Trade Deficit

Trade Deficit and Current Account Deficit [Name of the Writer] [Name of the Institution] Trade Deficit and Current Account Deficit Critically examine this statement, â€Å"Current Account Deficits do not seem to matter anymore – the US$ appears to remain unaffected by escalating US trade deficits†, by reference to the â€Å"Balance of Payments Approach† to exchange rate determination The trade deficit of the US is at exorbitantly high levels. Many economists suggest that depreciating the US dollar would help put a squeeze on United States enthusiasm for globally produced goods.Since this move of depreciation would inherently curb the exaggerated import costs that the US so loves to incur. Furthermore, these three critical factors essentially would help limit the import prices incurred by US due to the trend of rising demands that has permeated in the societal culture: * The practice of using USD for US trade invoicing; * Exporters concerns on market share dynamic s, and; * The outrageous US distribution costs. $759 billion is the aggregated US trade deficit in 2006. This is six percent of the actual nominal GDP of the country.One of the biggest contributory factors is the impasse of plethora of imported goods from foreign lands. In the perspective of numerous investigators and policymakers, dollar depreciation remains a crux system for tending to this export-import imbalance and restoring the worldwide competitiveness of American producers. Indeed in principle, a weaker dollar might as well raise the expense of different merchandise for U. S. consumers, in this manner diminishing U. S. mandate for imports in the meantime that it helps gather interest by foreign nations for U. S. products by making the country's exports increasingly cost-focused abroad.My investigation uncovers that dollar depreciation is unrealistic to shut the exchange crevice courageously. To make sure, remote request for U. S. exports may as well develop, as speculation p redicts. Since basically all U. S. exports to different nations are invoiced in dollars, remote buyers will determine an instantaneous profit from dollar depreciation as the expense of their buys decreases in varying foreign currencies. Notwithstanding, the value of outside imports for U. S. consumers will be impressively increasingly versatile to conversion standard updates.Exchange invoicing practices, it is contended, donate altogether to the lack of care of import costs to trade rates. Since very nearly the sum of the products that the United States imports, for instance those it exports, are invoiced in dollars, the costs of foreign made merchandise remain settled for a period when trade rates change. Also, even in the longer term—over, state, the year emulating dollar depreciation—the craving of outside makers to remain focused in the huge U. S. business sector might lead them to oppose expanding the dollar value of their products.Beyond any doubt, the atypically towering showcasing and appropriation takes added to imports once they drop in the United States—fetches designated in dollars—further isolate the last utilization value of foreign made merchandise from conversion scale updates. The American President stated that: â€Å"The best way to, deal with the trade deficit is to make sure that America is the best place in the world to do business†¦ † Examine this view that promoting growth is more effective than direct targeting of the trade deficit USA is a diverse country with numerous of its regions continuously producing high growth, innovative companies.These companies have risen above the economic downturn that hit the global economy in the start of the 21st century. Rather with surprise, the diverse US states boast such companies not only distributed in the locales of Silicon Valley and Boston but rather in most of its states. End of 2012; saw a sharp decline in the trade deficit of the US. In this period, o il imports drastically reduced whereas exports increase sharply. This essentially iterates that the shrinking trade gap, has improved on the government’s estimated growth and trade deficit levels.Furthermore, the levels reached in the closing months of 2012 indicate towards levels that have not been observed in the last three years. This is a positive inducement. Exportation of US products saw rise in oil exports and other petroleum based-product exports. Further, aircraft sales and agricultural good sales also demonstrated positive increment. Various economists believe that this is a very encouraging sign. Though, economists have stated that the essential focus of the US treasury should be to enhance growth in the country, and secondary considerations should be given to the trade deficit.This assertion is based on the belief that reinvigorating the business systems of the country would deplete the rising gap between the socio economic classes of the country. Furthermore, ind ividual families would be given financial stability and long term sustainability. It also has to state that the narrowed gap between imports and exports, i. e. the trade deficit, essentially iterate that US corporations earn extra then their foreign counterparts. Furthermore, domestic consumption of foreign goods is also less in comparison.It is expected that the companies are not piling up their inventories; this indirectly suggests that curbing expenses including cuts in defence spending would help in keeping a positively skewed growth rate in the future months. These events would see an additional negative pressure on the trade deficit that has started to show signs of decrease. As such economists are of the view that trade will be favourably impacted in 2013. These forecasts are dependent on premises that iterate that the EU debt crisis will finally show some features of stabilizing.This would further give a positive boost to the US exports. Moreover, economic growth witnessed i n Asia would also positively impact the growth potential of the US. One of the biggest negatives for US is the rising trade deficit between China and the US. This trade deficit climbed to a spectacular 300 billion mark in 2012. This would be the biggest pressure point on the growth prospects of the US economy. Economists have confronted this issue by attacking the economic policies of China, specifically the country’s practices to artificially peg their currency at far lower levels, than is required.This assertion is made with the logic that such an economic move by China would essentially lower the costs of its exports in the US. UK trade statistics show similar trends to the US situation. Review the suggestion of b) above for the UK situation UK trade statistics show similar trends of that of US i. e. ever-increasing trade deficits and curbing growth prospects. Given these circumstances and the global economic turmoil that hit the global economies in the early years of the millennia, it is disappointing to even follow the growth prospects of the World, let alone the UK.Britain’s trade deficit also demonstrates a serious picture of disappointment. Economic chiefs of the country suggest that the super competitive currency i. e. the British Pound Sterling can be the glimmer of hope in this dismal economic prospect. This is because the currency is almost a quarter below the pre financial crisis levels. In 2008, December reports indicated that the nation’s deficit consumed after trade sharply rose to 14 billion pounds. One of the biggest factors of this deficit jump is attributed to magnified increase in aircraft import costs.Given these factors, it juxtaposes a truly saddening prospect for the country. Economists who eagerly made plans to rebalance the economic prospects of the economy, by cashing on the decline in pounds value to feed increases through export based growth. BoE has thus decided to restrict any particular changes to the inter est rates. This was due to suggestions that raising the rates would cause pound to appreciate, thus thwarting the trade prospects, negatively. Nonetheless, declining GBP has not appeased the concerns of above targeted and persistent economic inflation, as well as higher than necessary import prices.Current UK growth prospects and outlook suggests that the region would see improvements, although the road to recovery would be filled with bumps and slowness. Outlook prospects also indicate that consumer spending would be positively impacted. Furthermore, squeezes on real incomes would also subside, slowly. These are thoughts that do not cross the normal household. As such they remain scared, and cautious towards excessive spending. This is keeping a tap on growth. UK economy does not have the support of infrastructure of commerce that is established in the US.As such the economy is overfilled, without vacuum, and without much chances of astronomical growth. Additionally, close associat ions with a debt ridden EU has also kept pressures on growth. Though, it is accepted that growth in the nation is the biggest policy to be looked for, economic wise. Moreover, trade deficit should be given a secondary consideration. References Smith, David (2011) Trade Deficit Sunday Times The Balance of Payments and Macroeconomic Policy in an Open Economy Book Chapter

Power and Politics in Organization

Power and Politics in Organizations: Public and Private Sector Comparisons Joseph LaPalombara Wolfers Professor of Political Science and Management School of Management Yale University A chapter for the â€Å"Process of Organizational Learning† section of the Handbook of Organizational Learning, ed. Meinolf Dierkes, A. Berthoin Antal, J. Child & I. Nonaka. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming. DRAFT: Please do not cite without author’s permission. Power and Politics in Organizations: Public and Private Sector ComparisonsJoseph LaPalombara Yale University Political Organizations and Their Milieu Organizational learning derives most of its knowledge from research on organizations in the private sector, particularly from the study of the firm. Its rich interdisciplinary quality is reflected in the range of social sciences that have contributed to the field’s robust development. The contribution from political science, however, has been minimal (reasons are s uggested in the chapter on ‘politics’ by LaPalombara in this volume).The mutual failure of political scientists to pay more systematic attention to organizational learning and of organizational learning specialists to extend their inquiries into the public/political sphere is unfortunate in at least three senses. First, a general theory of organizational learning is unlikely to emerge unless and until what is claimed to be known about this phenomenon is shown to be the case (or not) in the public/political sphere as well.Second, sufficient evidence in political science—even if not gathered with organizational learning as the central focus—shows that organizations in the public/political sector do differ in significant ways from those in the private sphere. And third, considerations of power and its exercise are so ubiquitous in public/political-sector organizations, indeed they are so central to an understanding of these bodies, that one wonders why such m eager attention has been paid to this concept in the literature on organizational theory and organizational learning.The present chapter is intended to show that the integration of political science into the field of organizational learning will be improved and that knowledge about organizational learning itself will be deepened if increased attention is focussed on two general questions: What characteristics of organizations in the public/political sector distinguish them from organizations in the private sector? And what are some of the implications of these differences for the overall field of organizational learning?The Normative Dimension The answer to the first question must be that one and perhaps the most salient distinguishing characteristic of public/political-sector bodies is that they are normative at their core. For organizations in the private sector, utility and efficiency are universally accepted as primary values. Theories about them are naturally based on the assum ption that these bodies are organized and behave according to rational principles that reflect these values and not other considerations.This assumption, however, remains so central to writing about management that, as shown below, it actually serves to impede almost any serious attention to power and politics in private-sector, for-profit entities. To be sure, any portrayal of private-sector, for-profit entities as monolithic structures exclusively and rationally oriented to the market and the so-called bottom line is much too stark and oversimplified.Even when this flaw is recognized or conceded, however, organizations in the public/political sector are quite different, so the logic and rationality that may apply to a private-sector body cannot easily be extrapolated to them. These differences are also reflected in the ways in which public-sector organizations relate to the learning process. The fact that they typically carry very heavy and distinctive normative baggage is only on e of many dimensions along which differences may be assessed.Normative considerations are endemic to public/political-sector organizations, first because they are directly or indirectly involved in what Easton (1953) once called ‘the authoritative allocation of values’(p. 129). This phrase is a shorthand way of describing a government’s vast organizational apparatus that engages in a wide range of activities over people. These activities typically include matters over which even the meekest of persons affected will argue and fight with each other, sometimes violently. These contrasts, or differences in preferences (i. e. hat government should do or not do), apply not just to the ends of government but also to the means chosen to bring these ends to fruition. In Lasswell’s (1936) brutally unvarnished observation, politics is about ‘Who Gets What, When, How’. Where organizations are constrained or hemmed in by normative considerations, appeals t o logic and rationality do not travel far or reach many receptive ears. Even when political issues appear to be settled and consensus is reached, say, on the desirability of a given policy, normatively driven questions will arise over the mode or method of policy achievement.Because these policies involve things that happen (or do not happen) to human beings, considerations of expediency and efficiency will often take a backseat to normative ideas about goal achievement. In Etheridge’s (1981) words, such normative matters also raise the issue of ‘what should government learn and what should government not learn’ (p. 86). To put it bluntly, learning things about goal-setting or policy implementation that may be rational and efficient but that are palpably unfeasible politically is not only a waste of resources but also a one-way ticket to political bankruptcy.This and other aspects of public/political-sector organizations to be discussed below make for a good deal of messiness—in organizational boundaries; in the specification of organizational missions and authority; in the functional, territorial, and hierarchical division of labor that relates to policy-making and policy execution; and so on. This messiness cautions against a too-easy extrapolation to the public sphere of agency theory or concepts such as principal–agent relationships. These theoretical frameworks may work quite well for the private sector, where one finds much clearer statements of urpose or of means and ends and where the boundaries demarcating organizations, their authority, and their responsibility are much more unambiguously delineated than in the public political sphere. To cite the most obvious example (see Mayntz and Scharpf 1975, for example), in the public sphere it is not easy to separate, say, the legislature (as ‘principal’) and the bureaucracy (as ‘agent’) for the simple reason that in many circumstances the bureaucrat s not only administer policies but also de facto make policies.In fact, the fabric of public policy-making and its administration is typically a seamless admixture of official and unofficial bodies interacting together in ways that make it next to impossible to distinguish principals from agents. This aspect is in part what I mean by messiness. Other Dimensions of Differentiation. It will help clarify the above exposition if one considers some of the additional dimensions that differentiate organizations in the public/political sphere from those in the private sector. The distinctions drawn are not a matter of black or white but rather one of degree.In every instance, however, differentiation is at least a caution against thinking that differences between the private and public/political spheres are superfluous, misleading, irrelevant, or nonexistent. The dimensions are the organization’s (a) purposes or goals, (b) accountability, (c) autonomy, (d) orientation to action, and (e) environment. Purposes and Goals Political organizations are typically multipurpose. The public policies they are expected to make or administer will often be quite vague, diffuse, contradictory, and even in conflict with each other (Levin and Sanger 1994: 64–8).What governments do is so vast and touches on so many different aspects of organized society that it would be astonishing if these policies did not have such characteristics. Even where single agencies of government are concerned, their purposes, goals, specific marching orders—to say nothing of their procedures and actual behavior—will rarely be coherent or logically consistent. Not only are the mandates of government normally quite vague and diffuse (Leeuw, Rist, and Sonnichsen 1994: 195; Palumbo 1975: 326), they may not be known to many of the people who make up the organizations designated to carry them through.It is not unusual for such organizations to have no goals at all (Abrahamsson 1977), or to have goals that appear to be quite irrational (Panebianco 1988: 204–19; 262–74). For this reason rational-actor models, in which it is assumed that preferences are ‘exogenous’ to the organizations themselves, rightly draw criticism when applied to public/political organizations (Pfeffer 1997). Accountability In the private sector, a timeworn cliche is that those who manage publicly held firms are accountable to their shareholders.As Berle and Means (1933) long ago established, this claim is largely a myth. If the ensuing decades have changed this situation at all, it is only in the influence now exercised over the firm by some of the rather large institutional investors as well as by some stock analysts. Occasionally, even the mass media may influence what a corporation does. The corporate community’s relatively recent references to management’s accountability to stakeholders does not make the publicly held firm similar to public/politica l organizations.In comparison with those who are in public office or who manage governmental and other political organizations, corporate managers live in splendid freedom. Paying attention to stakeholders is, like many other aspects of corporate policy, a matter of management’s choice. In the public/political sphere, accountability to a wide spectrum of individuals and organizations is an inescapable fact of organizational life. People in the public/political sphere who fail or refuse to understand this fact spend very little time there.Public-sector officials, especially those who occupy governmental office, whether appointive or elective, wisely pay attention to and worry about many constituencies, all of which are more or less ready and able to apply sanctions if their wishes or advice are not followed. The vaunted autonomy of the executive branch is much more limited than one supposes (Levin and Sanger 1994: 17). In all democratic systems, what the executive does is subj ect to oversight by legislatures and to challenge in the courts. And the latter two institutions are themselves subject to checks by still others.All of them are under continual scrutiny by outsiders prepared to intervene. In addition, many activities that are considered legitimate, and even praiseworthy, in the private sphere would subject public office-holders to arrest, prosecution, and possible imprisonment were they to practice them (Gortner, Mahler, and Nicholson 1987: 60–4). Consider, for example, the public’s quite different reactions to words like ‘broker’ and ‘influence peddler’—or the variety of meanings ascribed to a term like ‘corruption’.As noted by Child and Heavens (in this volume), the universal condition of governmental and other public-sector organizations is that they are subject to constitutions, laws, administrative regulations, judicial decisions, executive orders, and so on. The actions of these pers ons called upon to manage these organizations are constrained by external and internal de facto rules, and limitations (Rainey and Milward 1981). Comparable examples of accountability in the private sector are rare. Public/political-sector organizations are also for more ‘porous’ than private firms are.The former are easily permeated by organized outside interest groups determined to pull these organizations, and therefore their leaders and managers, in different policy directions. The mass media (often the instruments of powerful interests in civil society) also often make quite explicit and sometimes contradictory demands on them. Because these organizations are presumably representatives of the public and are expected to behave in its interest, the press is expected to be especially vigilant on behalf of the public. Above all, public-sector organizations in democracies are subject to the influence of political parties.These parties have their own preference orderings of issues and their own sense of the public policies required to deal with them. Their agendas are essentially normative; rarely do they brook qualification or interference on grounds of efficiency or similar considerations (Gortner et al. 1987: 65–9). Members of governmental organizations, even when protected by civil service laws, defy political parties at considerable risk. This exposure may be extreme in the United States, but it is endemic to European and other parliamentary systems as well. AutonomyThis condition of multiple accountability, formal and informal in nature (Cohen and Axelrod 1984), implies that political organizations are considerably less autonomous than private-sector organizations. Not only are the formal chains of command multiple and complex, but informal influences and pressures often limit, sometimes drastically, the degrees of freedom open to persons in these organizations. Although managers in the private sector are also not free to act exactly a s they might prefer, their organizations (as long as they operate within the law) are immensely more autonomous than public/political sector organizations are.Two additional characteristics relating to autonomy are worth noting. First, not only the goals of these organizations may not only be dictated from the outside, they may also be dependent on other external bodies to achieve them. Lawmakers need the executive branch, as do the courts, to have their policies enforced. Central governments need regional or local governments. A single policy may require the coordination and collaboration of different governmental bodies, many of which are in competition or conflict with each other.And, as I noted earlier, successful goal achievement may in part also lie in the hands of political parties and interest groups. Furthermore, governmental bodies or agencies often disagree about goals and policies. Evaluations of how well or poorly organizations are doing will be driven not by objective criteria (assuming they are available) but rather by political ideology and partisanship. Even within the same government, existing organizations will be in conflict over policies, such as in the case of ministries and departments that spend money while others have to worry about deficits, exchange rates, inflation, and so on.Even in highly authoritarian or dictatorial political systems, such factors make organizations in the public/political sphere, if not radically different in kind from their counterparts in the private sector, then certainly different in the valence of the factors that I have been enumerating. To summarize, the missions of these public/political bodies, their membership, the resources provided for operations, the rewards and punishments for good or bad goal achievement, and often the sheer survival of the organization itself are all matters that typically lie outside the organization itself.Hence, before taking initiatives, persons in political and governmental organizations will make careful internal and external assessments. First, they seek to discover how their superiors or immediate colleagues may feel about a policy or mode of policy implementation. Second, they look to how this policy or mode of implementation will sit with those internal or external forces that can impinge on their professional careers, their economic well-being, or the welfare of the organization itself.Third, they make assessments about what will lie in the way of their ambitions, including, perhaps, their desire to make and enforce given policies. This basic pattern suggests that these organizations are under enormous pressure to engage in learning. Attention will certainly be paid to other governmental agencies, political parties, labor unions, trade associations, religious or ethnic groups, the courts, the mass media, professional associations, the corporate community, and other political and governmental jurisdictions at home or abroad that may affect the org anization’s well-being.The list is very long of constituencies that wield enough power, formal or otherwise, to either dictate or veto certain policies or facilitate or nullify their successful implementation (Dean 1981: 133). Failures to perform calculations of this kind and to learn about these things—and at a reasonably high level of competence—will hobble or defeat the persons or organizations involved. The corporate community has taken to engaging in somewhat similar scanning in recent years, largely because of the internationalization of the firm.When managers extend their operations abroad, they come to appreciate the value, indeed the necessity, of scanning these new environments for aspects that are not, strictly speaking, directly related to the market. As noted above this scanning has also been practiced at home, for national and local governments have come to exercise jurisdiction over matters that affect the life and particularly the profit or loss of private enterprise. One can generalize this tendency by noting that managers are increasingly impelled to engage in scanning whenever gaps begin to appear between a corporation’s policies and its actual performance.Failure to catch sight of such gaps before the media do can carry severe consequences. Orientation to Action The conditions described above do not encourage much initiative by public/political-sector organizations. Action tends to be reactive, not proactive, and prophylactic, not innovative. Fresh ideas are typically viewed as threats to a delicate equilibrium between internal and external forces. Few people wish to risk taking steps that might trigger chain reactions with unknown consequences.Conservatism, not risk-taking, becomes the modal orientation to action. Persons in the private sector, and the mass media, lament attitude, sometimes stridently. They overlook, perhaps, that they themselves are partly responsible for the shortcomings that they criticize. C onservatism also grows out of the fact that these organizations are much more tied to tradition and more deeply institutionalized than is true in the private sector. These traits, too, make them extremely resistant to change.Whether legislatures (Cooper 1975), political parties (Panebianco 1988), or bureaucratic agencies (Powell and DiMaggio 1991; Scott 1995) are meant, the length of time they have been around will greatly condition what the organization is capable of doing, including its capacity to learn and, on this basis, to change. Max Weber’s (1958) reference to bureaucracy’s ‘dead hand’ (p. 228) suggests that this type of conservatism is brought about by the very same characteristics that he associated with legal-rational authority systems.Some writers have labeled this phenomenon ‘strong institutionalization’ (Panebianco 1988: 53). Others have called it the embeddedness of values, or norms, that affect the cognitive systems of organiza tions (Herriott, Levinthal, and March 1985), the governmental sphere, therefore, endless examples show that efforts to reform these organizations fail more often than not (Destler 1981: 167–70). This pattern does not mean that the bureaucrats who run these organizations are beyond anyone’s control or that change is impossible (Wood and Waterman 1994).It does mean, however, that organizational change is extraordinarily difficult to carry off, given the magnitude of inertial forces (Kaufman 1981). The budget process and goal displacement in the public/political sphere are additional factors that impinge on an orientation to action. For instance, not only are public budgets controlled from outside the organizations that depend on these allocations, in the short and medium terms, they can be modified and redirected only minimally, and at the margins. This circumstance is one reason why political scientists who wish to identify the most powerful groups and organizations, wi thin government tself and within civil society, will profile public budgetary allocations over fairly long periods of time. Goal displacement occurs when the personal interests and expediency of organizational leaders and members come to dominate and replace the purpose(s) of the organization itself. This tendency is ubiquitous in the political sphere. Cooper (1975) nicely summed it up in his observation on the U. S. Congress: He found that institution ‘quite vulnerable to the deleterious effects the pursuit of residual goals [of its members] involves. These self-regarding goals] distort policy orientations and block institutional reforms by making individual self interest or collective partisan advantage the focus of attention and the criterion of action’ (p. 337). Mayhew (1974) found that the best explanation for the action orientation of members of Congress is the strength of each member’s the desire be reelected. In extreme form, and in many different types o f organizations, these characteristics actually result in a transformation of the organization itself (Perrow 1972: 178–87).The Environment Because the environment of organizations in the public/political sphere is so strongly normative, the policies enacted there are not only temporary but also contested in their implementation every step of the way both inside and outside government. Knowing about these aspects of their environment, the managers of public/political organizations engage in a predictable type of environmental scanning and learning. For example, they learn whether to pay more attention to the legislature or to the executive office (Kaufman 1981).In order to be at least minimally effective in their environments, the organizations involved must learn the ways and means of overcoming the kinds of constraints that I have been summarizing (Levin and Sanger 1994: 66–8, 171–6). Indeed, considerations of organizational efficiency may be and often are ent irely irrelevant to decision-making and choice in the political sphere. Successful ‘entrepreneurs’ in this context are the ones who learn how to survive and/or help their policies survive in an environmental landscape full of dangerous surprises and subject to frequent and radical change.The basic knowledge to be internalized is that this struggle will remain continuous and that space for freedom of action will not last long. It is these qualities—ambiguity, messiness, and continuous struggle and conflict—in the political and governmental environment that lead political scientists to give considerable attention to power and its distribution both among and within organizations. That attention remains intense, notwithstanding that power is an elusive concept invariably laden with all sorts of normative claims about to what type of power is legitimate and what type is not.In political science there is fairly broad agreement (Dahl 1968) that power is the abili ty, through whatever means, of one to person make another do his or her bidding, even and particularly in circumstances in which doing so is not what the other person wishes or prefers. Power and Organizations The Role and Anatomy of Power Struggles Power, and the struggle over it, describe the essence of the political process. Rothman and Friedman (in this volume) note that scholars writing on organizational learning rarely take conflict and conflict resolution into consideration.They add that organizational conflict, even in the hands of authors as skilled as March and Olsen (1976), is not mentioned as one of the factors that may inhibit the successful development of a learning cycle (see also March 1966). This neglect stems in part from the tendency, widespread in both the corporate community and management literature, to consider conflict itself as something highly undesirable and potentially pathological and, therefore, as something to be defeated (Hardy and Clegg 1996: 627â₠¬â€œ8; Pfeffer 1981: 2–9).It cannot be without negative consequences, either for the theory of organizational learning or for attempts to apply it in the workplace, that such organizations are almost never studied from the vantage point of power and of the competition that takes place to create and maintain control of it or wrest it from others (Berthoin Antal 1998; Dierkes 1988; Hardy and Clegg 1996: 631). One author (Kotter 1979: 2) noted that the open seeking of power is widely considered a sign of bad management.Indeed, the authors of management literature not only skirt the behavior associated with power struggles but also condemn it as ‘politicking’, which is seen as parochial, selfish, divisive, and illegitimate (Hardy and Clegg 1996: 629). Kotter (1979) found, for example, that in 2,000 articles published by the Harvard Business Review over a twenty-year period, only 5 of them included the word ‘power’ in their titles. This finding is astound ing. It suggests that power is treated like a dirty little family secret: Everyone knows it’s there, but no one dares come right out to discuss it.One might imagine, though incorrectly, that the situation has changed for the better in recent decades. An examination of the Harvard Business Review with Kotter’s same question in mind shows that only 12 of more than 6,500 articles published in the period from 1975 to mid-1999 contained the word ‘power’ in their titles and that 3 contained the word ‘conflict’. ‘Leadership’ appeared in nine titles. In a sample of abstracts of these articles, one finds, as expected, the term ‘power’ somewhat more often than in the article’s titles.But the term is almost never treated as a central concept that orients the way the researcher looks at an organization or develops propositions about its internal life. This finicky, keep-it-in-the-closet attitude toward power is puzzling. F or political scientists, the question of power in organizations is central for many reasons: because power is held unequally by its members, because there is a continuous struggle to change its distribution, because these inequalities and efforts to change them inevitably lead to internal tensions.A persistent quest in political science, therefore, is to illuminate the structural aspects of public/political management that permits those involved to confront and handle power confrontations without defeating the purpose of the organization itself. Is There a Power Struggle? The puzzle of inattention to power in the fields of organizational theory and organizational learning is all the more intriguing given that leading organizational theorists, such as Argyris and Schon (1978, 1996) and Perrow (1972), have certainly addressed this matter.For example, Perrow treated organizational traits such as nepotism and particularism as means by which leaders of economic and noneconomic organizati ons maintain their power within them. Because these organizations are the tools of those who lead them and can be used to accumulate vast resources, a power struggle typically occurs over their control (pp. 14–17). And because of goal displacement that may accompany such power struggles, organizations may well become ‘things-in-themselves’ (pp. 188–9).It is possible that leading theorists such as Argyris and Schon (1978, 1996) and Senge (1990) have themselves been excessively reticent in treating phenomena such as power struggles within the firm (Coopey 1995). It may be that corporate managers are in denial and therefore loathe to acknowledge that even they, like their counterparts in politics, are playing power games. Firms, and the literature about them, stress the beauty of teamwork and team players. Plants are organized around work teams and quality circles. Mission statements are endlessly reiterated.Human resource managers expend enormous energy inst illing the firm’s culture as a distinctive way of doing things. People who excel at the approved traits are rewarded with promotions and stock options. All these practices might be cited as evidence that corporate behavior is instrumentally rational and that the search for power, especially for its own sake, is alien to the firm. This way of thinking and describing things leaves little room for attention to the power games that lie at the center of most organizational life.Thus, making decisions about corporate strategic plans and the budgetary allocations that go with them; defining of core businesses and the shedding of what is not ‘core’; effecting mergers, acquisitions, and alliances; and carrying out radical corporate restructuring that may separate thousands of persons from their jobs and yet dazzlingly reward others would typically be seen by political scientists as behavior that is quite similar to the kind of power struggles that take place every day in public-sector organizations.Behind the veil of corporate myth and rhetoric, managers obviously know about this aspect of their environment as well. So do writers for the financial newspapers, where words such as ‘power struggle’ appear much more frequently than they do in the management journals. How could it be otherwise when the efforts at leveraged buyouts, struggles to introduce one product line and abolish others, and differences over where and how best to invest abroad take on the monumental dimensions reported in the press?It would be astonishing if the persons involved in these events were found to actually believe that considerations of personal and organizational power are not germane to them. Nevertheless, as Hardy and Clegg (1996) noted, ‘the hidden ways in which senior managers use power behind the scenes to further their position by shaping legitimacy, values technology and information are conveniently excluded from analysis. This narrow definition o bscures the true workings of power and depoliticizes organizational life’ (p. 629). Attempts to correct the queasy orientation to the reality of conflict and power struggles have been relatively rare.One reason is that not just the actors in the corporate community but also students of such things come to believe in the mythologies about empowered employees, concern for the stakeholders, the rationality of managerial decisions, and the pathology of power-seeking within organizations. Their belief is a pity in that, without doubt, the structure of power, explicit or implied rules about its use, and the norms that attach to overt and covert power-seeking will deeply affect the capacity of the organization to learn (Coopey 1995).In any case, there can be no doubting the fact, however much it may continue to be obscured in the corridors of corporate power, that struggles of this kind deeply affect corporate life its external behavior; and who gets what, when, and how within these institutions (Coopey 1995: 202–5). The Benefits of Power Struggle Power struggle, of course, is not the only aspect of organizations worth study, and the world of politics is not just Hobbesian in nature. Cooperation is the obverse of conflict.How power is defined and whether the definition reflects left-wing or right-wing bias makes a difference in thinking about or conceptualizing the salience of power in organizations (Hardy and Clegg 1996: 623–5). In particular, it is essential that one avoid any definition or relatively broad conceptualization that does not take into account that, in any organization the existing ‘rules of the game’ even if they are considered highly rational and ‘legitimate’, constitute in themselves the outcome of an earlier (and typically ongoing) struggle over control of an organization’s resources (Hardy and Clegg 1996: 629).When the ubiquitous existence of power struggle within organizations is acknowledged and put into proper perspective, when power-seeking (even when the impulse is entirely ego-centered and not driven by organizational needs) is accepted as normal behavior, and when it is recognized that no existing organizational structure is entirely neutral, only then can one hope to clarify what kind of single-loop or double-loop learning is likely to occur.For example, Coopey (1995) argued, correctly in my view, that where the distribution of power within an organization is hierarchical and asymmetrical, the type of organizational learning that proceeds in such contexts will tend to buttress the status quo. Their reasoning makes sense not just because, for example, the learning process tends to favor senior managers but also because the kind and quality of information to which those managers have access becomes, in itself, an instrument for exercising and preserving one’s favorable position in the power hierarchy.In the public sector, double-loop learning is even more imp eded and therefore rarer than in the private sphere. The reason is that politics, in both the organizational environment and political organizations, actually infuses every aspect of what public-sector organizations are and what they do. The more important the sphere of action or the issues treated by these bodies and the more public attention they draw, the more difficult it will be to reach consensus.And once consensus is reached, the more improbable it will be that anyone will either want to modify it or succeed in doing so—no matter what the feedback about the policies and their efficacy may turn out to be (Smith and Deering 1984: 263–70). Double-loop learning in the public sphere is impeded also by the formal separation of policy-making and policy implementation, as for example between legislative and administrative bodies. As noted earlier, policies are infrequently the choices of the organizations called on to implement them.In this setting, endemic to governmen tal systems, certain types of impediments to organizational learning tend to materialize. On the principal’s side, there may not be sufficient time, or technical competence, or interest to learn what is actually going on with policy implementation. The probability is low, therefore, that those who make policy and set organizational goals will ever get information that might encourage a realistic articulation of goals and a rational specification of the means to be used in goal achievement.Organized interest groups are well aware of this gap. As a consequence, their typical strategy is to keep fighting for what they want, not only when alternative policies are up for consideration but also (sometimes particularly) after an unwanted policy has formally been adopted but must still face the vagaries of being carried out. On the agent’s side, whatever is learned about policy implementation that might urge a change of methods or of the policy itself may never be articulated at all, for to do so might upset an existing political equilibrium.Not only are these equilibria difficult to obtain in the first place, they often also involve an unspoken, symbiotic relationship—often dubbed the ‘Iron Triangle’ (e. g. Heclo 1978: 102)—between a specialized legislative committee, a bureaucratic agency responsible for administering the specialized policies, and the organized interests that benefit from particular policies, particular ways of implementing these policies, or both. Potential learning that would upset this balance of forces finds very rough sledding.The treatment of whistle-blowers, who sometimes go public with revelations of misguided or distorted policies or of bad methods used in their administration, is eloquent evidence of this problem. One way to overcome the stasis implied by these tendencies is to encourage power struggles, not to obscure them (Lindblom 1971: 21–42, 64–7). Nothing will galvanize the atten tion of politicians and bureaucrats more than learning that organized groups with a vested interest in a given policy and large numbers of faithful voters are unhappy about a particular aspect of public policy.When these groups lie outside the Iron Triangle, they are far less inhibited by considerations of equilibria then when they are inside it. This single-issue focus is indeed one of the reasons why even small and not well-financed public advocacy groups can sometimes be very effective in bringing about change (Heclo 1978). The trick is to maximize transparency, to encourage more group intervention as well as prompt the media to provide more, and more responsible, investigative reporting than they usually offer.Today it appears that the Internet is quickly becoming an important instrument for the timely, accurate, and detailed exposure, now on a global scale, of conditions that require correction. The organizational learning implications of this development are potentially enormo us. Increased transparency implies, if nothing else, a more democratic, capillary diffusion and sharing of information (see also Friedman, Lipshitz, and Overmeer in this volume).In an organizational context, whether in the private or the public sphere, this fact alone modifies the form, quality, and spread of learning; it also brings about a modification of the organizational power structure itself. Such modifications also mean that the structure and configuration of conflict will change. In political science this kind of transformation, which widens and deepens competition, is considered to have healthy implications for the overall political system in which competition takes place.That is, benefits are expected to derive from the fact that the ‘market’ becomes, in comparison to the more dirigiste state, more Smithian, less concentrated, and less dominated by a handful of competitors who, rhetoric aside, rarely pursue the general welfare but rather much narrower conside rations. At the very least, increased transparency and the broadening of the competitive sphere clearly require that political managers develop a set of skills that permit them to meet such challenges and function well within these constraints.New Signals from the Private Sector Something similar to this attitude about encouraging conflict may be developing in the private sector. Gortner et al. (1987) lamented that theories of the organization ‘simply do not deal with the issue of politics, and . . . [that these theories] interpret power as an internal phenomenon usually related to the area of leadership’ (p. 76). But change may be afoot in this respect for at least two reasons.Contributors to this volume as well as writers such as Pfeffer (1981, 1997), Coopey (1995) and Hardy and Clegg (1996) may well succeed in their efforts to raise self-consciousness and broaden and refine theories of the organization and organizational learning to include attention to power and pol itics. Second, variations and abrupt changes in the environment of business are ubiquitous today and likely to intensify tomorrow. It could not be otherwise in an era of globalization of the firm, in which, more than ever before, firms venture into a wide variety of cultural settings.In addition, managers increasingly come from a wide variety of cultures and professional backgrounds where values and norms are not necessarily carbon copies of each other. An organization’s capacity to read signals about politics and power distributions, outside as well as inside the firm, and to make quick, constructive adaptations to them will represent not just a luxury but also a necessary condition for establishing a competitive advantage in the global marketplace.In limiting cases, this capacity may actually become a necessary condition for survival. Power-driven behavior within the firm not only is endemic to such organizations but remains salient irrespective of the degree to which the f irm succeeds in creating an internal environment that is homogeneous, harmonious, and collaborative—an environment peopled by those who share corporate values and a corporate culture and who stress collective over individual goals (Handy 1993: 123–49).By definition, the firm is typically an organization that places high value on the competitive spirit. That spirit is an aspect of human behavior everywhere and that can scarcely be divorced from the impulse to obtain and hang on to disproportionate shares of power. Improved understanding of the structure of such internal competition also illuminates the relationship between these kinds of patterns and corporate learning (Coopey 1995: 197–8; Hardy and Clegg 1996: 633–5; Kotter 1979: 9–39).Increased attention to power (even if the term itself is not used) is implicit in the corporate community’s recent encouragement of internal open expression of objections to existing policies and of open compe tition between units of the company and between its members. Bringing these universal underlying conditions to the surface may be inevitable, given how much more variegated today’s large-scale companies are from those in the past, not just in technology, product lines, and personnel but above all in the great diversity of markets and cultures in which they now operate.The less homogeneous the international firm becomes, the more difficult it will be to mask the fact that corporate life, like political life, involves a good deal of organizational and individual struggle over power. Power Linkages and Networks Because conflict and power struggle in public-sector organizations are both internal and external, their managers are impelled to search the environment for opportunities to form alliances. Sometimes such alliances are of the Iron Triangle variety, but they are certainly not limited to this form. The idea is to create structural linkages that will improve one’s cha nces of prevailing.As public policies become more salient for the firm, the firm too, will experience increased need to expand its own networks beyond those that already exist in the marketplace. Linkages with public bodies, for example, cannot be optimized (as once may have been the case) through the use of consultants and lobbyists. Structures and capabilities consonant with the establishment of direct networks come to replace or supplement these older approaches. Multinational corporations that operate abroad, where public policies represent new risks for the firm as well as new opportunities as well, have often moved in exactly this networking direction.One indicator of this change is the proliferation not just of equity joint ventures (as opposed to the once-dominant fetish of the wholly owned subsidiary) but also all manner of other interfirm alliance, designed to optimize, in overseas local markets, the use of firms and their managers who have extensive experience there. In t he case of U. S. companies, this type of change was also spurred by the passage of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act a generation ago. At home, one immediate consequence of this legislation was a sharp increase in the number of in-house attorneys employed by American firms.Overseas, it led to a much more intense search for the ways and means of finding arrangements that can somehow enable overseas U. S. firms to engage in corporate behavior that was unexceptional abroad but suspect or even outright unacceptable at home. The globalization of enterprise, the growth of networks in which the firm becomes involved at home and abroad, also brings about a considerable extension of learning methods and horizons, if not a new type of organizational learning in the private sector. The international firm becomes more sensitized to power configurations and power equilibria.The search is broadened as well as intensified in order to identify aspects of the environment that might impinge on corpor ate success. The quality of intelligence relevant to business operations at home and abroad is improved, as is the knowledge about the location and means of access to points in the decision-making process that relate to public policies affecting the foreign investor. A keen sense that each environment has its unique aspects as well as dimensions that are general to any environment impels the firm to sharpen its analytical instruments and thereby try to improve its learning.Efforts to create a total quality system come to include not just the production, distribution, and servicing of a firm’s products but also the firm’s ability to recognize power and power struggles for what they are and to attune its learning methods to profit from this new capability. Types of Power Distributions and Equilibria Although power equilibria are never permanent, they tend to last for a long time. The reform of governmental bodies tends to be greatly resisted because, even when reforms ar e relatively mild, they threaten existing equilibria (Seidman 1977).As a rule, unless quick and deep change is the goal, it is better for an organization (inside or outside the public/political sphere) to learn how to operate within an existing equilibrium than to make efforts to change it. Indeed, it is almost axiomatic that, where a radical departure in public policy is intended, creating a new organization is far preferable to seeking achievement of these new goals through the existing system (Levin and Sanger 1994: 172–3).Events of this kind, though rare, provide highly fluid opportunities to achieve first-mover advantages as new networks and a new equilibrium are established. In this regard, it makes a difference whether the overall configuration of the political system is monocratic or pluralist, unitary or federal, highly centralized or characterized by broad delegation or devolution of powers. That is, power equilibria at the microlevels will be influenced in no small measure by the configuration of the larger system in which these equilibria are embedded.Pluralism Pluralist systems tend to maximize not only the number of individuals and organizations able to intervene in the policy-making and policy implementation processes but also the number of channels through which the interventions occur. Pluralism implies minute and fragmented representation of interests. The underlying assumption is that equality of opportunity, central to democratic theory, should also apply to the policy-making process. It will obviously make a difference which groups prevail in these efforts to exercise influence.It is equally important whether and what kinds of groups can bring some order to the process by aggregating a number of small groups under a single organizational umbrella. Pluralism also invites much debate. In theory, when consensus is achieved, it is expected to be very strong, precisely because of widespread opportunities that interested parties have for being consulted and hearing the views of others. Again in theory, this system of broad participation should also optimize the discovery both of best solutions and of innovative ideas about public policies and how best to achieve them.It is behind such policies, according to pluralist democratic theory, that one can expect the strongest collective effort to emerge. And given all of these assumptions, consensual policies are likely to be well administered and widely accepted as long as they achieve expected aims. Within this rich mosaic of interactive participation, organizational learning is presumably optimized, as are the efficacious making and implementation of public policies. There are also negative sides to pluralism, and they are well known to organizational theorists.A plethora of communication channels easily degenerates into information overload. This overload in turn can lead to never-ending debates that wind up in stalemates or paralysis. There may be too much talk, too m any options raised, and little inclination, or indeed ability, to reach closure. An even more notable objection to this mode of decision-making is the raised probability that it will produce only lowest-common-denominator outcomes. The need to balance competing forces and to find acceptable compromises implies that only in extreme emergencies can pluralist systems adopt radical measures.Pluralism and the forceful, timely management of issues do not sit easily side by side. Hence, it seems valid to presume that such systems will not work well within a corporate structure that, almost by definition, is expected to be hierarchical and unitary (Hardy and Clegg 1996: 622–6). Monocratic and Unitary Systems Monocratic and unitary systems are highly centralized. If they permit a broad representation of interests, it is likely to be within a framework that is much more disciplined than that of pluralist systems.Monocratic and unitary systems are able to act even when broad consensus m ay be wanting or impossible to bring about. Participation from the ground up, so to speak, is not so loose or permissive as to actually tie the hands of or paralyze those at the center. Compared to pluralist systems, monocratic arrangements tend to be less democratic (not to be confused with undemocratic). They may involve broad, well-articulated participation in policy-making and implementation, but within limits.They tend to be more intolerant of inputs that are judged to be dysfunctional. They are immensely more suspicious of interventions in the formal decision-making and policy implementation process by groups and organizations that are not official, or not officially approved by the government. The tensions between pluralistic/democratic and unitary/monocratic arrangements are not unlike those found within corporations that move in the direction of empowerment of those located toward the bottom of the pyramidal hierarchy.As I have suggested, this pyramid is not just one of pos itions and authority but also of command and control. That is, as long as the pyramid remains a pyramid, even slightly, it is a power arrangement governed by rules that, with rare exceptions, are themselves the outcome of a power struggle. Serious efforts to empower persons who have not had very much power, or who through empowerment will come to exercise more of it than in the past, clearly imply a widening and deepening of participation in decision-making both in the making of corporate policies and in their implementation.It is no wonder that changes of this kind, as well as those designed to bring stakeholders meaningfully into such processes, are fraught with complications and that they usually degenerate into not much more than lip-service platitudes (Coopey 1995). Monocratic and unitary political systems, such as those typically found in Europe and elsewhere outside the United States (and to some extent outside Great Britain), accord very high status to the state writ large. Those who manage the state are more inclined to redirect, minimize, and, if necessary, override interference from civil society when this interference threatens to paralyze government.Reasons of state, as the justification is often called, will lead to closure of debate and then to public action, presumably in favor of the community as a whole. In monocratic systems, popular sovereignty and broad participation by the masses or by organized groups will not be permitted to place the state and its overriding welfare at risk. This attitude is similar to the posture of senior corporate managers who are scarcely about to tolerate modes of empowerment or participation that might cast serious doubt on the company’s mission, the rationality of its basic long-term strategy, or the company’s very survival.Nevertheless, in the corporate sphere, as in the sphere of the state, the powers available to managers must be and often are used to end an aura of legitimacy not just to existi ng rules and policies but also to the outcomes that derive from them (Hardy and Clegg 1996: 630). Federalism Federalism adds another facet to this discussion. As a political concept that stands in opposition to that of unitary structures, federalism implies a division of power on the basis of territory.A much-touted advantage of federalism is that it permits the bringing together, under one central authority, of territorial units that differ quite markedly from each other in many ways. This would include, say, the size of their population or territory; their racial or linguistic make-up; and a wide range of social, economic, and even political conditions. Federal systems represent ways of organizing and managing diversity. In the realm of politics, experience has shown that these systems are therefore much more viable means of managing large nations than are highly centralized unitary systems.In fact, most of these nations are of the federal, not the unitary, variety—even the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China in their so-called totalitarian heyday. Federalism also maximizes the amount of experimentation (with different laws, institutions, electoral arrangements, administrative organizations, and the like) that can take place under a common political roof. This umbrella-like structure permits, indeed encourages, the search for best practice in institutional form and relationships and in policy-making and implementation. This feature of federalism encourages, permits, and, indeed encourages self-conscious learning.In the United States, for example, there are formal organizations designed to provide the individual states and major cities with information about the potentially innovative or effective approaches that each may be taking to, organizational procedures or public policy. Similar information-sharing institutions also exist at the international level. This institutionalized learning is designed in the broadest sense to raise th e quality and lower the cost of governmental services. In a federal setting the political center shares a number of powers with other territorial units. Except in estricted areas, it cannot pretend to be the exclusive holder or exerciser of power and authority. Even where in formal terms the political center’s authority may be exclusive and where policies are expected to be uniformly administered throughout the system’s territories and subunits, considerable local variation must be permitted. Unitary systems, by contrast, permit much less flexibility of this type. The central authority within such systems exercises nearly exclusive authority to make system-wide policies, and it is also expected that these policies will be uniformly administered everywhere.Any deviation from centrally established policies, indeed any policy-making within subnational units, proceeds only with some sort of authorization by the center. As often said in France, if one wishes to know exactly what children might be doing at a certain hour of any school day, it is sufficient to consult the manual issued by the appropriate ministry in Paris. The unitary form is highly analogous to the world-wide business firm, including firms organized by product group or division, in which authority and control are concentrated in a single, central organization.The preceding, post-war development of the multinational corporation, at least in the United States, proceeded for the most part on the basis of this model. It was thought that the revolutions in jet travel and electronics made such centralized control both desirable and feasible. That is, these changes in the speed and facility of travel and communication were said to make possible the global extension of the so-called Sloan model of the corporation, a model that had worked so well within the United States.Feedback and Learning No matter whether the basic structure is pluralistic or monocratic, federal or unitary, the need for fe edback from which the center can presumably learn is universal. Federal systems, because they produce many streams of information, may be more open but less efficient than unitary systems. Unitary systems, although in theory narrower and easier to control than federal systems are in terms of information-producing channels, are at high risk of having information delayed, distorted, or misdirected.It is apparent, however, that the center often deludes itself into believing that, with a highly disciplined and centralized organizational weapon at its disposal (like the Communist party under Stalin in the USSR or the Chinese Communist party under Mao), it can both learn and control what transpires at the periphery (Hough 1969). The fallacious assumption in this instance is that a centralized and highly disciplined organizational instrument, such as the Communist party, can prevail irrespective of whether the overall system is of the federal or unitary configuration.Pluralism and Federali sm in the Firm? A pluralist and federal model of the polity ill fits the generally held image of the firm and of other private-sector organizations. Decision-making of the kind represented by the typical firm can scarcely follow a pluralist model to the letter, at least not without a rethinking of a great many well-established notions of what a world-scale company should be and how it should be run. Within the firm great emphasis is placed on clear lines of authority, both horizontal and vertical.The global firm still tries to instill a single corporate culture so that the hierarchy of values, the operational norms, and the modus operandi will be essentially the same wherever its branches and units may be located. This model leaves little room for pluralist inputs and local diversity. Pluralist democracies and federal systems thrive (most of the time) on their multicultural dimensions. Rather than eliminate diversity, it is honored and encouraged. In the corporate world, much of wha t is claimed about decentralization, ‘planning from the bottom up’, and individual empowerment often is spurious.Senior managers in the corporate world are rarely able or inclined to practice the decentralization or the broad and deep participation that they may preach. More often than not they use the considerable powers at their disposal not to encourage debate that leads to consent but rather to mobilize consent itself (Hardy and Clegg 1996: 626). In the public/political sector, a key test of how seriously the center wishes to encourage diversity and favor empowerment lies in the practice of devolution, as opposed to decentralization.Devolution, typically practiced on a territorial basis, substantially reduces the powers of the center over the periphery, sometimes drastically. The strongest indicator of this reduction is the empowerment of the periphery not only to make policies but also to tax or otherwise raise capital in connection with these policies. Such transf ers, in turn, encourage high levels of competition between the subnational units of federal systems, sometimes creating very difficult problems at the center.Devolution increases pluralism. When hierarchy is replaced by something composed of rather free-acting units, managers need to develop skills that are germane to these changed circumstances. It is one thing when a person’s position makes it possible to mobilize consent and conforming behavior; it is quite another story when both of these things must be generated within the context of a relatively open, participatory, and fluid system of reaching consensus on what should be done and how best to do it.It is possible that the globalization of enterprise will force an increase in genuinely federal arrangements on the firm, a shift that would certainly imply moving away from a strict unitary, hierarchical model and award one that is genuinely more participatory, even if more difficult to manage. Charles Handy (1996) stated th at such a change may be taking place (pp. 33–56), although even he suggested that the application of federal principles to the corporate world will, perhaps inevitably, be imperfect (pp. 109–12).The creation of similar federal structures, even ones remaining distant from devolution, requires a new look at many of the most canonical ideas about how best to organize and manage the profit-seeking enterprise. On close inspection, the sometimes spectacular downsizing and other changes in corporate structures since about 1990 do not appear to have brought about radical operational changes in hierarchical structure. In both the public and the private sectors, centralized control of organizations dies hard.Nevertheless, the federal thrust in many of today’s global firms should not be underestimated. In the truly global firm, where multinationality is not just a label, traditional arrangements for strategic plans, corporate finance, and capital budgeting—which are still basically monocratic and unitary in nature—will gradually be revised. It is misleading to think, as so many corporate managers still do, that the continuing electronic and information technology revolutions will permit efficient global control from a single, geographically dis

Integrated Logistics for DEP/GARD Case Study Essay

Tom Lippet, sales representative for DEP, feels the challenge when the successor of Mike O’Leary, Richard Binish, becomes the new purchasing agent at GARD who plans to trim the product line in the next three years. His plan to narrow the service window for suppliers from the original 5 days to 3 days in the next three years to the eventually 1 day window forces Tom to consider ways that can increase the performance and service of their company to win the contracts in the future. Solutions for DEP 1) Diagram on the Left shows the DEP/GARD supply chain. Value adding stages are: – The inbound transportation from compound suppliers – The manufacturing and packaging process – The outbound transportation to GARD Non-value adding stages are: – The compound inventory sitting in DEP (7-day supply) – The order transmission time wasted by receiving and handling orders manually – The finished product staying in the warehouse The minimum performance cycle for the supply chain is 9 days, whereas the maximum performance cycle is 20 days. 2) The performance cycle can be improved through the use of the 25 percent and 15 percent suppliers. But because DEP used a bidding system that emphasized on price, by giving out more proportions of the raw materials to the 25% and 15% suppliers, the average variable cost per unit will be higher for each compound. However, choosing 25% and 15% suppliers who has a relatively higher fill rate can increase the reliability of inventory availability and reduce the possibility of shortages. Which in turn means that DEP can lower the 7-day supply of each compound to a 6-day or even 5-day supply depending on the reliability of the supplier. By doing so, the inventory carrying cost will decrease and in the end if not saving more for the company, at least balances the extra costs used by purchasing from 15% and 25% suppliers. A Performance Statistics of Compound Suppliers copied from the Integrated Logistics for DEP/GARD Case Study is shown in the next page. For instance, we can see that the f ill rate for company 1 is relatively low comparing to other suppliers. And in the case of compound E and F, we have to reason to procure these two compounds from company 1 since it not only has the lowest fill rate but also costs the most. All or portion of the compound A and B can be purchased from company 2 or 3 depending on their capacity and performance consistency. 3) Things to do if I were Tom Lippet: Change the bidding system in a way that DEP is able to purchase more compounds from suppliers with a higher fill rate and lower performance cycle uncertainty, in order to reduce the days of inventory storage. (People  challenge: Employee’s reluctance and unwillingness to change in the manufacturing department.) Communicate with compound suppliers before the next bid and inform them the changes that are going on. Tell them the importance to reduce their performance cycle uncertainty and increase their fill rate. And that these two criteria are also going to be considered as well on the next bid. (Challenge: a) Disturbed relationship between buyer and supplier. b) Ethics issues. ) To facilitate the order transmission process in order to reduce the performance cycle, a more reliable internet-based information technology should be used, such as EDI and ERP systems. However, the installation and implementation of an ERP system can be costly and time consuming. The order transport ation performance cycle uncertainty is too high (3-6 days). Automated inventory management is highly recommended to ensure exact day delivery, and cost savings will incur from less labor force required in the warehouses. (People challenge: Possible resentment and intentional sabotage or strikes from warehouse personnel. To mitigate the process, appropriate procedures should be taken to help the workers to find alternative jobs. ) 4) It’s important to let Richard Binish to realize how the company is consistently improving according to his expectations. Maintaining a competitive price and quality while enhancing and exceeding their competitors in terms of performance cycle and service would be order-winning criteria for DEP. The implementation of the EDI system will provide real time information between the companies and solidify collaboration. Of course, the criteria will be continuously changing when supply chain management becomes more sophisticated and evolved over time. There will eventually be a day when the fill rates required become 100% and the service window will not be exact day delivery but exact time delivery for DEP. With the industry’s average standard constantly increasing, continuous improvement on supply chain management is necessary in order to survive in today’s competitive environment.

The Concept of Individuals Responsibility To other Members of Their Essay

The Concept of Individuals Responsibility To other Members of Their Community by Peter Singer - Essay Example By taking a look at the donations from such an angle these countries generosity can be said to take a drastic dive when compared to their other expenses. One could say that these governments care more about their transport system for example than they do about the millions of lives that they could affect with such money (Singer). However, in realistic terms especially from an economic point of view, it is necessary that a government invests in projects that will bring back financial returns in a bid to provide a better stable economy from which they can operate from. Without these investments, they would not be able to donate any money to the causes that they provide funding for. Taking a look at the stance brought about by Singer and the economic defense of such actions by the governments it can be said that two clear sides emerge from this argument with each supporting the opposing sides. A good strategy to determine whether Singer was right in his evaluation of an individualâ€⠄¢s responsibility to other members of their community as well as a government’s responsibility to society is by studying the underlying factors that would more or less govern the potential results of what certain actions may bring. This can be done by setting a choice of two potential paths that a society can take and the results that these two paths are most likely to yield. By doing this, it can be said that the path that leads to the best results will be the better option. Taking a look at the basis of the argument taken by Singer it can be said that from an overall perspective he has a good point and if his plan was to be placed perfectly into action there could be a high chance of success should everyone play their part. This is to say that the effect should take place from the grassroots and make its way up to the top echelons of government. This would mean that a regular individual would begin to take more interest in the plight of refugees and ensuring that they are doing everything in their power to improve their conditions. This would include donating more money to affiliated organizations, taking a political interest in the policies as well as changing their lifestyle to a more giving and generous one (Singer). The government on the other hand would divert more of their funds towards helping these causes and concentrate more on the wellbeing of these individuals rather than the other projects they have lined up (Singer). The government in this case would take the stance that the improvement of human life is more important than other issues. If this was to happen exactly as stated there could be a chance that causes such as the wellbeing of refugees will get the attention it deserves and as a result their plight may be significantly reduce as more people take action on the matter. However, this would need the support and co operation of all the people and bodies involved which would also include a somewhat drastic in some change in mindset wh ich is something that would not happen overnight. People would need to be willing to change their ways and adopt a giving policy that may have diminished over the years thanks to the promotion of capitalist values. The changes entailed could also bring about negative aspects as well as positive ones, which is something that should be taken into consideration. As much as helping others and ensuring tha

Prostate Cancer Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Prostate Cancer - Essay Example Significantly, prostate incorporates gland cells that produce some of the seminal fluid and this fluid protects and nourishes sperm cells in semen and supports the ejaculatory ducts, or sperm tubes. The growth of the prostate normally continues till man reaches adulthood and it is maintained after it reaches normal size as long as male hormones are produced."Prostate cancer begins most often in the outer part of the prostate. It is the most common cancer in men older than age 50.In most men, the cancer grows very slowly. In fact, many men with the disease will never know they have the condition. Early prostate cancer is confined to the prostate gland itself, and the majority of patients with this type of cancer can live for years with no problems." (Prostate cancer) In certain cases, prostate cancer may spread from the prostate to nearby lymph nodes, bones or other organs and such spread is generally called metastasis. It is also essential to note that most prostate cancers originate in the posterior prostate gland, while some others start off near the urethra. As the US National Institute of Health suggests, the estimated new cases and deaths from prostate cancer in the United States in 2009 are: new cases of 192,280 and deaths of 27, 360. According to some important surveys, there aremore than2 million American men currently living with prostate cancer. The given data for the year 2009 in the US indicates the relevance of further researches and medical treatment for prostate cancer and this paper makes a reflective analysis of some vital elements of the prostate cancer. In a profound analysis of the prostate cancer, it becomes lucid that it is mainly found in older men, compared to younger ones, and the prostate may get bigger and block the urethra or bladder, when men grow old. Such phenomena within the reproductive system of elder men, in which prostate gets bigger and block the urethra or bladder, will cause difficulty in urination or it will interfere with sexual function. This condition called benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) can be corrected through surgery and it is not cancer, although the symptoms of benign prostatic hyperplasia or of other problems in the prostate will be similar to symptoms of prostate cancer. "Possible signs of prostate cancer include a weak flow of urine or frequent urination. These and other symptoms may be caused by prostate cancer. Other conditions may cause the same symptoms." (General Information about Prostate Cancer) It is important to consult a doctor if any of the following problems occur, as it may indicate prostate cancer. Such signs include weak or interrupted flow of urine, frequent urination (especially at night), trouble urinating, pain or burning during urination, blood in the urine or semen, a pain in the back, hips, or pelvis, and painful ejaculation. It is important to comprehend that prostate cancer is one of the most common diseases in the US and the curability of prostate cancer is based on how immediately one identifies the disease. Significantly, the 'cure' rates for prostate cancer, similar to all cancers, describe the percentage of patients likely remaining disease-free for a specific time and it is common that, the earlier

Assessing the Different Types of Derivatives Essay

Assessing the Different Types of Derivatives - Essay Example The major classes of derivatives are Futures/Forwards which are contracts to buy or sell an asset at a specified future date, Optionals which are contracts that give a holder the right to buy or sell an asset at a specified future date and Swappings where the two parties agree to exchange cash flows. Derivatives are often subject to criticisms such as large losses, counter-party risk, and unsuitably high amount of risk for small or inexperienced investors, large notional value and leverage of debt in the economy. In spite of these it has huge advantages such as facilitating the buying and selling of risk thus having a positive impact on the economic system. As former Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan commented in 2003 the use of derivatives has softened the impact of the economic downturn at the beginning of the 21st century. In this paper the pros and cons and the circumstances under which derivatives such as forward contracts, future contracts, spot contracts, call opti ons, hedging, interest rates swaps, currency swaps and credit swaps are used, are discussed.(Note: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Derivative(finance)) Forward Contract is an agreement between two parties to buy or sell an asset (which can be of any kind) at a pre-agreed future point in time.As suggested by the International Journal of Sheep and Wool Science, volume 55(2007), results suggest that income stabilization and price risk management were the two major pros of the forward contract method although these were strongly overshadowed by the list of cons: pricing, complexity, dominance of the auction system and production risks. Allaz and Vila (1993) suggest that there is a strategic reason (in an imperfect competitive environment) for the existence of forward trading, that is, forward trading can be used even in a world without uncertainty In finance, a futures contract is a

Lunar Science Research Proposal Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Lunar Science - Research Proposal Example Cameron concluded that the "angular momentum" or the rotation or orbital movement of the Moon was caused by the size of Mars, which is about 10% of the Earth and sometimes referred to as the Theia. The giant impact created a ring of very hot molten debris in orbit around the very young Earth in 10 years or less. Taylor illustrated that the young Earth was spinning faster, throwing out a huge blob forming the Moon ("Moon Beams and Elements" 6). The moon is now surrounded by an ocean of magma as it formed in orbit around the Earth. Hartmann concluded that the Earth must have been hit strong enough to send off sufficient materials into orbit and form the Moon because of the large impact craters, ten or more times bigger than 150 km projectiles. The Apollo Moon Landing Program was an American lunar spaceflight program carried out by the National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) during the years 1961 to 1975 (MSN Encarta, par. 1-3). It aims to conduct manned moon landing missions and overtake Soviet Union in space exploration as well. President John F. Kennedy initiated the first astronauts to send to the moon in 1961, inspired by the first American astronaut in space, Alan Sheperd (NASA, par. 2). Portraying the years of effort and expense, NASA employed 36, 000 civil servants and 376, 700 contractor employees on the peak of the program in 1965 and spent $25.4 billion between 1961 and 1973 for the Apollo missions. The first Apollo mission was delayed due to a tragedy caused by a destructive fire inside the capsule ("Apollo Mission Landing," par. 3-17). The astronauts Roger Chaffee, Edward H. White II and Virgil I. (Gus) Grissom all died in the tragic accident on the launch pad. In April 4, 1968, Apollo 6 was lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to accomplish a revolution around the Earth's orbit, followed by Apollo 7 and 9. The first ones to orbit the Moon were the Apollo 8 and 10 missions. In 1969, Neil Armstrong, commander of Apollo 11 and the first human to walk on the Moon along with Michael Collins, commander module pilot and Edwin "Buzz" E. Aldrin Jr., lunar module pilot. Apollo 12 and 14 successfully landed on the Moon also except for Apollo 13 which left the astronauts in a deadly situation when they were about to return to Earth without a scheduled landing though they used the lunar module as a lifeboat in order to survive. Apollo 15, 16, and 17 conducted lunar explorat ions missions that are much longer and involved more in-depth scientific exploration. Apollo's Analysis on their Discoveries There was a broad range of over 60 experiments done on the lunar surface and 30 experiments of the lunar orbit of the Moon (MSN Encarta 5). Six unique and scientifically significant lunar locations collected a total of 381.7 kg (841 lb) of lunar material. In the Apollo 11 mission, Neil Armstrong and his companions brought to Earth samples from another planetary body-basalts and dark-colored igneous rocks that were about 3.7 billion years old. After every mission, they brought back more lunar rocks and soil

Gendercide Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Gendercide - Assignment Example From this essay it is clear that in order to save the women from facing this type of misery, the pregnancy is terminated. This is one of the main reasons that justify gendercide. The boys are also in a better position to protect their families and fend for them as compared to girls. A family is therefore much secured if they have boys as compared to girls .   Some of the religious roles in India can only be performed by men and hence the advantage of a family having a son as compared to a daughter. The levels of discrimination of women in India is also high due cultural believes and hence more justification for a son.This paper highlights that the strength of the research is on the use of examples and comparisons between different cultures and countries with regard to the problem. However, it weaknesses is the lack of adequate statistical data to support the findings. Some of the information is also too general in the paper. The qualitative methods have mainly been used in the rese arch and this has provided a lot of useful information with regard to the topic. The research was also based on specific populations like the Indians and the Chinese. Generalizing the findings therefore affects its outcome. The research provides more information to the healthcare workers including nurses on why abortion rates are high in some communities when the women are expecting a girl. In conclusion, it is evident that gendercide can be justified by cultural and economic reasons in India.

Environmental Analysis (company reporting) Essay

Environmental Analysis (company reporting) - Essay Example The environmental costs will include the amount the company will have to pay in order to indemnify the victims of the company's water waste victims. The environmental costs will include the amount of money spent to clean up the land and water area that they has been contaminated with dirty water sewage as well as the pollution of the air by the smokestacks with the company's carbon dioxide emissions in violation of the law. The environmental costs includes costs to clean up the company's contaminated sites, penalties for violation of the UK and Germany environmental laws. Environmental accounting also includes the taxes that the company will be able to save because the net income of the business has been reduced by money invested in environment saving devices. According to Wolfgang Ballwieser, there are many major key features of the German Accounting System 1Accounting in Germany. One of which is that it is influenced by the Roman Law system. The German finance financial accounting is regulated by the law from the start to the finish. The start begins with the gathering of business financial data that will be used in the recording of daily business transactions what will be recorded and how it will be recorded. The finish of the accounting in our basic accounting course(Larson,1995) is the part when the financial statements such as the balance sheet and the income statements as well the statement of cash flows are produced. The most important accounting law in Germany is the Handelsgesetzbuch or simply known as the HGB commercial code. This German accounting law is composed of regulations(Sussland, 2000) that are depending on the which of business the German company is involved in. The business could be a sole proprietorship which means that is owned by only one individual or businessman or businesswoman. Another form of business organization is the balance sheet. The partnership is composed of two or more persons who will agree to contribute, money or industry to the partnership in order to generate income. The partners then agree to distribute the profits by dividing such based on a pre agreed profit and loss distribution plan. The last kind of organization is the corporation. The corporation is composed of shareholders who willingly invests their hard earned cash in the business but do not partake in the minor day to day business operations. This same German accounting law gives laws based on the size of the business. This Same German accounting law use the factor of what kind of business the company is engaged in. The German accounting system in all situations, even the predictable events, must be based on the Grundstze ordnungsmiger Buchfhrung or GoB which is described as the principles of regular accounting. The Gob had previously originated from accounting for business transactions. The the Grundstze ordnungsmiger Buchfhrung or GoB is a major factor in accounting for tax purposes because both the commercial accounting(Ross et al, 1996) and the tax computation process are related. The method of accounting will either increase or decrease the amount of taxes that the business enterprise will pay the government of Germany. Therefore, the process of using group accounting is now legally

The Social context of health and social care Essay

The Social context of health and social care - Essay Example In contemporary society, status inequalities are found everywhere. Therefore, no individual can be saved from the injustice one can face in the name of status, gender, political constrains etc. Political and economic constructs used to define societal systems of stratification Societies of Britain and other European states are the example of unequal societies as they show vast and unequal division of income, property ownership, and wealth. So, all these terms can be used to describe the class societies. Other differences of culture, lifestyle attitude are not meaningless; however, they are seen to point at different level of social division (Scott, 1999). Social inequality is at the heart of social stratification. The concept of social stratification as a particular form of social division emphasises on the idea that individuals are distributed among the layers and levels of social hierarchy because of their economic relations (Scott, 1999). Class: Economic division and inequalities are used by most of the sociologist in terms of the use of the word class. These divisions are rooted in property and employment relations; in other words, it is a particular kind of social division. The economic relations of class are often contrasted with cultural matters, particularly with status that is a more visible style of life of the people that affects their standing in the community (Scott, 1999). In the society we live, class difference among the people has developed to a larger extent. People do not really look after the poor ones in the time of need. The rich are getting more concerned about class-consciousness. Gender: It is another issue that is seen in the stratification of the class. Rae Lesser Blumberg in her theory has explained the position of women in all type of societies. According to Rae Lesser Blumberg, the lesser the economic power the women have, the more they are likely to be oppressed ideologically, politically, and physically. The level of economic pow er that woman can mobilize is a positive function of their ability to participate in the production of the economic affairs and in the distribution of the economic production. It is also seen that greater women’s economic power to that by men, the more the women have control over their life. However, if they do not have economic power they are likely to have less control over their basic matters such as their fertility patterns, their marriages, their premarital sex, right to seek divorce, their access to extramarital sex, their level and type of education, their freedom to move about, and their household activities (Turner, 2003). It is seen that in our society, since women are allowed to have economic power; therefore, they do have right over these issues. However, in the societies of the third world countries, where women do not have such power, they are seen to be deprived of these rights. Factors and trends that reflect current societal change Technology has been used to overcome many primitive structures of living. On one level, where it has made the life easy for many of people, on the other hand life has become more complicated for most of the living beings. Technology has proven itself very helpful for the students as due to entity they can have a better understanding of their literature (Chanlin, 2007). But technology has also become a

Recruitment, Training and Compensation Assignment

Recruitment, Training and Compensation - Assignment Example A Telenor company is purely 100% owned by Telenor ASA in addition to adds-on to its operations in the continent Asia plus country Malaysia,Pakistan , Thailand, and Bangladesh. In March of the year 2005 Telenor in Pakistan successfully launched its operations in Pakistan just like a single biggest direct European investment, while setting their priority for further more foreign investments in the sector of telecom (Telenor Group, 2012). As of end of December in the year of 2013 ,It has got a subscriber base of around 150 million all over the world. It specifically ranked among the top 500 largest mobile operator in the world with a total of around 150 million of subscribers in the mobile operations. The company names Telenor ASA is actually an international provider of very high quality telecommunications, all data along with media communication services. They have broadened themselves from corner to corner in the country where they have operated, and having around more than thirty on e thousand plus employee . Telenor has set up cellular phone operations in 12 different markets and as well in 17 markets via our  ownership in VimpelCom Ltd. ... The process of Personnel selection is the systematic placement of persons into the main jobs for the duration of which applications are calculated against currently available and offered vacancies and evaluated as per the skills, talents and experience of the applicant in the compliance with the Telenor selection procedure that is without a doubt specified in the Recruitment Policy. . . . . . The strategy or the policy that Telenor adopted is in this manner as described below: Coordination with all of the departments on the recruitments and sourcing of the well qualified candidates in conformity with an approved hiring plan. Job advertisement is done through web site or the newspapers or via third party recruitment sources. . . . . . . . CV Screening and short listing, as well as conducting interviews plus tests. Synchronize with the selected universities for graduate placements and internship. An appropriate match is essential and compulsory between culture and employee in the recru itment hand hiring if the individual Excellence Division feels just like a person will not be capable to adjust in the environment of the organization, although he/she is doing functionally very well, the individual is completely rejected. . . . . The talent and the appropriate skills that are actually required by the main and major company Telenor is that each and every employee should have very high-quality communication skill, have to be result oriented, ought to be developing yourself as well as others having the capability of innovation , should be a very good team player. Question no 3:Outline a training and development strategy for your selected MNE that could be used to effectively meet organizational requirements for operating in multiple countries Telenor is

To Kill A Mockingbird Reader Response Essay Example for Free

To Kill A Mockingbird Reader Response Essay Harper Lee’s book, â€Å"To Kill a Mockingbird,† is, in my opinion, a book with a diverse collection of messages, skillfully woven into an interesting and engaging story. It seems to me, though, that the book is very focused on symbolism. The symbol of mockingbirds is reoccurring in the book. It appears in the title, it is suggested in various characters and situations, and in parts of the book it is stated explicitly. For example, on page 90, Atticus told Scout and Jem, â€Å"Remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird. † Scout didn’t understand this, and so she asked Miss Maudie about it. She responded, â€Å"Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, they don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.† From these parts of the book, we learn that mockingbirds are innocent; it is a sin to hurt or injure them. I think that the symbolism of mockingbirds extends to humans also. They represent the innocent ones who are injured by evil. For example, I think that Tom Robinson is a prime example of a mockingbird that was killed. He was innocent; he was a good guy who didn’t hurt anybody. However, because of prejudice, he was accused of a capital offence. He was convicted by a prejudiced jury and sentenced to death. With all his hope gone, he made a crazed attempt to escape his prison, but was shot dead. Clearly, the author is telling us here that Tom shouldn’t have died. It was a sin to kill him. He shouldn’t have been convicted because he didn’t do anything. Boo Radley, however, is an example of Mimidà ¦n symbolism that was not killed, but nearly was. He led a reclusive life, but he was a kind person. He gave gifts to Scout and Jem, and even patched up Jem’s pants. However, his greatest moment in the book was when he saved Scout and Jem from Bob Ewell. Without Boo, Scout and Jem would have ended up dead. However, even though Scout and Jem were saved, Mr. Ewell was not so lucky. When Atticus heard about all this, he was presented with a serious moral situation. He didn’t really know what to do about Boo. Boo had almost definitely murdered Mr. Ewell, but Mr. Ewell had nearly murdered two children. At first Atticus was convinced that Boo should go to court. In Atticus’s mind, not sending Boo to  court would be hypocrisy. As he stated on page 274, â€Å"I can’t live one way in town and another in my home.† The choice boiled down to this: if Boo went to court, justice would be carried out, but an innocent life might be destroyed. If Boo didn’t go to court, Atticus would be a hypocrite. Atticus was confronted with this problem, but Heck Tate and Scout convinced him that it a greater sin to kill a mockingbird. As Scout said on page 276, â€Å"[sending Boo to court would] be sort of like shootin’ a mockingbird.† Eventually, Atticus decided that it would be better to save Boo. Here, the author is telling us that killing a mockingbird, or hurting an innocent person, is wrong, more so than most things that a person can do. â€Å"I wanted you to see what real courage is†¦ It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. Ms. Dubose won†¦ She was the bravest person I ever knew.† Atticus told this to Scout and Jem to help them understand what real courage was. According to Atticus, real courage is when you keep on trying to do what you think is right, even if you’re almost certain to lose. When I was reading about courage and Ms. Dubose, I was reminded of Homer’s â€Å"The Iliad.† The main character of the Iliad, Achilles, was a nearly invincible Achaean hero who possessed the same refusal to change his views as Ms. Dubose. In Homer’s book, the king of the Achaeans had wronged Achilles, and so he decided not to fight in the war. He kept this totally fixed resolve for most of the book. In the Iliad, Homer even compared Achilles’ total refusal to change his opinions, based on what others thought, to how the Greek gods behaved. In the book, for example, Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite each believed that they were the most beautiful goddess. Rather than make a compromise, they eventually started the Trojan war because of this dispute, and fought each other over something so seemingly insignificant. For example, in one part of the Iliad, Athena and Aphrodite were each helping opposing sides in the war. Athena was helping the Achaean hero Diomedes, and so she had him throw a spear at Aphrodite. The spear went right through Aphrodite’s wrist, injuring her, and gave the Achaeans a small victory in the battle. Ironically, thousands of Achaean and Trojan lives were lost because of a dispute between three goddesses. The goddesses did not care how many mortals were killed because of their  dispute, just as Achilles didn’t care that the Achaeans might lose the war because of his decisions. Similarly, Ms. Dubose would not change her views for anything. This is what Atticus described as real courage. According to the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, prejudice is, â€Å"preconceived judgment or opinion.† Prejudice is also a major theme in â€Å"To Kill a Mockingbird.† For example, while in court Atticus referred to, â€Å"the evil assumption that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are immoral, that all Negroes are not to be trusted around women.† According to Atticus, people with minds like Mr. Ewell had these assumptions, and Mr. Ewell was counting on the jury being the same. For most of the trial though, Mr. Ewell’s attempts to win over the jury with such an extreme assumption were a total failure. Atticus had solid evidence and Mr. Ewell had nothing. As Atticus put it, â€Å"[The state] has relied instead upon the testimony of two witnesses whose evidence has not only been called into serious question on cross-examination, but has been flatly contradicted by the defendant.† However, Tom Robinson didn’t win the trial. Somet hing happened that caused the jury to turn against him. This event happened on page 197, when Tom said, â€Å"I felt right sorry for her.† The people in the jury were uncomfortable with this answer, as alluded to on the same page. I think that this was because they believed black people to be subhuman. They thought that black people, such as Tom Robinson, had a limited capacity to feel human emotions, especially for someone who was supposedly higher than them in society. Atticus though, a firm believer in equality, called Tom’s feelings for Miss Ewell, â€Å"unmitigated temerity† (page 204). The jury was not prejudiced enough to assume that all black people were born criminals, but they did feel that a black person could not feel sorry for a white person. Somehow, Tom’s one statement of temerity jeopardized all of Atticus’s evidence. To the jury, Tom was guilty. Of course, prejudice in â€Å"To Kill a Mockingbird,† also occurred on a less dramatic level. Maycomb itself was divided into different social groups. For example, in chapter 23, Scout thought that it would be nice to invite Walter Cunningham over for dinner. However, Aunt Alexandra forbade this, on the grounds that Walter was somehow not as good as the Finches. Jem summed up  Maycomb’s social hierarchy on page 226 when he stated, â€Å"Our kind of folks don’t like the Cunninghams, the Cunninghams don’t like the Ewells, and the Ewells hate and despise the colored folk.† Scout, however, didn’t quite agree with this system. She believed that all folks were equal. I think that by showing us the prejudice in â€Å"To Kill a Mockingbird,† the author is telling us that all labels are wrong. For example, Scout thought that Walter was a nice person, but society disagreed. Tom Robinson was a respectable man, but because he was black and admitted to being capable of feeling sorry for someone who was white, society condemned him. I personally think that giving a person a label is wrong, because each person is an individual, not a clone of some stereotype. Today, I think prejudice and stereotypes are a not only a big problem for the entire world, but they also affect teenagers such as D’Arcy students. It seems that all too often students categorize each other into stereotyped groups, much like how the citizens of Maycomb divided themselves. For example, if someone was walking down the hall at a school wearing old 70’s style glasses, corduroy pants, a plaid vest, suspenders, an ugly bow tie, and a shirt with a pocket protector and several pens plus a calculator in the pocket, many students would immediately associate this person with a stereotype. However, this student might be a great skateboarder who enjoys cooking and football. Obviously, labels are wrong. They can never be accurate because a person is not a stereotype. People are individuals. If everyone understood this, then maybe the world would have less problems, because many of the artificial barriers that we create because of prejudice would be broken down, and we would all get along much better. Of course, what starts off as a barely conscious stereotyping at school could develop into racism, just as Maycomb’s subtle prejudice escalated in enough racism to kill an innocent black man. Racism is a major problem around the world, and I think that its foundation is based on small acts of prejudice, and hypocrisy or ignorance. For example, one major connection to racism in the book occurred in chapter 26 when Scout was discussing current events in her class. What she wanted to know was, â€Å"How can you hate Hitler so bad an’ then turn around and be ugly about folks right at home?† I think that what the author was trying to tell us here was that many people are hypocrites.  Atticus was very careful to avoid this, almost to the point of killing a mockingbird, but others, such as Ms. Gates (Scout’s teacher), were total hypocrites when it came to racism. As Scout said, how could a person accept the social hierarchy of Maycomb, convict Tom Robinson, and then turn around and say that prejudice is wrong? I think that the author is not only telling us that racism is completely wrong, but she is also telling us that we should not be hypocrites. We should make up our minds about what is right. â€Å"Folks don’t like to have somebody around knowin’ more than they do. It aggravates em’.† Calpurnia said this on page 126, in response to a question from Scout. When I read this, I realized that it was very true. Generally, people don’t like to have people around who know more than they do. For example, a few weeks ago I was talking to someone at school who had gotten an excellent mark on an important assignment. When they told me their mark, they asked me not to tell their friends, because they might be angry. I think that it’s too bad that people, especially students such as those at D’Arcy, can’t always share their achievements with others without running the risk of â€Å"aggravating em’.† While I was reading, â€Å"To Kill a Mockingbird,† I noticed that one of the most effective tools that was used was point of view. The story was told in first person perspective, with Scout speaking. I think that this mainly allowed us to follow Scout’s personal development; it allowed us to see Scout’s thoughts and emotions. For example, in the beginning of the book, Scout enjoyed terrorizing Boo Radley in an attempt to make him get out of his house. Later on, though, she realized that doing this was really just hurting an innocent person. On page 279, Scout finally understood Boo well, and she felt that she had developed so much that â€Å"there wasn’t much else left [for her] to learn, except possibly algebra.† This sort of progress in Scout’s character made the story much more interesting for me, and helped me to better recognize the messages that the author was trying to convey. I also thought that the author used point of view to alter the mood in certain parts of the book. For example, on page 211, when the jury was convicting Tom, Scout said that it â€Å"had a dreamlike quality†. This sort of dazed confusion from Scout helped me understand what she thought of the  conviction. I think that Scout knew that Tom would be found guilty, but she didn’t want to accept it. This sort of tension and confusion seemed to convey similar feelings to the reader. When I first read this part of the book, I had to read it again to make sure that Tom really was being convicted, just like how Scout seemed to have some trouble accepting what happened to Tom. One of the characters in the book that I found particularly interesting was Atticus. Atticus was a person who knew what the world was like. He knew that countless mockingbirds were being killed every day around the world. He knew that there were many people who were selfish and unwilling to help others. However, even when he knew all this, he was one of the few characters in the book that continued to believe that there was good in the world. For example, after Jem had seen prejudice in a jarring way at the trial, he decided that everyone was not really equal. As he stated on page 227, â€Å"If there’s just one kind of folks, why can’t they get along with each other?† Jem didn’t understand that even though many people fight each other and divide themselves into social groups, they really are equal. Because what Jem thought was right wasn’t reflected in society, he changed his values. Atticus, though, understood that prejudice and racism were common in the world, but he always tried to see the best in people. On page 281, the story was ending when Atticus was putting Scout to bed. Scout was talking about a book that Atticus had been reading, and she said, â€Å"When they finally saw him he hadn’t done any of those things. Atticus, he was real nice†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Atticus responded, â€Å"Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.† From this quote we can see that Atticus kept his own values, and his faith in humanity, despite what others did. I think that Atticus was able to do this because he didn’t think of a person as a ‘good’ person or a ‘bad’ person, instead he saw people as individuals with good and bad qualities. I think that the author is trying to tell us that people should be like Atticus, and not change their values to suit society’s values. We need to see people for who they really are, though, or it would be almost impossible to do this. Also, the way that Jem changed his own values to represent what society thought reminded me of John Wyndham’s book, â€Å"The Chrysalids.† In the book,  the people of Waknuk were obsessed with ‘the norm’. They believed that any deviation from ‘the norm’ was totally wrong, and they exiled offenders for (a very short) life. All of the people strived for their concept of normality, sort of an exaggerated example of how Jem changed his values to reflect what the majority of Maycomb thought. One last theme that I noticed in the book was the importance of education. The novel seemed to contrast two different types of education. One type was Atticus’ teachings to his children. Atticus enjoyed reading, and he passed this on to Scout by reading to her every night. Atticus also helped Scout and Jem to understand courage by sending them to Ms. Dubose. When Atticus taught something to Scout and Jem, he was always sympathetic and he usually succeeded in teaching whatever he was trying to. This contrasts strongly to the way that Scout’s schoolteachers tried to teach children. They ignored, or perhaps were oblivious to, the needs of their students, and tried to force them to follow the educational system they had been hired to teach. For example, on Scout’s first day of grade one, her teacher, Miss Caroline, found out that Scout could read. You would think that any reasonable grade one teacher would be very impressed by this, and maybe send Scout up a few grades, but instead Miss Caroline said (on page 16), â€Å"You tell [Atticus] I’ll take over from here and try to undo the damage†¦ Your father does not know how to teach.† Actually, Atticus was a much better teacher than Miss Caroline, because he understood Scout and Jem, his students. I think that the author is trying to tell us that while it is important to educate children, it is important to do it right. The key to teaching children, or, for that matter, anyone else, is to understand those who you are trying to teach. In conclusion, I think that, â€Å"To Kill a Mockingbird,† is a book that talks about innocence and understanding. It encourages us all to not hurt the innocent ones, the mockingbirds.