Animal Farm-Power Corrpts Essay Example for Free

Animal Farm-Power Corrpts Essay Animal Farm is an allegorical novel about the Russian Revolution and the resulting political system of the Soviet Union. Through this story which appears to be a simple fable on the surface, we see George Orwell’s beliefs about the nature of power and its seemingly inevitable corruption of noble ideas. Educated authority figures in the book bend the principles of communism to suit their own selfish needs and desires, all the while taking advantage of the uneducated masses, and easily manipulated them through propaganda and persuasion. Through this allegory of communism turned to totalitarianism, Orwell explores the dangers of a political system where leaders have no sense of social responsibility toward their subjects. The first instance of corruption among the ruling class appears shortly after the revolution. The pigs, the new rulers of Animal Farm after the ousting of the tyrant farmer Jones, milk the cows to relieve them from of their discomfort. The animals, remembering how Jones would mix some of the milk into their mash, look forward to at least similar treatment from the pigs. However, the milk soon disappears and it is discovered later that the pigs have mixed it into their own mash without sharing it with the other animals, just as the windfall apples have been consumed exclusively by the pigs. Squealer, the political propagandist for the pigs, justifies this to the other animals by saying that the pigs need the extra brain energy, and then bolsters his argument with some fear mongering: â€Å" Do you know what would happen if w pigs failed in our duty? Jones would be back!† (32). The fact that this incident occurs so quickly after the revolution and at a time when all of the pigs are still present on the farm shows Orwell’s belief that the corruption is not only inevitable in a society where the ruling sector of the population is so much better educated than the rest, but that all of these members of the ruling class were potentially corruptible. As the story moves on Orwell shows us how power is corrupting more. Another of the major instance that occurs after the milk and apples is the ruling class moving in the farmhouse. As the commandment says no animal shall sleep in a bed. Some of the other animals were confused but as usual squealer came with his propaganda.

Assessing Corporate Culture Essay Example for Free

Assessing Corporate Culture Essay 1. Scheins approach to assessing organizational culture a. Strengths of scheins approach to assessing organizational culture Schein defines and describes culture as any one of many elements of organizational culture. The culture of an organization can be viewed and treated like other structures within an organization. Certain organizations such as by-laws, committees, and chain of command flow charts, may serve to answer basic questions such as â€Å"how do we interact with the external environment?† and â€Å"how do we order ourselves internally?† As an organization responds to these questions, the responses become core assumptions. These core assumptions become the frames through which the organization interprets the world round it. In place of questionnaire or instrument that utilizes typologies, Schein prefers clinical research model of assessing organizational culture. In this model of organizational culture investigation, the researcher gets much more directly involved within the organization by acting as participant observer or ethnographer. He suggests that members of the organization will more openly respond to the researcher and the investigation because the members of the organization think they have something to gain by collaborating with the researcher. Schein believes that valid data on the culture of the organization will only be collected when the researcher is perceived as the consultant who is seeking to help the organization and has the best interest of the organization in mind. Schein admits that the clinical model of evaluating organizational culture assumes that the researcher intervenes in the culture of the organization. If the organization perceives that the researcher is helping to make changes that will benefit the organization, then the research will accurately yield the cultural dynamics of the organization. b. Weaknesses of Schein approach to assessing organizational culture The results gained from qualitative result are limited to specific cases under investigation. Direct comparison cannot be made between the results from other studies unless the research is specifically designed in that manner. Furthermore, results cannot be generalized to other settings and links to organization’s performance are rarely explored. One significant weakness to Schein’s approach (qualitative method) is the time needed for data collection and analysis which makes the research more costly and time consuming 2. Cameron and Quinn approach a. Strengths of Cameron and Quinn approach to assessing organizational culture Cameron and Quinn provide an evaluation tool called the organizational culture assessment inventory (OCAL). The OCAI is a survey instrument established on a theoretical model called the competing value framework. This framework is valuable for organizing and interpreting various phenomena within an organization. The competing values framework refers to whether an organization strives for flexibility and individuality or stability and control, whether or not an organization is focused externally or internally. The purpose of the OCAI is to discern the relative strengths of these culture types within a given organization. Used over time, the OCAI can measure culture changes within the organization. Cameron and Quinn observe many cases in the business world where culture change is the key to increasing organizational effectiveness. The four major culture types proposed by Cameron and Quinn embody these competing values: clan-internal/control; adhocracy-external/flexible; market-external/control; hierarchy-internal/control. In fact pure control (hierarchy), compete (market), collaborate (clan), or create (adhocracy) are extremely rare. Most of the company cultures that have been diagnosed using Cameron and Quinn’s organization culture instrument indeed have a strong secondary component. Cameron and Quinn identify the cultural and organizational competencies that give rise to value creation. It explains how cultural and leadership competencies can be profiled which, in turn, can lead to a diagnosis of culture gaps, cultural congruency and cultural strength. 3. London first united church Cameron and Quinn’s model is appropriate for this church. This approach is built around clan, adhocracy, market and hierarchy. These four maps themes were also used in the analysis of how organizational culture of London first united Methodist church chances with structural inventions. The church is both an organization and an organism. As such, the church has a lifecycle development built into it: birth, growth, reproduction, decline, and death. The church itself historically has through several changes. Change as renewal is a major aspect of the Methodist movement. Much of the rise and fall of the Methodism can be traced to how the church was willing, or not, to change. Oftentimes, organizations experience growth and/or renewal because of structural changes within the organization. The four maps themes therefore fit this church.

The Critical Contextual Studies Media Essay

The Critical Contextual Studies Media Essay Marshall McLuhan wrote of existing in the age of re-tribalised man and residing in the global village. Throughout my research I will examine these concepts in relation to the effects of modern media, especially television and the internet, and how it has changed the way we communicate with others around the world. Canadian born theorist Marashall McLuhan (1911-1980) was an English graduate turned media analisist. His first Popular book the mechanical bride looked at advertising and it was a ground breaking piece of writing as it was the first time that anyone had ever studied advertisments as a form of communication, from then McLuhan had the concept that the content of the media was irrelevant, but the form of which the media took was the importance the medium is the message. The telephone for example as a medium has significant impact on our enviroment and the way we live and communicate however the conversation we have on the telephone affects very few people just as what we print is nothing to the effect of the idea of the printed word. This can be better explained in another quote from McLuhan: the content of a medium is like a juicey piece of meat by the burgular to distract the watchdog of the mindà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without rissistance he recoginised and understood the power of media and argued how it plays an important part in shaping and structuring human culture in terms of the way we communicate and the way we experience the world. we shape our tools and then our tools shape us McLuhan also saw the importance of new media technologies as new media brings new forms of communication. Mcluhan formed the concept of hot media and cool media: In this theory McLuhan gave the lable of hot media to forms of media that stimulate only one of the human senses whilst interacting with it, for example he suggests listeing to the radio or reading a book, watching a film, Viewing a photograph or sitting in a lecture require one sense. However cool media requires more active partisipation this form of media can be Conversation, television, telephone, comics, the seminar. he belives the electonic age offers a more diverse multi sensory environment, he claims we use more of our senses with multimedia rather than singlular media and this makes us more true to our natural state. In this theory Mcluhan looks simplistically to the physical interaction in terms of senses and doesnt acknowledge the engagment the singular media has to our imagination or to our sentiment. Although McLuhan is incredibley insightful he does get critised for not leaving room for evaluation, he looks generally and broadly not looking at individuality or things suc h as values; as indicated in a dibate with Norman Mailer 1968. Re-tribalised Man McLuhan had another theory were he defined three ages of man, separated according to the means of the form of communication (media) used and which of our senses is involed. In this theory McLuhan identifies the first age was the preliterate or tribal era Where the spoken word was the main way to communicate and our hearing was our most important sense, He also identified the second age is the gutenberg Age where the main media was the written word (print) and our sight became more important than our hearing. McLuhan then goes on to suggest the third age is the electronic age of the re-tribalized Man where all our senses are involved in the interaction to the form of media. Mcluhan doesnt suggest the book or the print is not still important, there is just a shift in the nature of the book; by this he means there is change with how we interact with books and how much we depend on it. As the book before digital media was the sourse of all our information about the world and each other. before the book we relied on verbal communication to exchange information to and from each other, it was a communal interactive experience where as the book is a very private experience and he sees we are shifting back to a more social interactive way of sharing information. Mcluhan compares the writen word to an assembley line where words like parts are moving in one diraction and assembled one part at a time and he speaks of how at the time the assembley line has changed where its no longer one component at a time its now as many parts delivered mechanically all at once where ever possible. he says you relise its no longer a line but an open field , He also talkes of the tribal man in this quote The world is like a continually sounding tribal drum constantly bangingà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ the princess gets married in London bang bang bang we hear about ità ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦. Global Village McLuhan saw technology as having become an extension of our senses. McLuhan saw the Radio or Telephone as an extension of the ear and Television and Computer as being the extension of our eyes. These technologies allowed us to project our senses beyond our limited physical range. He saw the pace of which we can communicate through electronic media is parallel to the speed of our senses. Through technology such as the telephone, television, computer systems and the Internet, we are able to Interact with people across the world as quickly as it would take us to contact and converse with the people who inhabit the same physical space as us (i.e the people that live in the same village). To understand what McLuhan means with the term global village we need to identify what he meant by village in this metaphor. In a sense the village represents a small environment in which people can easily communicate and interact quickly and know of all the events that takes place. As McLuhan writes: Time has ceased, space has vanished. We now live in a global village a simultaneous happening McLuhan is communicating the idea that through our extended senses we can now share and experience things on a global scale, we can share things with people on the other side of the world, as if we were with people in the same physical space. McLuhan also saw the global village as a potentially invasive community in an interview McLuhan says: the global village isnt a place where you have harmony. It has extreme concern in everyone elses business and much involvement in everyone elses life. it means huge involvement in everyones affairsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ The global village is as big as a planet and as small as a village post office. In many senses I think McLuhan was very insightful when talking about the global village to the shift into the digital age of which we live today, particularly when analyzing the quote above and applying it to social media such as Facebook . On sites like Facebook there is constant dramas and bickering whether this is caused by over sharing some information or people digging into someone elses information, so we can see validation in McLuhans quote. However there are many good qualities to social media too such as being instantly connected to friends and family across the world. I can also see that McLuhan also had something in his idea about certain medias being an extension of our physical selves, although he did not mean it literally one can see that todays generation are constantly attached to their mobile phones, although its not actually physically part of us we are rarely without it as if it were a detachable appendage. The device is kept at hand like a pair of glasses. I think McLuhan is not only correct when talking about the computer or telephone but also television, I think it can allow us to experience the world and some situations as close as we can without physically being there, like living life looking through a window we get to see what world wide tragedies are being broadcast in the news as if we were there viewing it for ourselves. With television we can get to experience a reality from a distance.

Sociotechnical Systems Essay -- Information Technology

The concept of sociotechnical systems was created in the 1960’s as a part of organizational development research by E. Trist and F. Emery. Ranging from a small system between you and your phone, to the interaction between human behaviors with massive technical infrastructures society has developed in hopes to boost performance and quality for both the societal and technical side of the system (Fischer). The essential impression behind a sociotechnical system refers to the interrelatedness that humans, which are the social aspect of the term, and non-humans, which are the technical aspect of the term, have networks between each other. It is how a human interacts with the particular technology and in conjunction how technology inscribes relations onto humans. It is a conventional logic to think that humans have control of technology, and also that technology is simply used as an extension of human capabilities. Sociotechnical networks attempt to reveal how that may not be true by showing how technologies have a much more active role on human behavior, and by trying to show how the relationship between humans and non-humans is a much more complex and dynamic that we may assume (Pinch & Wiebe). Now with a better grasp on such a broad concept, where does someone actively fit in one of these systems? Personally, I participate in a number of sociotechnical systems across a range of platforms and devices from simple design to large scale complexity. Sociotechnical systems can bring people together through computer-mediated communications. Dedicated systems in companies can gather employee statistics to then compile and deploy in a knowledge base easily accessible by anyone who may gain assistance from a previous employees experience w... ...rking there were given two weeks’ notice. As a way of helping them go through this transition the company used a lot of its resources, be it the workforce placement company Yoh to find a new job for these employees to personal recommendations to friends in other companies to help this employees not be jobless for any long period of time. It’s very difficult to cater to everyone’s ethical expectations of the world. All we can do is cope, until a new sociotechnical system comes out that solves everyone’s ethical dilemmas for us. Works Cited Pinch, Trevor J. and Wiebe E. Bijker. "The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other. "Social Studies of Science: 399-441. Fischer, Gerhard. â€Å"Distributed intelligence: extending the power of the unaided, individual human mind.† 7-14.

Media Advertising - Societal Conformity and Advertisement of Cigarettes

Societal Conformity and Advertisement of PALL MALL Cigarettes Sloan Wilson did not publish The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, a classic on 1950's middle-class conformity, until 1955. But, by July 1953, PALL MALL cigarette advertisers appear aware that "society seemed to reward those who lacked rough edges and eschewed eccentricity" (Blum 794). This conclusion seems justified by a TIME magazine advertisement. Here, these promoters apply this conformity principle and other advertising techniques to a specific socioeconomic group. They seek to lure the expanding male, middle-class audience by presenting indecorous fun, an enticing social situation, and smooth smoking delight all stemming from their product. The advertisement's rich red coloring immediately strikes a viewer with exciting and salacious overtones. The red lettering, border, cigarette package, and swimsuit all emphasize social and physical pleasure. The other colors' absence only strengthens the red coloring's implications. Prominent curving lines support the coloring's implied connection between enjoyment and the product. The foreground woman's curvaceous waist, chest, shoulders, hair, and cheeks give the scene a fun and lively feeling. Further in the background, the other women's similarly curved bodies also emphasize the cigarette's fun. Even the arching beach umbrellas portray such a feeling. Finally, the small boat's billowing sails, pushed by the wind, show excitement and pleasure, an appeal directly to the intended audience. Other aspects strengthen the advertisement design's sexual appeal. The foreground woman's strapless swimming suit, highlighted in red, is the most notable example. Her chest prominently resides above horizontal boxes in both th... ...by asserting, "PALL MALL gives you a smoothness, mildness and satisfaction no other cigarette offers you." Of course, the audience need not accept the text's promise of pleasure. They can easily see that PALL MALLs bring happiness. The picture clearly shows that all middle-class white males frolicking on beaches with beautiful women carry PALL MALL cigarettes. After all, the advertisement's fun and sexy appeal, its enticement to social enjoyment, and its portrayal of the brand's pleasures certainly imply that PALL MALLs bring social happiness. Then again, cigarette advertisers notoriously ignore tobacco's detrimental effects, but who has time to consider negatives when viewing such an appealing scene? WORKS CITED Blum, John, et al. The National Experience: A History of the United States. 5th ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, Incorporated, 1981.

Comparing Brad Manning’s Arm Wrestling With My Father and Itabari Njeri

Comparing Brad Manning’s short story â€Å"Arm Wrestling With My Father,† and Itabari Njeri’s â€Å"When Morpheus Held Him†   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The relationship between a father and son stems from an unspoken competition in many countries. Whether it is a physical or mental rivalry the superior role slowly transcends on to the son as he grows into a man. In Brad Manning’s short story â€Å"Arm Wrestling With My Father,† and Itabari Njeri’s â€Å"When Morpheus Held Him,† both contain admiring sons and impassive fathers. Despite both stories similarities in unspoken emotions they differ in the aspect of their physical relationships. This unrequited bond between a father and son in these stories portray various types of love.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Throughout Brad Manning’s anecdote about arm wrestling he refers to his father as â€Å"the arm† or â€Å"the master with clenched fists.† The embodiment of his father in these empowered limbs shows the dominating figure once held over him. â€Å"Daddy,† was the only personal name Itabari Njeri’s father allowed him to say. If Njeri did not settle for â€Å"Daddy,† â€Å"Dr. Moreland† would have to due. There is a sterile and clinical connotation in referring one’s father as Doctor. Manning’s states,† the man would win,† also giving an impersonal and cold feeling to his â€Å"strong father.† But this impersonal name was not forced upon Manning as Njeri’s father had done. Manning’s â€Å"father-son† matches battling â€Å"arm against arm† was their only means of communication. Manning decodes his father’s crude â€Å"ritual,...

Community Health and Population Essay

McKinney, Texas is â€Å"unique by nature†. As one of the fastest growing cities in the US, McKinney has a current population of more than 149,000, located 30 miles north of Dallas and is the seat of Collin County. McKinney offers rolling hills, lush trees, a historic downtown square and unique neighborhoods and developments. The city ranks number 2 in the CNN’s Money Magazine Best Places to Live in America’s list (Live Edit, n.d.). According to the US Census Bureau (2010), McKinney was one of the most populous places to live with a census of 54,369 in 2000 and 131,117 in 2010 (QuickFacts, para 1). The 141.7% increase over ten years signifies why it was rated number one on the list of Top 10 fastest growing cities with a population of 50,000 or greater (Live Edit, n.d.). In this 100% urban city, there is more than 2300 acres of open space containing 47 parks, 50 miles of hike and bike trails, neighborhood centers and sports complexes. As of the 2012 census, McKinney had a population of 143,223 (49% males and 51% females) with a median age of 32.7. The racial and ethnic composition of the population was 64.5% non-Hispanic white, 10.2% non-Hispanic black, 0.7% Native American, 1.0% Indian (from India), 3.1% other Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 0.1% non-Hispanic reporting some other race, 3.1% reporting two or more races and 18.6% Hispanic or Latino of any race. The median income for the household in the city was $81,894 and $92,868 median family income with only 9% of local residents living in poverty. Considering that 67.9% of McKinney’s residents are employed, the percentage of population with a bachelor’s degree or higher is significantly above the state’s average is explicable. Falling marginally below average at 94.6 (US average is 100) is the cost of living index in McKinney (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012).