Organizational culture Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Organizational culture - Essay Example It also focuses on ways of implementing the concept of organisational culture in its operations so as to ensure optimal performance of the organisation. Recommendations will also be given at the end so as to suggest the best possible ways that can be implemented to ensure that there is compliance between the organisational culture and its stated goals. MSD is a multinational pharmaceutical company with headquarters in USA but it operates in more than 100 countries across the globe. Particular attention is given to MSD in the Arabian Gulf region where I am currently working in the sales field. The company has more than 150  000 employees around the globe and it operates in different areas with people from different cultural backgrounds. In my own country, there are more than 300 employees and of interest is that the organisation has more than 80 years in business now. However, as going to be outlined, the organisational culture needs to be constantly refined in order to meet the changing demands of the environment. There is also need for flexibility where the workers need to be developed and trained to play a part in decision making in areas that affect them and their work. According to Brown (1998), research suggests that strong, adaptable cultures which value stakeholders and leadership, and which have a strong sense of mission are likely to be associated with high performance over a long period of time. Basically, organisational culture is a system that tries to make a distinction between one organisation from the other and there are various definitions of organisational culture that have been developed over the years. â€Å"Organisational culture refers to a system of shared assumptions held by members which distinguishes one organisation from the other,† (Werner 2003: 25). In the case of MSD, it can be noted that there are no espoused values that are clearly stated by the

Art To Bring Us Closer To The Truth Philosophy Essay

Art To Bring Us Closer To The Truth Philosophy Essay Art is a lie which brings us closer to the truth- Pablo Picasso Ever since I can remember I have always loved art in one way or another. I remember, on numerous occasions, sitting my father down at the kitchen table and begging him to draw me a family of horses, this consisted of mum and dad and babies running along behind trying to catch up. For a long time I practically worshipped these pictures and let the horses run free in my imagination making them go on big adventures with one another. As I got older the pictures stayed with me, but I grew out of the way they looked. They no longer burst out of the page and came to life; they just did not look like real horses anymore. Life had disappeared from them. I suppose I fell into the trap in which many people fall into. This trap could be called ignorance. Many people believe that skill is the most important feature in a piece of art. They think that paintings or drawings that look-real must be the best because they have required the most attention from the artist. Some people say that these pieces are the true meaning of art. Of course this is something to admire about a piece of work, but does this mean that paintings or drawings with fewer detail are less good? Who is to say that these detailed pictures are the truth? Who is to say what the truth is? In order to put this theory into practice I have taken two pieces of art work. Albrecht Durers Crab made in 1495 and Rembrandt van Rijns Two Studies of a Bird of Paradise. It is obvious how much detail and time Durers watercolour of the Crab has taken but who was to say that the birds are less good and required less skill? Rembrandts Birds do an incredible job of portraying the texture and character of the Birds with merely a few simple lines. He grasps their curiousness and profound features of their faces along with the softness and majestic element of their bodies. The piece may not look as realistic but it portrays the birds characteristics much better, something which could be seen as portraying the true nature of the birds as opposed to a real life drawing. Another example of this are the Disney characters. Mickey Mouse looks nothing like a real mouse but the artist, Walt Disney, knew it would be better to distort or change the way the real thing looked. This could have been to make him seem more like a mouse because of his added characteristics and more pleasurable to watch for a younger audience. By making him less mousy he has made him even more mouse-like. Even though Mickeys appearance is unlike a real mouse at all, a distortion of the truth, you do not see people complaining about it. This is because when watching a film or studying this particular art, people are not worried about art as a work or piece, only a source of entertainment or pleasure. This could also be because Walt Disney is a respected and admired man who is seen as a classical artist whose work has been carried on for generations. Yet, if a modern artist were to draw something in his own personal way, just like Walt Disney once did, he would most likely be frowned upon and thought untalented. This leads us onto another piece. Pablo Picassos work of a hen and her chicks is an interpretation of a mothers caring nature towards her children. They way her body is bent towards them and her soft gaze shows that she is focused entirely on her chicks and their wellbeing. It really is a work that many people would find hard to criticise. However, when Picasso created his piece Cockerel he was not satisfied with giving a life-like aspect to the picture as he had done with the hen and her chicks piece. Instead, he wanted to grasp the birds belligerent and foolish nature. Picasso has taken a cockerel and changed it into something even more chickeny than the real thing. All of the cockerels characteristics are portrayed in the piece so that the onlooker can almost see, touch, hear and feel what the bird would be like in real life. This is where the statement Art is a lie which brings us closer to truth comes into account. The piece Cockerel is a lie because of its distortion of nature, it looks nothing like what a real cockerel looks like. However, it brings us closer to truth, closer to what a real cockerel behaves and acts like by its exaggerated features and comedic charms. In this work we can almost hear exactly what the bird would sound like, when interpreting the piece; one would suggest his voice would be loud, frantic and desperate. This is due to his bulging eyes, elongated neck, his mouth opened to a massive size and his small sharp tongue sticking out. The birds franticness and clumsiness is suggested from his outstretched wings and bowlegge d feet. His toes suggest a thought of scratching around and quick movement showing that he is all over the place. From Picasso portraying the cockerel to be like this, we can see the cockerel to be more like a real cockerel than if Picasso just drew one from life. We humans have a habit suggesting that nature must always look like what is considered, by us, to be normal in paintings. It must always look like what we are used to in our everyday life; we are almost forced from a very young age only to accept plain and predictable shapes and colours as the correct ones. An example of this is how we draw when we are younger. We are led to believe that a tree has one large straight trunk and a round bushy ball of leaves stuck on the top. We all know that no real tree looks like this, but if it were drawn any different, it would be thought unusual. Another example is how children perceive stars. Stars are not star-shaped at all as believed but every child will draw a star like this. This is also when art is a lie which brings us closer to the truth comes into account as well. Even though a star is not shaped like this, it still gives a clear outline that the small star gives off light; the stars hands acting like rays of light being given off. Altho ugh this exaggeration is not necessarily a bad thing, it would be better if everyone disconnected themselves from this trap and we look at things afresh, without interference. In fact, many artists are able to disconnect themselves from this and look at the world and the natural surroundings as if they have never seen them before. This means that they would be seeing everything for the first time. Who is to say that the sky is blue and clouds are white? In fact, we would probably find things in the most astonishing colours and forms. If every person was to think like this and every artist was not persuaded or affected by society, art would never be considered a lie. For me, a lie can be different for each individual person, we as humans have created lies. A lie is seen as something which is not the truth, not normal. Therefore, a piece of art which does not portray the normality of the world is therefore considered a lie. Yet, if there was no such thing as normality, there would never be such thing as a lie. Then we come back to the question; who is to say what the truth is, and what a lie is? I suppose the answer to this question is everyone. We all have different opinions on what is the truth and what is not, but if we all look at things outside of the box and with open eyes, surely we will be able to accept completely different things to what we are used to, to be normal. To conclude, I believe that skill is not the most important aspect in a painting or drawing. If an artist portrays what he or she wants to portray, it cannot be considered a lie. Furthermore, a lie is something which changes according to each individual. Some may believe something to be the truth, while others may believe it is not. No one really knows for sure what is the correct way of drawing or painting a certain object or form. And if they insist that they do and state that people draw it wrongly because it is not like that in normality, it just means that they have been persuaded by society and the people around them, as well as the banality of our own sense perception. An example of this is how children draw hearts in heart-shaped form. Hearts are not really shaped like this at all, but it is how everyone knows a heart to be drawn and is not considered a lie, yet it brings us closer to the truth by showing us that a heart has two sides; a left and a right side. This leads to b iological explanation of what each side does, the right side pumps blood to the lungs to be oxygenised and the left side pumps the oxygenated blood all around the body. The fact that the heart shape shows a left and right side would not be evident if it was just drawn as an oval-like shape. This is how art can bring us closer to the truth even if it is a lie. TOK ESSAY Art is a lie which brings us nearer to the truth (Pablo Picasso). Evaluate this claim in relation to a specific art form (for example visual arts, literature, theatre). Alice Elphinstone Centre number: 002351 Candidate Number: 026 Word Count: 1668

Critiques of Frederick Douglass Work, from The Narrative to the North

Critiques of Frederick Douglass' Work, from The Narrative to the North Star "Right is of no sex-Truth is of no color-God is the Father of us all, And all we are brethren." A brief biography of Frederick Douglass Some historical criticisms of Douglass' Narrative New criticisms of Douglass' work Frederick Douglass Links See the First edition of The North Star, Douglass's newspaper A brief biography of Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass was born into the institution of slavery in 1817, in Tuckahoe, Maryland. Frederick Douglass did not know the exact date of his birth so he adopted February 14th, because his mother used to call him her "little valentine." Douglass knew very little about his mother since she was a field hand on the plantation some twelve miles away, and tragically she died when he was a very young boy. Douglass did not know who his father was, but it was rumored he was the son of his white slave master, Aaron Anthony. As a child, some cruel slaveholders mistreated him. At times, to keep from starving, he competed with his master's dog for table scraps and bones. In 1825, he was sent to serve as a houseboy in the home of Hugh and Sophia Auld in Baltimore, Maryland. Mrs. Auld grew fond of Douglass and decided to teach him how to read and write. When Mr. Auld discovered this, he soon put a stop to it; however, Douglass had already acquired enough to carry on by himself. In 1832, Douglass went back to the harsh life on the plantation in Tuckahoe. For years later, along with several other slaves, Douglass attempted to escape, however the attempt was unsuccessful because one of the slaves revealed their plan. Viewed as a "bad slave," Douglass was sent to Mr. Covey's plantation. Covey was ... ...eated. Douglass made poignant points about manhood, Christianity and literacy that helped the freedom bells ring for all mankind. He did so in a peaceful and Christian manner that was exemplary and repeated in later years by civil rights activist Martin Luther King. Douglass opened the eyes for many both black and white to the shadows and indignities that slavery cast on all that were involved with it. Through his hard work, dedication and sacrifice he helped bring an end to the demon of slavery. Bibliography Almanac, Afro-American, "Biography of Frederick Douglass."(1996): 7 paragraphs.[On-line] Available: www.toptags.com/aama/bio/men/freddoug.htm File:bio Davis, Charles T., Henry Louis Gates Jr. The Slaves Narrative.London:Oxford Press Sundquist, Eric J., ed. Frederick Douglass: New Literacy and Historical Essays. Boston: Cambridge Press, 1990. Critiques of Frederick Douglass' Work, from The Narrative to the North Critiques of Frederick Douglass' Work, from The Narrative to the North Star "Right is of no sex-Truth is of no color-God is the Father of us all, And all we are brethren." A brief biography of Frederick Douglass Some historical criticisms of Douglass' Narrative New criticisms of Douglass' work Frederick Douglass Links See the First edition of The North Star, Douglass's newspaper A brief biography of Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass was born into the institution of slavery in 1817, in Tuckahoe, Maryland. Frederick Douglass did not know the exact date of his birth so he adopted February 14th, because his mother used to call him her "little valentine." Douglass knew very little about his mother since she was a field hand on the plantation some twelve miles away, and tragically she died when he was a very young boy. Douglass did not know who his father was, but it was rumored he was the son of his white slave master, Aaron Anthony. As a child, some cruel slaveholders mistreated him. At times, to keep from starving, he competed with his master's dog for table scraps and bones. In 1825, he was sent to serve as a houseboy in the home of Hugh and Sophia Auld in Baltimore, Maryland. Mrs. Auld grew fond of Douglass and decided to teach him how to read and write. When Mr. Auld discovered this, he soon put a stop to it; however, Douglass had already acquired enough to carry on by himself. In 1832, Douglass went back to the harsh life on the plantation in Tuckahoe. For years later, along with several other slaves, Douglass attempted to escape, however the attempt was unsuccessful because one of the slaves revealed their plan. Viewed as a "bad slave," Douglass was sent to Mr. Covey's plantation. Covey was ... ...eated. Douglass made poignant points about manhood, Christianity and literacy that helped the freedom bells ring for all mankind. He did so in a peaceful and Christian manner that was exemplary and repeated in later years by civil rights activist Martin Luther King. Douglass opened the eyes for many both black and white to the shadows and indignities that slavery cast on all that were involved with it. Through his hard work, dedication and sacrifice he helped bring an end to the demon of slavery. Bibliography Almanac, Afro-American, "Biography of Frederick Douglass."(1996): 7 paragraphs.[On-line] Available: www.toptags.com/aama/bio/men/freddoug.htm File:bio Davis, Charles T., Henry Louis Gates Jr. The Slaves Narrative.London:Oxford Press Sundquist, Eric J., ed. Frederick Douglass: New Literacy and Historical Essays. Boston: Cambridge Press, 1990.

Review of Related Studies Essay

A lot has been written about what supply management is, and how it relates not only to similar terms and to concept like purchasing, procuring, and sourcing, but also to concepts like management, logistics, and supply chain management. Most authors differentiate purchasing, procurement, sourcing, and supply management as follows: they start by stating that purchasing includes operational activities that are carried out more or less exclusively by one department, namely the purchasing department. The sequence of activities here usually starts with the need identification and ends with the tracking of purchasing activities. Procurement is then defined as being broader in scope and including some activities of strategic relevance. According to Dobler/Burt (1996), procurement includes not only purchasing but also tasks that are strategic in nature. The same logic is then applied to supply management as figure 1 shows. See on page 38 for the figure. Monczka/Trent/Handfield(1998) use the terms purchasing and procurement interchangeable throughout their book. In their view, purchasing and procurement are functional activities that â€Å"most often refer to day-to-day management of material flows and information†. They also define sourcing â€Å"a cross functional process that involves member of the firm other than those who work in the purchasing department, the sourcing management team may include members from engineering, quality, design, manufacturing, marketing, accounting, strategic planning, and other department† Kaufmann (1995) describe sourcing; â€Å"an integrative management approach to designing all supplier relations in the sense of a total relationship management† Arnold (1997) uses the term supply management as an umbrella term for the concept of procurement, materials management, and logistics. According to him, the latter includes inbound logistics, and internal logistics, as well as outbound logistics. Tempelmeier (1995) defines purchasing as contract-centered (as opposed to logistical activities implying the physical movement of goods). He defines procurement as all activities aiming at supplying the company with needed inputs. Corsten (1995) the process of purchasing denotes the act of acquiring the property right of the procurement goods. He defines procurement in a similar way as Tempelmeier. Sourcing is the process of planning and handling outside sources. He defines supply management as procurement with a strategic focus that acts proactively and contributes significantly to company performance. Koppelmann (1995) uses the term Procurement Marketing for nearly exactly the same set of activities as Dobler/Burt do for supply management. There is also some discussion about the types of purchases that fall under each of the definitions. International authors like Dobler/Burt (1996), Monczka/Trent/Handfield (1998), and van Weele (1995) restrict the scope of purchasing, procurement, sourcing or supply management to materials, services, and capital equipment. They do not include the supply of the company with financial resources or personnel. German authors like Arnold (1997), Fieten (1986), Pieper/Pfohl (1993), Tempelmeier (1995) argue differently: They say that from a theoretical standpoint all inputs have to be considered. Some of them like Arnold and Pieper/Pfohl however, pragmatically restrict the scope of purchasing, procurement, or supply management to materials.

Dinner With Friends

Within the field of psychology there are branches that explore different types of human behaviour. Some of those branches turn their attention to hidden aspects of the human nature, like for example research into our linguistic faculties, other deal with modeling of various situations to better investigate our individual or group modes of action.But perhaps one of the fields of psychology that deals with the realm of human life which is most familiar to us in our everyday goings-on is the branch investigating interpersonal communication. Interpersonal communication can be most generally defined as our communication with another person or within a group of persons. However, this overall description hides the true complexity and variety of the forms that interpersonal communication can take.Indeed, to this aspect of our social life we can attribute such fundamental elements of out interaction with people as ability to initiate and maintain conversations or arguments, to listen, to spea k privately and publicly, to generate and interpret patterns of nonverbal communication, manifest our unconscious modes of communication, and any other skills that actually enable us to be active members of society. At this point, considering the proximity of the phenomenon of interpersonal communication to our everyday life, we may wonder what are the proper ways of study of forms of interpersonal communication?Of course, psychology as a strict science has its own standards and methods of investigation. But at the same time I think that we can find a lot of examples of interpersonal communication happening on a regular basis right before our eyes. To see this we may turn to the film â€Å"Dinner With Friends† (2001) directed by Norman Jewison, which provides a lot of interesting aspects relevant to the theory of interpersonal communication. Let us take a closer look and discuss such aspects.The film â€Å"Dinner With Friends† tells a story of two married couples †“ Gabe and Karen, and Beth and Tom – that have been close friends for 12 years, and were spending their time over dinners discussing their relationships, their children, and other matters and interests that friends can share. However, when unexpectedly for Gabe and Karen Beth declares that she and Tom had decided to separate, this event inflicts a profound change in the pattern of their relationships.As both couples undergo emotional turmoils it turns out that, ironically, their mutual love of cooking may be the only thing that remains between them, while their former friendship is gone. â€Å"Dinner with Friends† is mostly built upon conversations as the vehicle to unfold the story. The personages talk a lot about different things, from their love of food to their ideas about the meaning of life, and the director managed to make dialogues in the film very life-like, akin to those that we would expect from really good friends.In this way, touching upon the theme of t he complexity of human relations that is familiar and important to most of us, the film provides very subtle insights into the nuances of friendship, marriage as a very delicate union between people, and divorce as a force that can have profound impact on lives of people. Now, speaking about interpersonal communication we may immediately begin to find examples of it in the film.Being the direct and the most personal form of interaction, interpersonal communication helps people learn about each other in an intimate way. We can see this in the film, which depicts communication between two people, also called dyadic communication. Dyadic communication occurs in privacy between Gabe and Karen, and Beth and Tom, and also between Karen and Beth, and Tom and Gabe, when due to the break-up of their traditional relations tensions develop between these women and men.In this regard, it is interesting to point out that as Gabe and Karen perceived their friendship with Beth and Tom as a close on e, after learning about the alleged betrayal of Beth by Tom Karen is angry that she had been unaware of the brewing troubles in their marriage. Thus, the previous apparent intimacy of relations between the couples was not completely true, and it could hardly be such. As Karen bitterly says, one can spend the whole life with another person, and in the end it may turn out that the person you fully entrusted your fate to is an impostor.To this, Gabe thoughtfully responds: â€Å"But it can`t be as simple as that†. Indeed, in accordance with the developmental view of interpersonal communication, with time communicators get to know more details about each another, develop ability to partly predict their behavior, and create their own rules of communication. But in the case of the couples from the movie, it seems that their established rules of communication at some point began to lag behind the changing nature of relationships within couples themselves, as most notably was the case with Beth and Tom.At the same time, being influenced and disturbed by the divorce of friends Gabe and Karen also had to reevaluate their seemingly healthy marriage. This fact hints about another quality of interpersonal communication, which lies in its effect on formation of our self-concepts through confirmation and gradual transformation of our identities. In application to the characters from the film, this can be evidenced by the belief of Gabe and Karen that they knew their friends very well, while in reality this was not the case.And when tensions between couples develop, Beth reevaluates the nature of gifts that Karen, who considered Beth to be â€Å"a mess†, had presented to her. In the scene where Beth declares that she has a new lover and Karen advises her to slow down, Beth observes: â€Å". . . you love it when I'm a mess. Every Karen needs a Beth. † It is not wonder that such aggressive stance of the person who had been your close friend can surely influe nce our self-perception. We also may interpret the interrelations between the characters of the film as representative of the small group communication aspect of interpersonal communication.While it is somewhat difficult to define a small group, some researches propose to consider as small such a group in which each participant can immediately sense and remember the presence of other participants. This definition suits the situations of the personages of the film â€Å"Dinner With Friends† very well. Judging from this viewpoint, small group communication between the couples can be interpreted as a dynamical process of receiving inputs, processing the information, and outputting certain behavioral modes.Input factors are present even before a group forms, and in our case it is the mutual background of the two couples, as Beth and Tom were in the first place introduced to each other by Gabe and Karen; process factors are developments that emerge in the process of communication within group, as exemplified in the film by rapid change of the format of individual relations between the personages themselves, and, consequently, between the couples in the aftermath of the break-up between Beth and Tom; finally, output factors are end results of the communication, and for Gabe, Karen, Beth, and Tom the end results were different, but in all cases prominent.For Beth and Tom the divorce meant the transformation of their lives, and for Gabe and Karen the separation of their friends from their small group serves as an impetus to come to conscious conclusion that â€Å"practical matters outweigh abandon† when it comes to their own family chores. On ground of what we have discussed, we can see that in the end of the film all its personages are deeply affected by the changes in the disposition of their dyadic relations and relations within their small group. In this way, it becomes clear that interpersonal communication has a very important role for all of us be cause it can influence the most important aspects of our life, friendship and marriage among them.