The Implications of the Phrase: “Existence Precedes Essence.”

Kung Tzu or Confucius as he is better known as was born in 551 BC and was a Chinese thinker and teacher (as he preferred to see himself) developed a system of philosophy and religion known as Confucianism. One part of his thoughts in particular are currently of interest to us; his views on human nature. Confucius believed that human nature is neither good nor evil, but develops through out one’s life.The actions, choices and thoughts of every person all contribute towards a person’s nature; and as a result of this thought he justified that there is no collective human nature and that human nature varies from person to person. This may be summed up into one phrase: â€Å"existence precedes essence†. The statement in this case would mean that people are born without any nature as such, and are neither good nor evil to begin with; quite simply they’re like a hollow husk with no character, soul or substance (mental and emotional) that would make them human.The character develops and grows as a person experiences live and all the challenges and rewards that accompany life and is reflected through the actions and decisions of each person. This would imply that every individual is born with a ‘clean sate’ and are thus free to determine the direction of their existence weather for good or evil as a culmination of their lives thus far. It also means that all human beings are born equal (at least on a moral plain) because every individual at birth has no essence or soul; quite simply, they may be compared to animals.It is their lives and experiences that shape who they are in essence and their actions and choices that reflect who they are. Further more as a result of the equality implications is could be deduced that all people regardless of their economic or social class are equally capable of committing good and evil and no individual is incapable of committing either good or evil regardless of their social or economic class.

The Millers Prologue And Tale Analysis English Literature Essay

Geoffrey Chaucer was a mediaeval author and regarded as the greatest of Middle English authors. Born in London, Chaucer was the boy of a affluent merchandiser who sent him to be trained at a baronial family. There he was educated and began to take journeys along with the male monarch for concern. Chaucer was a really busy man of affairs, and in his trim clip he would compose. He wrote The Canterbury Tales, during the fourteenth-century, a fabliau, which was about a group of people stating their narratives on a pilgrim's journey to the Canterbury Cathedral. The Miller ‘s tale mirrors today ‘s stand-up comedy modus operandis as evident in the Miller ‘s usage of timing, sarcasm, and personal narratives to state his narrative. † A TheA Millers Tale started by speech production of John, a carpenter, and an older gentleman, and his immature married woman, Alison, an 18 twelvemonth old adolescent. He loved her more than he loved himself. John was described as being covetous, because of her age, thereby maintaining her caged. In actuality, he was good hearted and really naA?ve. He was a typical older adult male that merely wanted to work hard and love his married woman. Alison was described as â€Å" wild and immature, with a slender, graceful organic structure † . Today there are older work forces that marry younger adult females, but normally non at such a immature age. John loved his married woman more than himself and most work forces today, who are attracted to immature adult females, are really in love and naA?ve every bit good. Alison was in love with a immature adult male that happened to be her and her hubby ‘s roomie. She was n't in love with John, yet she knew that he would make anything fo r her. At such a immature age, it sounds like she wanted what adult females in today ‘s society, would name a â€Å" sugar dada † , person to give her nutrient, shelter, money and demo her echt love. Nicholas was a clerk, and he was besides John and Alison ‘s roomie. He was immature, wild and a con-artist. He was besides, in love with Alison. Although he ne'er truly described her as did the other characters, the Miller made it evident of his fondness for her. His function in today ‘s society could be compared to a wild college pupil at an Ivy League university. He did n't mind a challenge and finally played the biggest function in the Tale because he plotted a fast one in order to pass clip with the adult female that he loved. He could read people good because he conjured up a program that worked ab initio, to flim-flam John so that he could pass the dark with Alison. He pretended that something was incorrect with him and being naA?ve, John believed him. He spoke about a major inundation and had John hanging bathing tubs. They all got in the bath until John had fallen asleep in the bath, so Alison and Nicholas snuck off to be together. While I do n't cognize anyone in today ‘s society that would travel this far, the play with Nicholas and Alison reminded me of a daytime soap opera sing they would crouch so low as to do up this narrative, and prosecute sexual brushs in Alison ‘s hubbies sleeping room. The last character in the narrative, Absolom, was besides a clerk and in love with Alison. Absolom was â€Å" reasonably and homosexual † , and day-dreamed about Alison. He described her as â€Å" spare, and so sweetly lecherous † . Like John, he was infatuated by Alison. Alison mentioned that â€Å" Absolom is populating in a bubble. He has nil but a laugh for all his problem. † It appeared that he did n't hold a hint about adult females and had ne'er dated before, but was happy merely being allowed to talk to Alison and lavish her with vocals, money and gifts. Today, there are many immature work forces like Absolom, who in secret loves a beautiful adult female but think they have no existent opportunity on holding her so, settle on woolgathering alternatively. The sarcasm of this character is that he was so clueless that he ended up blowing the screen of Nicholas and Alison ‘s love matter by firing Nicholas ‘s butt. I would state that things like th is as it relates to today ‘s society, happens when there is a sloppy deceiver, sloppy things come to visible radiation! Although there was no moral to the narrative, throughout the narrative, each character could be compared to in some facet, with people in today ‘s society. I believe the writer ran across aliens during his travel, and to maintain himself entertained, found ways to compose about these different people and utilize it for his ain ego pleasance. Possibly his occupation was so serious that he had to do visible radiation of any given state of affairs. The writer could hold really good encountered most of these people throughout his life. We will ne'er cognize what his logical thinking was, but it ‘s astonishing to see that people today are still like they were in some facet to the people in the in-between ages. The writer used timing, sarcasm, and personal narratives to maintain people interested, yet it is so closely related to today ‘s society.

Me Against the Media

I stroll into my Critical Media Studies classroom, drinking an icy bottle of Pepsi and wearing a Nike baseball cap. A few of my students glance up from their cell phones and iPods long enough to notice me. â€Å"Um, nice hat,† someone comments. â€Å"Thank you,† I say. â€Å"Today’s class is proudly sponsored by Nike, a strong advocate of education. When it comes to education, Nike says, ‘Just do it! ’. † I take a swig of my Pepsi. â€Å"Can you guess who else is sponsoring our class today? The few students who have actually done the reading chuckle because they know that today’s class is about the pervasiveness of consumerism in popular culture and in the schools. Over the years, I’ve resorted to lots of gimmicks like these in my quest to teach students about consumerism. I try to make my students more aware of how the media naturalize consumerism through advertisements, product placement, and especially through advertiser-frie ndly programming. You might be surprised to hear that I find this to be the single most difficult topic to teach.I teach about many controversial media issues — ownership, violence, race and gender representation — and students contemplate these topics enthusiastically. But when it comes to consumerism, it’s a brick wall. Five minutes into any such discussion, I brace myself for the inevitable chorus of, â€Å"Oh, come on. It’s just a bunch of ads. † Corporations and advertising executives should rejoice, as this reticence of young people to think critically about the role of consumerism is money in their pockets.Advertisers have always coveted the 18-34 year old group—the legions of the so-called â€Å"Age of Acquisition† who have few established brand loyalties and lots of pocket change. Today’s Generation Y youth, born roughly between 1977 and 1997, are especially desirable because they are the children of Baby Boomers, and therefore represent a population explosion. Run the term â€Å"Generation Y† through a search engine, and you’ll find dozens of sites with information about how companies can take advantage of this marketing gold mine.Multinational corporations are deeply invested in the collective consumer choices of my students. When my students fail to show concern, these corporations become all the more powerful. So why is it that Generation Y is so uncritical of consumerism? I offer you this report from the trenches, from my college classroom in Fort Collins, Colorado, with my insight into how students view consumerism and why lack concern. I also discuss how I have addressed these attitudes. My hope is that media activists of all stripes can draw upon my experience.To demonstrate to my students how media content itself naturalizes consumerism, I used to show my students a clip from the movie Father of the Bride. In this clip, the father is horrified that his daughter wants him to spend about $130,000 on her wedding. He would prefer to have a simple wedding reception at the local Steak Pit, but the whole family rejects this idea. Even the adolescent son understands this is â€Å"unacceptable†; he comments, â€Å"I don’t think you want the word ‘pit’ on a wedding invitation. When he complains that his first car cost less than the wedding cake, the wedding coordinators bursts into laughter and says, â€Å"Welcome to the ‘90s. † After the daughter agrees to downsize the wedding, her father discovers her, asleep, reading a magazine article with tips on how to throw a budget wedding. Suddenly ashamed of himself, he agrees to fund the extravagant wedding. Dad learns his lesson, so to speak. Consumerism-fueled expectations may be outrageous, but they are necessary, and failure to adhere to these expectations is silly, miserly, and downright unloving.I quit showing this clip. It didn’t work. Oh, they got the point, tha t media content often promotes the agenda of advertisers. Unfortunately, the clip would inevitably lead to a version of the following discussion. A female student raises her hand shyly and says, â€Å"I understand why this is bad, but I want a big wedding. † A dozen ponytailed heads nod in harmony. â€Å"I mean, not as big as the one in the movie,† someone responds, â€Å"but you know, the flowers, the cake, the dress, the ring, all that stuff. I’ve daydreamed about my wedding since I was a little girl. † Me too,† the first student says, and frowns. â€Å"Does that make me a bad person? † Therein lies the trouble. The dreams, the memories, the rites of passage of Generation Y — all of these are intertwined intricately with consumerism. By placing wedding consumption under scrutiny, this student feels like she is being attacked personally, because her sentimental dream of a wedding is linked so closely to products. To this Generation Y student, the suggestion there is something wrong with consumerism is akin to the suggestion that there is something wrong with her.While all of us in the post-war Western world have grown up with the association between happiness and consumption, this association is all the more powerful with Generation Y. They have grown up with unlimited advertising and limited models of social consciousness or activism. Let’s look at the experiences of my students, a fairly typical U. S. American sample of Generation Y. Their happiest childhood memories are thoroughly linked to consumption. They were born in the 1980s under the Reagan administration, when two important trends in children’s television occurred.Reagan, ever the media deregulator, relaxed requirements for educational programming at the same time as he relaxed restrictions on adverting to children. This helped bring forth a new marketing strategy—which Tom Engelhardt has called the â€Å"Shortcake Strategy† — in which children’s television shows were created for the exclusive purpose of marketing large collections of children’s toys. The prized childhood memories of Generation Y are filled with these shows and toys: Strawberry Shortcake, He-Man, the Care Bears.Discussing the politics of this kind of marketing with students is even harder than discussing wedding excess. A student once wrote in my teacher evaluation, â€Å"Great class, but please don’t go hating on Strawberry Shortcake. † And then there was high school. This is the first generation that came of age in the era of rampant advertising in the schools, as well as Channel One, the news program piped into schools complete with advertisements. As a Generation Xer who graduated from high school in 1988, I recall very few ads in school. A relatively short time later, the hallways, lunchrooms, and sports facilities f cash-strapped schools frequently are sponsored by corporations. When I ask stud ents if this happened in their schools, they supply never-ending examples: stadiums dotted by Nike swooshes, lunchrooms filled with Pizza Hut and Chic Fil-A, a back-to-school party sponsored by Outback Steakhouse, even book covers sponsored by corporations. Then, of course, there’s the prom. Eschewed by some of my Gen X counterparts, the prom is back and bigger than ever, teaching future brides and grooms important lessons about gowns, limos, and flowers.Oh, and ask a Generation Y member which mall he or she grew up in, and you may well get an answer. In addition, many young people don’t take consumerism seriously because they feel that as individuals, it does not affect them. As media activists like Jean Kilbourne have argued, this illusion that advertising affects â€Å"everybody else but me† is nothing new, but I think this is even more the case with Generation Y. I find that young people have a hard time understanding media effects in any way other than thei r own experience.Students claim violence in the media doesn’t matter because they grew up playing Doom and they didn’t turn out violent. Or they claim that unrealistic images of women in the media do matter because they know a lot of girls with eating disorders. Young people don’t seem to have a language for understanding that the media doesn’t just affect us on an individual level — the media impact society politically, economically, and ideologically. A student might dismiss ads in his high school by saying they did not affect him.But nonetheless, the proliferation of ads in high schools have affected U. S. American culture as a whole — and that’s what young people do not seem to understand. Again, this individualistic way of looking at media effects isn’t entirely new, especially in an individualistic culture like the United States, where social scientists for years have been obsessed with trying to draw links between indivi dual behavior and the media. But Generation Y is a particularly individualistic cohort. The Me Generation is back.Just like in the 1970s, young people are frightened and disgusted with current events and have retreated away from politics, with their iPods, Playstations, and all the other isolating technology the consumer market can offer. But the 1970s were different because the 1960s didn’t die overnight. Me Generation or not, the language of activism was still spoken in the 1970s, and in fact many young people were involved in movements such as Women’s Liberation. To what activist language has Generation Y been exposed? It’s three years into their own Vietnam, and Generation Y isn’t exactly flooding the streets with protestors.Often students tell me that they find politics to be boring and irrelevant to their own experiences. In other words, it’s pretty hard to engage a group of young people in a discussion of the political implications of consum erism when they are not engaged in politics much at all. Consumerism is a personal choice, and most of my students cannot see beyond that. They shop at Wal-Mart because it’s cheap, and buy coffee at Starbucks because they like the mochas. Sweatshops? Globalization? It’s not so much that young people don’t care about these things (though many don’t).Rather, they haven’t been taught to think of consumerism as something that extends beyond their own enjoyable trip to the mall, or that their personal consumer decisions are political. To me, perhaps the most frustrating argument students make about consumerism is that it shouldn’t be a societal concern because â€Å"it’s the parents’ responsibility. † Parents are responsible for refusing to buy their kids $200 basketball shoes, for making sure they eat a healthy lunch in the cafeteria, and for instilling values that, according to my students, will somehow make their children immune to the effects of advertisements.This argument disturbs me in part because very few of my students are parents, and in part because they seem to show no compassion for kids who have parents unwilling or unable to be this active in their kids’ development. But most of all, this disturbs me because it places corporations off the hook for the effects they have on society. It doesn’t matter how or to whom a company markets their products; it only matters how parents raise their children. Once again, consumerism becomes the business of individual families, not society. So, what can media activists do?I think the first step is to find ways to appeal to members of this generation on the level of the individual. Young people might not care about plight of a Nike worker in Vietnam or a Wal-Mart worker in Houston. They may, however, be concerned with how credit card companies lure in college students, or how college bookstores jack up prices needlessly, or how car insuran ce companies charge young people exorbitant amounts. When I ask students to give examples of how corporations have screwed them over personally, the room fills up with raised hands.This is a good way to show young people that although consumerism has brought them happiness in their lives, it has also brought them problems. A second activist strategy of reaching Generation Y is to find examples of popular culture that promote consumption. Generation Y is all about popular culture. I’ve found that my students are amenable to discussions about how advertisers and media producers consciously create media content that â€Å"trains† young people to be consumers. Young people need to know that corporations see them as a market to manipulate, and often will respond to this argument, because who wants to be manipulated?The trick is to find popular culture texts they relate to that have a strong pro-consumerism bent. No, don’t show them Father of the Bride, but one thing I have shown with more success to my students is the â€Å"Pottery Barn† episode of Friends. In this episode, Rachel lies to her roommate Phoebe and tells her their new furniture is antique. Actually, it came from Pottery Barn, but Phoebe hates commercial furniture. Rachel is caught in her lie at when the two walk by Pottery Barn and see most of the furniture in the display window.But then Phoebe sees a lamp in the window and decides she must buy it. Phoebe learns her lesson. Commercial furniture is good. Another good source of pro-consumerism media is reality television, a favorite of students and chock filled with product placement. A third strategy is simply to get young people to talk to their parents about their experiences growing up and how people â€Å"back in the day† felt about corporate power and consumerism. These are the children of Baby Boomers, after all, so even if they haven’t been around activism, their parents have.One of my favorite assignmen ts is one in which I have students interview older family members about popular culture and their past experiences. Students love this assignment. So, there’s hope. When I wear my Nike hat to class, some of the students get it, and inevitably, a student stops by my office at the end of the semester and announces she has stopped going to Starbucks. But this is no easy task, and activists would be well advised to work on the issue of Generation Y and consumerism. The advertisers are certainly paying attention to Generation Y, and so should we.

Book Review of A National Party No More

The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat by Zell Miller In A National Party No More Senator Zell Miller writes a non-fiction book that is something of a memoir of his political life as a lifelong Democrat and as well as being a diatribe against the Democratic Party. In 2002 the Democratic Senator Paul Coverdell from Georgia died suddenly and the Georgia Governor Roy Barnes asked Zell Miller to fill in until November of that year and then to run for the position to serve the time remaining in the late senator's term of office. When Miller went to Washington D.C. he claims that he had hoped that he would find Washington to be â€Å"the place where great issues of the day are debated and solved, and great giants walk those hallowed halls.† Instead he discovered what Washington D.C. was not at all like he had hoped and this angered him â€Å"on behalf of Americans† (Miller 8). In his career Miller has served the State of Georgia as an administrator of a number of â€Å"vital agencies, as an assistant to two governors, as head of the State Democratic Party, as Lieutenant Governor, and then as Governor† (Miller introduction no page number). He also served in the Georgia State Senate from 1965-1969. He failed in his attempts to run for the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia. In addition Miller served in the U.S. Marine Corps and has taught at four different colleges. It is worth noting that the majority of these positions are executive positions not legislative positions so serving as Georgia's United States Senator put him into a relatively unknown form of government where he lacked extensive experience and none on the national level. It appears somewhat incongruous that a marine would be a lifelong Democrat since military personnel currently tend to lean toward the Republican Party. Although Miller served only three years in the Corps it is clear that his experiences affected him greatly because he has written a book Corp Values: Everything You Need to Know I Learned in the Marines.† Miller's book was occasioned by his experiences in the U.S. Senate beginning in 2000, in combination with his advanced age. Miller was born in 1932 according the reverse side of the title page. The book was published in 2003 so Miller was 70 or 71 at the time his book was published. This is certainly not an issue of itself, but one wonders if Miller would make the same claims he had entered the same Senate at the age of forty or fifty. Miller alludes to this when he writes that he has â€Å"arrived at a station in life where I hear the whistle of that moral policeman we all have to answer to . . .† (Miller 1). He takes the occasion to advise â€Å"members of my Democratic Party and other politicians who are so far out of touch with regular Americans to ‘shape up'† (Miller 2). This position, that tacitly assumes he is correct while other party members who disagree with him are wrong, is strongly reminiscent of an elderly gentleman on the brink of retirement who climbs on a soapbox to â€Å"straighten out† the next generation. This is not to say Miller does not make some good points, he just does not prove them nor give the reader sufficient information to determine if Mill is correct. The book suffers significantly because it has no notes, no bibliography and no index. Consequently the reader has no opportunity to check either the statements Miller makes as being either true or false. Many of his claims are supported by anecdotal evidence based on his memory of what happened throughout his career. Miller calls himself a Conservative Democrat, an unusual designation, but not an illogical one. Despite this he is known to have been a supporter of President George W. Bush and announced in 2003 that he would support the Presidents re-election. He spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2004 in support of the President. Such actions hardly indicate a lifelong Democrat. Miller criticizes the Democrat Party because the leaders, he claims, have ignored the opinions of Conservative Democrats in the South, about one-third of the U.S. population, and have told them to â€Å"go to hell† (Miller 9). He appears to assume that all Democrats in the South are Conservative Democrats because he is one and that they all agree with him. He fails to mention the non-conservative Democrats in the South and seems to assume there are none. Miller concludes the Democrat leadership disagrees with Southern Democrats on the critical issues of â€Å"capital punishment, late-term abortion (even with a lot of pro-choice people), trying juveniles as adults, national defense, and the teaching of values in school† (Miller 3). Miller's reasoning process is suspect for a variety of reasons. First, it is not clear that these are the critical issues, at least on a national level. Capital punishment has been left up to the states and should not be regarded as a national issue, as are abortion laws as long as laws do not restrict a woman's right to control of her own body. Trying of juveniles as an adult does not seem to be a national issue either nor should it be. The current system presumes juveniles will not be tried as adults unless there are significant overriding reasons for doing so. The decision of where to try a juvenile is judged on a case-by-case basis which is as it should be. As far as the teaching of values as a national issue, it is clearly an important issue that impacts people throughout the country, but the Federal Government has no basis to determine what values should be taught. Miller seems to have completely forgotten the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution that reserves to the states any powers not delegated to the federal government and not prohibited to the states shall be a state power. It is apparent that many of these critical issues are state issues. National defense clearly is a national issue, but federal taxes, the deficit, Medicare, and Social Security benefits are as well, but Miller doesn't mention these issues. Miller's has a rambling and folksy writing style that slips from story to story and slides from point to point in a chaotic fashion that defies linear analysis. He chooses his anecdotes by cherry picking stories that will reinforce his position even if they are not related to the Democratic Party; on page 145 Miller quotes The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Winston Churchill, and Rodney King on the same page in support of a chapter entitled â€Å"Give to Bigotry No Sanction.† Certainly a case can be made for citing Rodney King, but the other two sources were clearly not written in support of civil rights in the United States. To his credit Miller admits mistakes he has made during his career. He points out that during 1964 he had â€Å"proclaimed that there should be an ‘investigation of Communist infiltration in the civil rights movement.' What an idiot!† (Miller 143). This is remarkably refreshing given the current climate of politicians who consistently hide what they have done and deny they have done it until they are proven to have done it when they will admit and ask for forgiveness. On the other hand this begs the question as to just how much credence one ought to place in the writings of a self-proclaimed idiot. Miller claims that the Democratic Party no longer represents the majority of Americans and has become distinctly too liberal in relation to the United States' population as a whole. This is an interesting position. Miller does not claim the leadership is wrong on issues, just that they disagree with Southern Conservative Democrats such as himself. This leaves the possibility open that the leadership is correct and the membership is wrong, but Miller fails to allow for this possibility. If this proves to be the case, it appears that Miller is advocating that the Democratic Party concern itself, not with the correct solution, but with gaining power again. A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat is largely not successful. His conclusion has merit but his treatment of the issues is inferior. The lack of references is a major weakness that could be easily corrected. Miller's failure to move in a linear, logical fashion in favor of using a disjointed, episodic style greatly reduces the effectiveness of Miller's writing. Rather than being the scathing indictment he hopes to provide that will help the Democratic Party, Miller's book feels more like a farewell by a statesman whose party has evolved while he has not. His gloom and doom predictions for the Democratic Party made in 2004 proved him incorrect since the Democratic once again gained the majority in both houses. Although Miller makes some interesting points that have validity, his book should be read with circumspection. Works Cited Barnes, Fred. â€Å"Zell Miller Endorses Bush.† 29 Nov. 2003. The Daily Standard. 20 April 2007. Miller, Zell. A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat. Atlanta: Stroud and Hall Publishing, 2003. â€Å"Text Of Zell Miller's RNC Speech.†Ã‚   01 September 2004. CBS News. 20 April 2007   ;http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/09/01/politics/ main640299.shtml;.

Elect any two countries and using the academic literature examine the Essay

Elect any two countries and using the academic literature examine the impact of cultural differences on the negotiation process - Essay Example Hofstede’s Cultural Typology Hofstede’s cultural dimension theory is beneficial in understanding cross-cultural communication processes and the influence of cultural differences. Hofstede found his theory beneficial for developing a model, which ranks one country against the other, on the basis of four dimensions of culture, i.e. power distance, individualism, masculinity/femininity and uncertainty avoidance (Hofstede, 1984). Culture Difference between United Kingdom and Australia Power Distance The society of United Kingdom is supportive of equality within the society and considers each human being or native of the country as equal. These results reflect that United Kingdom’s society has transformed from the typical old times society into a modern one, which believes that individual rights should not be limitedly granted to few fortunate individuals of the society, but fair play should prevail in every aspect of life. Australian society, on the other hand, is fo und to be a little bit more supportive of equality in the society, as compare to United Kingdom. Australian culture provides each individual with equal opportunities to make their lifestyles better, no matter if the individuals belong to black or white community and they immigrants or civilian of the country (Hofstede, 2012). Individualism By analyzing UK’s society utilizing Hofstede’s typology, it is found that the society is highly supportive of individualism and takes care of each other’s privacy. Individuals are empowered to take decisions about their lives, career and education on their own, and the outcome of their actions is their own responsibility. Moreover, individuals are also supported to live their life in a way, which is considered as a positive contributor towards the overall social structure of the society. When the culture of Australia was analyzed against UK’s culture on the basis of individualism, it was found that Australia’s so cial structure and culture design are more supportive of individualism as compare to United Kingdom (Hofstede, 2012). Masculinity/ Femininity The society of United Kingdom is highly supportive of masculinity and individuals who are highly successful, ambitious and positive are usually considered as the one who drives the society towards positive attitude. On the other hand, Australian society is also femininity oriented, where individuals’ attitude towards life and their contribution to the society are measured from how successful and ambitious they are about their career and job related performance (Hofstede, 2012). Uncertainty Avoidance In this dimension, the society of UK is found to be more supportive of positive attitude and they always perceive that the future is going to bring for them happiness and fortune. Individuals living within the society are hopeful that their present and future would bring hope. Moreover, it also implies that the social structure of UK allows its individuals to keep their plans for the future and present flexible, as it can be altered according to changing scenarios and incoming new information. This is the reason, that UK’s society is supportive of fair play and equal opportunities for every individual in the society. On the other hand, Australian society is more uncertain about the future and reflects a slightly negative attitude in their daily life practices. They are scared of what might

Costumer service Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Costumer service - Essay Example Researchers have developed different models for quantifying customer service as explained by Kapur (2010). The models are significant since they help the management in identifying problematic areas in quality control. This helps the management to devise strategies to improve on customer service leading to an overall improvement of profitability and performance of the firm (Pang 2007). Most of the models in customer service focus on the concept of service quality gap. If the customer expectations are greater that performance, then the perceived quality is less and the customer is said to be dissatisfied. The current case will take the 4 Gap Model to measure customer service. The 4 Gap Model Research has been conducted in different sectors including banking, telecommunication, repair and maintenance and in insurance concerning the model (Ramsaram- Fowdar 2007). The gap models developed by researches are used to measure the service quality expectations before and after the service. Ther e are five major determinants of service quality in the model are tangibility, reliability, perceptibility, safety and empathy. The use of The 4 Gap model shown below became widespread in the measurement of service quality. The model has received criticism when analyzed from a methodological and conceptual aspect. In spite of this, the model has been used in various researches regarding quality of customer service (Ben-Haim 2006). The basic feature of the model is that it places an emphasis on oversight regarding quality between the customer and the service provider (The Marketing Association of Australia and New Zealand 2011). The

Women and science Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

Women and science - Essay Example Ada Byron of the United Kingdom is hailed as the creator of the world’s first computer software programme. She was born in December 1815 to the famous English poet Lord George Gordon Byron and Lady Annabella Byron. There were 4 momentous events in her life that propelled Ada to scientific distinction.2 The first event was the split up between her parents. Lady Byron legally separated from her husband just 5 weeks after the birth of Ada. The court granted her sole custody of the child. Free from her husband’s influence, Lady Byron {who secretly dreaded that Ada would take up poetry like her father}, encouraged her daughter to become a mathematician and a scientist. The second and third momentous events were the advent of 2 persons into Ada’s life: Mary Somerville and Charles Babbage. Mary was a brilliant woman who translated the works of French mathematician and astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace. Her translated texts were widely used at Cambridge. Mary motivated 17- year old Ada to study mathematics deeply. Ada met Charles Babbage during a dinner party in 1834. Charles was an English mathematician, philosopher and mechanical engineer. She was very interested in his pet project called the ‘Analytical Engine’ {which turned out to be the predecessor of the modern computer}. Charles’ contention that the Analytical Engine could be made not only to foresee but also act on such foresight ignited a spark in Ada Byron that would precipitate her to scientific fame.