Irony of The Setting in The Lottery by Shirley Jackson :: Lottery Shirley Jackson Essays

Irony of The Setting in "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson The setting set forth by Shirley Jackson in the beginning of The Lottery creates a mood of peacefulness and tranquillity. This setting also creates an image in the mind of the reader, the image of a typical town on a normal summer day. Furthermore, Shirley Jackson uses the setting in The Lottery to foreshadow an ironic ending. First, Shirley Jackson begins The Lottery by establishing the setting. To begin, she tells the reader what time of day and what time of year the story takes place. This is important to get the reader to focus on what a typical day it is in this small town. The time of day is set in the morning and the time of year is early summer. She also describes that school has just recently let out for summer break, letting the reader infer that the time of year is early summer. The setting of the town is described by the author as that of any normal rural community. Furthermore, she describes the grass as "richly green" and that "the flowers were blooming profusely" (196). These descriptions of the surroundings give the reader a serene felling about the town. Also, these descriptions make the reader feel comfortable about the surroundings as if there was nothing wrong in this quaint town. Upon reading the first paragraph, Shirley Jackson describes the town in general. The town is first mentioned in the opening paragraph where she sets the location in the town square. She puts in perspective the location of the square "between the post office and the bank" (196). This visualizes for the reader what a small town this is, since everything seems to be centralized at or near the town square. This is also key in that the town square is the location for the remaining part of the story. The town square is an important location for the setting since the ending of the story will be set in this location. Also, Shirley Jackson creates a comfortable atmosphere while describing the residents of the town. First, she describes the children gathering together and breaking into "boisterous play"(196). Also, the children are described as gathering rocks, which is an action of many normal children. She described the men as gathering together and talking about "planting and rain, tractors and taxes"(196). Finally, she describes the women of this community as "exchanging bits of gossip"(196) which is a common stereotype of women. She creates a mood for the reader of the town and residents of this town on a normal summer morning.

Process Documentation: Creating a Flowchart for PI Badge Manufacturing Essay

In this reflection paper I will be reflecting on the process documentation assignment that involved creating a flowchart for the PI Badge Manufacturing Company (PIBMC). I personally have created a flowchart for the revenues and cash receipts part of the company and have reviewed two other flowcharts representing manufacturing and purchases. The two main points of this reflection paper will be describing how creating the diagrams altered my perceptions of a business and accounting for the business and I will also explain any differences in mindset in preparing versus reviewing flowcharts. I will start with the first important point. By creating the diagrams, my perceptions of a business and accounting have been altered in many ways. One of the ways my perception of accounting have been altered is it helped me understand what process is going after a certain process. For example, after the purchase order (PO) has been accepted, it will be prepared on electronic invoice/picking list. After electronic invoice have been created, one copy goes to the accounting department and another copy goes to a customer, which makes perfect sense. The one part that I missed originally is the picking list, which supposed to go to the warehouse from the sales department. But, the way I had it set up was that picking slip was send to the warehouse from the accounting department, which is not accurate. The reason it is not accurate is because the customer would be billed first, and only after that receive the product. It is also will take the process twice as long to carry out the transactions, because the warehouse would have to wait for the accounting department to get done. My perception of business was also altered. For example, I can now see that as a manager I could use a flowchart to assign duties to employees and employees will have a clear understanding of the reporting structure in an organization. This was the eye opening moment for me. Now, I will move on and talk about any differences in mindset in preparing versus reviewing flowcharts. The second main point of this reflection paper is to explain any differences in mindset in preparing versus reviewing flowcharts. One main difference between creating and preparing is the pressure that was hanging over me to get it right. For example, I didn’t know how to start or even how to attach the lines between the figures. It was challenging and really helpful experience to know for the business and accounting professionals. When I was reviewing flowcharts, I was using my knowledge to find any mistakes that have been created. For example, I moved the figures around to make sure the lines were attached. I checked to make sure the right figures were used for processes, and also checked make sure the flowchart is making any sense in general. Now, I will summarize what I have discussed in this reflection paper. In conclusion, this reflection paper explained two main points which are to describe how creating the diagrams altered my perceptions of a business and accounting for the business and explain any differences in mindset in preparing versus reviewing flowcharts. It is also important to note that creating a flowchart is not as simple as reading and editing already created flowchart. It is critically important for an organization to have a well-designed flowchart, because it is essentially a summary of the flow of a business processes. It is important to note that the speed, the accuracy, and the controls of the business depend on the processes summarized in a flowchart.

Christian and Islamic Art Essay

Christian and Islamic Art The difference between Islamic art and Christian art is that Christian art is of human objects and forms while Islamic art portrays the meaning and reflection of things. Unlike Christian art, people do not appear on Islamic art. Unlike Christian art, Islam art does not include pictures and statues of Prophets and Gods. Christian art however, brings religious forms and images to life. It represents spiritual beliefs through illustrated scenes from the life of Jesus. It gives us images of biblical episodes and even carries on stories and images of those now deceased. The Catacombs (Christian burials) represents the final resting place for Christians. It represents ultimate love, sacrifice and triumph. When I first entered into the Catacombs of Rome, I remember walking down into the catacomb and feeling bit nervous as I was surrounded by darkness. It was dark, humid, smelly and yet, so beautiful! There were religious carvings on the inside that almost looked like chalk drawings. The clearest memory I have is visiting the section where the martyrs were buried and putting myself in their position. Would I have been so brave? In Islam, calligraphy is a major Islamic art form. Writing, books, geometry and patterns are most important. In Islam art, geography reflects the language of the world and most importantly, it reflects their spiritualism. A circle for example has no end and represents infinity. It represents never ending love. For Islam, the circle is a reminder that Allah is infinite. My Muslim brother-in-law, born in Lebanon, doesn’t take pictures and explained to that in his culture, taking pictures of living forms is forbidden. They can take pictures of objects, but not of pets or humans. Of course, in my culture we save pictures for memory keepsakes. After 7 years of marriage, he agreed to take a family picture with my sister and their three sons. It was a huge sacrifice in his part but this also explains how art, religion and culture have an influence on each other.

Good Leadership Is More Important Than Good Management Essay

Leadership and management are crucial factors that determine the company’s further development. Management tries to control everything even humans, whereas leaders attempt to liberate humans and powers (Kotter 2001). Generally, the work management does is to make plan and budget, organize, control and solve the problem. The aim of management is to set up the rules. The leader’s work is to ensure the direction and target of the company, integrate all the resources, impel and encourage employees, its aim is to change, and it is obviously that this is the way leadership runs (Kotter 2001). More specially, leadership cares about the value and meaningfulness, whether the target the organization has achieved is worth or not. Leadership follows closely to humans, the dignity, value, potential and development. If management is concentrate on technology and means, procedures and methods, then leadership put emphasis on humanity and objective, the results and art (Northouse 2007). For example, management is focus on the function of power, but leadership cares the effect of enchantment. In fact, for every organization even country, they need both leadership and management. The aim cannot be achieved if lacking any one of these two. Since the leadership is playing the direction instructor role in the management process, this essay believes leadership is more crucial. Therefore, the essay will first have a literature review on leadership and management, following that, it will explain the interdependence of both two functions. Finally, it will illustrate the reason why leadership is more important through examples. Many studies have research on leadership and management from different perspective. According to Kotter (2001), the meaning of management is dealing with the assigned task, managers do key works such as planning, organizing and controlling, and then achieve the expected goal. Through management, the current organization performance can be maintained efficiently (Cuban 1988). It is certainly that in the management process, the leadership will always exhibits, but the main functions of management is preservation rather change (Bush & Heystek 2003). Both of management and leadership have their special value towards various situations, however, management deals with the technical issues while leadership deals with values (Bush and Heystek 2003). According to Kouzes and Posner (2002), leadership is the ability how the leader encourages others to volunteer to make efforts to the organization. As for leadership, it has five following styles: country club management, team management, organization man management, impoverished management, and authority obedience (Blake & Mouton 2003). Among these five styles, â€Å"team management† is proposed most. Blake and Mouton (2003) think the leadership is the ability to deal with both production and humans, and team management is the most appropriate one. In terms of Fiedler (1967), the situation has more influence on leadership. Three main situations are leader member relationship, the structure of the mission and the authority power. Different situation will show different leadership. Furthermore, all these three divisions also have impact on the leadership. Tannenbaum and Schmidt (1958) conclude four main styles, autocratic, known as the telling style, the leader takes the mission and let it known to the group; persuasive (the selling style), the leader would like to motivate the group without discussion, only through persuading them to believe the tasks is a good chance; consultative (the consulting style), the leader will consider member’s advices and their feelings when facing the decisions; democratic (the joining style), the leader will invite discussion, in this step the leader is not only a decision maker. Presently, how the organization can adapt to the fast changing society has become a critical problem for people to think about. In such a competitive era which is compete on knowledge (Bell 1999), an organization, particularly an enterprise which wants to gain the everlasting success should focus on both leadership and management, in this way to adapt to the changing world and keep the competitive advantage (Welch, J & Welch, S 2005). Although the leadership and management are diverse, both of they are very crucial to the organization and interact each other. Therefore, the organization needs both the objective view from managers and vision brought by the leaders (Bolman & Deal 1997). For achieving the vision and keeping high efficiency of the organization, it is necessary to pay great attention to both leadership and management. The interdependent relationship between leadership and management can be illustrated through balanced scoreboard (Kaplan & Norton 2005) shown in the following figure. The Banlance Scorecard (Kaplan & Norton 2005) According to the figure above, it looks into the key area of a business, external area like consumers, financial performance, internal one such as innovation and learning process. It clearly shows a comprehensive view of the two functions. Managers should use measurable methods to have a deep understanding of consumers’ demands, and leader should give the company goal with these demands. Managers are required to use any internal business strategy to let the consumer satisfied while leaders are give all the supports that reach that strategy. So under nowadays such a fierce globalized competition, every company wants to hold the consumers and market share. So the managers and leaders are pretty interdependent, with leaders are responsible for search the demand to adapt the change, and managers control the process and give advices. It is thus clear that good leadership and good management are very important aspects of an organization, however starts from the key esprit of the firm, leadership represents the excellence of the enterprise, and it could realize the value of every employee. Leadership needs sustained training and creation, it is regard as the key factors that influence the development, alternative and reproduce of an organization. Based on this understanding, compared with good management good leadership is a more critical issue. Following section will take Sony and P&G as cases to explain why leadership is more important than management. Sony is a leading firm in the high-tech manufactures industry, it first develops the memory stick and MP3 player, but its sales revenue did not performance well. And soon after the emerging of Samsung and Apple, Sony was soon surpassed by the two competitors. Samsung has more brand value than Sony since 2005, and the Ipod and Macbook from Apple are popular rather than Vaio (Chang 2008). Actually a firm like Sony who can perform on the international stage will of course have a good management within the company for until now Sony still do a very good job. And from the external environment, the different strategies Sony and Samsung takes will not lead to the different performance on its sales. Sony has the right strategy, the complete resources, the powerful energy, but the winner turns to Apple and Samsung. Why Sony could so easily be surpassed by the competitors? The main reason why such gap exists is because the company lacks of the leadership. Many enterprises failed due to the unsuccessful integration of strategy and operation. Take Sony’s competition with Apple as an example, Apple has no core technology on the MP3 player market, all the things they do is to implement the innovation with its computer processor technology. But in the contrast, although Sony has every factor to success, the wrong steps results in the lost in the MP3 player market. Sony took defensive strategy rather than offensive one, such strategy is not appropriate to its market and organizational management. There are two characteristic of current market: the rapid change of new technology and the fast depreciation of old ones. Sony actually do little effort to face the two emerging companies, the new leader team organized by the formal president of Sony could not meet their new visions. Why Apple and Samsung could win is not only because they know the market trend and importance of innovation, but also because the right vision from the leaders. The vision is not a dream but based on the careful market analysis and knowledge of current organizational situation. This is the reason Sony failed in the competition and meanwhile it also shows the more importance of leadership than management. Senge (1994) said that an efficient leadership is that the leader could change the path of an organization’s development and destiny, because every success eventually depends on the leaders. P&G, a global successful company in FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) industry, their leadership management is a good experience to learn. There has a rule in P&G, inter-dependence is a lifestyle (McDonald 2009). Every department, products and areas among the company should trust each other and closely cooperate. P&G is proud of getting the success if take other’s advices. The rule shows P&G has make a closely partnership with their suppliers, consumers, communities and employees. In this way, P&G has built an entire smooth value chain and leads to a multiple- win situation. Good leadership shown in P&G Company as following: Friendly and long-term cooperation with partners. P&G’s leadership with partners could be shown as they always built a long-term relationship. Many partners think P&G has enough respect toward its partners. The reason P&G seldom change partners is due to two reasons: first is in this way to keep the brand image, second is P&G hopes the partners should be familiar with P&G’s business, thus they can reduce lots costs and time. Innovative cooperate strategy. P&G’s another leadership performs to be creative cooperation with Wal-Mart. When many manufacturers are complained about big retail stores such as Wal-Mart and Carrefour, P&G always take an initiative position in the bargaining with the retailers. P&G make an evolution on its supply chain. They use the information technology to realize the continuous replenishment program,which manage the products by categories. The team from P&G and Wal-Mart are from many departments such as sales, marketing, operation, IT and finance, but they share the same goal. In the cooperate process, P&G carefully absorb the advices from the retailers and at the same time, P&G design some products for Wal-Mart. The two companies also intend to expand their business into other areas. Provide training and communication with employees. P&G regards people as their wealth. P&G provide systematic training program, internal promotion. Most of the management is recruiting internally; this basically increased the employee’s loyalty. Besides, P&G not only provide a competitive wages, but also its comfortable working environment. All these are the elements that can show P&G performance on leadership. P&G takes more social responsibility. Aims at sustainable management and environment protection, from 1994, P&G would release its global environment reports to the public annually. Its target is to show a clear vision of the company’s work for improving the global environment. Commitment to consumers. P&G’s belief is they produce and offer best quality products in order to improve the life of global consumers. As returns, they will first gain the leading market position and increasing profit, thus to make the society prosperity which our employees, stakeholders works and lives in. P&G put customers as the first position; they listen to their suggestions, including sales and R&D. P&G set the free call for consumers in order to keep connection with consumers, they always think and solve the problems from consumers perspective and explore the potential demands. 3E model. The 3E model of P&G is ultimately an excellent indication of their works on leadership. The 3E model includes: envision, energize, enable. Envision encourages people to have a clear plan and strategy toward their targets, concentrate on achieve the goal; find the possibility and not the limitations. Energize inspire employees to listen, understand and trust, approve the employee’s performance. Enable improve employees productivities. And also create possible conditions for employees to get success. The 3E model seems very simple but it has included everything related to the leadership. In this model, leadership is a behavior not a job. It clearly gives three missions to the managers: setting the goal, inspiring the employees, provide any helps. From all these aspects of P&G case, people can know that leadership is not just depends on one person or one group, it rely on the whole organization. And leadership not only considers for small aspects such as company strategies, but also considers more about the social responsibility it have in the society. Generally speaking, there are three outcomes of excellent leadership: -The productivity. The only results when the employees cannot finish his job on time are the waste of time and the reduction of quality. The main reason of such consequence is the uncertain guidance and follow-ups. If the leader cannot offer guidance the employees need, then the job cannot achieve the expected level. So lots of time and strength are wasted thus reduced the productivity. -The stability within the organization. As said above, the current society is based on knowledge. If the organization wants to approve the value of the employees, it should provide continuous training and developing opportunities for them. In this way to show the organizations confirmation on their value through spending time and money invest on the knowledge. The company could use such method to increase the stability of the employees and improve the efficiency. -The consumer’s satisfaction. The excellent external consumer services are based on the internal customer service. If the company could realize that the employees are the key customers for them, then they could get the chance to earn huge profit. As a leader, the company’s attitude towards the employees mainly determines whether they wish to work for the company. To care the employees give the company a chance to provide an excellent consumer services from inside-out. Bass and Avolio (1994) mentioned that the leadership should include behaviors like inspiring others, intellectual stimulation, coaching and development, respect and faith. This paper thinks, the leadership is, under the organization’s process of implement its target, the ability of the leader influence other related be led and the interaction between leader and the one to be led. The leadership itself is not only a capability but also a process. In the process, it includes the process of onstruct a binary relationship between the leader and followers, and also includes the functions leader set the organization, improve the efficiency, and leaders help organization adapt the environment, develop and innovative process.? Conclusion To sum up, good management is also an important issue concerning the organizational development. The reason why leadership is more important is that leadership is on a higher level. Take riding the horse as example; if the stableman has an excellent technique to control the horse, perhaps the stableman has management talent. But if he always goes to the wrong direction, that is to say, though the high technique of his management, but still cannot achieve the target, then he is doing the incorrect thing. Clawson (2008) said that leadership is nothing if without changes. So under nowadays a fiercely global trend competition and rapid changing of information and technology, leadership becomes more important for the organization. But only integrate the power of these two functions can, the organization develop on the right way.

Gender Bias in Korea and Japan Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Gender Bias in Korea and Japan - Essay Example The social problem has been catalyzed by their almost similar beliefs in culture and traditions, which supports male chauvinism and dominance. The traditional woman in the Korean society is considered one that takes care of her family at home. The husband is the head of the house and is expected to fend for the family. These views are similar to those in the traditional Japan culture. To analyze the gender bias in the two societal set ups, this paper analyzes and compares gender bias in employment and education opportunities in the two communities. The Japanese and the Koreans had, and still have, similarities in their societies’ gender bias. The problem is highly attributed to the patriarchal system of the families in the two societies. Civilization has brought about changes in the way women are viewed in the society through introduction of the laws advocating for gender equality, but these laws are yet to be implemented effectively. Consequently, high level of gender bias still haunts these societies to date. Today, despite South Korea having one of the world’s highly educated workforces with 37% women and 42% men past college education, women are still very disadvantaged in the labor industry. The women have to balance between home commitments and the long working hours. This is as a result of cultural emphasis still prominent in the society that men are the breadwinners in a family and women the homemakers.

In recent years, honeybee colonies have been experiencing Colony Essay

In recent years, honeybee colonies have been experiencing Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Given the key role of honeybees - Essay Example The honey bees that leave for the forage largely do not return back to their hives and this is especially witnessed to a large extent with migratory bees which are trucked from one country to another for pollination purposes. Scientists have begun to unravel the causes behind this phenomenon as it is a major source of income for the beekeepers and also the farmers depend on it for crop production (Johnson, 2010). In the earlier times a 10 percent loss in honey bee population in a season was considered to be normal, which then rose to 30 percent due to infection by parasitic mites and beginning from 2006 many commercial beekeepers have reported a loss of 30 to 90 percent average colony loss with the onset of CDD. Even the surviving colonies showed weak viability. Though a majority of the losses have been attributed to known causes about 25% of the loss is estimated to have occurred due to CCD. These losses of colonies occur throughout the year and are not seasonal. The major symptoms of this condition are the rapid loss of adult bee workers without any accumulation of dead bees in the hive which is an indication that these bees are not retuning back to the hive that is highly unusual in case of the bee population. These adult bees leave behind their brood which is generally inactive. In addition, there is also the presence of food stores that includes both honey and bee bread. The queen bee is generally present and actively laying eggs (Johnson, 2010; Colony Collapse Disorder, n.d). In case of actively collapsing bee colonies, only an insufficient workforce of young adult bees will be present and though the queen is present the population does not show an inclination to consume food (Colony Collapse Disorder, n.d). Research carried out to determine the causative factors for this condition has found out that CCD could be a syndrome which is not caused by any one particular factor but a combination of several factors (multifactorial). Some of the major possible fa ctors that threaten the bee population are viruses, parasites and microbes, pesticides, antibiotics, miticides, radiations, genetically modified crops and climatic and other environmental changes (Johnson, 2010; Colony Collapse Disorder, n.d). The USDA’s Agriculture Research Service, the Pennsylvania State University and several other universities are conducting most of the current research to unravel the cause of this phenomenon (Johnson, 2010). A recent study carried out by the Washington State University has shown that CCD could be caused due to a combination of toxic chemicals and pathogens present in honeycombs as the bees present in such combs had reduced longevity (Gutierrez, 2010). Of these, chronic exposures to pesticides, miticides and antibiotics have been shown to have an impact on the immune system of the honey bees and hence on their response to infection. In addition, bees have a reduced number of genes which offer resistance to various diseases and toxins thus making the bee population more vulnerable to such problems (Colony Collapse Disorder, n.d). These toxic chemicals are believed to cause the colony to collapse either by themselves or by combining with each other, which would result in increased toxicity to the hive. In addition scientists are also studying the combinatory effects

- Assess the extent to which an Arab Winter followed, and was caused Assignment

- Assess the extent to which an Arab Winter followed, and was caused by, the Arab Spring - Assignment Example The Arab Spring was a misnomer that was motivated by wishful thinking. During the time of Arab Spring overthrowing of the authoritarian regimes gave democracy a chance to bloom. Not only that this movement had given many Islamist parties to advance their undemocratic agendas. While there was political instability in Middle East and West Africa many Islamist insurgents and terrorist groups got the opportunity to expand their influence (Scott, 2009). In such circumstances the Middle East became more hostile strategic environment where regional security, Western values including the US national interest was under severe threat. It was not possible for the United States to react with a difference to this situation. The popular rebellions that erupted in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, and in other Arab countries during the so-called Arab Spring are works in progress that have caused various outcomes. Since America is not the policeman of the world it is not possible for America to govern the Middle East and instruct the people how they should live their lives. Washington, however, could do a better job to protect the US national interest and promote peace and prosperity in the Middle East(Bellin, 2012). The United States needs a comprehensive strategy to combat Islamist regimes that promote agendas counter to American interests and that suppress opportunities for political, religious, and economic freedom. The Arab Spring had steered an unprecedented political transformation, which devolved into a chaotic Islamist Winter in many Arab countries threatening the US national interest (Howard, et. al., 2011). Washington lost a key strategic partner when Egypt’s Mubarak regime was replaced by one dominated by the anti-Western Muslim Brotherhood. Allies in Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait and Yemen now have to deal with challenges posed by Islamist-dominated