Nature of Conflict Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Nature of Conflict - Essay Example This makes the employees enter into hitch with the management or higher officials. They may go on strikes or do other sorts of protests. Major conflicts occur when, for example, employees experience gender discrimination, work overload, forced overtime, short deadlines, and no opportunities for promotion, reward or compensation. These factors reduce job security and the employees suffer from work related stress. Other major causes may include dissatisfactory wages and salaries, and poor communication between the management and employees due to which the latter feel that their problems are not being considered. Also, when employees feel that they are not being able to participate in the decision-making process, they may acquire conflicting views about the project at hand. All of these conflicts may get serious enough to be requiring a mediation plan for resolution. No matter the conflict is small or big, the management should make serious efforts to resolve it as soon as possible so t hat employees do not lose their morale (Wilmot & Hocker, 2011). Negotiation or Mediation Negotiation is necessary to solve conflicts. Sometimes, this negotiation is done through mediation. We define mediation as a process in which a third party intervention is sought for reconciliation between individuals or groups. The purpose of negotiation is to make possible the re-establishment of mutual tolerance between the parties involved. However, negotiation itself depends upon the friendly signals shown by the opponents leading to friendly re-union and cooperative bonding. Strasser and Randolph (2004, p.22) affirm that mediators should â€Å"accept conflict as an inescapable facet of human existence, with the possible consequence of reconciliation.† Negotiators and mediators should understand that conflict cannot be eliminated entirely. If negotiators start thinking that they will be able to eradicate conflict completely, then this perception will be a barrier to an effective impl ementation of the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) process. It will also make the negotiators forceful and aggressive toward resolution. Thus, the negotiators need to adjust their behaviors and attitudes so that they can efficiently deploy conflict management techniques. Personal Experience This section of the paper describes my own case as an example of workplace conflict and negotiation process. I worked as an internee in a company in my city. As I stated, most conflicts occur due to unfair treatment or policy changes from the management side, this incident also involves a conflict between the manager and I. It was about the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA). For reader’s information, the major responsibility of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 is to make accommodations for disabled employees, under the title I of the Act. ADA makes sure that the disabled employees do not have to face discrimination by their seniors or co-workers when they are at the workplace. In order to get protection by ADA, the individual must have a disability which is defined by the Act as â€Å"a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities† (U.S. Department of Justice, 2005). All persons who have in their medical history that they have been or are going through such a disability, or people perceive him as

Rape In The Us Military Criminology Essay

Rape In The Us Military Criminology Essay Cases of rape and sexual assault in the ranks of our U.S. military continue to grow, and very few proactive steps seem to be taken, by higher up to bring the offenders to justice, to try and put an end to these horrific occurrences. The military institution seems unable to end this issue on its own, and seems in need of our country to step in and make sure these crimes stop, the offenders come to justice, and the victims get the help and support they need. To get to the heart of the issue is it important to know why rape is so common in the military, why these crimes often go unreported, and what steps the military and our country can take to help prevent future rapes. It is important to look into rape cases and try to determine the causes of the rape. What are the situations in which these rapes occur? In a documentary shown in class titled The Invisible War a large number of women talked about being raped while serving in the military. None of these women did anything that would suggest their interest in sexual relations, but each one of them was forced into the act. One common element that relates all these cases together is that in each situation the woman that was violated was one of the only women in her military unit. With such a high ratio of men to women the risk of sexual assault and rape greatly increases. In one case concerning the Coast Guard the unit was all men until a new female recruit was stationed there along with them. Almost immediately she had everyones attention, and it was greatly unwanted. She immediately became a victim of verbal sexual misconduct, and as a result asked to be moved to another duty station. Her authorities denied this request. As a result a few weeks later her own brothers in arms raped her. In the military camaraderie is something that is strived after, but these men displayed nothing of the sort. With such a minority of women, and in some cases one woman on her own risk of rape greatly increases. Just because there is a minority of women doesnt really explain why men would take advantage of this. One possible answer to this mystery can be answered in a study that was conducted in the Navy that revealed a history of men coming into the service having either raped or having attempted rape at twice the rate of the civilian population. (West West, 2012) This suggests that a large amount of men in the military have a history of rape that when mixed with easy targets makes the chances of rape occurring escalate. With recruits like this being allowed into our countries military, it is obvious why so many rapes happen. Physical explanations and actual cases and studies do help give an explanation of rape in the military, but there is also a sociological perspective and ethological and psychophysiological explanations. The sociological perspective of rape helps to explain why the military as an organization is a place where rape offenders thrive. There are three aspects that are used to explain this theory. The first aspect looks into the militarys organizational structure and culture. The military is a hierarchal one that was organized to produce warriors who are taught to overcome barriers and to be manly. This culture is a very masculine one. Aaron Belkin states a commander hierarchy combined with a culture that emphasizes dominance creates a recipe for rape. Women do not fit into this type of military very well, and that ones that try often find themselves the victim of a horrible crime. The second aspect, masculinity, was just viewed in combination with the first. The final aspect is the mechan ism for redress. The fact that the whole procedure for investigation is done in-house poses a serious problem. Other countries take cases of rape outside the military and hand it over to civilian police. These three aspects make up the sociological perspective of rape. To introduce ethological and psychophysiological explanation as an understanding of human actions which we saw as primarily voluntaristic, motivated strategies manifest in competing interests, arouses, not altogether surprisingly, a sense of vertigo or indeed nausea. (Littlewood, 1997) With these perspectives on rape it does help us to understand a little better why rape occurs in the military. With rape being such a serious crime, it is a strange fact that so many rapes go unreported. Answering that question will give a better understanding of how serious rape affects the victims of the crime. Often when stats are gathered about a crime, many crimes arent reported. This dark figure of crime is credited to the fear that rape puts into victims minds. A very sad example is from The Invisible War. Kori, one of the victims, was being interviewed and during the interview she finally admitted to her husband that she was only a victim of sexual assault but that she in fact had been raped, and not only was she raped, but in one of the sexual assaults she was beaten so severely that her jaw was smashed. And the discs in her neck were damaged so badly that she required surgery, which the Coast Guard did not do-even though there was physical evidence of assault. (West West, 2012) Finding something hard to tell your own husband puts in perspective how hard it would be to tell anyone e lse, especially a member of the unit in which you were raped. In the military when subordinates are targets of a higher ranks wants and desires it makes it difficult to disobey those orders, no matter how unlawful. In the Army Times news article A Secret Sex Life, army Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair has engaged in a deliberate, degrading course of conduct where he targets his subordinates to satisfy his abhorrent desires. (Gould, 2012) This follows up on the previous point, because the victims are for the most part helpless when the offender has power over them both physically and with rank. When the person who commits the rape is also the person who gives you your daily orders and commands it makes it very difficult to accuse that person. One reason it is so difficult is that to achieve these higher ranks an individual has to demonstrate loyal dedication to the military and they are viewed as the best examples in the ranks. So when this person is accused of a crime by an insubordinate that has been in the military for less than a year it becom es a matter of whose word has more swaying power. Rather than suffer the embarrassment of the rape, and still not find justice, victims choose the alternate route, keeping silent. In the article A Secret Sex Life an unnamed female captain said she repeatedly tried to end the relationship andà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦she asked Sinclair to transfer her out of his command. (Gould, 2012) Although this didnt start out as actual rape, just fraternization, it escalated into a sexual relationship in which the female officer felt trapped and was exposed to sexual assault. The women even threatened suicide at one point to try and get her point across to the general, and to prevent having to suffer the embarrassment of everyone knowing the truth about her and the general. All these unreported cases of rape are known as the dark figure of crime. This dark figure of crime is that portion of the total crimes committed each year that never comes to light. (Hemmens Walsh, 2011) Rapes in the military are definitely underreported, an issue, which desperately needs to be addressed, and a solution needs to be made. If more rapes were reported it would give investigators a better idea of why they happen, where the majority of them take place, and how to best help eliminate future rapes from occurring. With the above information on why rapes occur and why so many go unreported what steps can the military take to prevent future rape? Being a member of the United States Marine Corps I know first hand quite a few of the steps that the Department of Defense, DoD, is taking to try and prevent future rapes. The main tactic they use is to try and educate us, the members of the military, is to show us how rape destroys both the life of the offender and the victim. They make it very clear the strict punishment that will be imposed on the offender if he or she chooses to commit this heinous crime. One problem with these educational videos is that they often come across as comical and poorly done. The lack of seriousness and maturity that many military members show during the viewing of these films really shows me how serious the issue must be. Knowing that the punishments dont usually fit the crime makes me very pessimistic while watching these films too. The truth of the matter shows that a round 87% of sexual crimes remain a secret and do not ever attract the attention that they need to go to trial. The DoD does have aims to better protect the rights of rape defendants. We see this with the Pentagonà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦finalizing changes to the militarys rape law that experts say will shore up the rights of troops accused of sexual assault. (Tilghman, 2012) So instead of trying to protect the victims the DoD is taking the opposite approach in trying to protect the offenders who are on the defensive. One good change that the DoD is going to take is that they will allow civilian agencies access to victims and offenders records, and military personnel wont only use them. This will at least allow the victims the use of their own attorneys. The military does use the Uniformed Victim Advocate, UVA. The UVA is a member of the chain of command whose main role is to help victims of a military crime. This is a method that helps the victim deal with his or her issues, and know how best to address the crime committed, but it doesnt help prevent the actual crime from happening. In order to put an end to rape happening in the military the chain of command needs to make it clear that there is a zero tolerance policy when rape is committed, and they need to stand behind this rule. One of the main steps that the military needs to take in order to help prevent rape is to have a better screening process for those interested in joining. As we saw before with the Navy recruits being allowed to join, this cannot be allowed. The last and most important step that the military needs to take is to address the sociological perspective of rape and the three aspects that go along with it. They need to either ban women from the military altogether, a path that I feel would be the most appropriate, or they can take measures to give the females in the military more protection. I feel women in the military will always be vulnerable to attacks, and even though all rapes dont involve women a majority of them do. Rape, in the military, needs to stop. The DoD needs to put its fist down and make punishment for offenders and the protection of victims of the utmost importance. It affects too many people, and if it isnt tolerated in the civilian world then the same should hold true for the military lifestyle as well. Rape is too common in the military, too often it goes unreported, and more safety nets and precautions need to be put in place if women are to be a productive part of our military. Following simple guidelines for insuring these issues being resolved would go a long way for our country and would help produce a positive view on the U.S. military.

Graduation Speech -- Graduation Speech, Commencement Address

(Love you mom and dad in Romanian) A lot of people here today probably didn't understand what I just said because I am Romanian, but if you take a look at my parents face they know I love them. I am Romanian and my parents came to the U.S. and could have chosen any state but they chose Washington. For all the people who don't appreciate Washington as much as me let me lay down some vibes. After I went to Arizona and California and some other states I came to realize that everything here is so much greener. Washington has the best-tasting tap water and yes, there is a difference in taste of water. Did you know Washington has an awesome kelp forest? People from all around the world come here to dive in our ocean to see our kelp forest. If you want some investment tips invest in kelp cause there is going to be a big boom in that industry. The city of Seattle is one of the greatest. It is so artsy and everyone here is so nice. I just felt I should point out that we have one of the greate st states in the United States. The beauty of doing a graduation speech is you get to say what ever you want. I thought that was going to be easy but, as I look back through the four years of high school the only time I wrote something was when I was assigned it. So you would think such a young thriving mind would take advantage of this and spill his guts out. So I typed and typed and well, I kept getting nowhere. I watched other commencement speakers from the HBN archive talk about our future and realized that they had some pretty fancy words of advice. Now I know I cannot give you advice on the future because I don't have the experience. What I will give you people here today is some grade "A" knowledge about a place that you guys might not of ev... ...iday album. That's the beauty of The Simpsons, it doesn't matter how dumb you are everyone has their place in the city. They keep true to them selves and eventually there moment of fame will come. Everyone, know your Simpsons! Now I want to get out of here as much as all you people, it just seems as though the last day will never end. So I just want to say respect each other and never give up on any of your dreams because you get one life and you might as well make it a fun one. So as we leave I want you all to know that I have the best wishes for all of you and if any of you see my comic book, Stickmen Revolution, for sale go ahead and help me out a bit. I leave you with a joke, (Romanian Joke) I know some of you might have had a hard time understanding that but if you take a look at my parents' faces that was, that was a really funny joke. For The Revolution!

The Challenges of Strategic Management

Strategic Management 313 News Critique – Topic 1 – The Challenges of Strategic Management *Mishal Ibrahim Mohamed *Didi 12928039 1. News item sources Gross, D. 2010. Major new app store to take on Apple, others. http://www. cnn. com/2010/TECH/02/15/app. store/index. html? iref=allsearch (accessed March 6, 2010). Kincaid, J. 2010. The Wholesale Applications Community Sounds Like A Disaster In The Making. http://www. washingtonpost. com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/15/AR2010021502209. html (accessed March 6, 2010). Mobile firms unite to offer applications. http://news. bbc. co. uk/2/hi/technology/8515813. stm (accessed March 6, 2010). Schenker, J. L. 2010. Mobile Industry Strikes Back at Google and Apple. http://www. businessweek. com/blogs/europeinsight/archives/2010/02/mobile_industry. html (accessed March 6, 2010). 2. Summary On February 15th 2010, the world's largest 24+ companies that deal with telecommunications have announced that they are tying up with each other to form what they call the Wholesale Applications Community (Gross 2010). This strategy is aimed at creating a unified open platform to create applications to work on any phone, including any carrier and any operation system (OS) that they are using (Kincaid 2010). As we know, Apple dominates the app market with more than 3 billion downloads in 18 months (_Mobile firms unite to offer applications 2010). The operators realised that their current strategy of creating individual applications for each of their phones was not able to come even close to the market share and the competitive advantage that Apple's App store has (Gross 2010). They realized that if they combined their efforts with each other they would be able to serve 3 billion customers collectively (Schenker 2010). Currently all most all third party developers have all been developing for Apple's App Store which amounts to about 140, 000 applications and almost completely ignoring the rest of the market (Schenker 2010). The Wholesale Applications Community's plan is to balance this market by bringing these developers towards them since they would be serving a bigger market collectively (Schenker 2010). They aim to have this common standard by a maximum of 12 months (Mobile irms unite to offer applications _2010). *3. Links* to topic This news critique links to Topic 1 – The challenges of strategic Management in many ways. Firstly the topic talks about what a strategy is and what achieving competitive advantage means. Apple in this case has achieved competitive advantage using its App Store. It has dominated the market for a long time with its app lications which other companies were not able to imitate as efficiently (Gross 2010). Secondly, the topic talks about how there are intended strategies and emergent strategies and the implementation of these strategies. Since Apple had such a market dominance, the original strategy for the other companies were to make applications and application stores by themselves but as the market changed they decided to improvise and implement a new strategy which was to work with each other to make a universal application store that would work on all their phones (Schenker 2010). The aim of this strategy as explained in the summary was to even the market and reduce the competitive advantage that Apple had over the rest (_Mobile firms unite to offer applications _2010). 4. What can be learnt There is a lot of things that can be learnt from this. For one, it shows the importance of implementing strategies and the power of achieving competitive advantage. The article said that Apple's App Store had 3 billion downloads in 18 months because of how brilliant their app store was compared to the rest of the competition (_Mobile firms unite to offer applications _2010). What was also learnt was that no one strategy would work forever and that strategies need to be consistently changing based on the environment around the company as well as what the competition is doing. If the other telecommunication companies just stood still with their old strategy then it is most likely that Apple would gain even more competitive advantage over them. They adapted and changed their strategies to match the market and compete. 5. Future developments There is a strong debate in whether this would be successful or not. Rob Conway, CEO of the GSM Association is extremely excited about this since he feels that it will be the start of an equal market with much more innovation (Gross 2010). Andy Rubin, Google VP of engineering, on the other hand believes that this is merely a dream and is extremely sceptical that it would work since he believes that the market place is too fragmented and also the specifications of each phone is too varied to create a singular format (Kincaid 2010). I personally think that this is both good and bad. I do agree that this would create more innovation and ultimately more value for the customers since finally competition would be created in the application market, but at the same time I do notice certain problems. For example if they are creating applications that would work on any phone then I feel it is likely that we might start seeing too much similarity in phones. The sizes of phones would be almost the same, the screen size would be almost the same and so forth. Nothing would be more unique than the other and it is likely that the companies may argue with each other on what the final design should be. Then again if these application are made in such a way that it could fit any size then there should not be much of a problem. In conclusion, I guess time will tell how effective this strategy will be for the mobile phone market.

Contribution of women in the agriculture according to the sub-sectors Essay

Crop Production In Bangladesh, a common social perception exists according to which women in the farm households do not perform field and market work and Men do not undertake most of the productive activities carried out in the proximity of the homestead. But in reality among poor households, such clearly demarcated gender divisions of labor do not apply. The traditional gender relations with women’s involvement in post-harvest work and men’s in fieldwork have not remained static over time. Presently, due to extreme poverty and a food crisis, social norms and traditions are changing and women are appearing in the field as well. About 60-70% of women from landless and near-landless households work as agricultural wage laborers, whereas women from larger farms do not participate in field activities. In the Grameen Krishi Foundation working areas in North-West Bangladesh, women equally share all tasks in rice production, even the presumably male task of irrigation. Forestry Women use the forest products for food, fuel as well as for handicrafts. Women in rural Bangladesh are responsible for obtaining the household fuel supply. They collect firewood from the forests. A traditional role of Bangladeshi women is collecting dung for fuel from the forests where cattle graze. Cow dung is the largest source (6. 6 million ton or 26% in 1992-93) of traditional fuels in the unorganized sector. Women also have a major role in homestead forestry. Livestock In Bangladesh, women are in general responsible for livestock and poultry rearing. Poultry rearing is a traditional activity performed by women for income generation. Feeding livestock, cleaning sheds, securing them properly for the night, and health care are the activities performed by women. Men are involved in the heavy work with the animals such as taking them out of the compound. Owing to their crucial role in livestock care, women are generally consulted while buying and selling the livestock. Women take care of the farmyard manure collection thus reducing recycling, which has important consequences for soil fertility. Fisheries Women in Bangladesh have diversified roles in fisheries, with substantial participation in small-scale fisheries. In Barisal and Rajashahi districts, women catch fish. They, to a large extent, carry out the drying, curing, and marketing of fish as hawkers, stall keepers in permanent market places and weekly bazaars. The majority of the employees in shrimp processing plants in Chittagong and Khulna are women. Women are also predominantly involved in net-making, the main income generating occupation in many families, and freshwater fish farming (FAO, 1980). Women have traditionally participated primarily as family labor in preparing fish nets and, in some areas, in fish processing. In some NGO and government programs, women from landless households cultivate fish individually or jointly in leased ponds, either within or near the homestead. Contribution of Agriculture in National Export-Earnings Agriculture of Bangladesh has not occupied an important place in the external trade yet. Contribution of agriculture to the export earnings even now is not so significant, still the potential of agro-based/ agro processed products is becoming visible now and there are valid reasons as to why this sub-sector should get due attention of the policy makers, trade bodies as well as producers/ exporters. Bangladesh as most of the LDC and net food importing developing countries has conflicting interests on many issues of agricultural negotiations, particularly on food security and market access perspective. Agriculture contributes about 9% of the world trade, but the world trade in agriculture was never run under a free trade regime. Budget Year Export-Earnings from Agriculture Rate of Export-Earnings 1991-92 268 13. 44 1992-93 314 13. 17 1993-94 347 13. 69 1994-95 452 13. 01 1995-96 476 12. 25 1996-97 526 11. 88 1997-98 502 9. 70. 1998-99 422 7. 92 1999-00 440 8. 15 2000-01 484 7. 48 2001-02 390 6. 51 2002-03 462 7. 59 2003-04 553 7. 84 2004-05 310 5. 35 Fig: Contribution of Agriculture in Export Earning Contribution of agriculture in credit market Agro finances a very much important part of the agriculture. And a huge amount of agri financing comes from the bank loans which is both Government and Non Government bank loan. Besides many NGO’s are also giving agricultural loan. So that it can be said that agriculture has a number of shares in the credit market. It has been concluded in different studies that the agricultural credit advanced by the financial institutions (banks) is not easily available to the farmers. On the other hand, Grameen Bank and quite a number of NGOs are giving credit to the farmers, although much of that credit is being used for non-agricultural purposes. However, the major proportion of agricultural credit still comes from the financial institutions. But the amount of credit that is available from this institutional source fulfills only an insignificant portion of the total credit requirement.