Global Trends in Hospitality Essay Example

Global Trends in Hospitality Essay Hospitality Management 18 (1999) 427}442 Operational issues and trends in the hospitality industry Peter Jones School of Management Studies for the Service Sector, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, UK Abstract This article makes some predictions about the future by considering operational issues in the rst part of the next century. Hospitality operations management is considered at two levels * the rm level at which strategic operations management takes place; and the unit level. It is proposed, using a model developed by Jones (1999, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality management), there are seven strategic concerns: location, integration, a$liation, conguration, organisation, implementation and adaptation. For unit operations management the framework of analysis is based on Lockwood and Jones (1989, The Management of Hotel Operations). This identies seven key result areas: assets, employees, capacity (or customers), productivity, service, income (or control), and quality. Using these frameworks an assessment is made of current issues and trends in hospitality operations management, leading to a prioritisation of possible future outcomes. 1999 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Operations management; Assets; Employees; Capacity; Productivity; Service; Quality 1. Introduction Have you ever looked at an impressionist painting? From a distance one is able to see the picture, appreciate its composition and enjoy its subtle realism. Move closer and it becomes apparent that it is made up of thousands of tiny dots, each of which is di! erent. We will write a custom essay sample on Global Trends in Hospitality specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Global Trends in Hospitality specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Global Trends in Hospitality specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer And really close up, there is no clear picture * just a chaotic jumble of colour. The global hospitality industry is like that. It is easy to assume that the industry is homogeneous and there are clear worldwide trends of relevance to hospitality operators everywhere. In reality, the industry is incredibly diverse and complex, which makes identifying common issues and future trends extremely di$cult. For instance, there is the development of global brands such as McDonalds. But this chains 18,000 restaurants needs to be placed in the context of the 8 million 0278-4319/99/$ see front matter 1999 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 2 7 8 4 3 1 9 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 4 7 X 428 P. Jones / Hospitality Management 18 (1999) 427}442 restaurants world-wide (IHRA, 1999), of which 206 thousand are in one country * China. There is also the world-wide growth of international hotels chains, but this is varies widely from region to region, and even within regions. For instance, `some 70% of new hotel development (approximately 27,000 new rooms) in Latin America over the next few years is concentrated in two countries * Mexico and Brazila and `the number of hotels in Dubai (a tiny Gulf state) has grown from 48 in 1988 to 255 by mid-1998. This is estimated to represent around 40% of the total hotel supply of the Gulf states (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE and Oman)a (BDO Hospitality Consulting, 1998). 2. Analytical framework In order to cope with such diversity and complexity, this article is structured around two analytical frameworks developed by Jones and Lockwood (1996) illustrated in Fig. 1. This comprises two systems, the management system and the technological system, congured as a hierarchy of three levels. The discipline of management is well established, but continues to evolve; whilst the technological system is in continuous adaptation as it responds to changes in consumer taste and Fig. 1. Model of Operations Managem (Jones and Lockwood, 1996). P. Jones / Hospitality Management 18 (1999) 427}442 429 demand, new product development, direct and indirect competition, advances in technology, and the many other factors which in#uence the growth and sustainability of any business concept. This review of issues and trends is concerned with two levels * the strategic (or rm) level, and the unit (i. . hotel, restaurant or operations) level. Jones (1999) has proposed that strategic operations (not to be confused with business strategy) can be considered as seven inter-related activities. These are: location, integration, a$liation, conguration, organisation, implementation and adaptation. Location is a key strategic decision with operational implications, long recognised within the industry and immortalised by Conrad Hiltons famous quote. Integration refers to the extent to which the hospitality rm owns and controls some or all of the resources it needs to operate its business. Some sectors, in some countries, have historically been highly integrated, such as pubs in the UK. Azliation relates to the choice of business format (direct ownership, franchising, management contracts, consortia) adopted by the hospitality rm. In the hotel sector, there are signicant di! erences with regards to format from one region to another. In the USA, 65% of hotels are franchised, in the UK 85% are directly owned and managed, whilst in Asia 65% are on management contracts (Kleinwort Benson, 1996). In foodservice, franchising in the restaurant industry and management contracting in employee feeding are highly signicant. Conxguration refers to how the rm designs or conxgures its product, technology and `hard systemsa; whilst organisation applies to the human activity or `softa systems within the rm, especially in relation to the operations function. Key strategic decisions in the rst of these relate to product and process choice, the degree of automation, and role of I. T. ; and in the second to issues of authority, formalisation, centralisation of function and so on. Implementation relates to how rms develop and operate systems designed to give them feedback on operational performance, such as nancial control systems and quality management systems. Finally, adaptation identies that rms need to respond to changes in their environment and they need ways in which they can adapt, specically how rms conduct research and development and innovate. At the operations management (OM) level, i. e. unit level, an output-based model of seven key result areas (KRAs) for the management of the service delivery system is used as the analytical framework, derived from Lockwood and Jones (1989) and Jones and Merricks (1986). The KRAs that have to be managed are assets, employees, capacity (or customers), productivity, service, income (or control), and quality. This model proposes the concept that within each area there are a range of alternative operational policies and procedures that might be adopted to re#ect the type of hospitality business, its size, and its technology. For instance, yield management is an approach to managing capacity in hotels, especially large, chain properties (Jarvis et al. , 1998); quality control is applied largely in quick service restaurants, whereas total quality management has been applied to a few hotels, such as Ritz Carlton. In the context of this article therefore there are two major OM issues. First, will hospitality rms switch from their existing, traditional approaches to managing the KRAs to other more contemporary approaches? Second, will any completely new ways for managing these KRAs emerge in the future? 430 P. Jones / Hospitality Management 18 (1999) 427}442 3. The international hospitality industry It has been argued that the hospitality industry, i. e. a single entity, does not exist. There are, and will continue to be, signicant structural di! erences between the hospitality industries in di! erent countries. Such structural di! erences are legal, nancial and economic. A countrys laws a! ct the ownership, size and operation of hospitality businesses. For instance, the German legal framework is the main reason that hotels are operated on leases, more than in any other European country (Kleinwort Benson, 1996). Finance a! ects the hospitality business in terms of the availability of capital for investment, the relative return from hospitality operations within a c ountrys economy, implications of taxation and other overheads, and so on. Whilst the USA throughout the 1990s has experienced unprecedented economic growth, the UK had a recession in the early 1990s, and the signs in Euroland for 1999 are very mixed. Finally, the structure of a countrys economy a! ects the size and scope of di! erent types of hospitality business. Slattery and Johnson (1993) have suggested that hotel infrastructure development is directly linked to the structure of an economy * as service overtakes manufacturing, growing business demand stimulates hotel development. But there are other factors too, related to demand and supply. For instance, Mediterranean countries have coastal, resort hotels designed and operated for longstay (one week plus) tourists. This is now changing * `Spanish hotels are experiencing signicant changes in both demand and supply.. [so that] there is a transition towards a more diversied tourism producta (BDO Hospitality Consulting, 1999). Likewise brand penetration by the industrys high prole global players may be international, but with a highly regional orientation. Cendant is currently the worlds largest hotel chain, but over 90% of its properties are in North America. ACCOR too is a global chain, but a high proportion of its operations are in France and Europe. In the future such structural di! erences between countries will be reduced. Within Europe the creation of a single monetary area will systematically remove wage and price di! erentials. Similar political and monetary alignments may appear in other regions of the world. European Monetary Union and competitive pressures may also stimulate a great deal of merger and acquisition activity as companies seek to achieve regional scale economies and drive out competitors. The following discussion of trends in strategic and unit-level operations management must be placed in this context. Change will not the same in all sectors and in all parts of the world. 4. Strategic operations management 4. 1. Location The strategic issue of location can be divided into two main aspects, that of where generally to locate a hospitality operation and then the specic issue of selecting suitable sites. In the hospitality industry, the key factor in the location decision is demand. In simple terms, operations are located where demand is highest, and sited so P. Jones / Hospitality Management 18 (1999) 427}442 431 that such demand can easily access the provision. Strategic success derives from matching the type and size of the business with the site available. The factors that in#uence location in the accommodation and foodservice sectors re di! erent. Hotels are primarily located near where people are travelling or at destinations, which requires them to stay away from home. In the days of horse-drawn vehicles or stage-coaches, inns developed near main routes; with the railways came station hotels and resort hotels; with paved highways and the motor car came motels and business hotels; and with air travel the airport hotel. Foodservice operations feed the traveller, but they also exist in locations where people congregate for a variety of reasons * to shop (shopping malls and centres), work (employee feeding), learn (schools and universities), and so on. In mature markets, all locations have been penetrated by the major brands and suitable sites are di$cult to acquire. There is some evidence that consumer demand in such markets is driven less by situation but by destination or experience. For instance, Club Med has kept their existing locations but transformed their concept to appeal less to couples and more to families with young children. The shift to all-inclusive provision, especially in resort properties with extensive sporting facilities and linked to time share, has made these hotels destinations in their own right. In the hotel sector, another trend is for sites to have a multiple use, i. e. more than one brand is colocated on the same site. For instance, ACCOR have developed a property in Paris which is shared by a Novotel, their mid-market brand, and a budget Formula 1 hotel. Whitbread Hotels in converting Londons County Hall, the former administrative centre of the capital, has created a Marriott ve-star property on the side of the building which overlooks the Thames, and a budget Travel Inn on the non-river side. In the foodservice sector, the trends is towards `micro-unitsa and sites in `host environmentsa. Because conventional, high tra$c sites have been lled, operators have developed smaller units, such as carts and kiosks, designed to go in secondary locations. Often, such units are sited not as stand alone operations, but within another operating business, such as a sports arena, cinema, lling station, supermarket, or any other venue with high customer throughput. In the USA, a signicant proportion of restaurant sales are take-out or home delivery meals. This is a growing trend in Europe. The rules of the game in this sector are also likely to change, with major pizza chains in concentrated urban areas attempting to reduce delivery times from what was the industry standard of 30 min down to less than ten by creating mobile hot storage or even hot production vehicles. In developing markets, locational decisions are di! erent between hotels and restaurants. Hotels tend to be developed in major urban or resort areas, irrespective of their geographic dispersion. Restaurant development tends to be regionlised, with one area being developed before moving on to the next. This is because hotel chains advertise nationally and internationally, whilst restaurant chains, especially the quick This is somewhat ironic. Ray Kroc writes in his autobiography that when a team of his executives suggested building small scale units, to be called MiniMacs he was `so damned mad I was ready to let those three guys have it with my canea. Their failing was to think small! 432 P. Jones / Hospitality Management 18 (1999) 427}442 ervice chains, use regional and national television promotions. This clearly has implications for the strategic issue of organisation (see below). 4. 2. Integration Integration is largely concerned with the management of the so-called supply or value chain. With regards to the supply chain, the accommodation sector and the foodservice sector have quite di! erent characteristics. Accommodation provision is largely an assembly operation (ser vicing of rooms) with most materials processing (laundering linen, etc. ) being carried out by a supplier. Foodservice on the other hand can range from being largely an assembly operation (with meal items being largely prepared o! site) to a full-blown production facility in which meals are processed from raw ingredients. There is also a signicant di! erence in the relative cost structures of these two sectors with respect to such processed consumables * low in the accommodation sector (less than 10%), high in the foodservice sector (25}40%). In many industries and for many rms, especially in manufacturing, supply chain management has been a key to success. In the hotel sector, the focus has been on integration of the reservations process through a network of providers * in-unit, in-rm central reservations, airlines, travel agencies and a number of other sources. The development of global distribution systems (GDS) which integrates these agents along with in-house management tools such as yield management and property management is likely to create competitive advantage for chains who harness the opportunities o! ered by both GDS and the disintermediation derived from the internet (Connolly et al. , 1998). But in other respects the hospitality industry has largely been unconcerned with supply chain issues. This is because as a service based-business, in-bound supply logistics are relatively straight forward * a combination of accurate forecasting, sound purchasing practices and good supplier relationships; whilst out-bound logistics are non-existent, because the customer consumes the output on site. The exception to this is #ight catering, which has produced meals on a scale much greater than most foodservice operations * up to 20,000 meals a day. This kind of vertical integration is however growing in importance. In hotels, there is an increase in outsourcing provision to specialist suppliers of services such as cleaning, in-room entertainment, and large-scale catering. One sector that has transformed itself through its e! ective harnessing of supply chain logistics is licensed retailing in the UK. The traditional pub, tied to a brewery, used to be largely concerned with wet or drink sales. In the space of the last ten years, fuelled by increased competition resulting from deregulation, pubs have become sophisticated concepts providing drinks, meals and entertainment to clearly identied market segments. Appropriate menu items and consistent standards of food provision have been delivered through working with food manufacturers and developing logistic support, rather than in-house production. Something the fast food chains have been doing for many years. The other major form of integration in the industry is horizontal integration, operating a portfolio of similar businesses at the same stage of production. Marvin P. Jones / Hospitality Management 18 (1999) 427}442 433 Cetron (IHRA 1999) argues that `in one industry after another, the big get bigger, or take over of other similar rms. Such activity has been onsiderable since the 1970s, thanks to economies of scale. The small prosper by providing high levels of service in niche markets. The middle-size, lacking either advantage, are either squeezed out or taken over. [This trend] is particularly strong in the hotel industry, and is seen in restaurantsa. Thus early in 1999 in the UK alone Friendly Hotels had taken over Lyric Hotels, Re gal Hotels had acquired County Hotels, Bass had acquired Stakis to reposition with its Hilton brand, and Whitbread (the Marriott corporate franchisee in the UK) was rumoured to be bidding for both Swallow Hotels and DeVere Hotels. But all this activity pales into insignicance when compared with the C2 billion takeover of Inter-Continental Hotels by Bass. In Europe, there has been similar industry concentration in the contract foodservice sector. 4. 3. Azliation Potentially a more important concern for the hospitality industry is not control over inbound and outbound resource processes, but over the resource of physical infrastructure, that is the issue of a$liation. Many hospitality rms do not own the site or building in which `theira hotel or restaurant is operated. Instead they `owna the concept, the brand and the operational characteristics and procedures of that brand. In some cases they directly manage the delivery of that through a management contract; in others they assign to others the management through a franchise agreement. Those independent operators that are not large chains, in order to compete and achieve the same kind of scale economies, have banded together to form consortia. Broadly speaking franchising has been very strong in chain restaurants and hotels in the US; management contracts are the foundation of the employee feeding sector, in#ight catering and hotels outside the USA and Europe; and consortia are mainly in the hotel sector. In the future, this will continue to be the case but we are likely to see an increase in hotel franchising; penetration of foodservice management contracts into hotels; the creation of restaurant consortia; and an increase in plural forms (Bradach, 1998), that is a combination of business formats within the same brand or organisation. Increasing complexity will be a feature of this strategic area in the years to come. As studies of hotel management contracts (Eyster, 1993) have shown, as power has shifted within maturing markets from the brand operators to the owners, more complex forms of agreement which require operators sharing more of the risk have evolved. Today, it is possible for a hotel to be partly owned by a developer and by a management contract company, to be managed by that contractor, who is a franchisee of a hotel brand. The same is true in the contract foodservice sector. Many contracts used to be based on the cost-plus concept, today most are performance related in some way. Contractors have also penetrated many more sectors than in the past. The current trend is for them to take over the food and beverage provision in the lodging sector; hotels having already experimented, during the 1990s, with inviting high prole restaurateurs to run their hotel restaurants, with greater or lesser degrees of success. 434 P. Jones / Hospitality Management 18 (1999) 427}442 . 4. Conxguration Over the last 30 years it has been argued that service operations in general (Levitt, 1976; Schmenner, 1986), and hospitality operations specically (Jones, 1988), have been subject to three major trends * production-lining, decoupling, and increased customer participation. In e! ect these three trends are all aspects of conguration. The traditional conguration of a hospitality business has been an autonomous, stand-alone, low- tech operation * in other words, the typical independent hotel or restaurant. It should be remembered that the chains, with their branded and standardised conguration are a fairly recent phenomenon. Kemmons Wilson opened the rst Holiday Inn in 1952 and when Ray Kroc bought out the McDonald brothers in 1961, that chain only had 200 `storesa. McDonalds is the classic example of production-lining, cited by Levitt (1976). In 1948 the McDonald brothers reduced their menu to seven items, standardised the hamburger and its ingredients, automated as many activities as possible, and broke down the production process into a series of separate, standardised tasks performed by di! rent people (just as Henry Ford had done for the motor car 35 years earlier). Since then, new technologies such as cook-freeze, cook-chill and sous-vide have further facilitated the industrialisation of processes. Such systems are often `decoupleda, that is back-of-house operations are separated from front-of-house, both in time and place. This has always been the case for #ight catering, with m eals prepared on the ground and served in the air. It is how the British pub sector has most dramatically changed, it is now common in contract foodservice for this to be the case, and increasingly common in the restaurant sector. These three trends have been less prevalent in the hotel sector, as the nature of the core product * an overnight stay * is not easily automated. The most signicant change has been in the information-processing element of the hotel product (reservations, check-in and so on), which has been revolutionised by the computer. This has enabled the decoupling of the reservations function into central reservations o$ces. Other aspects of hotel conguration have changed and will continue to change. New build hotels, especially those in the budget sector, do not have restaurants. For instance, 40% of American hotels and 30% of French hotels have no restaurant compared with 10% in the UK (McKinsey Global Institute, 1998). On the other hand, leisure facilities are increasingly being added to hotel properties especially where there is a strong local market for leisure club membership. Historically, hotel design has frequently seen common major design faults, which include underprovision of administrative space, too little bulk storage, misalignment of kitchen space with dining areas, poor relationships between accommodation (`drya) and leisure (`weta) space, and not enough operational space on accommoda- The very rst long distance commercial passenger airline, Transcontinental Air Transport, was formed in 1929 in the USA. Even in its rst year of operation it had #ight attendants, served meals and showed in #ight movies! Meals were served despite the fact that planes were unpressurised and unventilated so that typically three quarters of passengers were airsick (Bryson, 1994). P. Jones / Hospitality Management 18 (1999) 427}442 435 tion #oors. Modern hotel design, such as the way Marriott developed the Courtyard concept, has overcome these problems and in the future new build hotels are more likely to be well designed from an operations perspective. New build hotels in mature markets are likely to be designed to ll product/market niches that have not yet been exploited. There are ve basic criteria: location (see above), market segment, room design, grade, and type of stay. The Holiday Inn concept was originally designed as a roadside property, serving the travelling leisure segment, with a standard room, in the middle price range, used mainly for overnight stays. Since then a number of other congurations have been developed including city centre business hotels, budget hotels, country house or resort hotels, courtyard concepts, and most recently all suite properties. In the future, there may be entirely new congurations. For instance, the rst ever hotel designed exclusively for children has been opened in London; in Japan `capsule hotelsa have been built for budgetconscious commuters too tired to go home; Sleepers is a hotel in Cambridge, UK, specially designed for back-packers; and hotels designed for the so-called grey panther market are being developed, designed for reasonably priced long stays in get away from it all locations. Within these basic product/market niches there is scope for enormous variation in the detailed design of facilities and services. Marriott when conducting market research for the Courtyard concept identied 48 di! erent elements, with a total of 160 di! erent variables. Elements included building shape, room size, vending service, type of check-in, and so on. An example of the variables within an element is laundry service: there could be none, client drop o! and pick-up, self-service, or valet pick-up and drop o!. As hotel chains develop internationally, they are likely to ensure that these basic elements are consistent across the world, but allow for di! rence in the specic variables to take account of local expectations. For instance, in the UK, American chains had to adjust full room service provision to re#ect the British practice of having tea making facilities in the room. Construction is also likely to be subject to a number of trends. Pre-fabricated building has been used in some countries for a number of years, notably for budget properties in France. However, in many countries it is little used. Howev er, Cendant plans to construct 30 new properties over the next ve years using this approach. Although `relatively rare in the United States, [it] is gaining in popularity due to its ability to control both cost and qualitya (Lister, 1998a). ACCOR in Europe and Forte Posthouse in the UK have also used this technology. Posthouse have used it to extend existing properties since the unit cost is marginally lower, but more importantly there is less on-site disruption caused by adding `podsa i. e. bedrooms in their nished state. Environmental issues will also a! ect construction. Environmentally, friendly hotels and operating procedures are relatively common especially in Europe, for instance the ACCOR chain has a Director of Environment. Sources of capital, such as banks, encourage this practice through lower interest rates, especially in Scandinavia. The Intercontinental hotel chain incorporates environmental management as one of the ways in which its managers performance is assessed. In Australia the new Eco Beach property in Western Australia and the Eco-hotel under construction in Sydney, are leading examples of this kind of development. It is claimed that the rst `environ- 436 P. Jones / Hospitality Management 18 (1999) 427}442 mentally smarta hotel in the United States is the Sheraton Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia (Lister, 1998b). It is likely that there will increasing pressure to meet environmental standards. A number of major international corporations, such as Nike, Volvo and BP, have instituted green purchasing policies which requires their suppliers * including hotel companies * to have environmental policies in place. Currently, the International Hotels Environment Initiative (IHEI) in conjunction with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is working on a benchmarking scheme which will identify the hotels chains level of performance in this area. The United States Agency for International Development has sponsored Green Globe certication, designed to recognise environmentally sensitive hotels and Australia is about to launch the Green Gum Tree classication scheme. In addition, the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development in 1999 is focusing on the tourism industry. 4. 5. Organisation If Cesar Ritz or any other famous hotelier of the nineteenth century were to be reincarnated, they could walk into any of the worlds top luxury hotels and recognise how work was organised, what jobs workers were engaged in, and the way hotel business was conducted. At a unit level, both in hotels and foodservice, organisational form and behaviour has changed little. The most signicant change has been the growth of large chains and the creation of the multi-unit manager. The challenge for senior management is how to manage large numbers of units geographically dispersed over a wide area, so-called multi-unit management. Multiunit management has been described as a `late twentieth century phenomenona (Jones, 1998). A number of new corporate roles are emerging concerned with the operations function. These include environmental managers as discussed above; loss prevention management teams which aim to provide an integrated approach to a wide range of issues such as security, health and safety; procurement and logistics specialists; and special projects directors who are tasked to tackle long-term, complex issues such as quality, productivity or innovation across the chain. Most large, international hospitality rms have been organised as classic functional organisations. This means formal systems, a high level of centralisation, clear hierarchies and relatively small spans of control. But chains are making dynamic changes to their organisation. All kinds of organisational innovation are being introduced. Authority is being delegated down to unit level management and below through empowerment (in some hotel and restaurant chains); merger and acquisitions create organisational turmoil as di! rent cultures clash; organisations are being `downsizeda or delayered to create #at hierarchies; unit management is being reorganised to be replaced by GMs responsible for three or four properties (in Forte Hotels); area managers are changing from controllers of standards into business development advisors (especially in UK pub chains); and so on. Such change is also being in#uenced by the development of intranets which greatly facilitates administrative processes wit hin the chain organisation. Radisson claim their intranet has improved productivity by 18%. P. Jones / Hospitality Management 18 (1999) 427}442 437 The organisational changes being taken by big companies has interesting implications for SMEs. Downsizing has resulted in large numbers of highly professional middle managers being made redundant. Many have used their lump sum redundancy payments to invest in their own hotel or foodservice business. This injection of professional expertise has resulted in considerable improvement in the provision made by small operators, which have traditionally lagged behind the major chains. 4. 6. Implementation The kind of organisational change and experimentation described above clearly has implications for how the operations strategy is implemented. The traditional functional organisation means that strategy is implemented on a command and control basis. Operating policies, procedures and standards are set centrally, and the operations management team, of typically regional directors, area managers, and unit managers are required to ensure these are carried through. Management is supported by systems, such as the management information system which monitors nancial performance and some kind of quality programme, usually based around mystery shopping, guest comment cards and customer surveys, which monitors customer satisfaction. This model is similar whether the chain operates its own units or operates on a franchise basis (see

Great Depression Essays - Systemic Risk, Financial Crises

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Modivication of ELP - Essay Example The main reason for choosing the computer network and communication technology specialization is hone my technical acumen, as this will qualify me to attain a future high scientific position in this field. The world now is taking a significant technological leap that requires more professional workers and developers. I am ready to meet the requirements of this Digital Age. Through further study and perseverance I will convert the theoretical academic knowledge into practical scientific applications in the area of communications technology. Study at Coventry University allows one to coexist and identify with a wide-array of students and cultures. There are many things that can be gathered from experiencing this multicultural perspective. I’ve found one of the most relevant application of the Coventry community occurs in collaborative activities, where students share scientific specializations, construct reports, create the projects, and present the findings. The multi-varied cultures, languages, religions, and traditions Coventry university cultivates is truly inspiring. Coventry university characterizes development in all fields, matching global business development to contemporary teaching methods. In the final year of my specialization module (mobile and Wireless), the class visited the BT company to support students practical study and experience. There are several positive factors will help me gain enough familiarity with information about network and communication technology. These factors have motivated me to complete my postgraduate degree study at Coventry university. - My driving force to success is the working collaboratively on study topics and meeting with other students; I also plan to consult with the school’s teachers who have relevant experience in my specialty. - I have the required expertise to utilize the laboratory equipments, particularly those related

Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 100

Assignment Example In the Andean groups extended their kingdom by creating an overarching political state and integrating its empire into a single order to secure its subjects and increase area for natural resources. The Anasazi, Mesoamerica, developed an economy on beans, squash, and maize. Their success in adapting these crops allowed the formation of large villages and resulted into vast cultural life in underground buildings known as kivas. Inca constructed roads that facilitated military troop movements, trade, and administration. Mesopotamia is considered the cradle of civilization; it was the located in the Fertile Crescent. Mesopotamia was located at convergence of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers that produced fertile soils; hence, irrigation was practiced. Sumerian came up with cuneiform script for communication. Egyptians started an agricultural economy with centralized society. Egyptian states had urban development and monarchies. Egyptians are recognized for surgery, barge transport, and mathematics. In addition, they are widely known as their pyramids. The Harappan civilization is credited with the introduction of decimal fractions. Small societies were nomadic in nature while vast empires settled along riverbanks on the same land hence showed the concept of ownership. Large empires increased their security since they were located at the same point from other small societies. Large empires encouraged specialization for example artisan, craftsmen, traders, and farmers who produce surpluses; small communities did not support these activities. Governments came in place to maintain specialized labor and surpluses production in agriculture, and to maintain the new culture. The government provided services like roads to the merchants, unified people in villages. These governments started taxing in form of surplus from farmers. Belief systems were created in order to bring order into the society because of political

Dealing with Moral Issues in Health Care Assignment

Dealing with Moral Issues in Health Care - Assignment Example As the report stresses  there was a belief that spirits cure diseases, which are caused as a result of divine punishment. Although, this concept is no longer accepted in the modern world, some of the religious beliefs and ideologies are observed to still hamper the moral issues in health care, wherein spirituality persists in contrast to morality. Some Muslim patients still convey strong religious or cultural issues about ‘modesty’, especially when being treated by the opposite sex, as commonly observed among the followers of Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism.  From the discussion it is clear that  a major proportion of Buddhists and Hindus can be observed as very rigidly ‘vegetarian’. For such patients, medicines produced from animals, is very much likely to cause problems, owing to the fact that such practices might be considered contradictory to their religious beliefs. The ‘dietary’ problem is also very much likely for Muslims and Jews, a s they refuse to accept pork or gelatin in their medicines. The Muslim patients may also question about alcohol based medicines and hand-rubs, which is strictly prohibited in their religion.  Suggestively, religious concepts, hampering the moral issues in health care can be minimized or even made negligible by adapting certain changes in actions and thoughts of patients, motivating them to become more flexible and rational towards medication.  Social media networks can also be major tool to generate awareness among patients and deal with the above discussed moral issues.

The Evolution Of Rhetoric In The Electronic Age

The Evolution Of Rhetoric In The Electronic Age The reason for this research paper is to discuss the future rhetoric of our new Electronic Generation. Rhetoric is an art of public speaking and, in our day and age, electronics play a major part. This paper will explain the rhetorical aspects of this potential transformation into an all electronic world. The information of this paper will explain the history of rhetoric and how we got to where we are today. It will also speak of some the major philosophers about this change in our new generation. Rhetoric is defined as the art or study of using language effectively and persuasively. From ancient Greece to the late nineteenth century, it was an essential part of Western education to teach public speakers and writers to persuade listeners to action with arguments. At the turn of the 20th century, there was a profound interest of rhetorical study began to grow in the organization of departments of rhetoric and speech at colleges and universities, as well as the development of national and international professional organizations. Some modern theorists believe that it was important to restore the interest of the study of rhetoric because of the renewed importance of language and persuasion in the progressively reconciled environment of the twentieth century and through the twenty-first century, with the media spotlight on the wide difference s and analyses of political rhetoric and its result s. With the expansion of marketing and of mass media such as photography, telegraphy, ra dio, and film, rhetoric is being more notably conveyed into peoples lives. In spite of its legacy as a moral way for persuasion, rhetoric has come to take on negative undertones. Through the years, generations have forgotten whats the real meaning of rhetoric is and has somehow implicate that this word is deceptive and untrustworthy. Today, rhetoric is greatly utilized by mass media in a derogatory manner, particularly when associated to public policies and politicians. Rhetoric as a systematic study was developed by a group of orators, educators, and advocates called Sophists. In the book, The History and Theory of Rhetoric: An Introduction by James Herrick, he states, Sophists employed paradoxes to shock their audiences, but also by this means to provoke debate and inquiry (Herrick, 2009). The Sophists outlook on rhetoric may very well have been the spark that ignited todays global misunderstanding on the meaning behind rhetoric. Sophists viewed rhetoric as a means that could unite pleasure with government. Sophists believed that words had the ability to medicate the audience. Although during this time when rhetoric was a skill with an increasingly expressive demand, it began to alter to a negative nuance as Platos criticisms grew more popular. The most primitive paradigm of rhetoric as a derogatory word can be followed back to Plato and his opinions about the Sophists. As one of Socrates renowned students, Plato often portrayed the Sophists as highly skillful writers who made the most of misleading language methods to persuade and influence audiences. Platos assumption on Sophism, also reiterated through the writings of Isocrates, was based on the gluttony, deception and the general lack of trust and apprehension for justice. Sophists could manipulate speech to make the worse situation appear better. The term Sophism continues to maintain the negative reputation in todays society. In Rereading the Sophists: Classical Rhetoric Refigured, author Susan Jarratt defines sophism as a derogatory term for a carefully crafted yet false argument aimed at deceiving someone (Jarratt, 1998). Sophism is also used today to describe rhetorical circumstances in which emotional demands may be emphasized over logical demands. Sophism and rhetoric have shared these negative connections into our modern era. As Christianity began to extend in the Middle Ages after the fall of the Roman Empire, societies started to connect rhetoric as expressive and fancy, but it was short of any knowledge or general idea. Due to the Church not believing expressiveness was an important aspect to communication and speech, rhetoric was diminished and viewed depreciatively. By the sixteenth century, rhetorics reputation had been revitalized, but some prominent scholars continued to pass judgment on rhetoric. Reformer Peter Ramus questioned rhetoric by stating that rhetoric was mainly a kind of verbal enhancement and as a result of little consequence. As Ramus praised dialectic and called rhetoric into question, rhetoric lost its theoretical influence, and was again viewed as nothing more than a stylistic, pessimistic speech tool. In his scheme of things, the five components of rhetoric no longer lived under the common heading of rhetoric. Instead, invention and disposition were determined to fall solely under the heading of dialectic, while style, delivery, and memory were all that stayed for rhetoric. In The Electronic Word: Technology, Democracy, and Arts written by Richard Lanham, he expresses that Ramus separated thought from language by developing a replica of education in which reason breaks free of speech (Lanham, 1993, pp. 157-158). Language bec ame an impartial tool for conveying the findings of other disciplines, and was no longer viewed as the basis of an art form that has been mastered by an educated person for its own sake. Another major contributor to the development of Western thinking about rhetoric is the great Greek philosopher, Aristotle. Aristotle was a student of Plato who famously set forth an extended treatise on rhetoric that is still repays careful study today. One of the most significant contributions of Aristotles approach was that he saw rhetoric as one of the three basic essentials of philosophy, in conjunction with logic and dialectic. In the opening words of Rhetoric authored by Aristotle, he asserts that rhetoric is the counterpart of dialectic (Aristotle Roberts, 1954, p. 30). Logic, according to Aristotle, is the area of philosophy concerned with ways of thinking to reach scientific assurance while dialectic and rhetoric are concerned with possibility and therefore is the parts of philosophy best suited to human affairs. Dialectic is an instrument for theoretical debate; it is a way for listeners to assess credible knowledge with the intention of learning. Rhetoric is an instrument for sensible debate; it is a way for convincing a common group of listeners using reliable knowledge to resolve practical issues. Dialectic and rhetoric together create a relationship for a method of persuasion derived from knowledge rather than playing on emotion. Today, modern scholars emphasize why rhetoric has taken on a derogatory connotation. They presume that there is a tendency to forget rhetorics past, which has damaged democracy by labeling all political speech as trickery, as well as unsuccessfully teaching the general public to vitally understand and make use of good speech. Richard Lanham (Lanham, 1993, pp. 243-246) disputed that the model of electronic words and texts has a natural potential to encourage democratic discourse and human thinking. Nevertheless, the source for Lanhams optimistic view of the digital age a perception that electronic textually makes no invidious distinctions between high and low culture, commercial and pure usage, talented or chance creation, visual or auditory stimulus, iconic or alphabetic information (Lanham, 1993, pp. 14) is besieged by some basic opposition which not only imply but reinforce all these oppositions. As Richard Lanham documented in his book, The Electronic Word, the presentation of w ords through the static textual display of print is quickly being replaced by the more fluid textual forms of the computer screen, which are radically altering our existing definitions of literacy. Lanham believes these new textual forms such as e-mail, network exchanges, and hypertext are changing our intellectual perception back to the root source of Western rhetoric: We can . . . think of electronic prose as moving back toward the world of oral rhetoric, where gestural symmetries were permitted and sound was omnipresent. Any prose text, by the very nature of the denial/expression tensions that create and animate it, oscillates back and forth between literate self-denial and oral permissiveness, but electronic text does so much more self-consciously, simply by the volatile nature of the written surface. A volatile surface invites us to intensify rather than subdue this oscillation, make it more rather than less self-conscious (Lanham, 1993). In addition, while some may feel the electronic explosion of inert textual structures serves to mark the death of the Western education, as demonstrated in the linear structures of print, Lanham believes it completes fairly the opposite and brings literacy more similar to another oscillation that Western thinking has always displayed. Reflecting the internal tension of elitism versus populism inherent in distinct ludic and resistance versions of postmodern theory, Lanhams digital rhetoric exemplifies an unsure oscillation between critical and aesthetic approaches to hypertext on one hand, and a more popular democratic appreciation of electronic media, the sub-cultural intertextuality of global culture, and hypermedia on the other. As Lanham exemplifies many of the hypermedia theorists and critics retained their privileged literary and critical assumptions, undermining claimed connections to the popular cultural extensions of electronic media. This is possibly because of the opposing and subjective ways in which an all-purpose hypermedia model alternates between focusing on designed interactive descriptions and the act of reading or reception as an essentially unintentional process, and (2) decreases human language and communication generally to the expressions of distinct images and information consequently also supporting an underlying conflict between print-age examples of language-use and the new and ever-present popular electronic culture. The integration of hypertext concept into a general hypermedia framework of electronic literacy is more than only a matter of describing hypermedia as hypertext extended to include electronic multimedia effects such as digitized sound and graphics. Postmodern literary models of meaning as a contingent product and play of open-ended narratives, language games, and reader-response clearly lent themselves to theorizing about hypertext. Such privileged models of textuality, reception, and aesthetic process or objects were implicitly at odds with the semiotic move to go from the subtle and intricate textual allusions of open-ended narratives mediated as verbal language-use to include the media of electronic popular culture in terms of language reduced to and even replaced by electronic imagery obsessed with the transitory fixations of human memory and desi re. The residual print assumptions of a convergence between the hypermedia model of electronic literacy and postmodern critical theories or practices is perhaps most effectively analyzed in terms of how points out, hypertext encourages both writers and readers to confront and work consciously and concretely with deconstruction, intertextuality, the decentering of the author, and the readers complicity with the construction of the text. In other words, the idea of hypertext effectively reinforces the postmodernist theories of such theorists as Barthes, Derrida, and Baudrillard that natural languages and other systems of representationespecially those involving electronic visual mediaare autonomous in relation to the diverse and contingent contexts of individual language users, specific language events, and discrete forms of verbal or visual representation. The twentieth century is perhaps the most exhilarating period in which to study rhetoric since the Middle Age. This has come about with the beginning of what is generally referred to as the New Rhetoric; the rediscovery of rhetorics epistemological significance and the critical role of persuasion and argument to our everyday lives. It is impossible to name all the causes for this new-found importance or all the contributors to the New Rhetoric, but among the most influential we must certainly consider I.A. Richards whose work on metaphor associated rhetoric to literary studies, Chaim Perelman, whose book The New Rhetoric is now a classic, Steven Toulmin, best known for his inquiries of argument, and possibly the most influential rhetorician of our era, Kenneth Burke. In teaching in the Middle Ages and years before, we have determined that rhetoric was a tool to teach students how to write good essays and, in other areas, it was a tool for persuasion. Rhetoric is widely used in business, politics, and technical writing. For example, the structure and style of letters, memos, speeches, and other kinds of documents follow the rhetorical standards. The old rhetoric dealt primarily with the structure and content of an essay or presentation. With New Rhetoric, rhetoric is given new limits. It now includes philosophy and sociology. It is no longer how to inscribe a good essay or speak a good speech, but how well we recognize communication and its influences on our lives. With the discovery of the World Wide Web (WWW), rhetoric had received a new, powerful field of its purpose. For the most part, rhetorical principles reveal its power in different kinds of Web projects. The five parts of the classical notion invention, arrangement, memory, delivery, and styleare one way we might start mediating about how to apply rhetorical ideas to writings in the twenty-first century and beyond. After all, literacy has undergone many changes in the pastfrom orality, to writing, to printand it will likely undergo many more, in ways we cannot even now imagine. We need to think about how computers and computer writing will impact the future of rhetoric, of composition and composition classes, and of literacy itself. Making hypertext documents on the WWW (World Wide Web) offers a wide range of freedom. The most astonishing difference in an electronic document is the skills to provide fairly instant access to the resources you gather during the invention process. To fully exploit the capabilities of hypertext, you should offer hypertext links that lead directly to the material you use in supporting your claims. Providing links to this material involves the audience in the invention process; your audience can have access to your primary materials and verify the validity of your evidence. Locating supporting information is greatly facilitated by search engines that can explore the Web for you, tracking down useful and relevant evidence to support your own presentations. In addition, many Web sites grant permission to use their digitized images. In an electronic document, there is no easy distinction between a beginning, middle, and an end. Determining a suitable arrangement for your electronic document depends on your creativity. Innovative arrangements are largely a matter of style can have powerful emotional appeal for an audience. Gorgias recognized the persuasive power of atypical uses of language, for changes in the usual order and meaning affected the audience. Today in the electronic age, Gorgias insights still remains true, but of course their submissions have expanded. Writing documents for the WWW creates an entirely new world, or cyberspace, one wide open to new ways of expression, and maybe meaning. An image, like a figure of speech can communicate meaning and provide your rhetorical principle. The same can be said for color. Color, like a trope, covers your meaning, provides your reason or at least it can. Of course, and image, and color has to provide a purpose but it must be suitable to the situation. Memory is fourth of the ancient standard of rhetoric. In the ancient law courts and assemblies, men were often called upon to deliver speeches without the help of written comments. The Greeks and Romans developed intricate memory systems that allowed them to give speeches precisely as it was written. Memory on the Web means some entirely different. Most people take it to mean the ways that readers can remember where they are and where they have been while they surf the net. In the days when text was written only to be conveyed verbally, the ability to persuasively delivery of a speech was one of the premier talents. Delivery is obviously related to the other standards, especially style, because your usefulness as an orator of text varying in large parts on the method of delivery that you chooses. In the hypertext world, delivery takes on some new obstacles. Were no longer certain who will be listening to our speech, nor are we positive that theyll even hear it the same way. The documents we generate are read by browsers, which decipher the HTML code for presenting on the monitor. Because each of these browsers maintains very different features, successful delivery is contingent on writing documents that predict the difference among browsers. Rhetoric, this art of persuasion, totally distorted our insight of the truth. Everything depends on the ability of speaker or writer to affectively captivate the audience using his or her credibility, detailed style, and compelling arguments. Anything can be shown as the truth. Due to this capability to alter anything to the truth the Rhetoric became an indispensable tool in the business communication. How to persuade people to purchase goods, services, ideasanything, that business word generates? How to encourage them that this is a necessity or this is the truth? It cannot be accomplished without rhetoric. The rhetorical theories had been altered by our highly technological age, but they did not modify in their real meaning. There is the truth that subsist in rhetoricits values itself. Rhetoric has not lost its inability in 21st century, but vice versa, we can observe that rhetorical theories reveal itself in any document individually from technology that was used for its establishing. On the one handRhetorical theories are used in todays writing, publishing, and electronic documents as a way of persuasion. On the other handrhetoric is no longer an essential humanist study of structure and content but a study on how and why we communicate and what we can learn from the methods of communication.

The Office Of Tomorrow :: Technology Predicting Business Office Essays

The Office of Tomorrow   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  In an increasing number of companies, traditional office space is giving way to community areas and empty chairs as employees work from home, from their cars or from virtually anywhere. Advanced technologies and progressive HR strategies make these alternative offices possible.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Imagine it's 2 o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon. Inside the dining room of many nationwide offices, Joe Smith, manager of HR, is downing a sandwich and soda while wading through phone and E-mail messages. In front of him is a computer—equipped with a fax-modem—is plugged into a special port on the dining table. The contents of his briefcase are spread on the table. As he sifts through a stack of paperwork and types responses into the computer, he periodically picks up a cordless phone and places a call to a colleague or associate. As he talks, he sometimes wanders across the room.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  To be sure, this isn't your ordinary corporate environment. Smith doesn't have a permanent desk or workspace, nor his own telephone. When he enters the ad agency's building, he checks out a portable Macintosh computer and a cordless phone and heads off to whatever nook or cranny he chooses. It might be the company library, or a common area under a bright window. It could even be the dining room or Student Union, which houses punching bags, televisions and a pool table. Wherever he goes, a network forwards mail and phone pages to him and a computer routes calls, faxes and E-mail messages to his assigned extension. He simply logs onto the firm's computer system and accesses his security-protected files.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  He is not tethered to a specific work area nor forced to function in any predefined way. Joe Smith spends mornings, and even sometimes an entire day, connected from home via sophisticated voicemail and E-mail systems, as well as a pager. His work is process and task-oriented. As long as he gets everything done, that's what counts. Ultimately, his productivity is greater and his job- satisfaction level is higher. And for somebody trying to get in touch with him, it's easy. Nobody can tell that Joe might be in his car or sitting at home reading a stack of resumes in his pajamas. The call gets forwarded to him wherever he's working.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  You've just entered the vast frontier of the virtual office—a universe in which leading-edge technology and new concepts redefine work and job functions by enabling employees to work from virtually anywhere. The concept allows a growing number of companies to change their workplaces in ways never considered just a few years ago. They're scrapping assigned desks and

Personality type INFJ letters Essay

INFJ (introverted, intuitive, feeling, judging) is a four-letter code used to represent one of the 16 personality types identified by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). This personality assessment was created by Isabel Myers and her mother Katherine Briggs in the 1940s based on the theories of Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung. People with INFJ personalities are creative, gentle and caring. According to David Keirsey, the INFJ type is one of the rarest with just one to three percent of the population exhibiting this personality type. INFJ Characteristics The MBTI identifies your personality type by looking at four main areas: 1) Extraversion vs Introversion, 2) Sensing vs Intuition, 3) Thinking vs Feeling and 4) Judging vs Perceiving. On each of these four areas, the MBTI identifies which way your personality tends to lean for each dimension. As you can see, the INFJ personality leans toward Introversion, Intuiting, Feeling and Judging. Introversion (I): INFJs tend to be reserved, quiet and have a small circle of close friends. Intuition (N): INFJs are prefer abstract concepts and tend to focus on the big picture rather than concrete details. Feeling (F): INFJs place a greater emphasis on personal concerns than objective facts when making decisions. Judging (J): INFJs like to exert control by planning, organizing and making decisions as early as possible. People with INFJ personalities tend to exhibit the following characteristics: Idealistic Sensitive to the needs of others Highly creative and artistic Reserved Focused on the future Private Values close, deep relationships Enjoys thinking about the meaning of life INFJs are driven by their strong values and seek out meaning in all areas of their lives including relationships and work. People with this type of personality are often described as deep and complex. INFJs have an innate ability to understand other people’s feelings. While they are introverted, they sometimes seem extroverted at times due to their strong interest in people and society. INFJs are interested in helping others and making the world a better place. They tend to be excellent listeners and are good at interacting with people which whom they are emotionally close and connected. While they care deeply about others, INFJs tend to be very introverted and are only willing to share their â€Å"true selves† with a select few. After being in social situations, INFJs need time to themselves to â€Å"recharge.† INFJs also have a talent for language and are usually quite good at expressing themselves on paper. They have a vivid inner life, but they are often hesitant to share this with others except for perhaps those closest to them. While they are quiet and sensitive, they can also be good leaders. Even when they don’t take on overt leadership roles, they often act as quiet influencers behind the scenes. In school, INFJs are usually high achievers and get good grades. They can be perfectionists at times and tend to put a great deal of effort into their academic work. INFJs enjoy learning, particularly about people, society, literature and art. They tend to prefer studying subjects that involves abstract theories and ideas rather than concrete facts and information. Because they are reserved and private, INFJs can be difficult to get to know. They place a high value on close, deep relationships and can be hurt easily, although they often hide these feelings from others. Best Careers for INFJs INFJs do well in careers where they can express their creativity. Because people with INFJ personality have such deeply held convictions and values, they do particularly well in jobs that support these principles.

Figurative Language Definition and Examples

Figurative Language Definition and Examples Figurative language is  language in which figures of speech (such as metaphors and metonyms) freely occur. Contrast with  literal  speech  or language. If something happens literally, says childrens book author Lemony Snicket, it actually happens; if something happens figuratively, it feels like it is happening. If you are literally jumping for joy, for instance, it means you are leaping in the air because you are very happy. If you are figuratively jumping for joy, it means you are so happy that you could jump for joy but are saving your energy for other matters†Ã‚  (The Bad Beginning,  2000). Figurative language  can also be defined as any deliberate departure from the conventional meaning, order, or construction of words. Examples It is midmorning. A few minutes ago I took my coffee break. I am speaking figuratively, of course. Theres not a drop of coffee in this place and there never has been.(Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction. Random House, 1971)MetaphorsMemory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food.(Austin OMalley, Keystones of Thought)SimilesThe Dukes moustache was rising and falling like seaweed on an ebb-tide.(P.G. Wodehouse, Uncle Fred in the Springtime, 1939)HyperboleI was helpless. I did not know what in the world to do. I was quaking from head to foot and could have hung my hat on my eyes, they stuck out so far.(Mark Twain, Old Times on the Mississippi)UnderstatementLast week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe how much it altered her person for the worse.(Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub, 1704)MetonymyThe suits on Wall Street walked off with most of our savings.ChiasmusYou forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget.(Cormac M cCarthy, The Road, 2006) AnaphoraAnaphora will repeat an opening phrase or word;Anaphora will pour it into a mold (absurd)!Anaphora will cast each subsequent opening;Anaphora will last until its tiring.(John Hollander, Rhymes Reason: A Guide to English Verse. Yale Univ. Press, 1989) Kinds of Figurative Language (1) Phonological figures include alliteration, assonance, and onomatopoeia. In his poem The Pied Piper of Hamelin (1842), Robert Browning repeats sibilants, nasals, and liquids as he shows how the children respond to the piper: There was a rustling, that seemed like a bustling / Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling. Something sinister has started.(2) Orthographic figures use visual forms created for effect: for example, America spelled Amerika (by left-wing radicals in the 1970s and as the name of a movie in the 1980s) to suggest a totalitarian state.(3) Syntactic figures may bring the non-standard into the standard language, as in US President Ronald Reagans You aint seen nothing yet (1984), a nonstandard double negative used to project a vigorous, folksy image.(4) Lexical figures extend the conventional so as to surprise or entertain, as when, instead of a phrase like a year ago, the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas wrote a grief ago, or when the Irish dramatist Oscar Wilde sai d at the New York Customs, I have nothing to declare but my genius. When people say that you cant take something literally, they are generally referring to usage that challenges everyday reality: for example, through exaggeration (the hyperbole in loads of money), comparison (the simile like death warmed up; the metaphor life is an uphill struggle), physical and other associations (the metonymy Crown property for something owned by royalty), and a part for a whole (the synecdoche All hands on deck!).(Tom McArthur, The Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford University Press, 2005) Observations Figures are as old as language. They lie buried in many words of current use. They occur constantly in both prose and poetry.(Joseph T. Shipley, Dictionary of World Literary Terms, 1970)Traditionally, figurative language such as metaphors and idioms has been considered derivative from and more complex than ostensibly straightforward language. A contemporary view . . . is that figurative language involves the same kinds of linguistic and pragmatic operations that are used for ordinary, literal language.(Sam Glucksberg, Understanding Figurative Language. Oxford University Press, 2001)At no place in Book III [of the Rhetoric] does Aristotle claim that these devices [figures] serve an ornamental or emotional function or that they are in any way epiphenomenal. Instead, Aristotles somewhat dispersed discussion suggests that certain devices are compelling because they map a function onto a form or perfectly epitomize certain patterns of thought or argument.(Jeanne Fahnestock, Rhetorical Fig ures in Science. Oxford University. Press, 1999) The emergence of nonliteral language as a respectable topic has led to a convergence of many fields: philosophy, linguistics, and literary analyses, computer science, neuroscience, and experimental cognitive psychology, to name a few. Each of these fields has enriched the scientific understanding of the relation between language and thought.(A.N. Katz, C. Cacciari, R. W. Gibbs, Jr., and M. Turner, Figurative Language and Thought. Oxford University Press, 1998) Figurative Language and Thought This new view of the poetics of mind has the following general characteristics: - The mind is not inherently literal.- Language is not independent of the mind but reflects our perceptual and conceptual understanding of experience.- Figuration is not merely a matter of language but provides much of the foundation for thought, reason and imagination.- Figurative language is not deviant or ornamental but is ubiquitous in everyday speech.- Figurative modes of thought motivate the meaning of many linguistic expressions that are commonly viewed as having literal interpretations.- Metaphorical meaning is grounded in nonmetaphorical aspects of recurring bodily experiences or experiential gestalts.- Scientific theories, legal reasoning, myths, art, and a variety of cultural practices exemplify many of the same figurative schemes found in everyday thought and language.- Many aspects of word meaning are motivated by figurative schemes of thought.- Figurative language does not require special cognitive processes to be produced and understood.- Childrens figurative thought m otivates their significant ability to use and understand many kinds of figurative speech. These claims dispute many beliefs about language, thought, and meaning that have dominated the Western intellectual tradition.(Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr., The Poetics of Mind: Figurative Thought, Language, and Understanding. Cambridge University Press, 1994) The Conceptual Metaphor Theory According to the conceptual metaphor theory, metaphors and other forms of figurative language are not necessarily creative expressions. This is admittedly a somewhat unusual idea, as we ordinarily associate figurative language with poetry and with the creative aspects of language. But Gibbs (1994 [above]) suggests that what is frequently seen as a creative expression of some idea is often only a spectacular instantiation of specific metaphorical entailments that arise from the small set of conceptual metaphors shared by many individuals within a culture (p. 424). The conceptual model assumes that the underlying nature of our thought processes is metaphorical. That is, we use metaphor to make sense of our experience. Thus, according to Gibbs, when we encounter a verbal metaphor it automatically activates the corresponding conceptual metaphor. (David W. Carroll, Psychology of Language, 5th ed. Thomson Wadsworth, 2008) John Updikes Use of Figurative Language [John] Updike wrote self-consciously about big subjects and big themes, but he was always celebrated more for his prose style than for his subject matter. And his great gift, on the level of style, was not just descriptive but explicitly figurativenot about presentation, in other words, but about transformation. This gift could work both for and against him. Figurative language, best employed, is a way of making connections between disparate phenomena, but even more than that it is a way of making us see better, more freshly, more naà ¯vely. Updike was more than capable of such flights: Outdoors it is growing dark and cool. The Norway maples exhale the smell of their sticky new buds and the broad living-room windows along Wilbur Street show beyond the silver patch of a television set the warm bulbs burning in kitchens, like fires at the backs of caves. . . .  [A] mailbox stands leaning in twilight on its concrete post. Tall two-petaled street sign, the cleat-gouged trunk of the telephone pole holding its insulators against the sky, fire hydrant like a golden bush: a grove.[Rabbit, Run] But taking one thing and turning it, via language, into another can also be a way of deferring or denying or opting out of engagement with the thing nominally being described. (Jonathan Dee, Agreeable Angstrom: John Updike, Yes-Man. Harpers, June 2014) The Abuse of Figurative Language Obfuscation also comes from mishandled metaphor. As readers of his reviews will know, letting [James] Wood anywhere near figurative language is like giving an alcoholic the keys to a distillery. In no time, he’s unsteady and comprehensibility is a casualty. Getting images upside down is a speciality. The personality of a Svevo character is, Wood writes, as comically perforated as a bullet-holed flag- an odd view of what’s comical since such a flag would usually be found among the dead and mutilated on a battlefield. Another character is inundated with impressions . . . like Noah’s dove. The point about Noah’s dove, though, is that it wasn’t inundated but survived the flood and ultimately brought back evidence that the waters had subsided. (Peter Kemp, review of How Fiction Works by James Wood. The Sunday Times, March 2, 2008)

Flame by jackson pollack essays

Flame by jackson pollack essays My experience with art is somewhat novice at best, but one particular piece caught my eye. It is a painting by Jackson Pollack entitled "Flame." This piece, which is, to say the least, is abstract. Although it is abstract, it still conveys an environment and setting. At first glance, it seems to be just a pattern of colors, but after comparing the placment of the colors and shapes, it seems to me to be a certain place in time or space. Ascending from what appears to be the ground, are bright red "flames," or shapes similar to it. The shades of red, yellow, and black look dark, and aggressively gothic, giving the total look of the piece fairly angry or suffering. It seems as though the black, red, and yellow colors are reaching out and around the light colored objects, almost smothering them. The few light colored shapes show to possibly be people, distorted and reaching for something. The overall appearance looks like a place between hell and purgatory. Most of the colors are red, yellow and black, and they are all very rich. The reds are mostly the same shade, which i can only describe as fire engine red (being a firefighting major). The black background doesn't stray from the original darkness, although intertwining between the reds and yellows. The few yellows in this oil painting are mere remnants of the red flames throughout the scene. As for the "human" objects, they feel vivid, but are pale in color, maybe because the rest of the painting is so dark. The only shapes in the piece that seem to be lighted at all are the people and the ground in front of them. All the rest of the shapes look simply pushed back. The irregularity of the shapes in this piece all have the same flow, either rising up like flames, or being suppressed such as the people. There are no definitive shapes, sharp cornes, or straight lines in this work. They seem to easily flow together, allowing the shading be the seperation as opposed...

Library Search Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Library Search - Research Paper Example The need for more information or further assistance on the library search. Create the reference for the article selected using correct APA format including: authors, year, article title, journal name, volume number, issue number, page numbers, italics, parentheses, punctuation, line spacing, and hanging indent. Type a quotation (10–20 words) from the selected article using correct APA format including quotation marks, authors’ names, year, page numbers, and parentheses. Do not use words or ideas the authors cited from another source. Summarize the article in 80–110 words. Be concise and clearly cover the main points of the article. Use correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Do not include the article title, journal, authors, or citations. Nursing theory is based on the expansion and understanding evidence based nursing practices and the contribution to the evidences. It also focuses on more comprehensive and diverse patterns away from just the narrow focus. Carper constitute four fundamental patterns in nursing. The fundamental practices constitute ethical, personal, empirical, and anesthetic practices. Mode of inquiry for development of evidence on each of the values is done differently. Each of the practices are considered a theory on its own. Different lenses are provided by the different nursing theories which are essential for evidence based nursing practices. Perfect inquiry is appropriate for generation and fostering the theories. Use 80–110 words to clearly state how you will use information learned from this article in your future practice. Be concise and clearly relate article contents to your practice. Use first person, correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Details and specifics regarding your own future use of this information are needed. Information from the searches should be stored in a systematic and a convenient way that enables reference. The information is arranged

In an increasingly dynamic environment, strategic management of risk Dissertation

In an increasingly dynamic environment, strategic management of risk has become a critical competency for organisations. From th - Dissertation Example It has also grown from a hot topic, one that was dealt with only by the most prestigious companies to one that has become a necessity to every company irrespective of its size and nature of business. Companies today face a considerable number of risks also because of international factors such as globalization, outsourcing and intense competition. Therefore, it is important for all companies to satisfy their risk needs through a formal risk management system. However, careful analysis and planning must precede the entire operation. This not only helps in smoother implementation, companies can develop plans to tackle some of the inherent limitations and disadvantages of the system before hand. It will also help the company determine the best course of action with regard to the risk management strategy eventually adopted. Once selected, the actual system is guided by a number of standard processes and phases each with its own set of requirements and objectives. The entire process is of a cyclic nature that starts with the identification an analysis phase and ends with the monitoring phase for a company new to the process, whereas in existing systems all the phases are carried out continuously. This is the only way to ensure effectiveness of the system. However, it need not be an overhead and the entire process can be integrated into the schedules of the employees of the company. Senior management involvement also goes a long way in ensuring the effectiveness of the system. Once implemented as per guidelines and having taken appropriate precautions, it is possible not only to achieve a safer degree of operation within the company; other benefits can also be reaped. For instance, risk management systems can offer one of ways of developing a long term competitive advantage which is critical in today's competitive environment. Risk management systems are still evolving and are in a dynamic state. Future work that establishes better guidelines for the implementation w ill assist several companies in understanding and implementing their own systems that is based on a unique structure and satisfied demands. 1. Research Question â€Å"In an increasingly dynamic environment, strategic management of risk has become a critical competency for organisations. From the perspective of an Operations Manager, present a case to the board of directors for adoption of a formal risk management process.† 1.1. Aim The aim of this report is to provide and propose to the senior management a detailed case for adopting a formal risk management process. 1.2. Objectives To achieve the aim of the report following objectives will have to be met: A. Demonstrate the importance of Risk Management Process in an organisation B. To present the advantages and disadvantages of adopting a formal risk management process C. To Analyse and Discuss why the organisation should adopt a formal risk management process D. To Conclude the findings of the report and present recommendat ions to the board 2. Literature Review