Timothy McVeigh Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Timothy McVeigh - Research Paper Example Unarguably, the case of Timothy McVeigh is one of the most infamous and heinous crimes ever committed in the United States. It is second only to the damage wrought by the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York in damage to property lives claimed. What made it particularly significant, however, is the fact that McVeigh is an American citizen, which made his terrorist act homegrown as opposed to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which was perpetrated by foreign terrorists. This paper will explore the criminal theories behind his act as well as in the dynamics of the drama that unfolded in the course of his arrest and trial, which culminated in his execution. This is particularly because there was so little effort to comprehend his act and his motivations because there was a collective clamor for his death and nothing else just so he could no longer repeat his feat. The sentiment was understandable, as McVeigh – throughout the whole affair stood unmoved and unrepentant, coldly defending hi s action as rational and calling the victims â€Å"collateral damage† in his twisted notion of things. ... The tragic event, wrote Stein, effectively â€Å"shattered the mythic invulnerability of the American â€Å"Heartland†Ã¢â‚¬ . (p. 51) McVeigh was apprehended a little over an hour later on a different charge – that of transporting a firearm. â€Å"By August 1995, McVeigh and co-defendant Terry Nichols had been charged with conspiracy, use of weapon of mass destruction, destruction by explosives, and eight counts of first-degree murder.† (Greene and Heilburn 2010, p. 189) When McVeigh was apprehended, along with his cohort, Terry Nichols, America was again shocked to find that these clean-cut men, both served in the country’s armed forces, were responsible for planning and implementing an action that would kill hundreds of their countrymen. In the process, they methodically constructed and detonated bombs, with the plan as some sort of revenge and catalyst to his separatist movement. (Disilvestre 2003, p. 64) For this paraphrase, this is the information/d irect quote from the source (I will include the quotes if you want to use it): â€Å"Timothy McVeigh, just 29 years, was the ex-soldier convicted of constructing, planting and detonating the bomb that killed so many of his countrymen. Terry Nichols, 42, was convicted of helping McVeigh plan, purchase and steal materials in order to construct the bomb.† (Disilvestre, p. 64) Criminological Theories Again, it must be emphasized that contemporary interest on the motivational factors for McVeigh’s crime was close to nonexistent as many Americans wanted closure and the sense of security that came with finally putting the man who murdered hundreds of Americans to death. If the public and criminologists themselves bothered to look, there are existing criminological theories that could explain McVeigh’s behavior and

Factors that Affect Self Esteem

Factors that Affect Self Esteem According to social psychological research, which factors affect self-esteem? How people regard themselves and evaluate their self-worth or self-esteem differs from one individual to the next. However, there are multiple factors that might affect an individuals self-esteem, these factors can include domestic treatment, group treatment and even the media. It can be hypothesized that one factor might affect self-esteem more significantly than the others. Social psychologists have seemed to agree that the social environment (while it does have its affects) has a minor influence on self-esteem. According to Schmitz, (2006) how children are treated domestically will have a significant influence on the development or lack thereof of self-esteem. Furthermore, other studies seem to also share similar conclusions; Belobrykin, (2003) conducted a study that explored self-esteem and its influencers, it was concluded that teachers and parents are the main influencers of self-esteem. Teachers and parents are both seen as authoritative figures, as well as much more knowledgeable. Therefore, how they treated children, especially during developmental stages will have a psychological effect. Although social influences might have an affect it can be inferred that the main influencers are authoritative figures due to how children might seek acceptance and validation. Hence forth if the child does not get what they intend as stated formerly it will aff ect them negatively. However, through the excess of information and communication in the modern age, a large emphasis is placed on the media and its role in affecting self-esteem. Although, the media does play a role in affecting self-esteem, according to Fernandez and Pritchard, (2012) social media influences how both men and women should look. However, although the media seemed to have the greatest effect, for women social pressure also affected self-esteem and for men it was internalization. Therefore, it can be assumed that social media simply acts upon peoples already existing self-esteem issues and that there is a different criterion such as social norms and standards or group treatment combined with how a person might view themselves to be. Self-esteem issues have always existed long before the media, however, it can be stated that the media is simply a catalyst that increases or aids in increasing low self-esteem. The media affects self-esteem though indirectly. For instance, how people perceive themselves versus how they want to be perceived, to elaborate further what people place on social media is what they want you to perceive them. Zuckerman, Li and Hall, (2016) conducted an experiment that explored what affects self-esteem between different genders. The research concluded that gender differences do not play a role in self-esteem, though it appears that these issues were more present in developed countries than in under-developed countries. This can be due to how more developed countries are characterized by values of equality or freedom, which in turn can affect how people perceive they should be treated versus how they are actually treated. Furthermore, other studies have also stated that how individuals perceiv e themselves also affects how they are aided in social situations, which can also affect self-esteem further. This implies that how people are treated can affect perception (Marshall, Parker, Ciarrochi, Heaven, 2013). In conclusion, self-esteem is not affected by just a single stimulus, however according to psychologists the main influence on self-esteem is domestic treatment in developmental stages of the child as it affects self-esteem on the long-term. Therefore, it is an individuals perception of what others might think of them which highly affect self-esteem. Furthermore, the media does not act a direct influencer of self-esteem, it is however an indirect cause of self-esteem issues. This is apparent as this issue is more present in highly developed countries. References Belobrykina, O. (2003). The Influence of the Social Environment on the Development of Older Preschoolers Self-Esteem. Russian Education Society, 45(5), 57-69. http://dx.doi.org/10.2753/res1060-9393450557 Fernandez, S. Pritchard, M. (2012). Relationships between self-esteem, media influence and drive for thinness. Eating Behaviors, 13(4), 321-325. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eatbeh.2012.05.004 Schmitz, M. (2006). Influence of Social and Family Contexts on Self-Esteem of Latino Youth. Hispanic Journal Of Behavioral Sciences, 28(4), 516-530. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0739986306293999 Shin, Y., Kim, M., Im, C., Chong, S. (2017). Selfie and self: The effect of selfies on self-esteem and social sensitivity. Personality And Individual Differences, 111, 139-145. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.02.004 Zuckerman, M., Li, C., Hall, J. (2016). When men and women differ in self-esteem and when they dont: A meta-analysis. Journal Of Research In Personality, 64, 34-51. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2016.07.007

The Middle Ages Essay -- History Historical Middle Ages Essays

The Middle Ages Throughout time, history has taken some strange turns. A single ruler establishing some new form of government can transform entire civilizations, or a single event can lead to the creation of a great new people. Whatever the case, history can repeat itself in time. One possible exemption of this could be Britain’s time period of the Middle Ages. Bearing a distinct and unique culture relative to the time period, some of the values and the customs held during this time have yet to be repeated in history. It is perhaps the most unique period of all time for the British Isles. Brief History   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Before the period of the middle ages, the British Isles mostly lay dormant in local disputes and settlements of small tribes. Up until the late 900’s, the Anglos and the Saxons laid their claim to the land of Britain. However, this all soon changed. An ambitions individual with hero-like characteristics set foot and conquered the Anglo-Saxons and started Britain on its journey to modernism. Thus, the tide was set in motion for a new government and a civilized race. A monarchy was established, and the Middle ages began in roughly 975 AD (Vinogradoff, p 18). Feudal Life   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In the Medieval Period, life was either very great or very bad, according to your class. Only 2 classes existed during this time: the nobles, such as kings and knights who lived inside the castle, or the peasants, such as working-class people who lived in often unspeakable conditions. The peasants treated the nobles with the utmost respect, for if they didn’t, then the nobles could have them beheaded. (Sanders, p 34). The nobles were almost always the ones who owned land, and the peasants worked on this land in exchange for a small portion of it, in a sense, rented out in exchange for the labor. Peasants often worked 16-hour days as long as they could see into the nighttime and got very bad nourishment. The noble was not interested in the health of the peasants working on his land, as there was a significant supply of others who were very willing to take his or her place.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Women had a very difficult position in society during the Middle Ages. The feudal age was known for its superstitions, and women were often convicted of witchcraft and burned at the stake. Some of the more lucky women held professions of there own, such as blacksmiths, carpenters, and apothecaries.... ...een defined. Juggling became a popular form of entertainment, as it was unpredictable and seemingly deadly objects could produce awe and inspiration to the audience. Drama also played a big role during this time period, and plays were acted out only by males and only for the noble class. (McCarthy, para. 3).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Perhaps the greatest and most unique time period of all time for the British Isles was the Middle Ages. The feudal system and the role of the monarchy led this seemingly boring piece of time on the path towards greatness in meaning and value. Social skills developed during this time to force humans to cooperate and work together to produce a lifestyle that was beneficial to everyone and not just a leader. Lessons have been learned from this time period, such that it is not perfect. Disputes inside a community cannot be solved easily because they often affect the whole community and there will only be one side. Perhaps there are more lessons to be learned from this time. One can only hope that the future of modern warfare could be secretly embedded in the time of the middle ages. History has a tendency to repeat itself; maybe the time has come for the middle ages.

America Revolution

The link between the French and Indian War and the American Revolution might seem unexpected, but the French and Indian War paved the way for the American Revolution. The influence of the French and Indian Wars on the American Revolution is even greater due to the success of the British in the colonial wars between Great Britain and France. The French and Indian War is the name used for the colonial wars that took place between Great Britain and France from 1754 until 1763 over the control of the territory in North America.The French and Indian War began on the basis of the rivalry between France and England which eventually began over the territories of the New World. The territory of North America was soon divided between British North America and the French North America, distribution of power that caught in the middle the Native Americans (Bell, 2003). The French and Indian War ended with the win of Great Britain, which by that time had already established itself as the worldâ₠¬â„¢s greatest empire, fact confirmed by the 1763 Treaty of Paris (Bell, 2003).However, the victory of Britain meant that its colonial empire increased and along with it the deficit of Great Britain. This deficit was passed on to the colonists in North America and later became the one of the reasons that led to the American Revolution. The influence of the French and Indian War on the American Revolution is noticeable especially due to the victory of the British which were faced with several problems that were among the reasons for the outbreak of the American Revolution.The American Revolution refers to the moment when the Thirteen Colonies that later became the United States gained independence from Great Britain. Although the fighting started twelve years after the end of the French and Indian War, the period that followed the Seven Years War represented the preparation for the American Revolution and the beginning for the revolutionary era (American Revolution). After the end of the French and Indian War American Colonies were faced with only one ruler, Great Britain, and gained an important ally for their revolutionary movement, France.â€Å"France played a key role in aiding the new nation with money and munitions, organizing a coalition against Great Britain, and sending an army and a fleet that played a decisive role at Yorktown† (American Revolution). If it wasn’t for the French and Indian War and if Great Britain wouldn’t have won over France, perhaps the American Revolution wouldn’t have occurred or it would have had a hard chance gaining any powerful ally in a battle against two colonial empires.While France became an ally in the American Revolution, Great Britain ended the French and Indian War with a great deficit, a deficit that it asked to be covered from the American colonies as a price of defending them from the French threat. These taxes imposed by Britain were considered to be illegal and caused great dissatisfac tion in the colonies, eventually leading to the outburst of the American Revolution.The most obvious link between the American Revolution and the French and Indian War is that of the taxes imposed by the British for the defense of the colonies from the French threat. The problem with the taxes, which eventually led to the American Revolution, was not that they were high or that they existed at all, it was that the colonists were not consulted about these taxes because they had no representative in the British Parliament (American Revolution). Since there was no representation of the American colonies in the British Parliament, how could there be taxation.The subject of â€Å"no taxation without representation† became one of the reasons why the colonies desired independence from the British government. Particularly this desire for equal rights and representation was the basis of the fight for independence from Great Britain. Taxation was not the only problem between the Britis h and the Americans. In 1764, the Parliament passed two acts that upset the colonists even more (Sugar Act and the Currency Act), leading to a boycott of British goods (American Revolution).Confronted with a common enemy, the colonies began to collaborate and from that moment on the road to the American Revolution began. The American colonies benefited greatly from the French and Indian War because this war left the victorious Britain in debt and exhausted so that it was a less threatening adversary by the time the Revolution began. â€Å"The war exposed the weakness of British administrative control in the colonies on various fronts† (1756-1776) .Through their attempt to cover war losses, the British â€Å"violated what many American colonists understood as the clear precedent of more than a century of colonial-imperial relations†. The taxation issue therefore became the symbol of hoe the relation between the colonies and Great Britain will continue and the necessity of independence occurred. Of course, taxation was not the only reason in the American Revolution, but it contributed greatly in setting a common cause in the colonies.The end of the French and Indian War had a significant influence on the American Revolution because until the end of the war, few British North America colonists revolted against their role in the British Empire. Bibliography: †¢ Bell, Sandra, Savoir Faire: the French and Indian War, May/June 2003, available at http://www. collectionscanada. ca/bulletin/015017-0303-05-e. html; †¢ American Revolution, available at http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/American_Revolution; †¢ 1756-1776: The Seven Years War to the American Revolution, available at http://www. tax. org/Museum/1756-1776. htm.

Marriage and Obedient Christian Head Essay

For almost 4 years I was married to a beautiful and adulterous woman. In terms of our friends and acquaintances and the public, we were a perfect couple. We held hands when at comedy shows and in malls. We kissed anywhere and everywhere, no matter who was watching or whose paths we crossed. But when night fell on any given evening, my beautiful wife would leave only to return in the wee hours of the morning, just before daylight. What a lovely person she was when we on the town together. I admit that I hung in there for almost two years and was the â€Å"good† husband and obedient Christian â€Å"head†. I ran my companies from home and rarely met clients in person, opting to use Skype for my meetings. When I approached my wife about going to church and seeing a marriage counselor, she balked and I felt abandoned. Too much of that began to make me feel worthless, helpless, and heartbroken. And then came the need to find attention and a woman who would show me appreciation and value; things my wife did not or could not. I began to meet clients out in lounges and at happy hours. Or travel everywhere out of state, or the country to find â€Å"other† women who would welcome this gentleman. I stayed out until daylight many nights. Bedded many women. Travelled on many excursions with strange women. In final, after a sadistically short marriage and nasty divorce, I came to terms with the way I react to pain. Ashamed am I to have turned to my ex-wife’s ways. Ashamed am I to have left my obedience to the Lord. Ashamed am I to have to write about the truth. Though, I know, now, that I would be better if I was ever cheated on again.

Biography of Bletchley Park

Biography of Bletchley Park Free Online Research Papers The influence Bletchley Park had on ‘World war two’ is a point that has long been debated, as there are many factors and arguments that can prove or disprove any point. The one undisputable fact remains, that the work done at Bletchley, certainly altered the course of the war, one way or another As I have mentioned, there are many points that argue that Bletchley were very limited in how much they could affect the course of the war. The greatest of these arguments, is probably the idea that Bletchley Park could only give the military information. After that, the military leaders had to decide on whether or not to use the information, the way in which they would use it and the people to whom they gave passed the information and battle to. And even after the military had decided all this, it was up to the soldiers to actually fight the battle, and win. So, in this way, Bletchley Park seems to have little influence regarding the war. And because of this lack of direct contact with the war, very little of Bletchley Parks information was acted upon and so went to waste, or the battle was fought badly or inappropriate tactics where used which meant that that particular battle was lost. This bad leadership is seen particularly in the battle of Crete, when Bletchley Park decoded ful l details on battle strategies and other key details that allowed the military to make moves against the Germans. Unfortunately, the ally troops were outnumbered, and so lost the battle. However, it wasn’t a total defeat as Hitler never tried this style of fighting again in the entire course of the war. But it wasn’t just because of Bletchley’s lack of contact, it was also often due to Bletchley’s failure in breaking the codes and achieving the Enigma settings for that day. This failure meant that no actions could be taken against the enemy, and so losses were inevitable. Again, due to bad code breaking, there were often inaccurate messages passed on and so moves were made that were detrimental to the war effort, and so affected the allies badly. However, it has been worked out that the information provided by Bletchley Park meant that the war was shortened by two years, saving millions of lives. Most notable of these triumphs was the ‘Battle of Britain’. The information provided by Bletchley meant that the allies could make moves to counter the invasion, and prevented Hitler landing in Britain. Because of such heavy losses to the enemy, Hitler never tried this form of fighting again. Another of the great triumphs for the allies, directly caused by Bletchley Park, was the sinking of the flagship, and pride of the German Navy, ‘The Bismarck’. After the Bismarck was damaged, Bletchley decoded a message that finally convinced the Navy that they were a reliable source, and as such this led to the destruction of the Bismarck, which was a great blow to the Germans, partly economically, but mostly morally. Perhaps the defining moment in the ‘Battle of the Atlantic’ was the breaking of ‘Dolphin’. Up until the breaking of Dolphin, 282000 tonnes worth of supplies were lost due to German U-Boats attacking the shipping convoys, and destroying many of the British fleet’s best ships. After Dolphin had been broken, the allies were able to prevent the Germans destroying so many of their ships, and breaking Dolphin also meant that the Battle of the Medanine could be finished leaving the allies triumphant. On the whole, Bletchley Park affected the war in a huge positive way, and as was previously mentioned above, shortened the war by two years saving millions of lives. Research Papers on Biography of Bletchley ParkAppeasement Policy Towards the Outbreak of World War 2Standardized TestingOpen Architechture a white paperGenetic EngineeringPETSTEL analysis of India19 Century Society: A Deeply Divided EraQuebec and CanadaComparison: Letter from Birmingham and CritoThe Spring and AutumnRelationship between Media Coverage and Social and

Every child is special Essays

Every child is special Essays Every child is special Essay Every child is special Essay Its one of the most Inspiring and touching movies of all time. Its one of those movies that Just wont be forgotten easily, a movie that will be etched In a viewers mind, and a movie that surely will Impart lessons about life, parenting, and teaching. The movie introduced me to the condition called dyslexia. It made me wonder and think back in time if some people I knew and met were dyslexic. I had classmates before in grade school that I really didnt understand why they took too long to read a simple sentence or a short paragraph, which to me, were very easy. The movie made me wonder if, perhaps, some of them were dyslexic after all. At that time, it was either you were smart because you read fluently, or you were dull because you simply took a longer time to read simple words and sentences. There was no in- between, no label for those who had a hard time reading simply because what they saw when they try to read were different from what normal people see. Another lesson that the movie made me realize was about parenting, about how parents should love their children equally, how they should accept them whatever conditions come with them when they were born and whoever they turn out to be. Parents should love their child all the more when they realize that he did not turn out to be the child they wanted to have. For a person still planning to have his own family and children in the future like l, that lesson In the movie will not be forgotten easily. With that alone, my mind was already awakened to the heavy responsibility of how a parent should love his child. Another deep lesson being carved In my mind was about how teachers greatly affect their students outlook In life, and how they Influence them. A simple show of care and understanding goes a long way, especially If that child has undergone something, e. G. , personal crisis In coping with personal Incapability, family problem, among other things. Child Is Special. Im sure that it wont be easily forgotten. The movie introducing me to dyslexia was like a Beaded-Inform phenomenon to me: after seeing/knowing about it, I start to see it everywhere. What I mean is, after watching the movie, I started to get to know people, be it in person or I only know of or read about, who were dyslexic. Posted by Michelle Bayonet Email This Biologists! In all its steaminess and hotness, 50 Shades of Grey taught me things about relationships . But before I delve into that, I think its Rick Radians Heroes of Olympus: Son of Neptune Olympian Series as well as book 1 of his Heroes The Nature of Man The nature of man. Sigh. This was one of the most complicated topics of conversations and debates, which often end up in fights and disagree Pointless Pointless, yes I know my love for you is pointless. Pointless, for I belong to him, he who has neglected my heart. Pointless, for we do not Simple template. Powered by Flogger.

Technetium Facts - Periodic Table of the Elements

Technetium Facts - Periodic Table of the Elements Technetium (Masurium)Â   Atomic Number: 43 Symbol: Tc Atomic Weight: 98.9072 Discovery: Carlo Perrier, Emilio Segre 1937 (Italy) found it in a sample of molybdenum that had been bombarded with neutrons; erroneously reported Noddack, Tacke, Berg 1924 as Masurium. Electron Configuration: [Kr] 5s2 4d5 Word Origin: Greek technikos: an art or technetos: artificial; this was the first element made artificially. Isotopes: Twenty-one isotopes of technetium are known, with atomic masses ranging from 90-111. Technetium is one of two elements with Z 83 with no stable isotopes; all of technetiums isotopes are radioactive. (The other element is promethium.) Some isotopes are produced as uranium fission products. Properties: Technetium is a silvery-gray metal that tarnishes slowly in moist air. Common oxidation states are 7, 5, and 4. The chemistry of technetium is similar to that of rhenium. Technetium is a corrosion inhibitor for steel and is an excellent superconductor at 11K and below. Uses: Technetium-99 is used in many medical radioactive isotope tests. Mild carbon steels may be effectively protected by minute quantities of technetium, but this corrosion protection is limited to closed systems because of technetiums radioactivity. Element Classification: Transition Metal Technetium Physical Data Density (g/cc): 11.5 Melting Point (K): 2445 Boiling Point (K): 5150 Appearance: silvery-gray metal Atomic Radius (pm): 136 Covalent Radius (pm): 127 Ionic Radius: 56 (7e) Atomic Volume (cc/mol): 8.5 Specific Heat (20Â °C J/g mol): 0.243 Fusion Heat (kJ/mol): 23.8 Evaporation Heat (kJ/mol): 585 Pauling Negativity Number: 1.9 First Ionizing Energy (kJ/mol): 702.2 Oxidation States: 7 Lattice Structure: Hexagonal Lattice Constant (Ã…): 2.740 Lattice C/A Ratio: 1.604Â   Sources: CRC Handbook of Chemistry Physics (18th Ed.)Crescent Chemical Company (2001)Langes Handbook of Chemistry (1952)Los Alamos National Laboratory (2001)

Essentials Skills for Business Projects Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Essentials Skills for Business Projects - Essay Example This overview affects all types of business projects excluding projects in distance education. Several project managers underutilize their skills about project management (Crawford, 2000). This paper evaluates the key skills required for the successful completion of business projects and reviews the common reasons for project failure. By acclimatizing with better project management skills, the modern-day project managers can improve their skills in executing and accomplishing the goals and objectives of business projects as defined by the senior management.   For any business project to take off and cruise through all the obstacles and challenges, proper project planning is a key factor and skill in completing the imminent objective successfully. Project managers have to develop clear prospective outcomes as well as execute desirable tasks needed to accomplish the objectives. The most significant initial step is identifying the scope of the project (Lavell & Martinelli, 2008). By doing this, project managers can estimate the size, boundaries, and purpose of the project in such a way that they â€Å"create a box† that facilitates the real components needed â€Å"in the box† while distinguishing them from the ones â€Å"out of the box.† Consequently, skillful project managers must ensure that they deliberate on every executable task in order to unearth ideas that can propel the business project to the final stage (Remington & Pollack, 2007). After brainstorming, the tasks should be arranged in the most consistent or der to get the business project running to its completion. However, new tasks might come up in the course of the business project, and skilled project managers should not hesitate to add them appropriately without changing the scope of the project (Fairholm, 2003). With the above measures, the budget of the business project needs accurate estimation.

Sociological Philosophy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words

Sociological Philosophy - Essay Example Plato suggests powers exercised by a ruler are governed by customary and community rules. Decisions are made by the minds of the rulers and their delegates. Humans have some innate knowledge of what is important and good in human life and because of this, we should not be constrained by laws and rules but by what our minds tell us what is right and just in the circumstances. The laws do not expressly provide on how to deal with this specific situation and judgment must then be made on moral principles. Permanent laws are incompatible with changing demographics and technology. Laws must change at the same pace with the rest of society to maintain society's current perspective of justice and righteousness, but time delays in passing laws precludes this. Still now, the public waits for tougher dog laws to be passed on pit bulls and others alike. Even worse, there is no guarantee administration will be efficient. Here, Plato argues, rules fail to meet the differences of time and there is a need for rulers to exercise discretion as it encourages efficiency. Where rules fail to take into account of specific, exceptional cases, Aristotle claims, equity should apply. Judges should correct errors of the law, rising from oversight by the lawmakers, given there are rules to be corrected in the first place. This is therefore, an argument to being ruled by laws. He favours rule by democracy where government by a collective of good men is better than being ruled by an absolute king. Decisions ought to be made by a democratically-elected assembly. Unlike Plato's idea of 'permanence', offices and positions will be rotated; enforcing the idea that everyone is equal and everyone should both rule and be ruled. The practice of using legal precepts to decide disputes was criticized by American Legal Realists as either redundant or pernicious. Disputes, it is said, should be decided justly. Where legal precepts dictate the same outcome as that of justice, and then legal precepts are redundant--acting justly will achieve the same results as following the precept. Where legal precepts recommend a different result than that recommended by justice then following the rules are pernicious. The result is, in the words of Jerome Frank, "injustice is according to law." (Frank, 1936) Most people are of a similar opinion when confronted with what appears to be the "unjust" application of a rule to a particular situation. One assumption underlying this objection is that, because they are formulated before a dispute arises, legal precepts cannot take into account the specific facts of a dispute that may argue in favour of a different "just" result than that recommended by the legal precept. Only after the fact can we know enough about the actual dispute to do real justice between the parties. As Frank argued, The judge, at his best is an arbitrator, a "sound man" who strives to do justice to the parties by exercising a wise discretion with reference to the peculiar circumstances of the case. He does not merely "find" or invent some generalized rule which he "applies" to the facts presented to him. He does "equity" in the sense in which Aristotle--when thinking most clearly--described it. "It is equity," he wrote in his Rhetoric, "to

Global Company Environment & Strategy Coursework

Global Company Environment & Strategy - Coursework Example Soon, true to its mission and vision, IKEA opened its first oversea store in Norway, followed by many other stores and distribution centres in many parts of Europe and the United States. Thus in 1990 onwards, IKEA embarked on a global operations strategy and put up more stores in UAE, China and other parts of Asia, Australia and even Russia. Today, IKEA pioneered the global market and successfully positioned the IKEA brand in more than 40 countries in Europe, North America, Asia and Australia with more than 300 stores and more than 12,000 products in its product range. IKEA also introduced innovations in its stores by putting up IKEA restaurants and groceries to cater to the needs of its growing customers. All of this growth would not be possible without implementing strategic and global operations management that transcends national boundaries. ... Operations management took responsibility in protecting the environment by changing the way they do things in IKEA and by using environment friendly materials. IKEA also took care of the less privileged children in the world by generously donating and partnering with UNICEF welfare programs. 2. Compare and contrast the critical success factors (CSF) that helped IKEA to be competitive. Briefly outline how â€Å"Activity mapping technique† helps IKEA link competitive advantage, core competence, CSF and supporting activities. The major contributor to the success of IKEA is low price differentiation of its Swedish furniture that is globally appealing. While contemporary companies are focused on specialty design, IKEA keeps their design simple, light and functional, produced at the least cost without sacrificing quality. IKEA mass-produced for the worldwide market while its competitor mostly produced on demand. While IKEA’s competitors shipped and delivered bulky preassemble d products, the company innovated by selling unassembled products on â€Å"where is as is basis†, thus bringing down price without sacrificing quality. The results are â€Å"flat packages† and lowered transportation and storage cost. Another critical success factor is the way IKEA managed its supply chain. Instead of directly managing product quality and investing on costly plant, property and equipment, IKEA delegated the responsibility by partnering with more than 1,200 suppliers in 55 countries. This offers more flexibility and keeps their headquarter focus on transnational operational strategies, allows more resources for research and design, marketing and advertising campaigns, and even more resources for community social

Amazon (Kindle Fire) Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Amazon (Kindle Fire) - Research Paper Example In order for it to stay at the top in its sales, more needs to be done to obtain competitive advantage that is essential to get rid of any competition in the prospect. Comparing with the rest of the firms, Kind Fire presents a gap of about $300 for a similar commodity, thus, allowing customers to enjoy significant sales from its target markets. The gap exists because the other firms seek to sell their commodities at $499 while Kind Fire sells its commodity at $199. From the recent market results, Kind Fire has hit a sale of five million in the period terminating on December 2011 although Amazon has already resolved to stop working for this company. In comparison, the market leaders Apple Inc. sold at eleven million for their iPad in the last quarter, thus, presenting an undefeatable upper hand. According to the CEO of Amazon, the company aimed at realizing smaller profits from these devices although in its capacity as the retail company has resolved to dwell in smaller margins a fact ors that only few electronic firms would manage. Comparing to other firms, Kind Fire from Amazon Inc. has revealed excellent pricing strategies, through price elasticity in order, to keep sales high above most influential firms in the sector. According to most analysts, Amazon has not much interest in obtaining a gap in the tablet device market rather it views it as an opportunity to develop into the market for the digital world and make use of the vast opportunities that exist within the target market (Rohida 1). The firm has the chance to present its services to Kind Fire similar to their tests concerning the digital content. In order to realize these objectives, Kind Fire and Amazon have used price as the tool for entering into the market. Price is considered to determine the purchases that occur within the digital and electronic markets. With the emergence of Apple Inc. and other firms that market commodities such as the iPad, the world has presented demand for the commodity alt hough the prices do not favor the customers. Unless a marketer manages to offer his or her product an edge over the competitor’s commodity, only little sales can be realized. Therefore, marketers ought to give their firms an edge over the competitors in order to acquire competitive advantage that serves to augment the sales of firms that manage to establish one. Pricing strategies are offered on various grounds through consideration of different concepts such as the target market, demand, assortment of products offered and the commodity life cycle (Roth 2). Pricing strategies assists the marketer in realizing his or her pricing objective. Therefore, the pricing objective that a marketer prefers assists in the creation of the best pricing strategy. Both the pricing objectives and pricing strategies are guided by the business plan that a certain firm places in the business environment (Roth 2). Selection of a pricing objective precedes the determination of the best pricing stra tegy for the firm. Kindle Fire utilizes the penetration pricing strategy in which the firm seeks to obtain entry into the market environment, especially if there are other already established firms with a similar product. The aim of utilizing this pricing strategy is to attract customers into purchasing products from the new market entrant and improve the market share of that firm (Roth 5). In case the anticipated extents of the

A restaurant chain Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

A restaurant chain - Essay Example Another important source of its revenue includes profits earned from its operated restaurants. In the year 2011, the company was able to make a profit of 5.5 billion dollars, and this amounted to annual revenue of 27.5 billion dollars2. The primary business line of McDonalds includes cheeseburgers, milkshakes, desserts, soft drinks, French fries, cheeseburgers, etc. Recently, the business performance of McDonalds has been falling down, reporting a negative growth in its markets, and revenues. For example, in the year 2014, the business performance of McDonalds in Europe and America experienced a slow down3. In Europe, the company posted a negative drop of its financial performance by 1.4%. This is despite depicting a strong financial performance in its UK market. In United States, the company was able to post a drop of its sales by 1%. Another problem facing this company is its weak and inefficient customer service capability4. The company employees are not good at catering for the needs of its customers, and this has an impact in affect the loyalty of the customers towards the business organization. In any organization, employees of the company play an important role in determining whether the company will succeed or not. An efficient and friendly workforce would ensure that they are able to know and serve the needs of its customers, and this is the key to increasing the market share of an organization5. For purposes of improving its financial performance, the management of the company has to solve the above mentioned problems. There are two major methods that the company can use to solve the mentioned problems, and they include, improving its marketing strategy and its customer service capability. However, the company cannot develop an efficient marketing strategy, without having information on the strategies of their competitors, and the needs of its customers. This would therefore force the company to

The Prince of the Marshes by Rory Stewart Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The Prince of the Marshes by Rory Stewart - Essay Example These cases are just a cause for great concern as they have claimed the greater number of casualties in the ongoing war in Iraqi. The most worrying part of the suicide bombings is that they can occur anywhere, even in protected areas. Just two days ago, a suicide bomber killed five people at the main reception area of the hotel where we are based. Fortunately, we had just retired to our respective rooms after a press conference and cocktail party with delegates from different regions representing various groups as a way of trying to find a workable solution to the war in Iraqi which has so far claimed close to a million people since it started a few years ago. Bombing of hotels, embassies as well as other official buildings is a regular occurrence here. These are targeted as they are in most cases suspected of accommodating enemies who are sponsoring war in that country. This has so far resulted in most foreign embassies being closed down as hundreds of people have been killed in these suicide bomb attacks. It is said that some areas outside Baghdad have been rendered impassable as a result of the high degree of destruction of infrastructure that was caused by the war. Most roads were destroyed and many areas are said to be full of landmines. In fact some areas are branded no go areas. Anyway, I am attending a one month workshop which seeks to establish feasibility studies of resuscitating the telecommunications infrastructure which was also not spared by the war. The main aim of the workshop is to try and see if the new information and communication technology can be improved as away of attracting investors in the war-torn country which is expected to be peaceful once again in the near future. I hope to gain a lot of experience from this workshop as we aim to design measures that would take a long way in attempting to put investment on the agenda in this troubled country. More importantly, I will also present my paper during the

A restaurant chain Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

A restaurant chain - Essay Example Another important source of its revenue includes profits earned from its operated restaurants. In the year 2011, the company was able to make a profit of 5.5 billion dollars, and this amounted to annual revenue of 27.5 billion dollars2. The primary business line of McDonalds includes cheeseburgers, milkshakes, desserts, soft drinks, French fries, cheeseburgers, etc. Recently, the business performance of McDonalds has been falling down, reporting a negative growth in its markets, and revenues. For example, in the year 2014, the business performance of McDonalds in Europe and America experienced a slow down3. In Europe, the company posted a negative drop of its financial performance by 1.4%. This is despite depicting a strong financial performance in its UK market. In United States, the company was able to post a drop of its sales by 1%. Another problem facing this company is its weak and inefficient customer service capability4. The company employees are not good at catering for the needs of its customers, and this has an impact in affect the loyalty of the customers towards the business organization. In any organization, employees of the company play an important role in determining whether the company will succeed or not. An efficient and friendly workforce would ensure that they are able to know and serve the needs of its customers, and this is the key to increasing the market share of an organization5. For purposes of improving its financial performance, the management of the company has to solve the above mentioned problems. There are two major methods that the company can use to solve the mentioned problems, and they include, improving its marketing strategy and its customer service capability. However, the company cannot develop an efficient marketing strategy, without having information on the strategies of their competitors, and the needs of its customers. This would therefore force the company to

Risk Analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Risk Analysis - Essay Example As Wrona (2010, p. 1) states, â€Å"companies that do perform a risk management process on a fairly typical multi-month project (no longer than 12 months) will identify and manage possibly five to ten easily recognized project risks†. According to this statement, risk analysis can reduce the occurrence of some main types of risks, as well as makes companies able to respond effectively to the risks. In this paper, we will discuss two of the main risks that can occur for Ashton Wood Homes which is a Toronto based construction company. The company deals in the construction of homes and buildings and is serving the nation since 1975. According to Zou, Zhang and Wang (n.d.), some of the main risks associated with the business of construction companies are listed in the table below. Ashton Wood Homes Potential Risks Significant Index Scores Design variations 0.49 Occurrence of disputes 0.42 Variations by the client 0.46 Tight project schedule 0.67 Incomplete approval of documents 0. 39 Price Inflation 0.41 Inadequate programming schedule 0.38 General safety accident occurrence 0.30 The company considers risk management necessary to conduct to ensure completion of construction projects within available time and budget. As Flanagan and Norman (1993, p. 45) state, â€Å"attention to risk is essential to ensure good performance†. It is the job of the risk management authorities to undergo risk management and analysis to save time and budget. As Akintoye and MacLeod (1997, p. 31) state, â€Å"risk management is essential to construction activities in minimizing losses and enhancing profitability†. This statement proves the aim of the company to do proper risk analysis in order to minimize the probability of potential risks, as well as to bring improvements in performance and level of revenue. Risk management is imperative for construction companies (Schieg 2006, p. 77; Zu, Liu, & Lu 2012). According to Sharp (2009), proper identification of the risks a nd assessment of their potential impac

The Economical Environment of Senegal

The Economical Environment of Senegal Capital: Dakar Official language: French Area : 196,723 kmsq. Population: 13,711,597 (2009) approx Currency : CFA franc Prime minister: Souleymane Ndiaye President: Abdouyale Wade The area that today is Senegal once was part of the West African Empire of Mali, Ghana, and Tekrur. The country takes its name from the river that runs along its northern and eastern borders, forming the frontier with Mauritania and Mali. A poetic etymology from the Wolof people states that the name derives from the local term  Sunugal,  meaning our dugout canoe (everyone is in the same boat). The Republic of Senegal became independent in 1960 after three centuries of  French colonial rule. Dakar, the capital since independence in 1960, lies on the Cap Vert peninsula, the most westerly point in Africa. Before independence, Dakar was the capital of French West Africa , which included nine French-speaking West African states. Although predominantly Muslim, Senegal is a tolerant secular state, whose peoples have lived together peacefully for several generations and have intermingled to some extent. Islam is a potential unifying factor. Wolof is the national language. Independent f rom France in 1960, Senegal joined with The Gambia to form the nominal confederation of Senegambia in 1982. However, the envisaged integration of the two countries was never carried out, and the union was dissolved in 1989. Despite peace talks, a southern separatist group sporadically has clashed with government forces since 1982. Senegal has a long history of participating in international peacekeeping. PESTEL ANALYSIS OF SENEGAL Political environment affecting Senegal These are how and to what degree a government intervenes in the economy. Specifically, political factors include areas such as tax policy, labor law, environmental law, trade restrictions, tariffs, and political stability. It will further depict how political factors shape the labor after Senegal in market evolution in Senegal after evolution 1945? Its by Pointing out the political factors as a key element in the evolution of the labor market since 1945. The change in the labor market is been mainly shaped by political factors as illustrated by four cases: The Union franchise : 1946 to 1956 The loi-cadre :1956 to 1960 The early post independence State policy: 1960 to 1980 The post independance State policy at the adjustment structural era: 1980 to 2000 The union franchise: 1946 to 1956 This policy which affects the political factors of Senegal consists of 2 key issues- The assimilations constitution adopted in 1946. The extension of the investment policy through the adoption of the FIDES (Funds investment development economy society) The loi-cadre : 1956 to 1960 A metropolitan France response to the growing favor for decolonization in the international community. It introduced the breakdown of the French west federation and the drastic reduction of industrial investment. The major consequence was the loss of major markets i.e. guinea, Soudan and ivory coast and the increasing obsolescene of production facilities. The post independance State policy at the adjustment structural era: 1980 to 2000 The economic crisis that began in 1968, , as well as the effects of rapid population growth and accelerated urbanization deeply compounded the problem of an oversupply of unemployed and underemployed workers. The adoption of structural adjustment policies led to the withdrawl of the state from the labor market in 1980. Thus we conclude that the change in the labor market was determined by political factors as well as economic factors. Economic environment affecting Senegal- It includes economic growth, interest rates, exchange rates and the inflation rate. Economic factors includes addressing the basic problems encountered by Senegals economy: lack of diversified output, the inefficiency of investments, the role of state in economic activity, and the excessive expansion of domestic consumer demand. These problems have been partly addressed by programs focusing on food self-sufficiency, fishing, and tourism, and by strengthening high-return activities. Projects such as the Manantali irrigation project, the phosphate-to-fertilizer recovery project, and the trawler modernization program are examples of what Senegal is doing within this policy framework. In the area of manufacturing, capacity utilization improvement, equipment modernization, and low-capital production are emphasized. Since 1994, the government has made progress in privatizing state-owned enterprises, reducing labor costs to improve competitiveness in the manufacturing sector, and liberalizing trade by eliminating export subsidies and removing restrictions on certain strate gic imports. Private economic revenues accounted for roughly 82% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 1999, but trade liberalization had not progressed as much as planned. Social environment- It includes the cultural aspects and includes health consciousness, population growth rate, age distribution, career attitudes and emphasis on safety. The key issue is safe operation of the equipments. It also consists of 1) Symbol stratification: The society historically which was organized into a hierarchy of castes, a rigid structure in which descendants of royal lines and nobles ruled over artisan castes and slaves. After independence, a new set of status criteria emerged. New means for achieving wealth, power, and status were introduced through the market economy and the development of the education system. 2) Symbol of social stratification- During the colonial era, nearly all the profits generated by the largest firms went to foreigners and the local nobility. The nationalization programs led by the government after independence favored a small number of citizens who entered into a new competition for status and power. 3) Social Welfare and change programs: Poor economic management has led to the intervention of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in State programs and policies. Two decades of structural adjustment programs have reduced government spending in all public sector activities, including social services. Urban and rural dwellers have adopted creative survival strategies, that have helped them cope with difficult times. 4) Infant rate- People value children greatly. A child is seen as neighborhood property, and so child care responsibilities are shared.  Abandonment of infants is rare, and the strength of family bonds limits the need for institutional care of orphans. 5) Child rearing and education: By the time a child is five or six years of age, he or she is taught good values and etiquette. A child should greet elders, help parents with household chores, avoid foul language, and listen to the wisdom of elders. In their early years, boys and girls play together. As they grow older, gender roles become more sharply defined, with the girls remaining more with their mothers to learn household chores. TECHNOLOGICAL ENVIRONMENT: It includes technological aspects such as RD activity, automation, technology incentives and the rate of technological change. They can determine barriers to entry, minimum efficient production level and influence outsourcing decisions. Furthermore, technological shifts can affect costs, quality and leads to innovation. The African Regional Center for Technology, with 30 member states, has its headquarters in Dakar. Most research facilities in Senegal deal with agricultural subjects. Dakar has centers for mining and medical research and a research institute on African food and nutrition problems. An institute of research for oils and oilseeds is at Bambey. The Senegalese Institute of Agricultural Research, with headquarters at Dakar, operates a national center of agronomical research at Bambey, a national laboratory of livestock and veterinary research at Dakar, an oceanographic center at Dakar, and numerous other technical facilities throughout the country. The University Cheikh Anta Diop at Dakar, founded in 1949, has faculties of medicine and pharmacy and of sciences, and research institutes in psychopathology, leprosy, pediatrics, renewable energy, applied tropical medicine, applied mathematics, health and development, environmental science, adontology and stomatology, applied nuclear technology, and the teaching of mathematics, physics, and technology. The University of Saint Louis has an applied mathematics unit. Other facilities for scientific training include a polytechnic school; an international school of sciences and veterinary medicine, representing 13 French-speaking countries, at Dakar; and an institute of nutritional technology at Dakar. In 1987-97, science and engineering students accounted for 21% of college and university enrollments. In the same period, four technicians and three scientists and engineers per million people were engaged in research and development. ECOLOGICAL/ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS- Cultures are quite diverse in moral teachings or beliefs and vary in many ecological aspects like climate, geography, population size, and social organization. The Wolof culture is an African tribe located between the northwestern areas of the Senegal and Gambia rivers. This entire area has a tropical climate and a flat landscape. The climate is usually dry and the Wolof people generally depend on wells for their water needs besides agriculture. The Wolof people are a dominant group in Senegal. The majority of the Wolof is Muslim and is very religious. They are rural villagers and each village may consist of anywhere from 50 to 150 people. Although French is the main language spoken in Senegal, the Wolof language is quite popular. The division of labor is based on social status and gender. The Wolof recognizes the patrilineage descent among villages. The Wolof organizational structure is characterized by bilateral descent. The Wolof group is ideal to study because they represent a hi gh percentage of Senegals population and there are a lot of documented sources on their culture. Identifying moral prohibitions and taboos concerning the Wolof culture is pertinent in understanding ecological and social factors and moral prohibitions by using the eHRAF database. LEGAL ENVIRONMENT- There are various legal factors which affect the environment of the country. The various laws which are being updated in wide range of areas example consumer protection legislation, environment legislation,Health, safety and employment laws etc. corruption has also been the vital factors which affects the legal environment of the country. There are a number of factors that facilitate non transparent and corrupt governance practices in Senegal. These include: Lack of sufficient regard for the law and inadequate application of existing laws The politicization of the State bureaucracy and its inability to effectively deliver basic public services. Weak accountability mechanisms Limited transparency and access to governmental information Resistance to decentralization The limited scope and capacity of civil society organizations involved in anticorruption activities Widespread public tolerance and acceptance of corruption based on cultural and social norms and traditions. Based on an analysis of Senegals political, institutional, legal and cultural context, it identifies four major, overarching problems that need to be addressed to significantly improve governance and reduce corrupt behavior: Inadequate checks on executive decision-making resulting from the pattern of extreme concentration of power in the presidency. The lack of transparency in government operations and lack of autonomy of control and regulatory institutions charged with monitoring public expenditures. Lack of service orientation in delivery of services to the public Inadequate and ineffective public opposition to corruption. COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE USING THE PORTERS DIAMOND Michael porters competitive advantage of nations will be used as the theoretical model for this study. This theory provides a framework to examine how nations gain a competitive advantage in the global marketplace based on specific determinants found within the industries within a nation. Michael porters competitive advantage of nations explores how businesses within a nation gain a competitive advantage. Porter believes that groups or clusters of interconnected firms, suppliers, related industries, and various institutions that arises in particular locations of Senegal, the government has to think about economies, assess the competitive advantage of the locations and set public policy. The 4 primary determinants of his model are: factor conditions demand conditions related and supporting industries firm strategy, structure, rivalry FACTOR CONDITIONS- are the basic inputs of production that is necessary to compete in an industry. E.gs are skilled labor, infrastructure, or capital resources. DEMAND CONDITIONS- are the quality of the home demand for a product or service in an industry. RELATED SUPPORTING INDUSTRIES- are defined by whether a nation has the supplier and related industries are competitive. FIRM STRATEGY, STRUCTURE RIVALRY- conditions within a nation that administer how companies are created, organized, and managed along with the type of domestic rivalry. According to porter these determinants individually and as a structure provide the atmosphere for nations to gain a competitive advantage. Porter positions these determinants in a diamond pattern. Senegals performance and competitive advantage in manufacturing relates to growth of manufactured exports which is often considered crucial for economic development. The reasons are: Price and income elasticities of demand, as well as price elasticities of supply are greater for manufacturing than other industries. Positive externalities and external economies are thought to be associated with manufactured exports. In Senegal, demand is for two main sectors: 1) Gold Mining 2) Infrastructure, Power Communications Gold Mining- the mining deposits consists of 2 projects: Sabodala gold operation- Strategically located at epicentre of a major new gold district. Positioned on one of the world great golds belts. Grand cote mineral sands project- development project with tier 1 pot SABODALA PROJECT A strong operating margin provides for a robust project- Volume mined : 55 Mtpa Heavy Mineral grade: 1.7%-1.8% Infrastructure, power and  communications- For a developing nation, Senegal has a well organized  infrastructure  compared to most other African countries   The World Bank estimated that in 1995 there were 507 kilometers  (315 miles) of paved road per million people. The CIA  World Fact Book  2001  notes that there are 14,576 kilometers (9,058 miles) of highway, 4,271 kilometers (2,653 miles) of which are paved. Although the railway system is somewhat antiquated, it carries more than 3 million tons of cargo per year. The railway network, which extends across 906 kilometers (563 miles), links  the major cities to Dakar and provides services between Senegal and Mali. According to the U.S. Department of State  Country Commercial Guide,  the airport at Dakar is one of the principal international airports in West  Africa, handling a variety of aircraft on its 2 runways. The airport serves  more than 24 international airlines, handling 1.5 million passengers per  year and moving more than 20,000 metric tons of international airfreight. There are direct flights to Europe and North America, along with frequent  flights to several African countries. Secondary airports are located in the  regions of Saint-Louis, Tambacounda, and Ziguinchor. In total, there were  20 airports in 1999. The competitive advantage of French firms in this sector relates, in part, to concessional funding (funds are granted in exchange for specific contracts)  given by the French government to the Senegalese government for the  modernization of the telecommunications network. The competitive advantage is also demanding in its export sector- The composition of exports Manufactured exports are heavily concentrated in three sectors: fishing and fish-processing, chemicals (the ICS) and oilseeds (mainly groundnuts). This will be clear from the following table: These three sectors represented 81 percent of manufactured exports in 1974. By 1999 this share increased to 93 percent. Within this subgroup, substantial change has taken place. In the 1970s, the groundnut oil sector dominated, with 56 percent of manufactured exports in 1974. In the 1980s, with the creation of the ICS, coupled with a decline in the groundnut harvests, the situation changed markedly. By 1999, the groundnut industrys share had plummeted to less than 12.6 percent while chemicals were up to 39.8 percent. The fishing industry also experienced a large expansion, and accounted for just over 40.6 percent of manufactured exports in 1999.

The Legacy Of Jackie Robinson Essay example -- Sports Baseball

The legacy of Jackie Robinson goes beyond the April 15, 1947 afternoon at Ebbets Field, when the Brooklyn Dodger infielder became the first black in the 20th century to play baseball in the major leagues. He changed the sport, and he changed the attitude of a lot of people in this country, Jackie Robinson fought for all the people that were fortunate, a lot of them are, especially the minority guys, to be able to play in the major leagues and the impact on the people of color today. Robinson was an undeniably great player who had some of his best years stolen from him. He was a speedster who led his team to six World Series, won Rookie of the Year honors, an MVP award and was a six-time All-Star. But it’s not because of his marvelous career that Jackie’s number 42 is retired in every major league ballpark. It’s because on a chilly afternoon in 1947 at Ebbets Field, Robinson took the diamond for the Dodgers to become the first black man to play in a major league baseball game in the modern era. His stellar play and moreover, his poise under fire paved the way for baseball integration, as barriers broke down in baseball, they also started to crumble in society at large. While Jackie is best remembered for integrating major league baseball, an incident that occurred before his fame as a Dodger heralded his future as a warrior in the battle for civil rights. America entered World War II, as in most of America at the time; blacks suffered the indignation of segregation. Jim...

Homesick :: essays research papers

Sela Ward, the author of Homesick believes her family shows her everyday what a home truly is. Keeping in touch with her Southern roots is a chronic part of her life. This paper will share with you ideas about the book Homesick in addition to how it relates to my life and English 121.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The book Homesick relates to my life in many ways. Like the author I feel the best gift my parents give me is spending family time together. Another way I can relate is that I get rapture from spending time with my friends. My family is also very close-knit like Ward describes hers in the book. Manners being a critical element to success are also an element that relates to my life. My life and the book Homesick have many ways they relate.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  I thought the book Homesick was phenomenal. Ward used excellent writing techniques to make you feel as if you were living her life. The deep romance she feels for the South is fascinating. I enjoyed discovering about the charitable ways a successful actress has helped others. The story opens your eyes to lessons we carry with us from childhood. I didn’t want to put down this excellent book until I had read it all.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  There are many concepts in Homesick that relate to English 121. An acquisition in English 121 is to write for a universal audience; the book Homesick can be understood by a universal audience. English 121 and the book demonstrate how crucial it is to write descriptively. The book used good â€Å"hookers† to get the readers attention like we do in English 121. English 121 and the book closely relate in ideas.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The book Homesick relates to the reading Coming to an Awareness of Language by Malcolm X. The book and the reading are both expressive autobiographies. Both also reflect back to a previous time in the author’s lives. Homesick and Coming to an Awareness of Language both demonstrate lessons learned by the authors. Both authors tried to emulate people they respected. There are many similarities between the book and the reading.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Homesick demonstrates many examples of definition, narration and description.

Doctor Faustus Review

On the 14th November 2012 we went to the Rose’s Theatre in Tewkesbury to watch Scene Productions perform the tragedy ‘Doctor Faustus’ which was filled with disappointment and unexpected aspects. However, it did bring forward a message throughout the play which is showed clearly and effectively. This message was that people who give into temptation because of greed get punished; this is based on a religious concept. At first we got told the whole performance was going to be an hour, this straight away made me have doubts about the play and allowed me to think that it was going to be rushed which I felt like happened. Despite this, there were some promising scenes which made me as the audience have a mixture of emotions. When I first arrived into my seat, the first thing I noticed was the set placed on stage. It seemed like a very simple set, but also very effective. It clearly showed the time the performance was set and allowed us to have a personal interpretation of the character Doctor Faustus without even meeting him. Whilst the lights were still on and people were coming into the theatre, it seemed like the production started as we are first introduced to two characters walking around in a sinister sort of manor, whether it was because people were late into the theatre or it was planned, it was a huge distraction and it was hard to focus on the dilemma which is occurring on stage, as I kept on turning my head to the loud talking of people arriving, not only this the harsh lights were still on which helped me to not focus on the characters on the stage whatsoever. The character of Doctor Faustus played by Ben Elder was introduced as a puppet, this was effective as it allowed us to realise that compared to hell he was seen as vulnerable and small. It also helped to distance the audience and showed to us that we are not watching reality; it was simply an interpretation of an urban legend. However, I also felt that it would have been much more effective if it was an actual actor performing because then perhaps we as the audience would be able to view his acting skills. The music throughout the play was purposely sinister to reflect on the major theme of the production which was death. The music helped to build the climax, create atmosphere and to determine the audience’s emotion. The constant screaming and howling in the soundtrack helped to portray hell as a dangerous and horrific place to be. The music started to begin before the play even started this was effective as it allowed us to have an interpretation on the whole play and gave off an eerie atmosphere beforehand. There were a few mistakes made in the whole performance which disheartened me and made it seem messy and disorganised. When organising props and having costume changes behind the actual set, it became distracting if ever a noise was made or the sheet was accidently knocked. This decreases its effectiveness as it clearly distracted me from the performance. Small incidents were made, from tripping up the stairs whilst getting on the stage, to a door not opening fully for Faustus to get through backwards. However these little mistakes were acceptable but it brought up climaxes for nothing. They developed Doctor Faustus’s thoughts by presented them as an angel and a devil on either side trying to convince him to go onto their side. They were seen as a black card with wings on either side and hid their bodies. The persistent flapping of their wings showed their persevering and their urge to not give up. Though sometimes the angel and devils got a bit stupid They also interacted with the audience which effectively broke the fourth wall, as it engaged the audience and it felt like we were part of the play. The use of the sign saying ‘clap’ or ‘gasp’, I thought was a quite over exaggerated as it completely distracted you from the entire play. It also brought a comical feel to the whole performance which changes the whole theme, did they intend to make you laugh or feel sympathy for Faustus? They made a member of the audience feel uncomfortable and separating the performer both physically and verbally. This makes the audience member feel apprehensive about going on stage due to the distinctive and eerie atmosphere, however this can easily be criticised as I felt that due to this I was watching more of a pantomime rather than a dramatic performance which I thought it was going to be as it struggled to create a powerful meaning, although it helped to patronise the audience which created a scary atmosphere, breaking t he conventions of a normal and evil play. The lighting throughout the play was effective as it demonstrates the major motif which is morally evil. I was constantly engaged when the arrogant protagonist who makes a pact with Lucifer to gain forbidden power and outstanding knowledge. He then finds himself getting dragged into the murky mist of hell. The low budget performance consisted of a mass of creativity, as the set didn’t change throughout the whole thing. There were small candles used to illuminate the stage and set which cleverly symbolized the heat that burns in life and death. The Candles also represented beauty which is highly ironic, as hell is an evil and sinister place, and is nowhere near beautiful. In conclusion, I felt that the narrative was creative but the way they presented it was filled with disappointment, perhaps without the humour it would be classed as a dramatic play which is what it is originally supposed to be. I myself would not go see it again as it did not appeal to me whatsoever; it got exhibited as a pantomime and made me feel like a child. Though I would recommend this production to the older generation as it is filled with complexities and enigmas, though it would also engage children as they get attracted the humour.

Relative and Radiometric Dating

Two general processes used to figure out the age of rocks is relative dating and radiometric dating. We will compare and contrast the strengths and weaknesses of both methods. According to Lutgens and Tarbuck, Relative dating is the process in putting events in their proper sequence. Relative dating is based on assumption, not able to give an accurate date but an estimated time period where the rock originated from. A Danish scientist, Nicolaus Steno is accredited for the Law of Superposition. This law basically tells us that each layer of sedimentary rock is younger than the one below it which is depicted in figure 8. in the text. Steno is also accredited for the Principle of Original Horizontality. The principle is shown in figure 8. 4 in the text showing rocks compounding with sediment escalating in height that have not been disturbed by geological disturbances. Another relative dating process is the Principle of Cross-Cutting Relationships. This takes place when faults force them selves through older rocks. This means that the faults or dikes have penetrated layers of sediment that were deposited long before the intrusion. By implementing these theories and processes, we can assume a time period in the Earth’s history where these rocks originate from. However, this is an assumption and not a specific time as shown in figure 8. 10. Radiometric dating is the process of estimating the age of rocks from the decay of radioactive elements inside the rock specimen. This process utilizes radioactive isotopes to date igneous rocks. These radioactive isotopes have a distinctive number of atoms that present themselves unstable. These atoms will inevitably decay through a series of evolutions. We will take Uranium as example. Uranium will ultimately decay into the stable element lead. The father element being the Uranium and the end result creating the daughter element lead. Radioisotope dating is used to date igneous rocks that have cooled from their molten stage. it is assumed that all daughter elements have escaped through the immense heat. Once cooled, no elements will escape based on assumption. In the event that elements do escape, is through radioactive decay. According to Lutgens and Tarbuck, The decay rate that takes place is measured in Half Life. This is the length of time that one half of the remaining atoms to decay. This can be measured in a laboratory by finding the decay rate and counting time backwards to find the age of the rock specimen. Relative dating and radiometric dating have many strengths but also many weaknesses. Relative dating gives a general time frame where the rock exists whereas Radiometric dating has a scientific formula to give a more accurate account on where the rock originated from. However, it is safe to presume that both processes rely on assumption and not strict scientific fact.

Leading Quietly by Joseph Badaracco

Lecture Text Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr. : Leading Quietly* Now what I’m going to do today is talk for a while about research I’ve done over the last five years and completed with the publication of a book by that title: Leading Quietly. What I set out to do initially was to see what I could learn about leadership and effective leadership, if I looked beyond, if I looked away from, what I’ll call the heroic model. And the heroic model is one that, with the briefest sketch, is familiar to all of us. Who are heroic leaders? They are people who change the world or part of the world, they’ve got very strong values, they are charismatic, they are inspiring, they are willing to make sacrifices, sometimes, in some walks of life, the ultimate sacrifice, because they sacrificed their lives. I have no intention, here today or at any point, in tearing down all that the great figures have contributed to our world. Without them, our world would be a poorer and meaner place. Without them, we wouldn’t have examples of courage to talk to our kids and to others about. But the proposition I want to put in front of you today is that viewing leadership, particularly leadership in organizations, particularly in the middle of big, complicated business organizations, simply in terms of heroism, is a limited and sometimes even misleading perspective. Let me say a little bit more about why I think that’s the case. I think there are at least three problems with this heroic view. One of them I call the pyramid issue. If you think about the world in terms of heroes, you tend to have in the back of your mind a big triangle, and at the top you’ve got great leaders, and at the bottom, fill in your favorite candidates, the skunks, bottom-dwelling slugs, T. S. Eliot’s hollow men. What about everybody else who is in the middle? People who are neither out saving the world like great heroes, saving companies, saving brands, nor are they exploiting it. They are doing their jobs, living their lives, taking care of the people around them. The heroic model doesn’t say much about them. The second problem with the heroic model was expressed in the Burke videotape. He said, â€Å"I never had any trouble telling right from wrong. † And I think that is fundamentally right because there are so many situations, as you know, when this is right and this is wrong, and the task is not to figure out what is the right thing to do, it’s to get yourself or other people to move in that direction rather than this one. But there are a whole set of messy, complicated problems that I refer to as right versus right problems that do not fit the simple, heroic, dothe-right-thing model. Let me give you an example. * Edited for clarity Copyright ? 2002 Page 1 You are at home. It’s evening. Someone knocks on your door. It’s somebody who works for you, he’s worked with you for a number of years. He says, â€Å"I’m really sorry to bother you at home, but I’ve got some really fabulous news. † This individual lives just a couple miles away. And he says, â€Å"I wanted you to be one of the first to know. My wife and I have been looking for a home and we really think we have found the house of our dreams. It’s really expensive, we are going to have to take some money out of the kids’ college funds, but this is just a fabulous home, and you know you are my boss, and you are the best boss I’ve ever had†¦. I’m sure many of you have had this experience. â€Å"The best boss I can even imagine having. † So you nod politely and in the back of your mind you know that there is a layoff coming and that this individual’s name is on that list. By buying this house, he’s not only putting himself on t he brink of financial calamity, he’s going to be taking a plunge over it. Now what do you do? You know the layoff is coming. As a corporate officer, you have a duty of confidentiality to the corporation. You’re not supposed to disclose the coming layoffs piecemeal to your friends. That’s supposed to be announced when everything is set up legally, when the HR work is done, at a point in time that senior executives decide. But this person is a friend. You owe this person a lot. Surely you have an obligation, I think, to help them out. And what if the person happens to go a little bit further and says, â€Å"Do you think I ought to do this? † And of course what you’re thinking is â€Å"You’re crazy if you do this. † And you are supposed to tell the truth, right? This is not a right versus wrong situation. You’ve got three obligations here: to your friend, to the truth, and the duty of confidentiality to your organization. You may think this is kind of a made-up story, but in the last eight or ten years or so, even when the U. S. economy was growing slowly in the early 90s and even when it was growing quickly in the late 90s, we had continuous layoffs. I heard four or five versions of this exact story. A good friend, what do you tell them about a layoff when you can’t tell them anything prematurely? This is what I would describe as a messy, right versus right kind of problem. The final thing wrong with the heroic view is that, at bottom, most of us most of the time don’t want to be heroes, even think it is irresponsible to act heroically. The saying is that martyrdom is a oncein-a-lifetime experience. I had a student, an auditor in fact, from the Nieman program, which brings journalists here to Harvard, in my second-year elective course a couple of years ago. The rules for auditors say that you can listen, you can’t participate. So we were having a discussion about an organization, it was a mini-Enron, there were lots of things going on that shouldn’t have been going on. A young guy knew what was going Copyright ? 2002 Page 2 on, he had copied some documents. The question was, what he should do? And there was a lot of enthusiasm building up in the class for him to blow the whistle. He had a tennis pal who was a journalist with the local newspaper. And I was watching this woman sitting over on the side, she was a reporter for a big New York City newspaper, and she was getting really agitated, and you could see her almost physically holding her hand down, because she knew what the rules were but she was going to separate her shoulder or something like that trying to restrain herself. So I called on her and she said, â€Å"Listen, what you have to understand is, if you are going to propose blowing the whistle, is that whistleblowers always get screwed. † That may be an overgeneralization, but life is really tough, at least in this country, for people who blow the whistle. And that’s the message she wanted to send. So you have the problem of the pyramid that leaves most of us out. You’ve got these messy problems that don’t fit into the right versus wrong format, and you’ve got the fact that most of us want to live to fight another battle. We’ve got complicated obligations in life, very few people realistically, pragmatically, are going to roll everything up into one big ball and sacrifice it, often no matter how great and how urgent they think the problem is. We might do that for somebody close to us, but would we do it for our organizations? I don’t know. So what I want to do is encourage you for a little while this afternoon to think beyond this model, and it’s a very, very powerful model. You’ve got the great figures of history that we’ve learned about since we were kids in school. Every walk of life has its heroes. Every business and industry has its heroes†¦I don’t know how many of you have seen the latest Economist, the title is â€Å"Fallen Idols: The Overthrow of Celebrity CEOs. † This looks like one of those statues in East Germany or in Eastern Europe after the breakup of the Soviet Union, down on the ground smashed. The smiling face here is Jack Welch. So we have the celebrity CEOs. Turn on the TV, go to a movie, go see Spiderman, it’s a relentless diet telling us that the people we really ought to admire and emulate are the folks who do great things, whether it’s fighting the mafia, or space aliens—pick your own favorite. I think in fact that this heroic view is almost—I’m going out on a limb here because I’m hardly a scientist—almost genetically etched in us. A long time ago when somebody in a crowd said, â€Å"We’d better go this way because the saber-toothed tigers are going that way,† the folks who responded and followed these leaders away from the sabertoothed tigers are the ones who survived, and the ones sitting over there saying, â€Å"Well, I’ll think it over, we’ll see,† are the ones who got consumed for lunch. That’s one view. My argument is that it is not the only view. In fact, I want to go a little bit further because the conclusion of the study I did, Copyright ? 2002 Page 3 and I should tell you a little bit about the study†¦What I essentially did was gather a lot of case studies, in the end about 150, of people who were typically in the middle of an organization, had a messy, complicated problem, had a significant degree of self-interest, prudent self-preservation, but also wanted to do the right thing for their organizations and for themselves, and I looked at how they resolved their problems. And I did it pretty systematically. I put them in three categories: people who looked like they were successes, they did the right thing for themselves and their organizations. People who failed, and they often said, â€Å"I failed,† explained why, and said what they would do differently the next time. And then the muddy cases. And I tried to go through systematically and see what separated the success stories from the others. And what I want to put in front of you are some basic conclusions about how these people think, how they behave, what they did. And I’ll give you some examples and, in fact, I’ll even come back to the little anecdote about the â€Å"house of my dreams,† and tell you a little bit about how you might approach that in this quiet leadership vein. But the big conclusion I came to is that we really need to look away from the figures on the pedestal, from time to time, maybe quite often, so we can see it’s the daily, unglamorous, in-the-trenches quiet leadership that so often is what moves and changes things in organizations. And I hope to encourage you to think a little bit about the people who work for you, the people you work with, to see if some of them don’t fit this model of quiet leadership that I’m describing. See if there’s something you can learn from them, and see if, when they work for you, there are ways you can encourage them, support them, help hold them up as examples for people in your organization. As you’ll see, quiet leadership can be lonely work. It’s out of the spotlight, it’s often unrewarded, sometimes it is even unnoticed, it’s done by people who are doing something right for themselves, right for the organization, but often there is no one standing by to give them a medal. Now I did a 150 cases, I’m a professor here at Harvard, but neither of these are reasons you should pay attention to the ideas I’m putting in front of you. Let me give you a more serious and more historically significant way of thinking about this†¦. This is a quote from Albert Schweitzer. I imagine most of you know who he is. He was born at the end of the 1800s in Germany. He was an astonishingly talented young man. He could have had a career as a theologian. Not just sort of a technical theologian; he was a deeply religious Christian. He was also a brilliantly talented musician. So, he could have had a nice life in Germany following either of those pursuits. Copyright ? 2002 Page 4 He decided instead to become a medical missionary. He worked in Africa. He won the Nobel Prize in 1952. Took the money, spent it expanding his hospital down there, and stayed in Africa working as a medical missionary until the point when he died. This is what he says. And I think this is a remarkable statement: â€Å"Of all the will toward the ideal, all of our highest aspirations, only a small part of it can manifest itself in public action. All the rest of this force must be content with†Ã¢â‚¬â€ notice that phrase—†small and obscure deeds. The sum of these, however, is†Ã¢â‚¬â€ notice again how strongly he puts this—†a thousand times stronger than the acts of those who receive wide public recognition. These folks who get the recognition compared to the former are â€Å"like the foam on the waves of a deep ocean. † This is someone who is a heroic leader, by so many standards, basically saying, don’t pay a lot of attention to people like himself. Look elsewhere—look at the people engaged in the se small and obscure deeds. So, what I’d like to do now is spend the remaining time, maybe fifty minutes or so, telling you a little bit about these quiet leaders: What I looked at, what I learned, how they think, and what they do. I summarize this in the form of seven lessons. Let me say a little bit about each one of these. The first thing about these people is they don’t kid themselves. What they don’t kid themselves about is how much they know, how much of what goes on around them they can control, how far they can see down the road. This is true even when people had titles like CEO, like general manager, like plant manager. They had a sense of the fragility, the uncertainty, the tentativeness of almost everything. Now, of course, for Americans, and the Americans in this room, you know we had our Internet bubble blow up and then collapse. And for so many people in the world after September 11th, maybe these reminders of the fragility of things are not as necessary as they were a few years ago, at least in this country, when it looked like we had sort of a lock on everything. Machiavelli says somewhere in The Prince that â€Å"fortune is basically the equivalent of a great powerful river. † And what human beings are doing is building little structures on the side of the river. And he says, of all the things that happen, about half of it is under our control. The rest is the plaything of this great force, this river he talks about. You take all the precautions you can. You build the dykes. â€Å"But, at the end of the day,† he says, â€Å"it’s only 50/50. About half of this is out of your hands. † Copyright ? 2002 Page 5 These folks I looked at had sort of a permanent view that they were likely to be surprised. That the future, whatever it might hold, was made up of multiple alternative scenarios. The future, no matter how hard and smart their efforts were, could easily come up from behind and sort of bite them in the posterior. They were also political realists about their organizations. They didn’t kid themselves about other people’s motives. They knew that in any organization, there are some people who are basically in it for themselves. They also didn’t kid themselves about the fact that most organizations are organized like pyramids—a lot of the goodies go to the people at the top, and lots of smart, ambitious people are trying to get hold of those goodies. They realize that organizations tend to be organized on the basis of insiders and outsiders. Insiders tend to take care of themselves; lots of outsiders are trying to get in. In other words, I’m not talking about saints, social workers, would-be martyrs, folks who are holier than thou. In fact, I’m talking about people—and I’ll spend a little more time on this in a moment—who are quite eager to get higher pay, promotions, and make their way up to the top of the greasy pole. They did not kid themselves about how the world worked. But, there’s one other element that I want to add to this basic idea of, â€Å"don’t kid yourself. † These folks were not cynics. When I mention things like the politics, the competition that takes place in any organization, it’s easy for you to think when I say, â€Å"Don’t kid yourself,† that I’m talking about the sort of Machiavellian maxim, â€Å"Do unto others before they do unto you. That’s not what I’m talking about. And that’s not the way these people thought. They were realists. They expected to be surprised. And they were just as likely, they thought, to be surprised by good things as by bad things. In other words, pessimistic, dark- tinted glasses are just as distorting as naive, pink-tinted glasses. These folks tried to see the world for what it was. They recognized that people do things for all sorts of reasons. People who you don’t expect—who are almost at the bottom of the list of people to show up when times get tough and there were things in organizations that really needed doing— sometimes surprised them. The second basic trait I found, I summarize this way†¦these people trusted their motives, even when their motives were mixed. Let me explain that a little bit. The heroic view tends to say that great leaders are motivated by altruism, by idealism, by the highest and most noble instincts you can imagine. By the way, that’s what makes it so easy for biographers— and this has been fashionable for about twenty or thirty years now—to write biographies of great leaders in which they point out that they were actually motivated by human, even low, motives: ambition, Copyright ? 2002 Page 6 pride. And often did some things that even these leaders themselves are hardly proud of. But that’s only because we have a kind of false conception of what it really is that makes human beings tick. As I said a moment ago, the quiet leaders that I looked at, that I talked with, that I thought about, they liked bigger paychecks rather than smaller paychecks. They preferred to have more people reporting to them than fewer. They wanted to have long, successful careers in their organizations or, if that didn’t work out, in other organizations. And when they found themselves in one of these messy, complicated problems, one of the things they thought about, and thought a lot about, was their own careers and their own reputation. â€Å"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? † You can get stranded alone out there. Who is going to take care of you? â€Å"If I am only for myself, purely, unalloyedly self-interested, what am I? † This is what I mean by mixed motives. And I want to go a little further than this to say why these mixed motives are so important. Let me give you an example of a senior marketing rep. This is somebody who is a little surprising because he had lots of opportunities to move into management but never took them. He really loved sales. He worked for a big American pharmaceutical company, and it had a terrific product for a fairly common form of mental illness. I don’t want to point fingers at any particular company. It turned out that this product had a second use, one that the Food and Drug Administration had not approved. It worked really well for losing weight. And some doctors were actually prescribing it for people who needed diets, not treatment from depression. And the company caught on to this, and it organized an unwritten, undocumented marketing campaign to encourage more of its reps to get out there and sell the product for this unregulated, unapproved use. This guy, whom I will call Elliott Cortez, wanted to get ahead, like most of the people I looked at. He went along with the program. So, he’d meet with doctors. He’d describe to them that it could be used for diet. He’d fill prescriptions. But, for some reason, I don’t know what it was, he began after time to get a little uncomfortable about this. Then a little more uncomfortable about it. And finally what did he do? He decided he was going to stop doing this. And he went around to the doctors to whom he’d been pushing or promoting his product for diet purposes, told them he was going to stop doing that, and explained why. He told a couple of other sales reps he was going to do the same thing. And he told his boss. Copyright ? 2002 Page 7 I don’t know what the initial trigger was that got him to do this stuff. But I later asked him why, once he was alerted to the problem, he went and did all of this. And he said, â€Å"Well, to be honest, there were really two things. I came to realize, first of all, that some people could get sick with the misuse of this product. And I realized secondly, given the scale of the campaign that this company was waging, unapproved and unregulated, that the company could get in a whole lot of trouble. And who was going to get the bull’s-eye painted on them? When the time came, it would be the reps and the marketing execs who were out promoting this unapproved product. And I did not want to get hung out to dry. † Now, what do you make of this story? It’s kind of an interesting one to talk about. Is this heroic leadership? Not by any standard. This guy was very careful. What motivated him? He didn’t want people to get sick as a result of what he was doing. But he also didn’t want to get himself in trouble. His motives were quite mixed. You might ask yourself, wouldn’t it have been better if he had blown the whistle, if he had dropped a dime, called the FDA, photographed some papers and sent them off? Who was going to win that uneven competition between a giant pharmaceutical company and a lonely rep? It’s a no-brainer. The company would have won. So he made the sensible decision not to blow himself up in place. But, he did something. He didn’t do everything; he did something. Within the little sphere where he reasonably could have some influence, and maybe set an example—the doctors, a few other sales reps and his boss—he explained to them what he was doing and why he was doing it. What if his motives had been purer? What if he didn’t have the selfpreservation instinct? I would argue he would not have done so well. A lot of cases of quiet leadership that I looked at are much more like distance runs than glamorous 50-yard, 100-yard sprints in front of a cheering crowd. And what often matters is not the purity of your motives, but the strength of your motives. You’ve got to have some skin in the game. And part of the reason he went around and did what he could is because he did not want to end up in court, in the press, on TV, in the event things came down on his company. His motives were mixed. And my argument is that he was probably much more effective as a result of that. There’s so many fascinating studies coming out now, the folks who do mind/body research. And what many of these studies tend to find is that our minds do far more processing and analyzing of reality preconsciously, unconsciously, than anybody ever realized. And often this analysis, this analytical work that’s done by these deep levels of our mind, doesn’t express itself in rational linear thinking. It expresses itself in feelings, in hesitation. If you’re facing one of these messy Copyright ? 2002 Page 8 problems, don’t think you’ve got to be General Patton or some other charge-the-hill hero. If something inside you is saying â€Å"slow down, slow down,† trust those mixed motives. That’s the second trait that I found among these people. The third thing these folks did was buy time. Sometimes they begged, sometimes they borrowed. I’ll come to this in a moment. Sometimes they played games. They stole a little time. They did exactly the reverse of what so many American managers were told to do just a couple of years ago. Remember the mantra about Internet time? And instead of this sort of old-fashioned ready, aim, fire, the new mantra was fire, ready, aim. Because the world was moving so fast. Now, in retrospect, you can see that for the monstrously bad advice it was. Hundreds of billions of dollars were thrown away by folks trying to seize opportunities on Internet time. The only thing that actually moved on Internet time was the Internet bubble itself, which rose and collapsed pretty much on the Internet time schedule. That said, the folks who were telling us that things were different were right about something else. Because they frequently reminded us that the world was getting to be a more complicated place. Business was becoming globally deregulated; you know all the rest of that sort of story. Why they went on to say that as the world got more complicated, you ought to make decisions faster and faster, I don’t know. But, they were right about the ever-growing complexity of situations that people faced. Taking their advice, however, doing things on Internet time, basically made them a candidate for an award that medical schools give out occasionally. It’s the SSW award. It stands for â€Å"swift, sure, and wrong. † The quiet leaders I looked at found ways to take time to get decisions right. They didn’t make their decisions on the basis of external pressures. They made their decisions when they were ready to make the decisions. Now, that may sound to you like a kind of naive, academic, ivory tower piece of advice, because all of you have about twenty-eight times more things to do than you’ve got time to do them. And typically, the In basket is a lot bigger than the Out basket. And I understand that. But, when you get one of these messy, complicated sorts of problems, you have a sense that it’s got ramifications, ripple effects leading throughout the organization, you’ve got to find the time. And you’ve got to take the time to get things right. There was a fascinating article, an interview about six weeks ago in the New York Times with Joseph Murray, a now-retired surgeon who Copyright ? 2002 Page 9 lives in a suburb of Boston. He was a pioneer in kidney transplantation. And he used to have a slogan up in his operating room, and the slogan said, â€Å"If the operation is difficult, you’re not doing it right. † And what he meant by that was, before you do something, especially something pioneering, like taking a kidney out of one person and putting it into another, you better make sure you’ve imagined all the steps and all the possible scenarios. And what does that take? That takes time. Quiet leaders find ways to get the time they need. Quiet leaders also learn some lessons from investment bankers and venture capitalists. They invest wisely. Now, let me tell you a little bit about what I mean by â€Å"invest wisely. † Sometimes professors here give their students a little bit of advice at the end of the course, which is that what they ought to do is get themselves some â€Å"go to hell† money. This is money you keep in fairly liquid form in the event that you just can’t take it anymore wherever you’re working. Then you don’t have to keep that job. You can get another job, but you’ve got a cushion. It makes perfect sense. That’s not exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about here. I’m talking about investing something that is far more important to careers and far less tangible, much more subtle than just money. I’m talking about political capital, a composite of two things. It’s your actual track record, and it’s your reputation: what people, especially influential people in an organization, think about your track record. So, it’s those two things. The quiet leaders I looked at, I’m only exaggerating a little bit, when they came upon these sort of messy problems, they thought about them like venture capitalists. They asked themselves, â€Å"How much political capital do I have? How much am I going to put at risk? What kind of returns am I going to get? And when am I going to get those returns? † In an ideal world, they looked for ways to handle these problems, even if there was some initial investment or a risk of their political capital. In the end they got back out even more than they put in. As I said, they weren’t looking to be martyrs or saints. Like venture capitalists, they often invested their political capital, and I’ll say more about this in a moment, in increments. They took small steps. They nudged a little bit. They escalated gradually to get a feel for what was going on, to learn a little bit more. If things looked bad, they’d back off and they’d move in another direction. If things looked good, they would invest a little bit more. They were very pragmatic people. They were looking for what was attainable. They were sort of following, without ever having heard it, this French maxim, which is Copyright ? 2002 Page 10 â€Å"the better is the enemy of the good. † Try to find something in this complicated, shifting, uncertain world that will work. Now, keep in mind what I said earlier, that they cared about getting these things right, and they were tenacious people. So, when they looked for ways to invest capital, they weren’t looking for your savings bond investment where you put in some money and you get an absolute guarantee of four or five percent. They were willing to take some risks, willing to shake the tree a little bit, willing to use some imagination, but they were concerned about the art of the feasible, the art of the practical. And they picked their battles. There were some cases where they said with regret, â€Å"Something was going on over here, and I just didn’t want to get involved. I don’t think I could get involved. If I had gotten involved, I would not have been able to make a difference. And so with regrets, I moved on. † Now that is not the heroic charge-the-hill, all purpose do-gooder approach to getting things done in organizations. But many of these people felt— and you can judge for yourself whether you think they were thinking soundly or not—that they had to pick their battles because they wanted to live to fight another day. And they wanted to move up in their organizations where they would have even more influence. There’s a wonderful statement of Machiavelli’s: â€Å"A man who has no position in society cannot even get a dog to bark at him. † That means you’re invisible. â€Å"A man who has no position in society. If you want to make a difference, you’ve got to be a player at the table. And not just once, but several times, again and again and again over a career, and at smaller and smaller tables. And that’s what these folks were thinking. A limited amount of political capital—they wanted to build it. They invested it carefully, with some imagination, with some care, but they invested it carefully. The fifth thing I found was this—which may not be intuitively obvious to all of you. Let me give you a little bit of background, a little bit of Harvard University lore. In the mid-1800s there was an ichthyologist named Louis Agassiz. Ichthyologists study fish. And he got to be a very important person, not just in his field, but nationally. Why? Well, in the mid-1800s Darwin and people who looked at fish fossils supposedly had something to say about whether God did it, or whether it was the unfolding of an evolutionary process. He was also a brilliant researcher and scholar. And so for a variety of reasons his lab attracted the best and brightest. The tale has been told many times. When graduate students came to work at his lab the first day and he’d say, â€Å"It’s really great to have you here. Here’s what I want you to do. † He gave them a little tray. And the tray would have on it an ordinary fish. He’d say, â€Å"I want you to go and look at this fish Copyright ? 2002 Page 11 and then come back in a little while and tell me what you see about the fish. † So, they’d go off. And when would they come back? A half hour, an hour, and knock on the door. And kind of eager, they’d have some things to report. He said, â€Å"No, I want you to go and look at the fish. † So, they’d come back at lunchtime. â€Å"Go back and look at the fish. † At the end of the day, same routine. Even at the end of the week. And they had ice in those days, but these fish were probably getting a little funky. It was only after two or three weeks that Agassiz would say, â€Å"Come in and tell me about the fish. † What he was trying to inculcate in them is the habit of discipline: focused, consistent, penetrating powers of observation. Looking and looking and looking and looking. As you move into more and more complicated general management situations, there are just more layers there. There’s more to see. There’s more to understand: There’s more to understand technically, there’s more to understand politically, there’s more to understand financially. And if you’ve got general management responsibility, you’ve got to bring that together. These folks that I looked at bought time. And in the process of investing carefully, they spent lots of time living with, sleeping with, and sweating over their problems. They really worked and worked their problems. And it was often only at the end of this effort to drill down that they had the creative breakthroughs that were critical. Let me give you a list of names here: Darwin Smith, George Cain, Alan Wurtzel. Am I ringing any bells? Colman Mockler? It’s interesting, there’s a book that I suspect that many of you have heard of, and maybe a number of you have read, called Good to Great by Jim Collins. He did a big statistical sample and found about twenty companies that had been doing terribly for fifteen years and then, for the subsequent fifteen years, outperformed the market by a factor of three. And he went in and studied their executives to try to find out what happened, how these companies were turned around. Darwin Smith was at Kimberly-Clark, Colman Mockler was at Gillette, George Cain was at Abbott Labs, and Alan Wurtzel was at Circuit City. All companies you’ve heard of, all companies that have had spectacular long runs after these turnarounds. Collins notes about these people that they spent their whole careers in their industries, if not in their companies. Talk about drilling down, looking at your fish. They knew these businesses from the bottom up, from the inside out. And Collins’s conclusion, not mine, was that this intimate sort of knowledge was what enabled them to accomplish all of what they did. I heard a talk by somebody who was getting an award for outstanding leadership a couple of months ago. He used an interesting phrase. He Copyright ? 2002 Page 12 said, â€Å"I didn’t really realize I was a leader. He said, â€Å"I was working too hard to lead. † A lot of the heroic stuff that you hear about sounds kind of glamorous. The message of this drill down stuff is, look at your fish: It can be pretty tough. Come back to that little example I gave you at the beginning. This long-term co-worker and friend comes to you saying, â€Å"I found the house of my dreams,† what are you going to do ? The easy way out of that situation is, don’t look for wiggle room, stick to the rules. And remember, we had three rules you could apply. You had the rule of the duty of confidentiality. And so what do you say to your friend? â€Å"Great. That’s fabulous, congratulations. I wish you and your family the best. † And you try to paste a smile on your face that doesn’t look too fake, because you know you’re helping to send him over the precipice. Or, you say, simple rule, tell the truth. So you blurt out the truth. And you swear this person to confidence, of course. And you hope that the old piece of advice that says, â€Å"Best friends only tell their own best friends† doesn’t come into play. And you haven’t violated confidentiality, and you’re not going to get in trouble for it. OK? Or you say, â€Å"This is my friend. Friends have to help friends. There’s going to be a layoff and your name is on it. † I would argue that in a case like that, following the rules is hardly leadership, barely ethical. You’ve got to find a way to have a little bit of wiggle room. Following the rules in a world full of rules, and oft-conflicting rules, can be a copout. The final little piece of advice here is to create compromises. The quiet leaders I looked at were really good at compromising. That’s probably not leadership—that’s what politicians do. You know, that’s what you do when you go to a car dealer. And you say, â€Å"This is a piece of junk. I’ll give you $10,000 dollars. The car dealer says, â€Å"It’s appraised $20,000 dollars. † You agree on $15,000. That’s a capitalist act between consenting adults. That doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with leadership, morality, what’s good for an organization. And that’s right. Although I have t o say that, in some of these cases, these folks who were really committed to doing what was best for their organization and for themselves realized that after digging down, after trying to be creative, after thinking like venture capitalists a little bit, they could go so far and go no further, and they compromised. There’s this Country Western song that says, â€Å"sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug. † Sometimes you’re the bug: you stop. But the important word there is the word â€Å"create,† not the word â€Å"compromise. † Because what the best people did was find a way to rethink, to reconfigure a situation, so it didn’t look like zero-sum, I Copyright ? 2002 Page 13 win/you lose. So, there was another way of thinking about the whole thing so that they could go forward. I want to give you an example that’s not a quiet leadership example. It’s a heroic leadership example. And it involves Abraham Lincoln, who was not simply an American hero, but in many ways is in the pantheon of world heroes. In 1858 Lincoln was running for senator, and he would have the same problem when he ran for president. The great problem in America at that time was, should we have slavery in the Northwest Territories? Should the territories be free, or should they have slaves? And Lincoln did not want to take a stand on that issue. In his heart, most people believe, at the time he opposed slavery. But he was an ambitious politician. His best friend said about Lincoln after died that he had a little engine of ambition that would never stop ticking. So, what would Lincoln do? What could he do? If he said he opposed slavery in the Northwest Territories, all the votes in the South would be lost to him in his running for president. If he supported slavery, he would lose the abolitionist vote in the North. Lincoln came up with the following answer. He said, â€Å"I oppose slavery in the Northwest Territories because it is unfair. Who is it unfair to? It is unfair to free white men who may want to migrate to the Northwest Territories to build careers. Why is it unfair to them? Because slavery is unfair economic competition. And free white men (i. e. , the voters I’m seeking) should not have to face that kind of competition. † Now, if we had more time, we could discuss this at some length. I will say, quite plainly though, that had Lincoln not come up with this tactic, which was described as one of the most brilliant pieces of political strategy or propaganda in American history, he would be an obscure, unknown Illinois politician. He could not have been elected otherwise. The Civil War might have turned out differently. What was one country might have been two. You can speculate about when or whether the Emancipation Proclamation would have been issued. What Lincoln did was take what looked like a win/lose, either/or situation and recast it. Let me come back and close off by talking about the â€Å"home of my dreams† case. My hunch is that the vast majority of you in that situation would do something like the following. And this is what the people I’ve run into have actually done. It looks like you’re on the hook. Either you say congratulations or else you say, â€Å"Look, I’ve got to warn you. † Copyright ? 2002 Page 14 In one case I asked somebody point blank, â€Å"What did you do? And he said, â€Å"What I did, I don’t know if it’s the right thing or not, but I said, ‘Look, there are a lot of layoffs now in some of our competing firms, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we had some here. Are you really sure you want to get that far out on a limb? ’† Now, is that he roism? Of course not. Is it leadership? Well, you’re trying to make a difference in this person’s life. You’re not trying to make the decision for him, and you can’t make the decision for him by telling him what’s going to happen. You’re trying to get him to think a little bit. And often that’s what quiet leaders do. Instead of telling people the answer, they find ways to get other people to think a little bit. It’s creative. It’s a way of finding a little wiggle room. You’re not the hero who’s saving this person, this family. You’re not the corporate hero maintaining the duty of confidentiality. You can judge for yourself. But I take it as a way of imaginatively and quickly, on the spot, recasting the situation. Let me summarize just very briefly. I don’t think quiet leadership is the only way. There’s lots of situations where what needs to be done is clear. And you’ve got to get it done, or you get it done through other people. And I don’t mean to detract for a moment from the great heroes who have made the world a much better place. But I am saying that we need a broader view, and I’m encouraging you to look in your organizations for people who don’t make noise, who you may not have noticed, who tend to operate quietly, behind the scenes, without asking a lot for themselves, but who are the kind of unseen cogs and gears that keep people going. People who, when they face, not a big problem that everybody gets excited about, but an everyday problem, bring to it a little extra effort, a little more care, a little more imagination, a little more analysis. These little brush strokes cumulatively make things a much better place. I’m suggesting you look for them, try to learn from them, and even try to reward them. One quiet leader used a phrase that actually ended up as the cover art in my book; you see those footprints over there on the side. He said what quiet leaders try to do is they try to leave a trace on the beach. And I really like that phrase, because it captures a degree of modesty. We’re not trying to change the world. It captures a degree of realism. The waves and the wind will come and wash away stuff on the beach. But despite that, these folks are determined. They’re tenacious. They look for ways to get the things done that need to be done. So they are willing to leave traces on the beach, even though these are only traces. Put differently, they care about small things. And that’s the final thing I want to say, both about quiet leaders and, as kind of a caution or asterisk about great leaders and the heroic approach: that it tends to distort your view. Copyright ? 2002 Page 15 The last thing I want to put up is a quote from a remarkable but little known American named Bruce Barton. He started a big advertising firm. He ran for Congress. He was a very successful writer at the end of his life on religious subjects. And this is what he said: â€Å"Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things, a chance word, a tap on the shoulder, or a penny dropped at a newsstand, I am tempted to think that there are no little things. That, I think, is almost the diametrically opposite view of the folks who say, â€Å"Look on the pedestal. Look at the defining moments. Look at the catalytic events. Look at the big folks in history. † It’s pretty easy, I think, to miss the wisdom that lies behind this view. So, learn from leaders. Use them as models. Use the great leaders to teach yourself, to teach people in organizations, to teach your kids. But, don’t forget the quiet leaders, they matter too. Thank you very much. Copyright ? 2002 Page 16