High Employee Turnover Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

High Employee Turnover - Essay Example These expenses are especially felt for lower paying jobs which turn out to be jobs that have a high employee turnover. Some of the expenses involved include advertising for the past, payments being done to the leaving employee, interviews for candidates and subsequent training. This is, in addition to, lose of productivity during that period the employee leaves and replacement with another employee. This paper explores employee retention as a measure of decreasing high turnover by focusing on the methods of assessment and selection, individual and organizational learning, and organizational transformation to find a resolution to the crisis. Methods of assessment and selection According to Carsen (2005, 2) employee retention starts with the application process which precedes recruitment. The applicants start by looking at the agency, and this is followed closely by the initial impressions of the employee during the orientation process, in addition to the subsequent assignments, the em ployee is given, performance ratings, any awards or promotions and off course the overall working conditions. All the above play a role in determining whether an employee decides to leave or stay during that short period. Therefore, the pre-employment assessment forms part of the solution to this trouble of high employee turnover as well as improving employee performance. It is essential that the employer objectively defines and quantifies the behavioral DNA that compels success on the job. This is to mean that the employer has to match the candidates who come for interview against a traditional performance profile for each of the positions that are to be filled in the company. This can be done by correlating the behavioral DNA of the present employees in a company against their performance data to determine the performance profile of the individual. This profile, thus, captures the behavioral and cognitive attributes that are unique to a certain position, and, thus, used to separat e the productivity leaders who will be capable of transcending the other employees. Subjective competencies are deemed an unsuccessful way of coming up with required traits of a particular position, therefore, a flawed way of filing vacant positions in any organization. This is because of absence of tangible correlation between the subjective competencies and the actual success of persons in that position (Carsen, 2005, 33). It is, thus, important that employers use objective competencies to measure the actual behavioral and cognitive traits required for the success of a certain individual in the given position. This means this benchmark of success should be leveraged so that it forms the objective model for the employer in evaluating candidates for specific positions. Therefore, it is important that the assessment strategies be developed having in mind the clear understanding of the knowledge, skills, abilities and characteristics that have to be measured for qualification to a par ticular position (Ongori, 2007, 50). The managers should also ensure that the method of evaluation being used in the process can be connective to, and effectively appraise the requirement being assessed. After a careful assessment of the applicants, hiring should be done on recommendation basis, which falls into four categories. These are recommended which is taken as the strongest match as compared to the others which are 'recommended

Strategic Management Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 2

Strategic Management - Research Paper Example Thus, according to Balanced Scorecard Institute (2014), strategic planning refers to the organizational management activities which set priorities, focus resources and energy and ensure that stakeholders work towards attaining the organizational goals. On the other hand, strategic management is described as a comprehensive set of continuous activities and processes which an organization uses for systematic coordination and alignment of resources and actions to the vision, mission and values of the organization. Thus, planning typically describes a time-bound practice while strategic management is an ongoing engagement. Furthermore, the institute observes that strategic management would be used to define the procedures, policies and themes of an organization as opposed to planning which entails the organization of how resources would be allocated to various business operations so as to achieve its objectives. Thus, strategic management is different from planning. Evaluating the process of strategic management gives further insights into how better to define strategic management. Thus, Dess, Lumpkin and Taylor (2005) define it as both an art and science of formulation, implementation, and evaluation of functional decisions that make an organization achieve its objectives. With this regard, Clayton (n.d.) gives the 5-step strategic management process in organizations. Goal setting involves clarifying the organizational vision eventually leading to the development of a mission statement which succinctly communicates goals to employees and shareholders. The second stage is analysis where the organization gathers relevant information and data for accomplishing the vision. It involves conducting the SWOT (strengthens, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis of the organization. This would then be followed by strategic formulation which involves the determination of strategy, reflecting upon and making decisions to design plans and strategi es to address the

Sociological perspectives on deviance

Sociological perspectives on deviance The term deviance is used by sociologists to refer to behaviour which changes, in some way, from a social norm. In this respect, it is clear that the idea of deviance refers to a violation of social norms and refers to rule breaking behaviour. Deviance refers to those actions which go against the norms, values and beliefs of ordinary culture. For example, drinking alcohol at the age of 16. In relation to deviance, the idea relates to all kinds of rule-breaking which involves such things as murder, theft, rape or wearing unsuitable clothing for a given social situation. Many sociologists have given their own definition of deviance. Some sociologist conceive of deviance as a collection of conditions, persons or acts that society disvalue (Sagarin, 1975, 9) There are various perspectives in Sociology such as the functionalist theories and Karl Marxist theories which asks different questions and focuses on different issues regarding deviance. In order to answer the question above it is n ecessary to outline and discuss the sociological perspectives on deviance. I will be discussing the main perspectives of deviance throughout sociology. Functionalism is defined as a Framework that conceptualises society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability (Macionis and Plummer, 1997. p. 19-20).Functionalism has grown through the work of many sociologists including Durkheim and later on by Brown and Merton, The works of these sociologists was based on a biological scientific model called organic system-comparison of social operations to that of a living organism (Giddens, 2001.16) Functionalist theorists, including Durkheim, state crime as having a social role. Others, including Merton, state the strain between socialized aims and reality as the true cause of crime. Functionalist Emile Durkheim believed that societies are held together by shared values and economic dependence. He thinks that society would crumple if principles are not passed from one generation to another. A vital function of society is the preservation of its values, which is done through education and religion. The concept of anomie was introduced by Emile Durkheim which suggested that In modern societies, traditional norms and standards become undermined without being replaced by new ones. (Giddens, 2009, 941). This is the breakdown of society, and will lead to social disorder, deviance and violence. Durkheim also argues that deviance is useful and necessary in society. It helps to strengthen the consensus of values, norms and behaviour of the majority non-deviant population, through the idea of anger at crime which reinforces social solidarity. Other theorists, including Erikson who argues that influential groups within any society are able to impose their views upon the maj ority by a process of ideological manipulation. The excitement generated by the crime quickens the tempo of interaction in a group and creates a climate in which the private sentiments of many people are fused into a common sense of morality.(Bean, 2003, 24). However, Robert Merton criticised Durkheims idea of anomie as being unclear. Merton argued that anomie is a state where the socially approved goals of society are not available to a significant amount of the population if they followed socially approved means of obtaining these goals. According to Merton, people turned to deviance in this state because there is anxiety between what people have socialised to want and what they are able to achieve through legitimate means. Robert Merton, who also accepted the view of functionalists who believed that society, must have certain features to survive. He argues that both goals and constraints on behaviour are socially based, and that desires are socially copied, from socialisation, into cultural goals such as work-related status or financial achievement. Mertons theory on deviance, which is known as the Strain Theory, is a development of Durkheims ideas of anomie and culture. Anomie, in Mertons perspective, can occur when people are not capable to follow the main norms within a society.Some individuals adapt by becoming ritualises, conforming to society norms without any expectations of achieving them. (Clinard, 2001, 5) Merton argues that individuals are socialized into wanting success, wealth, status and power. When they are unable to achieve this, it results in a strain between what we want, and what we can get. One possible response to the strain theory is deviance through innovation (deviant and crimin al behaviour resulting to crime), retreatism (backing out of socially desirable behaviour, for example, alcoholics, drug addicts), Ritualism (ignoring goals of society) and rebellion (rejection of goals and means, but an attempt to replace them with alternative values). Mertons analysis on deviance suggests that deviant behaviour is efficient. First, for the people involved, it allows them to adjust to the situation in which they find themselves in. Merton sees these responses as useful to the society as they help to release the anxiety, therefore maintain the social system stability. However, Merton was criticised by Valier, amongst others, for his importance on the continuation of a common goal in society. Valier argues that there are a range of goals that people struggle to attain at any one time Feminist approach have also criticised functionalism for not explain on conflict, also not considering it to be an integral part of the social world (Dominelli, 1997. p.17). Feminist also argues that this supports and explains structures which have a tendency to be male dominated and in so ignoring the past and women contributions to the society. In conclusion, it can be argued that Functionalist theories do certainly go a long distance in justifying the reasons for Deviance. However, it is overly deterministic in the view of society and the way in which it shapes and forms human behaviour. However, it should argued that Functionalist theories are useful in explaining and deviance, In terms of civil theories or triangulation and procedural pluralism to stable out the problems and challenges linked with Functionalist theory. Sub cultural theories on deviance were developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s from the Albert Cohen and Richard Cloward. They stressed that people respond to forces which are outside to them. This therefore leads them to behave in different ways. Their behaviour is explained by social causes. Sub cultural theorists have tried to seek the causes of these differences. Subculture theories claim to have recognized break downs in the social order. These break downs are seen to be rectifiable by dissimilar types of social engineering e.g. Social reform, social welfare and education. According to interactionist theories of deviance, they make fundamental ideas of deviance in terms of there being no such as deviant act. They place firm importance on reaction. Interactionist put forward useful idea such as labelling, self-fulfilling prophecy, and mortification and primary and secondary deviance. They are significant of the functionalist and subculture theories of deviance. Interactionists argue that human action is original. Humans create roles in relation to and adjustment to others. American Sociologist Edwin Lemert, argues that public reaction is a cause of deviance. Lemert starts by explaining between primary and secondary deviance. Primary deviance is deviance before it is openly labelled; it has a number of likely causes and is not worth looking at given that the samples are unfair and it has no impact on the individual, therefore it does not strain status or activities. The general factor among deviants, argues Lemert, is the process of labelling. The public response to the deviant leads to secondary deviance, the response of the deviant to public labelling. Lemert claims that secondary deviance should be the focal point of study because of its result on the individual. The vital idea is that societal reaction can in fact cause deviant behaviour. The Labelling theorists are another approach in sociology which views the point of seeing deviance from the view of the deviant individual. They claim that when a person becomes known as a deviant, and is expected to have deviant behaviour, it is to do with the way they have been labelled, as the deviant act they are said to have committed. The labelling theory realises that certain acts labelled as deviant are more than likely to be carried out by certain types of people. If society labels a person as a criminal or as deviant there is much evidence that this label sticks with the person to the extent that he believes that they are deviant. So to satisfy society they carry out the role of a deviant to the degree that they are fitting in with what they observe is their role in life or in the society. This makes a great impact on their life, as they need someone to help them to see that they are not deviant or a criminal. If a person becomes a criminal then society need to recognise this and help the person to overcome this, by offering support or counselling to make it aware to the person that this behaviour is not acceptable and if they continue it will lead to them not achieving. However the main criticism of labelling theory is that it is deterministic, and that it makes the person as if they were not human, which then leads to certain behaviour by the act of labels being given to it, and following behaviour patterns as a result of behaviour patterns that go with it.. The Marxist approach has been one of the most vital approaches in explaining deviant behaviour. They mostly base their ideas and theories on how the powerful people control the society which influences how the society works today. The definition of deviance from a Marxist perspective is a conflict between powerful and less powerful groups. Definitions of deviance then emerge from class conflicts between powerful groups and less powerful groups. (Clinard, 2002, 118) Marxists believes that working class males of a younger age commit most crime mainly due to the media which emphasize ideas of greed into people. Therefore, results in a materialistic capitalist system that may force working people of a lower class to commit crime as they have a lower income and may not be able to afford certain equipment such as clothes like the rest of the society. Marxism criticizes a capitalist society where by the productions are owned by the ruling class and the lower class. The bourgeoisie are the ruling class, whilst the proletariats are seen as the lower class. The bourgeoisie act as a societies ruling class. The proletariats, on the other hand, fill the ranks of the ruled end of society. (Clinard and Meier, 2008, 77) The idea of deviance came when Marx attempted to look for something in the world that caused conflicts. He found it in the idea of class struggle. Throughout the past, we have fought against each other for the control of food, shelter, money. Marxists mainly focus on the class distribution and empathises that the ruling class control the norms and values of the society. Therefore, it will not be classed as deviant unless the bourgeoisie say so. The bourgeoisie will only class deviant unless it is committed by a working class person. However, the Marxist approach in terms of explaining deviant behaviour is only consistent to some degree. Along with the challenges from other perspectives, it shows that improvements can be added to their ideas. Marxists mostly focuses on the class distribution and argue that they the ruling class manage the norms and values of the society. It will not be classed as deviant if the bourgeoisie say so and they will not say so if a working class person commits it. Finally In conclusion to sociological perspectives of deviance, they all give an account of some explanation to deviance and give their point of view. However, it varies depending on the various approaches. For an act to be thought to as deviance it varies from place to place and from time to time

The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldratt Essay

In a situation like Alex Rogo’s, the Plant Manager for the Bearington Division of UniCo Corporation, who has been given three months by his boss to either show a profit or face shutdown, one can be tempted to consider an easy option – quit now and look for another job while your reputation is still intact. The temptations for Alex to consider this option are many – his plant has not shown any profit for quite some time, orders are often shipped months late, the inventory position is so bad that the aisles of the plant floor are crammed with in-process parts, almost all jobs are designated as â€Å"rush† and upon all this his marriage is on the precipe because he has been spending all his time in the plant. However, Alex decides to take the problems head on. In this quest, he is helped by his old Physics professor, Jonah. Rather than giving him ready made answers like a consultant, Jonah forces Alex to think by confronting him with pointed questions designed to help him bring out his intuitive skills. When Alex tells Jonah how he was able to increase productivity by thirty-six percent in one department alone with the use of robots, Jonah points it out to Alex how the robots could not possibly have contributed to the company’s goal – and that in fact in terms of its overall goal, Alex must actually be running a very unproductive plant. Prodded on by Jonah, Alex comes to the conclusion that as a first step, he first and foremost has to ensure that his plant makes money. With a continuous barrage of questions from his teacher, Alex and his team learn how to define measurements so that they better reflect the money making goal of a manufacturing organization. Proceeding systematically, they discover the facts which point to how the bottleneck machine in their plant, or in any plant for that matter, determines the throughput and that the capacity of the entire plant is actually equal to the capacity of the bottleneck. They then devise a system whereby the bottleneck (a machine called NCX-10, in this case ) is kept busy for the maximum amount of time possible – this they do by first ensuring that the NCX-10 is kept running even during lunch breaks and later on by ensuring an adequate buffer in front of the bottleneck so that it would not be idle for want of parts. In the meantime they also save time on another suspected bottleneck, the heat treatment, by relocating ... ...e omni-presence of two phenomena, dependency and variability, in manufacturing environments, it is vital that the system’s actual constraint be identified – which may or may not be physical. All other policies have to be built so that they work within the constraint. That is to say that the non-constrained resources have to be used to maximize the performance of the constrained resource. The next step is to try and improve the constraint itself, if possible. Alex Rogo is successful in turning around his plant because he unwittingly, or by design, follows this same ordered thinking process wherein he goes from first defining his fundamental measures and then exploring the effects of different parts of his plant on these measures. He is then able to identify his constraints and effect changes that allow him to maximize his plants performance within the constraint. Later when he finds that his constraint is no longer physical but has become something intangible beyond his plant, he identifies it correctly as a market constraint and tries to improve it by encouraging his sales staff to come up with new orders. And if all this wasn’t enough, Alex has also managed to save his marriage!

Never Let Me Go Essay

Over the past century, biological engineering has made a huge step forward. They made possible to duplicate human DNA in order to produce a genetic replicate. The novel â€Å"Never Let Me Go† by Kazuo Ishiguro in the fiction story of three friends, as the products of genetic cloning, illustrates the negative view of the human nature. This novel, through the eyes of Kathy H. , shows what it means to be a clone and what problems they experienced growing up. Clones are real humans and should be treated as naturally born humans. The clones were not naturally produced, but they created inside of a government lab. These story shows that they were not considered as a humane, and were treated not as rest of the real people. They were created to increase the health of the greater population. If clones are the real people then it is wrong to donate their vital organs against their will. These clone students who lived in school called Hailsham were cut off from the world. They were told only what they needed to know. Once, their teachers, Miss Lucy, explained to her students that one day they all will donate their organs and then die before they even became middle aged. As naturally born humans, clones should have free will. Further, when they were fifteen years old teenagers they had dreams about future. Some of them wanted to go to America, another wanted to be actors and to be a film stars or to work in supermarkets (81). But Miss Lucy told them â€Å"Your lives are set out for you. You’ll become adults, then before you’re old, before you’re even middle-aged, you’ll start to donate your vital organs. That’s what each of you was created to do. You’re not like the actors you watch on your videos, you’re not even like me. You were brought into this world for a purpose, and your futures, all of them, have been decided (81). † Real humans are brought into this world for a purpose and they have free will, not like these clones and it is not right. As a real human, clones should have a chance to choose as we all do. Later, when they were thirteen years old they were told that they will not going to be able to have babies. â€Å"Then there was the whole business about our not being able to have babies (83). † Conclution : The whole idea of cloning humans is wrong

History of Communication Essay

The history of communication dates back to prehistory, with significant changes in communication technologies (media and appropriate inscription tools) evolving in tandem with shifts in political and economic systems, and by extension, systems of power. Communication can range from very subtle processes of exchange, to full conversations and mass communication. Human communication was revolutionized with speech approximately 100,000 years ago. Symbols were developed about 30,000 years ago, and writing in the past few centuries. Petro glyphs The next step in the history of communications is petroglyphs, carvings into a rock surface. It took about 20,000 years for homo sapiens to move from the first cave paintings to the first petroglyphs, which are dated to around 10,000BC. It is possible that the humans of that time used some other forms of communication, often for mnemonic purposes – specially arranged stones, symbols carved in wood or earth, quipu-like ropes, tattoos, but little other than the most durable carved stones has survived to modern times and we can only speculate about their existence based on our observation of still existing ‘hunter-gatherer’ cultures such as those of Africa or Oceania. Pictograms A pictogram (pictograph) is a symbol representing a concept, object, activity, place or event by illustration. Pictography is a form of proto-writing whereby ideas are transmitted through drawing. Pictographs were the next step in the evolution of communication: the most important difference between petroglyphs and pictograms is that petroglyphs are simply showing an event, but pictograms are telling a story about the event, thus they can for example be ordered in chronological order. Pictograms were used by various ancient cultures all over the world since around 9000 BC, when tokens marked with simple pictures began to be used to label basic farm produce, and become increasingly popular around 6000-5000 BC. They were the basis of cuneiform and hieroglyphs, and began to develop into logographic writing systems around 5000 BC. Ideograms Pictograms, in turn, evolved into ideograms, graphical symbols that represent an idea. Their ancestors, the pictograms, could represent only something resembling their form: therefore a pictogram of a circle could represent a sun, but not concepts like ‘heat’, ‘light’, ‘day’ or ‘Great God of the Sun’. Ideograms, on the other hand, could convey more abstract concepts, so that for example an ideogram of two sticks can mean not only ‘legs’ but also a verb ‘to walk’. Because some ideas are universal, many different cultures developed similar ideograms. For example an eye with a tear means ‘sadness’ in Native Americanideograms in California, as it does for the Aztecs, the early Chinese and the Egyptians. Ideograms were precursors of logographic writing systems such as Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese characters. Examples of ideographical proto-writing systems, thought not to contain language-specific information, include the Vinca script (see also TÄÆ'rtÄÆ'ria tablets) and the early Indus script. In both cases there are claims of decipherment of linguistic content, without wide acceptance.