Life After Disease Research Paper

Life After Disease Research Paper The simple fact that Crohn's disease often recurs after surgery makes it quite critical for the individual and doctor to consider carefully the advantages and hazards of surgery compared with different treatments. Gynecologic infections are somewhat more common, and might be harder to eradicate, in the HIV population. A few of the indicators can vary from mild to severe. There are lots of symptoms related to endocarditis. Treatment is dependent upon the particular disease you've got and on the patient's circumstances. Alcoholism obviously impacts the life span of the alcoholics, but nevertheless, it may also be dangerous to the other due to violent temperament of the alcoholics. If any facet of the topic isn't specified, think about the ideas you could put in your essay. You can't compose an essay if you don't have a notion of what things to write about. Anyway, it is going to be simpler for you to develop the principal ideas of an essay. Any psychology topic you require, we've got a suggestion for a wonderful paper. Disease Research Paper Secrets That No One Else Knows About With simple changes it's feasible for individuals to reduce the effect of CVDs and a lot of other associated health difficulties. Furthermore, his health is severely affected in the long term. You should have your reasons, and our primary concern is that you wind up getting a great grade. Instead, a new system must be pl aced into place that realizes that increasingly more young individuals are getting to be sexually active. Various arteries supply various regions of the heart with oxygenated blood. Clinical study shows that the growth of atherosclerosis occurs in childhood. Blood tests searching for signals of diabetes, kidney disease and higher cholesterol may be done. In case you have PAD, you have a higher chance of also having blockages in different arteries throughout the body that could lead to heart attack and stroke. If blood circulation is restricted, so is your capacity to be active. As significant blood cholesterol itself doesn't cause symptoms, a lot of people may not bear in mind that their cholesterol level is high. In case the level is high, it needs to be lowered to lessen your susceptibility to coronary heart disease. If you experience constant stress on a prolonged period, you could be at a greater chance of developing high blood pressure, resulting in a heart attack. As the disease progresses, the individual may also start to have other difficulties, like problems with thinking and walking. For women in the USA, heart disease is the major cause of death. Celiac Disease affects people in various ways. It is a disease that is very common, but a lot of people do not know about it. Though chest pain is an indicator of a heart attack occurring, angina pectoris isn't a heart attack. The inflammation tends to return in regions of the intestine next to the area that's been removed. Hemodialysis can be utilized in the event the kidneys are not able to purify blood from the toxins and it's used for cleaning and filtering the blood to get rid of any additional body toxins and salts. Coronary heart disease (CHD) is a key source of death for both women and men in the usa. What You Should Do to Find Out About Disease Research Paper Before You're Left Behind Scientists have identified 270 unique mutations that can either reduce production or stop the full purpose of protein C. The food cells eat is a kind of sugar called glucose. Even people without protein C deficiency ought to take action to stop clots. People with protein C deficiency might want to take additional measures. Promising results are reported by several studies, but more resources ought to be invested into research that has the capacity to uncover a cure. Families are encouraged to request an autopsy for a contribution to learning more regarding the genetics of AD. Scientists have described two types of vitelliform macular dystrophy with similar capabilities.

Causes of the Fall of the Roman Empire Essay - 1421 Words

For a long period of time, Rome seemed like an unstoppable empire. It conquered the majority of the land surrounding it, including Greece, Turkey, Iraq, and many of its other neighboring countries. It seemed as though Rome would conquer the entire world, as it was the center of it, until it began to decline in 476 C.E. The very aspects that made it so successful were the ones that caused its collapse. Various political, religious, and economic reasons caused its downfall. The fact that the entire economy of Rome collapsed and money became worthless was a major reason for the empire’s collapse. In addition, the loss of a common religion and lack of efficient ruling in relation to its vast territory affected the empire. The Roman†¦show more content†¦They were the main economic boost of the empire, and were now lost. Unlike with political and religious reasons involved in the fall of the empire, regardless of what laws were changes and removed or what actions we re taken, nothing could reverse the effect of this terrible economy on the Roman Empire. (http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=22703, Sterns page 108) At one time, all of Rome was united by a common religion. This religion, commonly referred to as the Roman religion, was derived from the religion in Greece. Members of this religion, which included the majority, if not all, of the Roman citizens, worshiped many different gods, including the creator or father god, Jupiter, the sun god, Apollo, the god of inspiring wars, Mars, and many others as well. The popularity of this religion began to decline when Christianity arose. It appealed to the majority of the people, particularly the lower class and slaves, who now had something to put their hope and faith in. This religion spread rapidly, and Roman emperors felt that because it was so influential it would become a possible threat. These leaders began persecuting Christians, but many Romans had already committed to this religion and refused to abandon it because they viewed it as the most important part of their life. This led to a lack of patriotism in Roman citizens who then rejected politics and became independent of the government. (http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=22703,Show MoreRelatedThe Causes And Fall Of The Han And The Roman Empire1065 Words   |  5 PagesThroughout history, there were various empires which developed into great, powerful forces. These empires expanded their lands to new places but, these empires ultimately came to an end. Amongst these great empires, were the Han and the Roman empire. Both were great in power but, due to political, social, and economic causes, they came to an end. Although they do partake in the equal shares of corruption and problems with the military, they also had fair shares of differences, regarding their declinesRead MoreReasons For The Fall Of The Roman Empire1127 Words   |  5 PagesWhy the Roman Empire Fell The Roman Empire was the most influential and structured government in history.Although they were more advanced they could not avoid the pitfalls that all countries face.Throughout history and even now civilizations can be dependant on these basic needs such as just political leadership, keeping the middle class at bay,economy, and religious morals,but unfortunately the Roman Empire had difficulties maintaining these basic needs. Through my research I have found severalRead MoreEssay on The Fall of the Roman Empire1078 Words   |  5 PagesFall of the Roman Empire Name: Institution: â€Æ' Fall of the Roman Empire Introduction The Roman Empire faced many problems in the third century. Many of these problems came within the empire and other forces that were outside the empire. The only thing that seemed to aid in the holding of this great empire was drastic economic, political, and military reforms, which looked as essential elements that would prevent the collapse of the empire. Large groups of historians come to terms with the idea thatRead MoreThe Decline Of The Imperial Collapse Of Rome And Greece1725 Words   |  7 PagesDecline and fall of the Mediterranean and Chinese civilizations was a result of population decrease, weak government, a frail economy, and invasion. The causes of the imperial collapse in Rome and Greece(The Mediterranean region)with the causes of imperial collapse in the East Asia during the period 600 BCE toward 600 CE has had an remarkable achievements but those same achievements have caused them into decline. A combination of these causes sparked the slow decline of these once great empires.. . Read MoreThe Fall Of The Roman Empire1537 Words   |  7 PagesAncient Rome was an empire so dominant, wealthy and economically- stable which came to a dramatic fall in the period of 250AD- 500AD. Ancient Rome faced unexplained unfortunate events which crumbled the Great Empire from the affluent empire to a impoverished society. For centuries historians have timelessly theorised and analysed many debates and research in relation to the Fall of the Roman Empire. What really caused the predominate Roman Empire to fall? Did Rome fall naturally? Was disease, suchRead MoreThe Roman Empire: What Went Wrong?1253 Words   |  6 Pages300I The Roman Empire: What went wrong? Rome was founded as a small farming town in 753 BC. It grew to a vast empire that enveloped the whole Mediterranean Sea. It spanned from the western shores of what is now Portugal, to as far as the modern day Persian Gulf to the east. It remained as the world’s largest and most powerful empire in the ancient world for about 1100 years. But by 476 AD, the stress of war and the multiple sackings of Rome proved too much for the once mighty empire. There haveRead MoreFall of the Roman Empire758 Words   |  4 PagesTaylor Davino Professor Horsley HIS 126 3 March 2010 The fall of the Roman Empire Political, economic and social aspects were all involved in the fall of the Roman Empire. In 395 A.D., Rome was divided into two empires, with one capital in Rome and the other in Constantinople. During that time, the western Roman Empire was being invaded by barbarian tribes from the North. In 410, the Visigoth tribe succeeded in conquering the western capital in Rome. In 476, the western EmperorRead MoreThe Fall Of The Roman Empire846 Words   |  4 PagesTake Home Essay Final Fall 2014 A1. For an empire that lasted nearly 500 years, the fall of the Roman Empire was influenced by various different events. Four troubled ingredientes lead to the demise of the the greatest empire of all time; politics, money, social, and war. It is important to note that the fall of the Roman Empire does not mean that the romans lost everything, it is just a reference to the fall of the western roman empire. One of the causes of the fall of the west was that ofRead MoreThe Fall Of Rome s Collapse1199 Words   |  5 PagesEvan Reilly Professor Latham Western Civ 1 12 December 2015 The Fall of Rome For hundreds of years the empire of Rome and its citizens fought with neighboring territories and expanded their territory until they had created a vast empire which included much of modern day Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Although many historians and professors claim the fall of the Roman empire was because of excess and corruption, invasions by barbarian tribes, military overspending, economic problemsRead MoreThe Rise of the Papacy948 Words   |  4 Pagespaper will look into the primary reasons for the rise of the Roman papacy to power, and a few of the many things that aided the papacy in getting there. The fall of the Roman Empire is clearly a key factor in the rise of the papacy, so a look into the factors that caused the fall of the Roman Empire is essential. Secondly, a look into how the church positioned itself, to step into the vacuum of power left behind by the fall of the Roman Empire will prove to be needed. Lastly, there will be a brief look

Gorton V Federal Commissioner Of Taxation †Myassignmenthelp.Com

Question: Discuss About The Gorton V Federal Commissioner Of Taxation? Answer: Introducation Corporation Law introduce fundamental rule which states, company is considered as separate legal entity. In other words, company is distinct natural person in the eyes of law which is completely distinct from its members and directors. This legal entity has similar rights and duties which any other natural person has. It must be noted that in actual company is legal entity and not a natural person which means it is not possible for company to conduct its operations itself. It is the corporation which employs peoples and authorized them to perform some particular acts. Therefore, it becomes necessary to impose primary or equivalent liability on the corporation also for the acts committed by its accused employees (Gurunnay, n.d.). For this purpose, Court develops identification principle in case Lennard's Carrying Co Ltd v Asiatic Petroleum Co Ltd [1915] AC 705. In this case, Viscount Haldane LC stated: Company does not have its own mind, and its directing will was imposed in the person acting on behalf of the company known as its agent, but in actual its real directing mind was the person who was the center of the personality of the corporation. Lord Denning sated in case H.L. Bolton Company v. T.J. Graham Sons that, company can be equated with the body of human. He further stated that, directors and mangers of the company who can be considered as directing mind and will was the brain and nervous system of the company. After considering above facts, it is clear that company is also liable for the acts of its agents if such agents are the directing mind and will of the company. Piercing the corporate veil is considered as legal decision, and in this Court determines the rights and liabilities of the corporation as the rights and liabilities of its members. There is fundamental rule that organization is separate legal entity which is distinct from its members and only responsible for the debts incur by the company. Countries adopted common law usually follows this principle but in exceptional cases lift the corporate veil to make the actual person liable. Usually, in very rare and exceptional cases Court pierce the corporate veil. In case AGC (Investments) Limited v Commissioner of Taxation (Cth), Hill J stated that situations in which Court pierce the corporate veil are very circumscribed. This doctrine was criticized as sacrifice elements for form. In case Gorton v Federal Commissioner of Taxation, Windeyer stated that this doctrine result the law in unreality and formalism. Usually it was argued that decision stated in case of Salomon that was principle of separate legal entity was considered as fundamental problem because House of Lords fail to provide the exact details about the situations in which Court must apply the principle of separate legal entity, situations in which this principle of separate legal entity was not applied and also those situations in which person refused to enforce the contract related to the corporate. After considering above facts, it is clear those situations in which Court lift the corporate veil are very rare and usually includes cases in which dishonest intension of person is involved. References: Gurunay, P. The Directing Mind and Will Test in Corporate Criminal Liability. International Journal of Legal Insight. Volume 1(3). Pp- 105-109. Lennard's Carrying Co Ltd v Asiatic Petroleum Co Ltd [1915] AC 705. HL Bolton (Engineering) Co Ltd v TJ Graham and Sons Ltd: CA 1957. AGC (Investments) Limited v Commissioner of Taxation (Cth) (Unreported, Federal Court, Hill J, 22, February 1991). Gorton v Federal Commissioner of Taxation (1965) 113 CLR 604 (Barwick CJ, Taylor and Windeyer JJ).

Mother courage and her children Essay Example

Mother courage and her children Paper Even more than most of Bertolt Brecht’s plays, â€Å"Mother Courage and Her Children† has irony at its centre. Its central events are heartrending: a mother loses all three of her children, and her own chances for a decent life, in violent and even sadistic ways, and continues staggering onward, surviving by her wits and her sheer will. And yet, Brecht wanted his plays to be performed in such a way that the audience would not be seduced into caring for or identifying with the characters. He wrote them so that in their very structure, they would continually remind the audience that they were just actors and that the integral part of the production is not the story, but the meaning behind it. With their rush of disconnected scenes, often framed by explicit narration, cynical violence, cruelty and suffering, Brecht’s plays tend to be the sort of challenge that any director relishes. In the essay, I should like to attempt to convey how I would prepare and direct actors for the last two scenes of â€Å"Mother Courage†. It is often understood that Brecht did not want his actors to embody and express emotions in the way that, for instance, Stanislavski would have typically ask them to. He preferred us to understand the complex realism behind a line like â€Å"Whenever there are great virtues, its a sign somethings wrong. † This poses choices: when Mother Courage has to cradle her dead daughter in her lap, she can either express her agony or she can bear it with stoicism and perhaps humour. We will write a custom essay sample on Mother courage and her children specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Mother courage and her children specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Mother courage and her children specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer I would choose the latter, because from a Brechtian point of view, rather than Mother Courage being an audacious character who earns the audience’s respect, it would portray that she cares more about her business and exploitation of war than her own children surely not an appropriate mindset of a mother. To prepare my actors for this challenge, I would make sure that they had all considered their â€Å"GEST†. This means that they should be prepared to express their characters’ emotion and social attitudes in a clear, stylised way. They should do this by practicing things such as their body language and their gestures. I would want my actors to demonstrate their character rather than trying to make them naturalistic. To do this, they should act as witnesses to the story rather than participants. I would tell my actors to exaggerate their parts so that if someone took a photograph at any time during the scenes, they would be able to tell what the message is that should be coming across. During these last two scenes, I would want the stage crew to be seen on stage occasionally punctuating the action with various percussion instruments, chorally announcing scenes or what is about to happen (and dying as they do so to set the scene as the aftermath of war). I think that this would attempt to break the illusion of a â€Å"fourth wall†. This means that straight away, the audience would be reminded that it is just a play, and they are just actors. I would make sure that the Lieutenant’s character is played robotically. The actor should do this by mindlessly marching onto the stage and speaking in a very monotone voice throughout, even when there is true action going on around him. I believe that this would convey that the Lieutenant has been robbed of his passion and soul because of war. He is no longer a real person just a clone, a pawn in a play about the corrupt effects of war. The three soldiers that are following him should drunkenly stagger onto the stage, pushing each other over and laughing with one another. They should now and again mimic the Lieutenant’s walk and act sarcastically towards him. This idea is to portray that the soldiers have no respect for their superiors. When the soldiers knock at the farmhouse door and the old peasant woman enters the stage, one of the soldiers should clap his hand over her mouth so to stop her screaming. The remaining soldiers should jeer at the sight of the feeble woman squirming with fear. A soldier should then throw the old peasant and his son onto the stage with aggression. A spotlight should appear at Kattrin crouching in the wagon, and as the Lieutenant says, â€Å"There’s one,† a soldier should pull her out and push her onto the stage floor. The peasants should alternate their lines with panicked expressions eyebrows raised, arms flailing, and they should speak very quickly so to convey their alarm at the goings on. This should make it very obvious to the audience what is happening and the messages behind the plot. As the frightened young peasant blurts the fact that he â€Å"don’t know any path†, the soldiers should mock him, repeating what he says in high pitched voices and mimicking his pained expression and as the second soldier bargains with the young boy, it should be evident to the audience that the actors are joking with him cruelly by the fact that the soldiers are grinning to one another. The levels in this scene, with the boy lower down and the soldiers walking around confidently with their shoulders pushed back and their wide strides should illustrate the status between the poor innocent child and the corrupt â€Å"heroes of war†. The Lieutenant and the three soldiers should continue acting their parts in arrogant, stylised ways, whilst the peasants try to bargain and finally give in. When the soldiers leave the stage, led by the terrified young peasant, the three remaining peasants should try to justify the fact that they are not helping the rest of the village. I think that to make this evident to the audience, the actors should say their lines very calmly and thoughtfully: â€Å"There’s nothing we can do, is there? † // â€Å"Nothing. † // â€Å"No, there’s nothing we can do. † The peasant woman should then force the others to kneel and pray. She should say the prayer hurriedly and stutter now and again, so to get the slight guilt that she may have out of the way. I think that this would reveal to the audience that the characters had a choice whether to help the others in the village or to keep themselves safe. They choose the latter, the more selfish choice, and it should be evident that even these supposedly innocent characters in the play, are corrupt. Kattrin should groan regularly in frustration and finally, as she creeps off to the wagon, climbs up the ladder onto the roof and starts beating the drum with such extreme determination, the peasants should abruptly stop praying and run into action. As the characters have talked themselves into thinking that they are doing the right thing, their reaction is even more frantic than before. Even this scene should be missing the kind of frantic, air-raid-siren intensity that it potentially holds, as Kattrin continues to beat the drum while the soldiers, themselves now panicked, try to stop her, to keep her from waking the village. Kattrin’s role should seem more stolid and deliberate than desperate and driven by adrenaline. This should really be the only part in the whole play where I would like the audience to feel something more than morality being thrown at them. I would like them to feel for Kattrin, whether it is frustration or admiration. The soldiers should seem to have all the time in the world to shoot her from her perch, just too late to prevent her from raising the alarm. They should be even more aggressive now, shouting at the dumb girl as she carries on drumming. I would ask the stage crew, still sitting on stage, to join in with drumming steady beat, so to again remind the audience that although this scene is full of passion, that is all it is, a scene in a play. As the soldiers start to chop wood manically, Kattrin becomes more and more upset, the actor showing this with tears in her eyes and peering around aimlessly, she carries on the steady drumming. To make it obvious that the girl is listening to the Lieutenant and his soldiers plotting something, she should put her hand to her ear and strain her expression. When she realizes that her drumming has worked, the actor should stop the beat, smile, continue drumming again and laugh manically. The actors playing the soldiers should be outraged at this, making it obvious that the roles in status have evidently been reversed. The scene should go on with quick pace, with the young peasant hitting the wagon with a board, the peasant woman screaming at Kattrin and her crying and distressed noises and expressions. Finally, the soldiers fire their guns and after a few more feeble beats, Kattrin should collapse, dead. Muffled noises of canons, gunfire and alarm bells should be heard so to remind the audience of the aftermath of war. The next morning, Mother Courage sits by the dead body of her daughter, ignoring the peasants words, denying the fact that Kattrin is dead: â€Å"Maybe she’s fallen asleep† and singing to her. As she is singing, I would like the actor to pick Kattrin up and cradle her in her arms, stroking her hair. When the fact that Kattrin is dead finally dawns on Mother Courage: â€Å"She’s not asleep†¦ she’s gone, you must get away†, with no hesitation, she should drop her dead daughter back onto the floor and cover her up with a cloth. She should speak to the peasants as though Kattrin was useless and swiftly pay the peasants for the â€Å"proper burial† without a second though. As Mother Courage harnesses herself back into her wagon, I would like for the audience to hear background noise depicting war. She glares back at her dead daughter as she complains to herself: â€Å"I hope I can pull the wagon by myself†, and with just one look back, the actor should run after a regiment screaming â€Å"Hey! Take me with you! † To end the play, the audience should hear the soldiers singing monotonously: â€Å"Dangers, surprises, devastations / The war takes hold and will not quit. / But though it lasts three generations / We shall get nothing out of it. / Starvation, filth, and cold enslave us. / The army robs us of our pay, / Only a miracle can save us / And miracles have had their day. / Christians, awake! The winter’s gone! / The snows depart. The dead sleep on. / And though you may not long survive / Get out of bed and look alive! †.

Easy To Make Glitter Slime

Easy To Make Glitter Slime Why make ordinary slime, when you can make sparkly glitter slime!  Try this easy recipe to make the slime in any color of the rainbow. Glitter Slime Materials glitter glueboraxwater The recipe works with either clear or white school glue, but white glue makes opaque slime. For clear or translucent colored slime that glitters, choose a clear or translucent glue. If you cant find glitter glue, add glitter as an ingredient. Borax is sold as a detergent booster with laundry supplies, or you can purchase it online. Let's Make Glitter Slime! Slime is a polymer that forms when you mix two solutions: glue and dissolved borax. The first step is to make these solutions. Dissolve 1 teaspoon borax in 1/2 cup warm water. Its okay if the borax doesnt completely dissolve. You only need the liquid part, not any solid that stays at the bottom of the cup.In a separate container, mix 1/2 cup glue (4-oz bottle of glue) and 1 cup of water. If you dont like the color of the slime, you can add a few drops of food coloring to the mixture.When you are ready to make glitter slime, dump the two mixtures into a bowl. Use your hands to mix the slime (thats part of the fun). If you have any leftover liquid after the slime polymerizes, you can discard it. When you are finished playing with the glitter slime, you can store it in a sealed plastic bag. The borax is a natural disinfectant, but the slime will keep fresh even longer if you refrigerate it. Clean-up is easy using warm water. Other Ways To Make Glitter Slime If you dont have the materials for this glitter slime recipe, you can add glitter to any  other slime recipes, or you can add glitter to slime from the store.

How to Celebrate French Candlemas (Jour des Crêpes)

How to Celebrate French Candlemas (Jour des Crà ªpes) The Catholic holiday of Candlemas, celebrated every year on February 2, is a feast of crà ªpes thats meant to commemorate the purification of the Virgin Mary and the presentation of baby Jesus. In France, this holiday is called la Chandeleur, Fà ªte de la Lumià ¨re  or Jour des crà ªpes. Note that this holiday bears no relation to  Lyons Fà ªte des lumià ¨res, which takes place December 5 to 8. A Bit of Fortune-Telling Not only do the French eat a lot of crà ªpes on la Chandeleur, but they also do a bit of fortune-telling while making them. It is traditional to hold a coin in your writing hand and a crà ªpe pan in the other, then flip the crà ªpe into the air. If you manage to catch the crà ªpe in the pan, your family will supposedly be prosperous for the rest of the year. French Proverbs and Sayings for Chandeleur There are all kinds of French proverbs and sayings for Chandeleur; here are just a few. Note the similarities to the Groundhog Day predictions made in the US and Canada: la Chandeleur, lhiver cesse ou reprend vigueurOn Candlemas, winter ends or gets worse la Chandeleur, le jour croà ®t de deux heuresOn Candlemas, the day grows by two hoursChandeleur couverte, quarante jours de perteCandlemas covered (in snow), forty days lostRosà ©e la Chandeleur, hiver sa dernià ¨re heureDew on Candlemas, winter at its final hour The Crà ªpe-Throwing Game Heres a fun way to celebrate la Chandeleur in French classes. All you need are a  crà ªpe recipe, ingredients, paper plates and a small prize, such as a book or a $5 bill. Thanks to a fellow French teacher for sharing this. The day before, ask a couple of students to make a pile of crà ªpes and bring them into class (or make them yourself). For the sake of an even playing field, the crà ªpes need to be the same size, about 5 inches in diameter.Give each student a paper plate and write his or her name on the bottom. The object of the game is to catch a crà ªpe in the very center of the plate.Stand on a chair about 10 feet away from the students and throw a crà ªpe, frisbee-style, for students to catch. Once they catch the crà ªpe, they cant jiggle or flip it to try to reposition it on the plate.After each student has caught a crà ªpe, ask two adults, such as fellow teachers, to come into the  room and judge which crà ªpe is the most perfectly centered.  The winner gets a prize.Then you can all celebrate by eating crà ªpes with an assortment of fillings and/or toppings, which can be  sweet  or  savory.

Language diversity and global media Research Proposal

Language diversity and global media - Research Proposal Example However, a major concern facing advertisers now is the possibility that historical criticisms directed at limited or stereotypical advertising content involving minorities (Westerman, 1989; Wilson and Guitierrez, 1995) may have created a negative atmosphere for these consumers to receive current multicultural marketing communication efforts. Similarly, as in-language media continues to grow, some have come to question the usefulness of general market English language media channels to reach consumers from ethnic minority groups (NCM.com, 2005). Although extensive research since the 1960s has generally acknowledged improvements in the portrayals of minorities in advertising, scholars and practitioners alike still suggest a need for more frequent and more positive portrayals, along with a broader range of roles and a greater degree of accuracy in the portrayals (Taylor and Bang, 1997). Some have suggested that ethnic media--that is, culturally relevant and/or in-language media--may be a better means for successfully reaching and representing ethnic minority consumers than general market English language media (Kalita, 2005; NCM.com, 2005; Yin, 2002) With increasing improvements of minority portrayals in general media and the development of ethnic media, one area that has been largely overlooked in the literature has been how ethnic minorities actually feel about portrayals of themselves in advertising (Green, 1999; Grier and Brumbaugh, 1999; Holland and Gentry, 1999). Attitudes such as these help form the media environment that in turn determines advertising message effectiveness. A meaningful research agenda relevant to today's media landscape should therefore be to find out (1) if ethnic minorities desire more representation and/or more accurate representation in the media and (2) if the historical criticisms have created a generally negative attitude among ethnic minority consumers and thus a difficult media environment within which a rejection of "mainstream" English language media outlets may exist. To address these issues, African and Latin Americans were selected as the focus of a study as they represent the largest ethn ic minority populations in the United States, and these groups have been receiving a significant amount of attention from marketers (Minority Markets Alert IX, 1997). Size, Growth Rates, And Purchasing Power Today, there are just over 281 million Americans in the United States and nearly one in four claims to have non-European ethnicities (U.S. Census Bureau, 2002). In some of the nation's largest cities (e.g., New York City, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Atlanta) more than half of the residents are nonwhites, and in some cases up to 70 percent of a large city's population consists of minorities. This demographic shift is predicted to continue with non-European ethnicities expected to exceed 50 percent of the U.S. population by the middle of this century (U.S. Census Bureau, 2002). Therefore, to ensure effective marketing communication, it is necessary that marketers understand all aspects of the various ethnic minority groups, ranging from their size and spending power to media use patterns and beliefs regarding marketing efforts. According to the

Death of a Salesman Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 3

Death of a Salesman - Essay Example Linda, the wife, who had a firm grip over the situation, even though she did not want to hurt the family in any way, is shown in the end as unsuitable to face reality while emulating dead Willy in talking to him, in the same way, how Willy spoke to dead brother Ben. This makes the play end as an unfinished tragedy. Willy has passed on his living in illusion to his favorite son Bliff, who thinks of big results, without making any effort towards it ("To suffer fifty weeks a year for the sake of a two-week vacation"). He knew of father's infidelity, but would not inform the mother, would not work for his graduation and would not work anywhere and ends up as a petty criminal. Even in the end, instead of making an honest start, he goes and steals a pen from Bill Cliver, ruining a possible career, and the saving grace comes only then, because he sees the truth at last ("I looked up and I saw they sky ... and I realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been") and realises that he had been fooling himself. Hap, on the other hand, craves for father's attention, while the father showers attention on Bliff, who could not care less. Hap is unhappy to hurt family members by telling the truth and tries to gloss it over ("My own apartment, a car, and plenty of women, and still, goddamit, I'm lonely"). Linda, who was realistic enough to realise that Willy was marching towards suicide, hesitates to confront the reality and has a total breakdown after his death. Finally, Bliff comes out as a real person who was ready to discard illusions ("We never told the truth in the house for ten minutes"). The play, divided into three sections is a saga of illusion starting from Willy Loman, a failing salesman, working on commission, could not complete sales trip, tired of life, returned home after 15 years of drifting. He sees a glorifying future for sons, Biff and Hap, though boys think he is becoming senile. Willy embarrasses the boys frequently by falling into another era, on a flashback, conversing with his hero, dead brother, Ben. He lives in world of illusion and false sense of reality, to cover his failures and creates fantasies of success. Even though Ben had stumbled into riches, Willy would like to glorify it as result of Ben's hard work and invents much swagger for Ben ("When I was seventeen, I walked into the jungle. And by twenty-one, I walked out. And by God, i was rich!"). A young woman with whom Willy had an affair intrudes into his illusions. He misguides his sons about life and success saying that looks and being liked are enough in life. "Willy did himself and his family a disservice by putting too much emphasis on appearance and popularity, and not enough on the value of hard work. He wound up living in a daydream whenever things went wrong, and his sons were unethical" http://www.bellmore-merrick.k12.ny.us/death.html Even though he was not particularly liked by anyone, he invents another lie that he was universally liked and when he decides to kill himself, again he had the illusion that the entire community will attend his funeral and once again, he was proved wrong. He was unrealistic enough to refuse Charlie's job and even Bliff tries to wake him up out of the reverie ("Pop, I'm a dime a dozen and so are you"). Hap makes up things exactly like Willy about his sales store and marriage to make parents happy. He wants Bliff to hide the fact that he could not even meet Bill Cliver from Willy. Psychologically

The abortion debate Essay Example for Free

The abortion debate Essay Abortion, the premature expulsing of an unborn child from the womb, is one of the most hotly debated issues of our time. On one side of the argument there is the pro-choice community who believe that abortion should be available to all women, and on the other there is the pro-life community who believe that it is the murder of an innocent human. Deciding what side is correct depends on an individual’s religious, scientific and ethical views. Key issues include the moral status of the unborn child, and whether its rights outweigh the mother’s. In examining this multifaceted debate, a good place to start is the Christian perspective. Many of the early church fathers had an existentialist view, where the foetus progressively becomes a person over time. Some are influenced by St Thomas Aquinas who identified the moment of ‘quickening’ as the decision point of development. This key moment is also significant for the formation of the brain and the first appearance of the ‘human icon’, when the foetus begins to look like a human being. Personhood is the main issue here. Humans are beings with human tissue, but persons must have moral status. For example, a baby without a brain could be regarded as a human but not a person. The question of whether or not abortion is murder depends on your definition of personhood. With today’s scientific advancements most Christians no longer accept the views of Aquinas and Aristotle on abortion. Dr. Landrum Shettles, sometimes called the father of In Vitro Fertilization, wrote, â€Å"Conception confers life and makes that life one of a kind.† As with all issues, Christian turn to the Bible to defend their position. Christians believe in the sanctity of life, meaning that all human life is created in God’s image and has intrinsic worth. The most important verse they turn to is part of the Decalogue: do not kill. At face value this may include abortion, but on the other hand, it doesn’t cover the killing of animals or killing in battle. It may not be as absolute as Christians make out. Other verses include an instance in Luke when John the Baptist recognised the presence of Jesus before he was born; this suggests that unborn children are alive and have a degree of awareness before they are born. To quote John Calvin, â€Å"If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house, then in a field†¦it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a foetus in the womb before it has come to light.† Christian opinion is divided between liberal and conservative perspectives. Conservative churches such as the Roman Catholic Church and the Free Presbyterian Church are against abortion. They believe abortion is murder of the innocent and have respect for human life right from conception. The Catholic Church has an essentialist view of abortion that does not allow for exceptional circumstances, even rape. In the Humanae Vitae of 1968 Pope Pius VI said, â€Å"human life is sacred.† This was followed up with the Declaration on Procured Abortion, 1974, where it states that women’s rights, though good in themselves, cannot be an excuse for abortion when it denies another person the fundamental right to life. On the other hand, some churches have more liberal views. The Methodist Church of Ireland released a document in 2012 that outlines their support for abortion in some circumstances: when the mother’s life is at risk; when her mental or physical health is at risk; in cases of rape and incest and fatal foetal abnormalities. They believe that their view is the most compassionate towards both the mother and child. They do, however, emphasise that they are against abortion on demand. The crux of the document is that while Christians may not agree with abortion, we should respect the separation of church and state when it comes to abortion law. Moving on, abortion is a situation of conflicting rights – many that are pro-choice believe that the rights of the mother are more important than the rights of the child. Proponents of situation ethics would believe that we should look at the circumstances behind an abortion, not the morality of the act. The Church of Englands position that abortion is evil but may be the lesser of two evils is consistent with a situationist approach. Difficult circumstances include when a woman has been raped. There are traumatic and involuntary circumstances surrounding the conception and the continuance of this unwanted pregnancy may well continue the trauma for the mother and her existing family. The foetus should have no claim on the woman unless the woman has consented fully to being pregnant. Another circumstance where a proponent of situation ethics would support abortion is if the mother’s life is at risk – surely it is better to save one life than lose two. Natural law would generally prohibit abortion. Supporters of this theory see the act of sexual intercourse as an efficient cause that brings about the final cause of the production of a human being. Abortion prevents the final cause from being achieved and is therefore immoral. However, there is the doctrine of double effect. While it may be morally permissible to perform a good action that may have a bad outcome, it is morally impermissible to perform a bad action with a good outcome. The theory of natural law states that you are only responsible for the immediate consequences of your actions, but not for secondary or unintended effects of your action. An example of this could be abortion: it may permit indirect therapeutic abortion (such as treating cancer, which may cause death of the foetus) but not direct therapeutic abortion. Prolife Christians often use the acronym SLED when arguing against abortion. This stands for size, level of development, environment and dependency. Starting with size, pro-lifers argue that it is wrong to discriminate against the unborn due to their size. Level of development means that the only difference between the unborn and us is that they are not as developed, but the toddler is not as developed as the adult. This does not mean the toddler is any less. Environment refers to the fact that just because the unborn is within the uterus, that does not mean it has no rights. Why should a 7-inch journey down the birth canal make a difference? Finally, dependency means that just because the unborn is dependent on its mother, it does not imply it should be allowed to be killed. A disabled person may be dependent on others but this does not mean we have the right to kill them. Abortion is much more likely to be supported within the secular realm. Ethicists such as Singer have a utilitarian view of abortion. Singer hold to Preference Utilitarianism which promotes that the preferences of individuals are taken into account except where they come into direct conflict with the preferences of others. For example, if the foetus was diagnosed with a fatal abnormality abortion may be the option that would cause the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest amount of people. If the parents go through with the pregnancy they will have to suffer the trauma of watching their infant die, or go through a stillbirth. Feminists are usually on the front line in the fight for reproductive rights. They believe women and men are not truly equal until a woman has access to abortion on demand. Some would even support viewing abortion as little more than a method of contraception. A notable feminist is Judith Thomson, author of â€Å"A Defence of Abortion†, uses abstract analogies to promote abortion. One of these is the violinist scenario. In this scenario a woman finds herself involuntarily chained to a famous violinist in a hospital. The violinist is dying and the woman was discovered to have the correct blood type to save him. Therefore she was kidnapped and is now acting as a life support. Thomson asserts that the woman has no moral obligation to remain connected to the violinist, and if she did it would be an extraordinary act of kindness. However, Singer claims that a utilitarian outlook would imply that one is morally obliged to stay connected to the violinist. Ultimately, in countries where abortion is legal abortion should be the choice of the mother. However, abortion is not without its dangers, such as damage to the uterus as well as depression and guilt. With this in mind, abortion may not be as safe as many believe.

The History of the Antitrust Laws Essay -- U.S. Law

In the 1800’s there were several businesses known as trusts. These â€Å"trusts† owned the entire industry. Railroads, sugar, oil, and steel were some of the major products that were controlled by these trusts. U.S. Steel and Standard Oil were two big companies that were famous for controlling their product and the industry it was a part of. The oil industry was an easy industry to be monopolized because the deposits were rare. The Standard Oil Company was incorporated by John D. Rockefeller in Ohio in 1870. At the time, the refining business was highly competitive, and Standard Oil had more than 250 competitors. Rockefeller and his associates took advantage of both the scarcity of oil and the returns produced from it to lay down a monopoly, with no help from the banks. The industry practices and questionable strategy that Rockefeller used to form Standard Oil made the Enron mass feel ashamed, but the completed product was not near as harmful to the market or the environment as the industry was previous to Rockefeller monopolizing it. There once were a lot of oil companies competing to make the most of their find. Companies would pump waste products into the rivers or on the ground because it cost too much for research on how to dispose of it properly. They also slashed costs by pumping through poor pipelines that were famous for seepage. Standard Oil eventually owned 90% of oil production and distribution in the United States, and they had learned how to make money off of their waste products. Vaseline was one of many of the new products formed. Andrew Carnegie went a lengthy way in producing a monopoly in the steel industry U.S. Steel, a gigantic corporation nearly reaching the magnitude of Standard Oil. U.S. Steel ... ...rman+Act Antitrust: An Overview. ANTITRUST. Legal Information Institute. Cornell University Law School. http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/Antitrust Sherman Anti-Trust Act. LawBrain. http://lawbrain.com/wiki/Sherman_Anti-Trust_Act Clayton Act. LawBrain. http://lawbrain.com/wiki/Clayton_Act Herbert Hovenkamp. Clayton Act (1914). Enotes. Major Acts of Congress,  ©2004 Gale Cengage. http://www.enotes.com/clayton-act-1914-reference/clayton-act-1914 Herbert Hovenkamp. Federal Trade Commission Act (1914). Enotes. Major Acts of Congress,  ©2004 Gale Cengage. http://www.enotes.com/federal-trade-commission-act-1914-100734-reference/federal-trade-commission-act-1914 Herbert Hovenkamp. Sherman Antitrust Act (1890). Enotes. Major Acts of Congress,  ©2004 Gale Cengage. http://www.enotes.com/sherman-antitrust-act-1890-101422-reference/sherman-antitrust-act-1890

Psychology the Nervous System

Assignment 3 Written Essay Questions 1. a) We are able to experience different types of sensations because our nervous system encodes messages. German physiologist Johannes Muller in his doctrine of specific nerve energies described a kind of code which is anatomical. In his doctrine, Muller explains that different sensory modalities exist because signals received by the sense organs stimulate different nerve pathways that lead to different areas of the brain. For example, when the ear receives signals, these signals cause impulses to travel along the auditory nerve to the auditory cortex.And signals from the eye cause impulses to travel along the optic nerve to the visual cortex. Because of these anatomical differences, light and sound produce different sensations. b) The code in the nervous system that helps explain why a pinprick and kiss feel different is known as functional. These codes rely on the fact that sensory receptors and neurons fire or are inhibited from firing, only i n the presence of specific kinds of stimuli. Functional encoding may occur all along a sensory route, starting in the sense organs and ending in the brain. 2.The lens of an eye operates differently from a camera, that just like a camera, the eye registers spots of light and dark, but neurons in the visual system build up a picture of the world by detecting meaningful features. The eye doesn’t passively record the external world, like a camera, ganglion cells and neurons in the thalamus of the brain respond to simple features in the environment, such as spots of light and dark. The existence of a specialized face module in the brain, explains why a person with brain damage may continue to recognize faces, after losing the ability to recognize other objects. . These units which were named after Alexander Graham Bell were called decibels (dB). Each decibel is 1/10 of a bel. Using decibels, they can be used to determine sound intensity, intensity of a wave’s pressure. Huma ns have an average absolute threshold of hearing of zero decibels and all decibels are not equally distant. For example, in my own environment, in my living room there is a 40decibel sound, my refrigerator and the light traffic from my window has about 50 decibels of sound.Everyday noises that may be hazardous to hearing could be rock concerts, deafening bars, stereos that are often played on full blast. In addition to that, noisy home appliances, lawn mowers and heavy city traffic also are hazardous to our ears. 4. If you were to inhale vapour from a rose, your receptors for smell have specialized neurons embedded in a tiny patch of mucous membrane in the upper part of the nasal passage. Millions of receptors in each nasal cavity respond to chemical molecules in the air.So when you inhale vapour from a rose, you’re pulling these molecules into the nasal cavity and can also enter from the mouth. These molecules then trigger responses in the receptors that produce that of fres h roses. From there, signals from the receptors are carried to the brain’s olfactory bulb by the olfactory nerve. And from the olfactory bulb, they travel to a higher region of the brain. 5. The basic concept of the gate- control theory, states the experience of pain depends on when pain impulses can get past a ‘’gate’’ in the spinal cord.The gate is a pattern of neural activity that blocks pain messages coming from the skin, muscles and internal organs or lets those signals through. Most of the time this gate is kept shut by impulses coming into the spinal cord from large fibres that respond to pressure or by signals coming down from the brain itself. However, when body tissue is injured, the large fibres are damaged and the smaller fibres open the gate. Once the gate is open, pain messages reach the brain unchecked. However, the theory doesn’t explain phantom pain, the pain from an amputated limb or organ that a person continues to feel aft er surgery.Melzack explains, even though there are no nerve impulses for the spinal cord gate to block or let through, the brain not only responds to incoming signals from sensory nerves but is also capable of generating pain entirely on its own. An extensive matrix of neurons in the brain gives us the sense of our own bodies and body parts. Pain results when this matrix produces an abnormal pattern of activity, as a result of memories, emotions, expectations or signals from various brain centres and not just from signals from peripheral nerves.Because of the lack of sensory stimulation or a person’s efforts to move a nonexistent limb, abnormal patterns may arise, resulting in phantom pain. 6. a) The role stimulus generalization plays in this problem is where mental images of the sights and smells of the clinic can become conditioned stimuli for nausea, aside from the nurse’s uniform, smell of rubbing alcohol or the waiting room. b) High order conditioning can be illus trated in this problem of vomiting and nausea where a patient who drank lemon –lime Kool-Aid before their therapy sessions developed anxiety disorders.They continued to feel anxious even when the drink was offered in their homes rather than at the clinic. c) Classical conditioning could help patients reduce pain and anxiety through the use of placebos. For example the use of pills and injections that have no active ingredients or treatments that have no direct physical effect on the problem. The bigger and more impressive the placebos are, the stronger their psychological effects are. 7. The evidence shows that punishments are effective when they are carried out immediately.As shown in the studies of criminal records of Danish men, punishments were effective in deterring young criminals from repeating their offences. After examining repeat arrests through the age of 26, punishment reduced rates of subsequent arrests for both minors and serious crimes. However, recidivism stil l remained fairly high. Other studies have indicated that the severity of punishment made no difference, in that fines and probation were just as effective as jail time. The consistency of the punishment is what matters most.For example, when law breakers get away with their crimes, their behaviour is intermittently reinforced and becomes resistant to extinction. Speeding tickets are another example of when you receive punishments. Even though the use of photo radar systems is useful for catching all speeders or reduces speeding, it doesn’t eliminate speeding entirely. As mentioned before, punishments are most effective in the period immediately following its delivery. This would explain when police officers supervise the speed traps; they are more effective since the punishment is given out immediately.However, when photo radars catch you, you have to wait for several weeks to receive the ticket. Laboratory and field studies find that punishments fail in everyday life, in sc hools, families and workplaces because of six drawbacks. The first is that people often administer the punishment inappropriately or mindlessly. People swing in a blind rage or shout things they don’t mean and when people aren’t angry, they misunderstand the proper application of punishment. Secondly, the recipient of punishment often responds with anxiety, fear or rage. Negative emotional reactions can create more problems than the punishment solves.For example, a teenager who has been severely punished may strike back or run away. Children, who have been punished physically in childhood, risk at being in depression, having low self-esteem, violent behaviour and many other problems. Third, depending on the presence of the punishing person or circumstances, the effectiveness of the punishment is often temporary. When a police officer is around at a park, you wouldn’t dare littering but if the police officer isn’t around then you wouldn’t be as afra id of littering. Forth, most behaviour is hard to punish immediately.For example, while you’re at work, your children eat all the deserts that were for tonight’s party, but you don’t punish them till after work, the punishment is no good. You children’s behaviour would have been reinforced by all those deserts. Fifth, punishments express little information, in that punishments may tell the recipient what not to do, but doesn’t communicate what the person should do. For example yelling at a student who learns slowly, won’t teach him/her to learn faster. Sixth, an action intended to punish may instead be reinforcing because it brings attention.For example, in the classroom, students enjoy when teachers yell at them in front of their classmates, putting them in the limelight. Often rewarding the student’s misbehaviour they are trying to remove. 8. a) Fixed Interval b) Variable Interval c) Variable Ratio d) Fixed Ratio Take a Long look 1. What is meant by the term â€Å"form perception†? Form perception means when an infant can or can’t respond to stimuli as shape, pattern , size or solidity. Thus they can see or can’t perceive form. 2. Why is the â€Å"preferential-looking† method of studying infants likened to a biologist’s use of a microscope?This method is similar to that of a biologist’s use of a microscope because this method is one of the first tools researchers turn to when they want to study how babies think. The method literally opened the doors to understanding the minds of infants. 3. What patterns were the babies in Fantz’s studies least interested in looking at? The patterns the babies were least interested in were the shapes that were just plain with no complexity. The least interesting shape for the infants was the square with no designs or complexity inside the square. 4.A preference for looking at faces is said to â€Å"set the stage for an infantâ €™s future survival and growth† (p. 41). Suggest two areas of learning that an infant’s attention to faces might facilitate. Two areas of learning that an infant’s attention to faces might facilitate are innate and primitive knowledge. The innate knowledge of the environment is shown by the infant’s interest in the kinds of forms that will later aid in object recognition, social responsiveness and spatial orientation. The primitive knowledge help provide an accumulation of knowledge through experience. 5.The early psychologist William James thought that the world for babies was a â€Å"blooming buzzing confusion† (see page 211 of the course text). Do Fantz’s findings support this statement? Explain. Fantz’s findings pointed out infants, regardless of age, can demonstrate that basic form perception is present at birth and ruling out a learning or developmental factor. Meaning that, babies have some kind of understanding of the diffe rent patterns and forms that are presented to them. This is how they are able to differentiate between faces, their mothers face or a stranger’s face. 6.Imagine you have been hired by a toymaker. Using Fantz’s findings describe your design for an infant toy or crib mobile. Using Fantz’s findings, I would create a toy that would have detailed patterns and include pictures or objects of faces of people or similar to those of people. Thus, I would create a toy with a face similar to that of humans and cover their body with items of great complexity, for example, a bull’s eye or a checkers board type of pattern. You would be able to place this toy over the infant in the crib, which should keep the infant entertained for many hours.Watch out for the Visual Cliff 1. What is meant by the statement that Gibson and Walk take a nativist position on the topic of depth perception? Both Gibson and Walk believed that depth perception and the avoidance of a drop-off app ear automatically as part of our original biological equipment and has nothing to do with experience. On the other hand, empiricists argue that these abilities are learned and aren’t biologically hard wired in us. 2. Write a one-paragraph summary of what Gibson and Walk discovered from their visual cliff studies with infants.Gibson and Walk had 36 infants for this study between ages 6 and 14 months with their mothers participating in the study. Nine of infants refused to move at all off the center of the board, which wasn’t explained by the researchers, but perhaps infant stubbornness. However, the other 27 infants crawled off the board and crossed the glass when called by their mothers on the shallow side of the table. Only 3 of the infants crept with hesitation off the brink of the visual cliff when called by their mothers from the deep side.When the infants were called from the cliff side by their mothers, most of the infants either crawled away from their mother on the shallow side or cried in frustration at being unable to reach their mothers without ‘’ falling off the cliff’’. The infants would often peer down through the class of the deep side and then back away or pat the glass with their hands, but would refuse to cross. After these results, it was difficult to prove that human’s ability to perceive depth is innate rather than learned because all the infants had at least 6 months of life experience to learn about depth through trial and error. . What did Gibson and Walk discover about depth perception in young animals? Gibson and Walk discovered that the ability of various animals to perceive depth developed in relation to when the species need such a skill for their survival. For example, within 24 hours of age, baby chickens never made the mistake stepping off into the deep side while looking for food. Kids and lambs response was the same as the baby chickens, which indicted the visual sense was in com plete control and the animals ability to feel the solidity of the glass on the deep side had no effect on the response.The rats were different from the others, as they didn’t show any preference for the shallow or deep side of the table. This could be explained by the fact that rats locate food by smell and doesn’t depend very much on its vision, but moves around using cues from the stiff whiskers on its nose. 4. Describe how Gibson and Walk use evolutionary theory to explain their infant and animal findings on depth perception. Gibson and Walk used evolutionary theory to explain that all animals that are to survive need to develop the ability to perceive depth by the time they able to move independently.For humans, this doesn’t occur until about 6 months of age and for chickens and goats it’s immediately. For dogs, rats and cats it’s about 4 weeks. Thus, this ability is inborn because to learn through trial and error would cause many potential fat al accidents. 5. Give one example of a finding that suggests depth perception has a learned component. A later study placed younger infants, ages 2 to 5 months, on the glass over the deep side of the visual cliff. The infants showed a decrease in heart rate, a sign of interest and not fear.This had indicated that the younger infants had not yet learned to fear the drop off and would learn the avoidance behaviour later on in life. 6. How has social referencing been found to impact youngsters' behaviour when faced with a visual cliff? In the Gibson and Walk study, when the mother had been instructed to maintain an expression of fear on her face, the infants refused to crawl any further on the table. However, when the infants saw their mothers looking happy, they checked the deep side again and crawled across.But when the drop-off was made flat, the infants did not check with their mothers before crawling across. Knock Wood 1. Why is Skinner referred to as a radical behaviourist? Skinn er is referred to as a radical behaviourist because he believed that all behaviours are ultimately learned, are controlled by the relationships between the situation that immediately precedes the behaviour and the consequences that directly follow it. This includes behaviours that are public or external, private and events such as feelings and thoughts.He believed that private behaviours are difficult to study, but acknowledged we all have our own subjective experience of these behaviours. However, he didn’t view internal events, such as thoughts and emotions, as causes of behaviour but rather as a part of the mix of the environment. 2. What is a Skinner box? How was the food dispenser set up for the pigeons in this study? Refer back to your text. What type of reinforcement schedule is this? The Skinner box consists of a box or cage that is empty except for a tray or dish into which food may be dispensed.This allows the researcher to have control over when the animal receives reinforcement, such pallets of food. The earlier boxes contained a lever that when pressed, would cause some food to be dispensed; rats were most commonly used in these boxes. For pigeons, the conditioning chambers were designed with disks to be pecked instead of bars to be pressed on. This study is an example of fixed – interval schedules, as the dispensers were rigged to drop food pellets into the tray at intervals of 15 seconds, regardless of what the pigeon was doing. 4.What were the pigeons conditioned to do as a result? One of the birds was conditioned to turn counter clockwise, making two or three turns between reinforcements. Another bird was repeatedly thrusting its head into one of the upper corners of the cage. Two of the birds developed pendulum motion of the head and body in which the head was extended forward and swung from right to left with a sharp movement followed by a somewhat slower return. One of the other birds was conditioned to make incomplete pecking or brushing movements directed toward but not touching the floor. . How did the pigeons’ behaviour change when the delay period for reinforcement was extended to a minute? With one of the head bobbing and hopping birds, the bird’s movements become more energetic until finally the bobbing and hopping become so intense, that it appeared that the pigeon was doing some kind of dance during the intervals. When the reinforcement in the cage was discounted, the birds’ behaviour was considered extinct. This resulted in the superstitious behaviour disappearing gradually.In the case of the dancing pigeon, there were over 10,000 responses that were recorded before extinction occurred. 5. Was extinction of this behaviour possible? This type of behaviour can persist a lifetime because any behaviour that is reinforced once in a while in a given situation, becomes very difficult to extinguish. This is because the expectation stays high that the superstitious behaviour might w ork to produce reinforcing consequences. In real life, instances of accidental reinforcement usually occur at irregular intervals which make extinction of this behaviour almost impossible. . What explanation does Skinner give for the resiliency to extinction of human superstitions? Skinner states that any behavior that is reinforced once in a while in a given situation, partial reinforcement, it becomes very difficult to extinguish. This is due to the expectation that stays high that the superstitious behaviour might work to produce the reinforcing consequences. In real life, accidental reinforcement usually occurs periodically, so you could imagine why superstitious behaviour may persist for a lifetime. 7.Use Skinner’s operant conditioning principles to explain the development of a superstition that you hold or once held, or one you have observed in someone else. Using Skinner’s operant conditioning principles, I noticed my friend who enjoys roulette had a superstitio n that when he bought himself and the person on his right a drink and place the bet on black he believed he would win. Of course he wouldn’t always win, only the person to his right side won with a free drink, but he always thought this would bring him good luck when he needed it.

Polyethylene

Introduction : Polyethylene is a type of polymer that is thermoplastic, meaning that it can be melted to a liquid and remolded as it returns to a solid state. It is chemically synthesized from ethylene, a compound that's usually made from petroleum or natural gas. Other non-official names for this compound include polythene or polyethylyne; and it is also abbreviated as PE. It is used in making other plastic compounds much often than it's used in its pure form. Though it has a wide variety of uses, it can be harmful to humans and to the environment.Members of the polyethylene group are heavily used in consumer products, and over 60 million tons of these materials are produced worldwide every year. For instance, high density polyethylene (HDPE) is used for products such as milk jugs, detergent bottles, margarine tubs, garbage containers, and water pipes. Ultra high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) is used in can- and bottle-handling machine parts, bearings, gears, joints, and bu tchers' chopping boards, and may even be found in bulletproof vests. Low density polyethylene (LDPE) is used for the production of rigid containers and plastic film.PolyethyleneDescription :Physical propertiesPolyethylene is a thermoplastic polymer consisting of long hydrocarbon chains. Depending on the crystallinity and molecular weight, a melting pointand glass transition may or may not be observable. The temperature at which these occur varies strongly with the type of polyethylene. For common commercial grades of medium- and high-density polyethylene the melting point is typically in the range 120 to 130  °C (248 to 266  °F). The melting point for average, commercial, low-density polyethylene is typically 105 to 115  °C (221 to 239  °F).Chemical propertiesMost LDPE, MDPE and HDPE grades have excellent chemical resistance, meaning that it is not attacked by strong acids or strong bases. It is also resistant to gentle oxidants and reducing agents. Polyethylene burns slowly   with a blue flame having a yellow tip and gives off an odour of paraffin. The material continues burning on removal of the flame source and produces a drip. Crystalline samples do not dissolve at room temperature. Polyethylene (other than cross-linked polyethylene) usually can be dissolved at elevated temperatures in aromatic hydrocarbons such as toluene orxylene, or in chlorinated solvents such as trichloroethane or trichlorobenzene. Polyethylene PolyethyleneIntroduction : Polyethylene is a type of polymer that is thermoplastic, meaning that it can be melted to a liquid and remolded as it returns to a solid state. It is chemically synthesized from ethylene, a compound that's usually made from petroleum or natural gas. Other non-official names for this compound include polythene or polyethylyne; and it is also abbreviated as PE. It is used in making other plastic compounds much often than it's used in its pure form. Though it has a wide variety of uses, it can be harmful to humans and to the environment.Members of the polyethylene group are heavily used in consumer products, and over 60 million tons of these materials are produced worldwide every year. For instance, high density polyethylene (HDPE) is used for products such as milk jugs, detergent bottles, margarine tubs, garbage containers, and water pipes. Ultra high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) is used in can- and bottle-handling machine parts, bearings, gears, jo ints, and butchers' chopping boards, and may even be found in bulletproof vests. Low density polyethylene (LDPE) is used for the production of rigid containers and plastic film.PolyethyleneDescription : Physical propertiesPolyethylene is a thermoplastic polymer consisting of long hydrocarbon chains. Depending on the crystallinity and molecular weight, a melting pointand glass transition may or may not be observable. The temperature at which these occur varies strongly with the type of polyethylene. For common commercial grades of medium- and high-density polyethylene the melting point is typically in the range 120 to 130  °C (248 to 266  °F). The melting point for average, commercial, low-density polyethylene is typically 105 to 115  °C (221 to 239  °F).Chemical propertiesMost LDPE, MDPE and HDPE grades have excellent chemical resistance, meaning that it is not attacked by strong acids or strong bases. It is also resistant to gentle oxidants and reducing agents. Polyethylene burns slowly  with a blue flame having a yellow tip and gives off an odour of paraffin. The material continues burning on removal of the flame source and produces a drip. Crystalline samples do not dissolve at room temperature. Polyethylene (other than cross-linked polyethylene) usually can be dissolved at elevated temperatures in aromatic hydrocarbons such as toluene orxylene, or in chlorinated solvents such as trichloroethane or trichlorobenzene.ProcessMonomerEthylene (ethene). The ingredient or monomer is ethylene (IUPAC name ethene), a gaseous hydrocarbon with the formula C2H4, which can be viewed as a pair of methylene groups(=CH 2) connected to each other. Because the catalysts are highly reactive, the ethylene must be of high purity.

Themes in Jane Eyre essays

Themes in Jane Eyre essays In the following excerpt, Kramer examines the interplay between Jane's concern for equality and her urges to submit or rebel. The fact is that the motivating forces of Jane Eyre's personality are not sexual concepts at all but personal concepts. She reacts as she does to erotic situations not because of repressions or of desires to emasculate or castrate her menfolk but because she fully understands her own motivations. She also comprehends the significance of alternatives she is presented with, and the states of life that her choice of action can lead her to. Unlike the actions of modern protagonists, whose lives are a continual process of self-frustration and self-discovery, Jane's conform to her principles and her understanding of her moral and physical needs. Jane herself controls the point of view and provides the standards by which she herself and all the other characters are evaluated; thus she herself is not only the principal integrating force in the novel but is also the most complex character in the story, with instincts and standards at odds with each other. The psychological action will therefore be the interplay of divergent impulses within her, and the final reconciling or proper ordering of these impulses will be the principal part of the final resolution of the novel as a whole. She demonstrates her self-confessed impulsiveness, her vehemence, curiosity, and rebellious nature, she admits that she cannot live without love but is independent enough to castigate Mrs. Reed, the person whom in other circumstances it would be the most natural for her to love. Again, by the time she becomes involved with Rochester, she communicates clearly the various conflicting impulses that impel her to thought and action. She consciously allows her attraction to Rochester to have temporary sway, enjoys a sublimated coquetry with him in argument, uses both common sense and impassioned self-chastisement to rid her mind of fancies that ...

The History of the Taj Mahal

The History of the Taj Mahal The Taj Mahal is a beautiful white marble mausoleum in the city of Agra, India. It is widely considered to be one of the greatest architectural masterpieces in the world  and is listed as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. Every year, the Taj Mahal receives visits from between four and six million tourists from all over the world.   Interestingly, less than 500,000 of those visitors are from overseas; the vast majority are from India itself. UNESCO has designated the building and its grounds as an official World Heritage Site, and there is much concern that the sheer volume of foot traffic may have a negative impact on this wonder of the world. Still, it is hard to blame people in India for wanting to see the Taj, since the growing middle class there finally has the time and leisure to visit their countrys great treasure. Why the Taj Mahal Was Built The Taj Mahal was built by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan  (r. 1628 - 1658) in honor of the Persian princess Mumtaz Mahal, his beloved third wife. She died in 1632 while bearing their fourteenth child, and Shah Jahan never really recovered from the loss. He poured his energy into designing and building the most beautiful tomb ever known for her, on the southern banks of the Yamuna River. It took some 20,000 artisans more than a decade to build the Taj Mahal complex. The white marble stone is inlaid with floral details carved from precious gems. In places, the stone is carved into delicate vined screens called pierce work so that visitors can see into the next chamber. All of the floors are inlaid with patterned stone, and incised painting in abstract designs adorns the walls. The artisans who did this incredible work were supervised by an entire committee of architects, headed by Ustad Ahmad Lahauri. The cost in modern values was about 53 billion rupees ($827 million US).  Construction of the mausoleum was completed around 1648. The Taj Mahal Today The Taj Mahal is one of the loveliest buildings in the world, combining architectural elements from across the Muslim lands. Among the other works that inspired its design are the Gur-e Amir, or the Tomb of Timur, in Samarkand, Uzbekistan; Humayuns Tomb in Delhi; and the Tomb of Itmad-Ud-Daulah in Agra. However, the Taj outshines all of these earlier mausoleums in its beauty and grace. Its name literally translates as Crown of Palaces. Shah Jahan was a member of the Mughal Dynasty, descended from Timur (Tamerlane) and from Genghis Khan.  His family ruled India from 1526 to 1857.  Unfortunately for Shah Jahan, and for India, the loss of Mumtaz Mahal and the construction of her amazing tomb utterly distracted Shah Jahan from the business of governing India.  He ended up being deposed and imprisoned by his own third son, the ruthless and intolerant Emperor Aurangzeb.  Shah Jahan ended his days under house arrest, lying in bed, gazing out at the white dome of the Taj Mahal.  His body was interred in the glorious building he had made, beside that of his beloved Mumtaz.

Argumentation Based on Marx's Communist Manifesto Essay

Argumentation Based on Marx's Communist Manifesto - Essay Example Modern industrial society is typified by class struggle between those who own the factors of production and proletariat. However, the influence of capitalism has been on the decline and is ceasing to be compatible with this exploitive relationship. Therefore, those who provide labor will lead to a revolution. This revolution will be different from the previous one. This is because in this revolution the proletariat will have to destroy all ownership of private property. In turn, this will lead to a complete overhaul of the classes eventually disappearing. The manifesto argument is that this development is unstoppable, and capitalism will inherently collapse. As a result, the communist engages in promoting revolution, and this will ensure that those involved are able to move history towards its natural conclusion. They concur that the elimination of social classes cannot take through reforms or changes in government. They know that such fundamental changes can only take place through a revolution. The Communist Manifesto was a plan by Marx and Friedrich Engels. They argue that for changes to take place in both society and political institutions it must be driven by a process of universal struggle on parts of groups of people with similar economic fate in order to realize their material or economic interests (Marx-Engels Archive 1). These struggles as shown in the history have been struggles of economically inferior classes against economically dominant classes who are against their economic interests (Marx-Engels Archive 1). This process has shaped the currently industrialized world: the bourgeoisie in its struggle against the aristocratic class of feudal society (Marx-Engels Archive 1). This has been heightened through travel to different parts of the world, and the discovery of new products and goods that created rooms for commercial activities. This is because the bourgeoisie whose purpose is to accumulate managed to grow wealthier and became politically embo ldened against the feudal order. In fact, the bourgeoisie has uplifted their authority to a stable entity in the society and drives various sector of the economy in pursuit of their interests. The interest of accumulation by the merchants has assured them to overcome the globe. They have forced almost all to adopt the capitalist mode of production. On the other hand, the bourgeois has fundamentally altered all aspects of the society, even the families and hence substituted rural civilization with enormous cities. Through industrialization, the means of production and exchange that drives this process of expansion and change have resulted in a subordinate class whose fate is determined by the bourgeoisie (Marx-Engels Archive 1). This class is the proletariat, and they have been uprooted by capitalism and hence are forced to sell labor to the bourgeoisie. This offends them as they remember how before they possessed and sold what they produced (Marx-Engels Archive 1). They face exploit ation and are forced to compete with one another for forever-shrinking wages as a means of production becomes more complicated. However, the workers will become enlightened and unite to fight their common enemy: the bourgeoisie. Furthermore, they will cooperate with an increasing number of the middle class whose source of livelihoods keep on dwindling due to large factories owned by a shrinking number of superrich industries (Marx-Engels Archive 1). The bourgeoisie will eventually be the author of their own downfall.  

United States, Petitioner v. Xavier Alvarez Essay

United States, Petitioner v. Xavier Alvarez - Essay Example He justified the work by saying to have been acknowledged by the Congressional Medal of Honor while, in essence, this was not true. In addition, he had not worked for the military forces. Evidently, a federal law under the Stolen Valor Act of 2005 criminalizes lying regarding military decorations. Apart from protecting the name of the institution, the Act protected the valor of the actual people who had the ward. The military is a sensitive government body that should not have its name used to impress or gain respect. By claiming to have worked and got a reward from the Congressional Medal of Honor, he committed an offense punishable by the United States law. If everybody is allowed to falsely claim an award in every institution, what will be the integrity of the wards? What role will they play to the actual people receiving them? Will it be a motivation or a formality because we cannot differentiate between the real holders and false one? These questions make Xavier Alvarez guilty for violating the Stolen Valor Act of 2005. Undeniably, United States v. Cabrales stipulates that a person can only be charged after committing an offense. On the other hand, the first amendment right entitles everybody to a freedom of speech as in the case United States v. Stevens. The rights stipulate that people have the right to speak liberally without intrusion from the government. Interestingly, the amendment has limit of speech to obscenity, incitement, child pornography, true threats, criminal conduct or deformation. The question, therefore, is whether Stolen Valor Act protects lies about the military or it infringes and restricts speech with regards to its content. Before pointing a finger to Xavier Alvarez, it is important to assess if the law is restrictive or constitutional. In conclusion, the case Lane v. Franks, the Supreme Court questions the extent of free speech with regards to qualified

It is not good to make friends relying on the social networking Annotated Bibliography

It is not good to make friends relying on the social networking - Annotated Bibliography Example Their irresistible need to chat and connect with their friends and peers makes use of this site all-consuming. To other students using facebook, there is often a false sense of privacy whereby students post embarrassing, denigrating, hurtful and humiliating content in text, videos and photos. The journal indicates that nothing is private online, especially in the social networks. Students have been expelled from schools; others have been sued and denied admission to intern programs all because of the content they post in their â€Å"private† facebook accounts. It is therefore, not advisable to make friends relying on the social networks because of the widely recognized negative effects it has, example, hacking of accounts, stalking people, being involved with several unknown people as well as getting deprived of the real life. Maria Kalpidou is the head of psychology department of the Assumption College. This article is a copyright of Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking is the property of Mary Ann Liebert. According to Kalpidou et al., online social networking sites have achieved popularity among students of the college. Creation of facebook has revolutionized social behaviors and networking practices among the college students. In literature, the average amount of time spent on facebook ranges from one hour to two hours daily. Since it appears to be the preferred approach to networking among students of the college, little research has been done on its relationship with psychological well-being. Kalpidou et al. investigated the relationship between facebook and social adjustment, as well as a negative relationship between facebook, emotional adjustment and self-esteem among the first year and upper class students. After the examination, first year students were found to spend more time on facebook and had strong emotional connection as they reported fewer friends than the upper class students did. It was evident that the number of

Relationship Between HRM and Employee Attitude

Relationship Between HRM and Employee Attitude The relationship between HRM practice and employee work-related attitudes Introduction The concept of human resource management (HRM) has received focussed attention for around 20 years, with the catalyst being that many US companies found they were being rivalled and in some instances overtaken, in markets they had dominated (Ehrlich, 1994, p. 492). As Lodge (1985, p. 319) observes: By the early 1980s there was still little disagreement that US corporate managers, employees and trade unions would have to change their ways in order to compete successfully for markets in America and abroad. Harvard university academics introduced a new compulsory component of HRM into their MBA syllabus and reinforced this so-called Harvard Model with influential books and articles (Beer et al., 1984; Walton, 1985b; Walton and Lawrence, 1985). While there would surely have been a genuine desire to help US business, US society, and even US employees, there was also a long-term effort to ensure that the Harvard Business School faculty provided leadership in human resource management (Walton and Lawrence, 1985, p. xx). The Harvard concept stresses that HRM should lead to employee commitment not simply as a means to employer objectives of improved productivity and profits, but because the fulfilment of many employee needs is taken as a goal rather than merely a means to an end (Walton, 1985a, p. 49). At about the same time as the Harvard concept was being developed another viewpoint was being promulgated by academics who supported a strategic concept of HRM, with the major work edited by Fombrun et al. (1984). This work emphasises that the four generic human resource activities of all organisations: selection/promotion/placement process; reward process; development process; and appraisal process (Tichy et al., 1984, p. 26) need to be strategically aligned with the organisations overall strategic objectives. Hard and soft HRM British writers have focused on the differences between the Harvard commitment concept of HRM and the strategic HRM concept. Keenoy (1990, p. 368) sees the Harvard concept as philosophically grounded in the recognition of multiple stakeholders and the belief that the practice and benefits of HRM can be achieved through neo-pluralist mechanisms, while the strategic concept is almost uniformly unitarist in orientation and displays a quite singular endorsement of managerial values. The former is frequently referred to as soft HRM, while the latter is hard HRM. In theory, soft HRM fulfils employee needs as an end in itself, and the favourable attitudes generated from the use of appropriate HRM practices (Guest, 1997) together with communication, motivation and leadership (Storey, 1987, p. 6), result in commitment to the organisation and improved performance. Hard HRM is only concerned with the effective utilisation of employees (Guest, 2002) and emphasises the quantitative, calculative and business strategic aspects of managing the head count resource in as natural a way as for any other economic factor (Storey, 1987, p. 6). If the reality of soft HRM practice was that it produced the benefits referred to in the rhetoric of academic evangelists such as Richard Walton then it should be highly favoured by both employees and employers. Questions have been raised by a number of researchers, however, about the ability of soft HRM to achieve these benefits. There are two concerns. The first is that the real motive behind its introduction is to undermine unions (Sisson, 1994). Indeed, going back to the introduction of the Harvard concept of soft HRM, Lawrence (1985, p. 362) writes about a seminal colloquium on HRM between 35 senior executives and Harvard academics. He claims that the question as to whether HRM was designed to keep the union out was emphatically denied, and he protested that all but three of the firms represented were at least partially unionised, with several having had a significant number of units of both kinds, with their older plants unionised and the newer ones not. An unreasonable interpr etation therefore would be that these leaders of commitment HRM will happily dispense with unions given the opportunity. Indeed, Lawrence (1985, p. 362) admits that there was a general view that in a well-managed unit with decision-sharing, a union was not needed to represent employee interests. Guest (1990, p. 389) concludes, the main impact of HRM in the United States may have been to provide a smokescreen behind which management can introduce non-unionism or obtain significant concessions from trade unions. The second concern is that meeting the needs of employees has never been an objective in itself, and has simply been the normative view of what Harvard academics would like to see as the employment relationship. Truss et al. (1997, p. 70) in a study of soft and hard models of HRM, concluded that even if the rhetoric of HRM is soft, the reality is almost always hard, with the interests of the organisation prevailing over those of the individual. Similar conclusions have been reached by Keenoy (1990), Poole and Mansfield (1992), Guest (1995) and Legge (1995a, b, 1998). If the soft model of HRM has validity, then there should be a clear relationship between the experience of soft HRM practice and positive employee attitudes (reflecting their needs are being met) and increasing employee commitment as well as improved productivity. Surprisingly, however, most of the research and reporting on HRM has ignored the views of employees. Legge (1998, p. 14) points out: when reading accounts of HRM practice in the UK and North America it is noticeable the extent to which the data are (literally) the voices of management. Guest (1999, p. 5) agrees, claiming that from its conception human resource management reflected a management agenda to the neglect of workers concerns. Some studies have considered employee reactions to HRM (Gibb, 2001; Appelbaum and Berg, 2000; Mabey et al., 1998) but Guest (2002, p. 335) is perceptive in his criticism that a feature of both advocates and critics of HRM is their neglect of direct evidence about the role and reactions of w orkers. Even the exceptions noted which gave employee reactions to HRM did not relate the employee experience of HRM practices to their reactions, and Guest (1997) argues for a research agenda that addresses this gap. This paper aims to contribute to this gap by fulfilling two major objectives. The first is to add to the limited number of studies which have tested to see if there is a relationship between HRM practice and positive employee attitudes. The second objective is to see if there is a significantly stronger relationship between HRM practice and employee attitudes if employee perceptions of HRM practice are taken as the measure of HRM rather than employer perceptions, which has been the approach taken in general by previous researchers. HRM practice and employee work-related attitudes The soft model of HRM, as stated previously, suggests a relationship exists between the use of appropriate HRM practices and positive employee attitudes, and while theoretically these relationships remain poorly developed (Guest, 1997, 2001), a number of attitudes are nonetheless widely considered to be an outcome of soft HRM. For example, levels of job satisfaction, which is the affective perception that results from the achievement of desired outcomes (Harber et al., 1997), are found to be related to levels of HRM practice (Guest, 2002; Ting, 1997). High levels of employee commitment have also been found to be related to the use of appropriate HRM practice (Guest, 2002), and results from investing in HRM practices which benefit employees. For example, the provision of opportunities for training and skill development benefits the employee by equipping them with the necessary knowledge, skills and attitudes to function autonomously and responsibly (Guest, 2002). Furthermore, it impro ves retention and enables them to cope with change in the work environment (Guest, 2002). Organisational fairness is the term used to describe the role of fairness as it directly relates to the workplace and is concerned with the ways employees determine if they have been treated fairly in their jobs and the ways in which those determinations influence other work-related variables (Moorman, 1991, p. 845). The HRM systems, policies, and procedures that operate in an organisation have been identified as impacting on an individuals perceptions of bias and fairness (Kurland and Egan, 1999; Greenberg, 1990). Studies show that where employees believe they are treated fairly in the workplace then they hold positive attitudes towards the organisation (Moorman, 1991), whereas HRM practices that are perceived to be unfair have been found to result in the employee feeling bewildered and betrayed and thus less committed (Schappe, 1996). As far as the relationship between HRM practice and employee attitudes is concerned, the HRM practice dimension has been measured by collecting data from employers in one of the two ways using additive measures of HRM practice or self-reports about the extent to which particular HRM practices have been operationalised. A possible third approach would be to collect employee views about the operationalisation of HRM practice and then relate these reactions to their attitudes. These approaches are described below. The additive approach To date the most common approach for assessing the relationship between HRM practice and employee work-related attitudes is the additive approach. This involves employers indicating, using a yes/no response format, which HRM practices from a predetermined list currently operate in their organisations. The yes responses are then added together, and the assumption is that a higher sum indicates better HRM. Researchers using the additive approach usually correlate the total number of practices with the HRM outcomes being examined. Research exploring this relationship show a strong correlation between high numbers of HRM practice and positive employee attitudes (Fiorito, 2002; Guest, 1999; Guest and Conway, 2002; Appelbaum and Berg, 2000). While this approach is frequently used, it has attracted criticism (Fiorito, 2002; Guest, 1997, 2002). The additive approach is very simplistic. If an employer claims a practice is utilised there is no differentiation on the basis on how well, or to what extent the practice exists. For example, there could be token training and development, or a high level of commitment to a professional and effective training and development programme. Both examples are credited as a yes. This perceived weakness has led some researchers to use employer self-reports about the strength of HRM practice. Employer self-reports about the strength of HRM practice Guest and Peccei (1994) suggest that an improvement on the additive approach is to assess the extent or strength of practice using response bands such as those contained in Likert scales. Such an approach sees employers self-reporting, either on the extent they consider particular HRM practices to be effective (Delaney and Huselid, 1996), or alternatively on the extent to which HRM practices have been operationalised (i.e. to what extent practices are practised) in their workplace (Kane et al., 1999). Guest (2001, p. 1099) claims further research is needed to test the extent that employer and employee views on HRM practices coincide or differ. Specifically he suggests: There is now a need for more research comparing the responses of managers responsible for developing and overseeing HRM practice and employees to identify levels of agreement about the operation of practices such evidence as it is possible to glean from reports about levels of autonomy and consultation suggest that levels of agreement might be quite low. Support for this assertion has already been found. For example, Appelbaum and Bergs (2000) study comparing supervisor and employee perceptions about participative initiatives in US organisations found wide differences. Similarly, Kane et al. (1999) also found evidence of perceptual differences about HRM between different organisational stakeholders. While managers and employers are important stakeholders, so too are employees. This has led to a strong call for employee voice to be heard in HRM research (Guest, 2001). Employee self-reports about the strength of HRM practice Given the apparent perceptual differences between employers and employees perceptions of HRM then a third approach that could be used would see employees reports on the strength of operationalised HRM practice analysed in relation to their levels of work-related attitudes. There is now growing support for assessing HRM from the employee perspective emerging in the literature (Fiorito, 2002; Gibb, 2001; Guest, 2001), and given that where the concern is employee attitudes, then it is intuitively logical to relate that to employee rather than employer perceptions of the effectiveness of HRM policies and practices. Method The most common approach employed in studies assessing the relationship between HRM practice and employee work-related attitudes is the survey (Cully et al., 2000; Guest, 1999), and this is the method of data collection used in this study. Four areas of HRM practice are examined good and safe working conditions, training and development, equal employment opportunities (EEO), and recruitment and selection. These areas of HRM have been selected because they have previously been identified as those likely to have the greatest impact on employee behaviour and attitudes (Guest, 2001). Three employee work-related attitudes are examined organisational commitment, job satisfaction and organisational fairness. These attitudes are generally considered to be desirable outcomes that result from the use of soft HRM (Meyer and Smith, 2000; Guest, 1997). Measurement Three approaches are used to measure HRM practice an additive measure completed by the employer, and two perceptual measures, one completed by employers and one completed by employees. All three measures relate to practices characterised in the literature as soft HRM or best practice HRM (Guest, 1999; Guest and Peccei, 1992; Johnson, 2000; Kane et al., 1999). They are employee-centred (i.e. they should produce benefits for employees when operationalised), and thus should impact on employee work-related attitudes. The additive measure, as stated, is the one most commonly used in research of this type. The additive measure used in this study asks employers to indicate, using a yes/no response format, which practices, from a comprehensive list of 80 practices (20 for each functional area covered), currently operate in their organisation (for example, Do you consult employees on their training needs?). A 20-item scale consisting of statements about HRM practice is used to assess the strength of HRM practices (five items for each of the four functional areas). Respondents are asked to indicate, using a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree, the extent they consider each practice occurs in their organisation, for example, EEO is promoted within this organisation (see Appendix 1 for a full list of statements). The same scale is used for both the employer and the employee groups, with the wording amended to reflect their different perspectives. Employer and employee assessments of HRM using this measure are, therefore, concerned with the judgements these groups make about the extent a particular HRM practice has been operationalised in the workplace. The ÃŽ ± coefficients for the five item measures relating to each of the four areas of HRM practice examined ranged from 0.83 to 0.88, suggesting high internal consistency exists (Browne, 2000). The s tatements about HRM practice on the perceptual measure closely reflect the ones used in the additive measure, but there is not a direct correspondence as that would have resulted in an excessively long measure. Three widely accepted measures of employee attitudes are used. Guest (1997) suggests organisational commitment should be measured using the standard measure developed by Mowday et al. (1979) the organisational commitment questionnaire (OCQ) because this scale captures the extent the employee identifies with the organisation, their desire to remain in the organisation and their willingness to exert effort on behalf of the organisation. An adapted and shortened version of the OCQ is used in this study to measure organisational commitment. Again, respondents are asked to indicate the extent to which they agree with each of the statements using a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree (ÃŽ ±=0.8535). To measure job satisfaction, an adapted and shortened form of the Minnesota satisfaction questionnaire (Weiss et al., 1967) is used. The scale has six items and respondents are asked to indicate how satisfied they are with respect to each of the statements, using a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1=very dissatisfied to 5=very satisfied (ÃŽ ±=0.8664). While organisational fairness has two dimensions distributive and procedural this study is concerned only with procedural fairness and HRM policy and practice. The measure used is an adapted and shortened six-item version of the procedural justice scale used by Moorman (1991). This measures employees perceptions about the way formal procedures are carried out. Respondents are asked to indicate the extent to which they agree with each of the statements using a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree (ÃŽ ±=0.9160). Employer and employee respondents were also asked to provide a range of demographic information. Analysis Data are analysed using SPSS, Version 11, using matched employer and aggregated employee data from 37 organisations. Correlations, using Pearsons r, are completed to explore the relationships between HRM practice and employee attitudes. The multiple linear regression technique is used to explore the differential impacts of the three approaches being tested. The sample In total, 234 organisations were originally contacted to participate in this study. A total of 40 organisations agreed to participate. The person most responsible for operationalising HRM practice was requested to complete the employer survey. Employee participation was voluntary, and the company fully endorsed their participation. The employer participant was requested to distribute the surveys to a representative sample of their workforce, in terms of occupational classification, ethnicity and gender. The targeted population of employees consisted of a total of 1,075 full- and part-time employees from the 40 participating organisations. A total of 626 employees responded (a response rate of 58 per cent) by completing the survey and returning it in the reply-paid envelope provided. In total, 37 usable matched sets of data were obtained. These 37 matched data sets comprise one completed employer questionnaire (total usable employer responses=37) and on average 15 employee questionnai res for each organisation (total usable employee responses=572). The number of actual employee responses received for each organisation varied with workplace size, and ranged from eight to 31. The demographics for the employer and employee samples are reported in Table I. New Zealand is a relatively small country and organisations employing in excess of 100 employees are usually classified as large, with those having between 50 and 99 employees classified as medium and organisations with under 50 employees as small. Three-fifths of the organisations participating in this study can be classified as large; one-fifth are medium, and the remaining five small. Of the 37 participating organisations, 19 are located in the private sector, 18 in the public sector. Around 35 per cent of the participating organisations are located in the service industry, with this group being evenly represented across both sectors. All other organisations are classified in the manufacturing, transport, retail, sales, education and health industries. Both the employer and the employee samples are reasonably a representative of organisations and the composition of the workforce in New Zealand, with the only notable exception being the employee sample is skewed in terms of occupation towards professional and semi-professional groups. Results The first analysis examines the relationship between additive measures of HRM practice and attitudes. The number of practices for each functional area varied considerably between organisations. Generally it is found that there are relatively high levels of practice for the areas of good and safe working conditions (M=15.95, SD=3.22), training and development (M=16.77, SD=2.76), along with recruitment and selection (M=16.52, SD=2.50). EEO is the one area, on the other hand, where a considerably lower mean level of practice exists (M=12.17, SD=5.96). According to prior research, high numbers of HRM practice are associated with positive employee attitudes (Guest, 1999). The results of the analysis for this relationship are reported in Table II. These findings differ from those previously reported. Using aggregated employee means, when levels of organisational commitment (M=3.72, SD=0.78), job satisfaction (M=3.72, SD=0.79) and organisational fairness (M=3.70, SD=0.86) are correlated with the combined additive measure of HRM practice, the results show that higher index scores in the number of HRM practices are not related to higher levels of organisational commitment (r=0.155, df=35, p=>0.05), job satisfaction (r=0.085, df=35, p=>0.05) or organisational fairness (r=0.146, df=35, p=>0.05). When this relationship is examined by functional area the correlations are also found not to be significant. Next the relationship between HRM practice and employee attitudes is examined using first employer self-reports, and second employee self-reports. These results are also reported in Table II. Statistically significant correlations are found to exist between the three attitudes measured and employee assessments of HRM practice for all the functional areas examined. However, no significant correlations are found between employer self-reports about the strength of HRM practice and employee attitudes. Data are then analysed using a regression technique, enabling the predictive qualities of each of the three approaches for assessing HRM practice to be explored. The model used for regressions is shown in Figure 1. All the measures of HRM practices were entered into a multiple regression[1] equation so that the character of the relationship between different measures of HRM practice and employee attitudes could be explored. It is found that nearly 51 per cent of the variance in organisational commitment (R 2=0.506, p The results of the regressions for the three measures of HRM practice, along with the three measures of employee attitudes, are presented in Table III. When the results of the regression for the three different measures of HRM practice are analysed it becomes evident that employee assessments have the greatest level of predictive power for attitudes. The regression reveals that numbers of HRM practice and employer assessments about the strength of HRM practice account for very little of the variance in attitudes. On the other hand, employee assessments of HRM practice appear to be very influential. Around 47 per cent of the variance in organisational commitment is explained by employee assessments of practice across the four HRM areas examined, with even larger and equally significant levels of variance being explained by this for job satisfaction and organisational fairness. If we exclude employee assessments related to EEO from the analysis, as it uniformly records the lowest ÃŽ ² across all three attitudes, the ÃŽ ² statistic for the remaining three functional areas of HRM practice implies that for every increment in employee assessments, levels of attitudes increase by between 0.17 and 0.34. The most statistically significant and consistent increments are in relation to employee assessments of good and safe working conditions, along with training and development, and these are found to apply to all aspects of work-related attitudes measured. Also worth noting is that, not surprisingly, assessments of recruitment and selection practices accounted for the largest variance in levels of organisational fairness. Discussion and concluding remarks Consistent with the work of Appelbaum and Berg (2000), Cully et al. (2000) and Guest (1999), this study also finds that a significant relationship exists between HRM practice and employee work-related attitudes. There is a strong statistically significant relationship when HRM is researched from the employee perspective. However, there was no significant relationship when HRM practice was measured using the additive approach or employer self-reports. These results have implications for current approaches used to assess the HRM practice-employee work-related attitudes relationship. This study demonstrates that by far the greatest correlate of employee attitudes are employees own assessments of the strength of HRM practice. Interestingly, higher levels of HRM practice, using an additive measure, are not found to be significantly associated with attitudes across any of the four functional areas of HRM examined. In fact, it is revealed that higher levels of HRM practice are in some cases related to decreased levels of job satisfaction and organisational fairness. For example, looking at the data for each functional HRM area, it is possible that higher levels of EEO practice may actually have no, or even a negative, effect on employee attitudes, with a strong inverse relationship being found for job satisfaction. Similarly, weak relationships are found when the relationship between employer assessments about operationalised practice and attitudes are examined. So while Guest and Peccei (1994) suggest these areas are important aspects of best practice HRM, this study finds them to be unrelated to attitudes when data are collected from employers. Put together these results suggest that if managers want to maximise employee attitudes, then implementing lots of practices is not sufficient. Practitioners need to be aware that the way they implement their HRM practices may be a more important determinant of employee attitudes than the number of practices they put in place. This builds on the research findings of other recent studies (Armstrong, 2001) that suggest it is possible that it is the quality of the practice that counts and not the quantity. It may be that practitioners may need to undertake regular attitudinal surveys to assess employee reactions to current HRM practice and assess these on a longitudinal basis to identify what is working and what is not. It was beyond the parameters of this study to examine the complex relationship between HRM practice, employee attitudes and business performance; it has, however, explored the narrower relationship between HRM practice (for the areas of good and safe working conditions, training and development, EEO and recruitment and selection) and three employee attitudes (organisational commitment, job satisfaction and organisational fairness). While regressions tell us nothing about the cause-effect nature of relationships between assessments of HRM practice and employee attitudes, these findings strongly suggest that incorporating the employees experience of HRM into analyses exploring the HRM practice, employee attitudes relationship will contribute further to our understanding about what aspects of HRM have the potential to yield the greatest performance outcomes. Arguably, more so, it would appear, than exploring this particular relationship solely using additive measures or employer self-re ports. This study has some limitations. This study found the standard deviations for assessments of HRM practice and work-related attitudes amongst employee groups within each organisation to be reasonably low, showing close agreement. Nonetheless the aggregated data has been developed from a relatively small sample, thus it may not be representative of the bulk of employee views. The evaluative nature of the questions used introduces the possibility of common method variance (i.e. an artificial correlation across questions due to mood or other contaminants (Fiorito, 2002)). Also, the HRM practices used in this study are supposedly best practice; however, there is still insufficient evidence available to confirm that they are indeed best practice. Finally, Gibb (2001) suggests effective HRM is about implementing best practice. While this may very well be true, it is clear from this study that simply introducing best practice, or even assessing the effectiveness of practice from the employers viewpoint, is no guarantee that they have been successfully implemented. If the organisations objective is to improve employees workplace attitudes, then possibly a better way to confirm which HRM practices are having the greatest impact, and hence are effective, is to correlate employees assessment of them with employees attitudes. Further studies in this area are now required. References Appelbaum, E., Berg, P. (2000), High performance work systems: giving workers a stake, in Blair, M., Kochan, T. (Eds),The New Relationship: Human Capital in the American Corporation, Brookings Institution Press, Washington, DC, . [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Armstrong, G. (2001), The Change Agenda: Performance through People, The New People Management, CODE, London, . [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Beer, M., Spector, B., Lawrence, P.R., Mills, D.Q., Walton, R.E. (1984), Managing Human Assets, Free Press, New York, NY, . [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Browne, J.H. (2000), Benchmarking HRM practices in healthy work organizations, American Business Review, Vol. 18 No.2, pp.54-61. [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Cully, M., Woodland, S., OReilly, A., Dix, G. (2000), Britain at Work: As Depicted by the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey, Routledge, London, . [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Delaney, J.T., Huselid, M.A. (1996), The impact of human resource management practices on perceptions of organizational performance, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 39 No.4, pp.949-69. [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Ehrlich, C.J. (1994), Creating an employer-employee relationship for the future, Human Resource Management, Vol. 33 No.3, pp.491-501. [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Fiorito, J. (2002), Human resource management practices and worker desires for union representation, in Bennett, J., Kaufman, B. (Eds),The Future of Private Sector Unionism in the United States, M.E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY, . [Manual request] [Infotrieve] (1984), in Fombrun, C., Tichy, N., Devanna, M. (Eds),Strategic Human Resource Management, Wiley, New York, NY, . [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Gibb, S. (2001), The state of human resource management: evidence from employees view of HRM systems and staff, Employee Relations, Vol. 23 No.4, pp.318-36. [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Greenberg, J. (1990), Organisational justice: yesterday, today and tomorrow, Journal of Management, Vol. 16 pp.399-43 Relationship Between HRM and Employee Attitude Relationship Between HRM and Employee Attitude The relationship between HRM practice and employee work-related attitudes Introduction The concept of human resource management (HRM) has received focussed attention for around 20 years, with the catalyst being that many US companies found they were being rivalled and in some instances overtaken, in markets they had dominated (Ehrlich, 1994, p. 492). As Lodge (1985, p. 319) observes: By the early 1980s there was still little disagreement that US corporate managers, employees and trade unions would have to change their ways in order to compete successfully for markets in America and abroad. Harvard university academics introduced a new compulsory component of HRM into their MBA syllabus and reinforced this so-called Harvard Model with influential books and articles (Beer et al., 1984; Walton, 1985b; Walton and Lawrence, 1985). While there would surely have been a genuine desire to help US business, US society, and even US employees, there was also a long-term effort to ensure that the Harvard Business School faculty provided leadership in human resource management (Walton and Lawrence, 1985, p. xx). The Harvard concept stresses that HRM should lead to employee commitment not simply as a means to employer objectives of improved productivity and profits, but because the fulfilment of many employee needs is taken as a goal rather than merely a means to an end (Walton, 1985a, p. 49). At about the same time as the Harvard concept was being developed another viewpoint was being promulgated by academics who supported a strategic concept of HRM, with the major work edited by Fombrun et al. (1984). This work emphasises that the four generic human resource activities of all organisations: selection/promotion/placement process; reward process; development process; and appraisal process (Tichy et al., 1984, p. 26) need to be strategically aligned with the organisations overall strategic objectives. Hard and soft HRM British writers have focused on the differences between the Harvard commitment concept of HRM and the strategic HRM concept. Keenoy (1990, p. 368) sees the Harvard concept as philosophically grounded in the recognition of multiple stakeholders and the belief that the practice and benefits of HRM can be achieved through neo-pluralist mechanisms, while the strategic concept is almost uniformly unitarist in orientation and displays a quite singular endorsement of managerial values. The former is frequently referred to as soft HRM, while the latter is hard HRM. In theory, soft HRM fulfils employee needs as an end in itself, and the favourable attitudes generated from the use of appropriate HRM practices (Guest, 1997) together with communication, motivation and leadership (Storey, 1987, p. 6), result in commitment to the organisation and improved performance. Hard HRM is only concerned with the effective utilisation of employees (Guest, 2002) and emphasises the quantitative, calculative and business strategic aspects of managing the head count resource in as natural a way as for any other economic factor (Storey, 1987, p. 6). If the reality of soft HRM practice was that it produced the benefits referred to in the rhetoric of academic evangelists such as Richard Walton then it should be highly favoured by both employees and employers. Questions have been raised by a number of researchers, however, about the ability of soft HRM to achieve these benefits. There are two concerns. The first is that the real motive behind its introduction is to undermine unions (Sisson, 1994). Indeed, going back to the introduction of the Harvard concept of soft HRM, Lawrence (1985, p. 362) writes about a seminal colloquium on HRM between 35 senior executives and Harvard academics. He claims that the question as to whether HRM was designed to keep the union out was emphatically denied, and he protested that all but three of the firms represented were at least partially unionised, with several having had a significant number of units of both kinds, with their older plants unionised and the newer ones not. An unreasonable interpr etation therefore would be that these leaders of commitment HRM will happily dispense with unions given the opportunity. Indeed, Lawrence (1985, p. 362) admits that there was a general view that in a well-managed unit with decision-sharing, a union was not needed to represent employee interests. Guest (1990, p. 389) concludes, the main impact of HRM in the United States may have been to provide a smokescreen behind which management can introduce non-unionism or obtain significant concessions from trade unions. The second concern is that meeting the needs of employees has never been an objective in itself, and has simply been the normative view of what Harvard academics would like to see as the employment relationship. Truss et al. (1997, p. 70) in a study of soft and hard models of HRM, concluded that even if the rhetoric of HRM is soft, the reality is almost always hard, with the interests of the organisation prevailing over those of the individual. Similar conclusions have been reached by Keenoy (1990), Poole and Mansfield (1992), Guest (1995) and Legge (1995a, b, 1998). If the soft model of HRM has validity, then there should be a clear relationship between the experience of soft HRM practice and positive employee attitudes (reflecting their needs are being met) and increasing employee commitment as well as improved productivity. Surprisingly, however, most of the research and reporting on HRM has ignored the views of employees. Legge (1998, p. 14) points out: when reading accounts of HRM practice in the UK and North America it is noticeable the extent to which the data are (literally) the voices of management. Guest (1999, p. 5) agrees, claiming that from its conception human resource management reflected a management agenda to the neglect of workers concerns. Some studies have considered employee reactions to HRM (Gibb, 2001; Appelbaum and Berg, 2000; Mabey et al., 1998) but Guest (2002, p. 335) is perceptive in his criticism that a feature of both advocates and critics of HRM is their neglect of direct evidence about the role and reactions of w orkers. Even the exceptions noted which gave employee reactions to HRM did not relate the employee experience of HRM practices to their reactions, and Guest (1997) argues for a research agenda that addresses this gap. This paper aims to contribute to this gap by fulfilling two major objectives. The first is to add to the limited number of studies which have tested to see if there is a relationship between HRM practice and positive employee attitudes. The second objective is to see if there is a significantly stronger relationship between HRM practice and employee attitudes if employee perceptions of HRM practice are taken as the measure of HRM rather than employer perceptions, which has been the approach taken in general by previous researchers. HRM practice and employee work-related attitudes The soft model of HRM, as stated previously, suggests a relationship exists between the use of appropriate HRM practices and positive employee attitudes, and while theoretically these relationships remain poorly developed (Guest, 1997, 2001), a number of attitudes are nonetheless widely considered to be an outcome of soft HRM. For example, levels of job satisfaction, which is the affective perception that results from the achievement of desired outcomes (Harber et al., 1997), are found to be related to levels of HRM practice (Guest, 2002; Ting, 1997). High levels of employee commitment have also been found to be related to the use of appropriate HRM practice (Guest, 2002), and results from investing in HRM practices which benefit employees. For example, the provision of opportunities for training and skill development benefits the employee by equipping them with the necessary knowledge, skills and attitudes to function autonomously and responsibly (Guest, 2002). Furthermore, it impro ves retention and enables them to cope with change in the work environment (Guest, 2002). Organisational fairness is the term used to describe the role of fairness as it directly relates to the workplace and is concerned with the ways employees determine if they have been treated fairly in their jobs and the ways in which those determinations influence other work-related variables (Moorman, 1991, p. 845). The HRM systems, policies, and procedures that operate in an organisation have been identified as impacting on an individuals perceptions of bias and fairness (Kurland and Egan, 1999; Greenberg, 1990). Studies show that where employees believe they are treated fairly in the workplace then they hold positive attitudes towards the organisation (Moorman, 1991), whereas HRM practices that are perceived to be unfair have been found to result in the employee feeling bewildered and betrayed and thus less committed (Schappe, 1996). As far as the relationship between HRM practice and employee attitudes is concerned, the HRM practice dimension has been measured by collecting data from employers in one of the two ways using additive measures of HRM practice or self-reports about the extent to which particular HRM practices have been operationalised. A possible third approach would be to collect employee views about the operationalisation of HRM practice and then relate these reactions to their attitudes. These approaches are described below. The additive approach To date the most common approach for assessing the relationship between HRM practice and employee work-related attitudes is the additive approach. This involves employers indicating, using a yes/no response format, which HRM practices from a predetermined list currently operate in their organisations. The yes responses are then added together, and the assumption is that a higher sum indicates better HRM. Researchers using the additive approach usually correlate the total number of practices with the HRM outcomes being examined. Research exploring this relationship show a strong correlation between high numbers of HRM practice and positive employee attitudes (Fiorito, 2002; Guest, 1999; Guest and Conway, 2002; Appelbaum and Berg, 2000). While this approach is frequently used, it has attracted criticism (Fiorito, 2002; Guest, 1997, 2002). The additive approach is very simplistic. If an employer claims a practice is utilised there is no differentiation on the basis on how well, or to what extent the practice exists. For example, there could be token training and development, or a high level of commitment to a professional and effective training and development programme. Both examples are credited as a yes. This perceived weakness has led some researchers to use employer self-reports about the strength of HRM practice. Employer self-reports about the strength of HRM practice Guest and Peccei (1994) suggest that an improvement on the additive approach is to assess the extent or strength of practice using response bands such as those contained in Likert scales. Such an approach sees employers self-reporting, either on the extent they consider particular HRM practices to be effective (Delaney and Huselid, 1996), or alternatively on the extent to which HRM practices have been operationalised (i.e. to what extent practices are practised) in their workplace (Kane et al., 1999). Guest (2001, p. 1099) claims further research is needed to test the extent that employer and employee views on HRM practices coincide or differ. Specifically he suggests: There is now a need for more research comparing the responses of managers responsible for developing and overseeing HRM practice and employees to identify levels of agreement about the operation of practices such evidence as it is possible to glean from reports about levels of autonomy and consultation suggest that levels of agreement might be quite low. Support for this assertion has already been found. For example, Appelbaum and Bergs (2000) study comparing supervisor and employee perceptions about participative initiatives in US organisations found wide differences. Similarly, Kane et al. (1999) also found evidence of perceptual differences about HRM between different organisational stakeholders. While managers and employers are important stakeholders, so too are employees. This has led to a strong call for employee voice to be heard in HRM research (Guest, 2001). Employee self-reports about the strength of HRM practice Given the apparent perceptual differences between employers and employees perceptions of HRM then a third approach that could be used would see employees reports on the strength of operationalised HRM practice analysed in relation to their levels of work-related attitudes. There is now growing support for assessing HRM from the employee perspective emerging in the literature (Fiorito, 2002; Gibb, 2001; Guest, 2001), and given that where the concern is employee attitudes, then it is intuitively logical to relate that to employee rather than employer perceptions of the effectiveness of HRM policies and practices. Method The most common approach employed in studies assessing the relationship between HRM practice and employee work-related attitudes is the survey (Cully et al., 2000; Guest, 1999), and this is the method of data collection used in this study. Four areas of HRM practice are examined good and safe working conditions, training and development, equal employment opportunities (EEO), and recruitment and selection. These areas of HRM have been selected because they have previously been identified as those likely to have the greatest impact on employee behaviour and attitudes (Guest, 2001). Three employee work-related attitudes are examined organisational commitment, job satisfaction and organisational fairness. These attitudes are generally considered to be desirable outcomes that result from the use of soft HRM (Meyer and Smith, 2000; Guest, 1997). Measurement Three approaches are used to measure HRM practice an additive measure completed by the employer, and two perceptual measures, one completed by employers and one completed by employees. All three measures relate to practices characterised in the literature as soft HRM or best practice HRM (Guest, 1999; Guest and Peccei, 1992; Johnson, 2000; Kane et al., 1999). They are employee-centred (i.e. they should produce benefits for employees when operationalised), and thus should impact on employee work-related attitudes. The additive measure, as stated, is the one most commonly used in research of this type. The additive measure used in this study asks employers to indicate, using a yes/no response format, which practices, from a comprehensive list of 80 practices (20 for each functional area covered), currently operate in their organisation (for example, Do you consult employees on their training needs?). A 20-item scale consisting of statements about HRM practice is used to assess the strength of HRM practices (five items for each of the four functional areas). Respondents are asked to indicate, using a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree, the extent they consider each practice occurs in their organisation, for example, EEO is promoted within this organisation (see Appendix 1 for a full list of statements). The same scale is used for both the employer and the employee groups, with the wording amended to reflect their different perspectives. Employer and employee assessments of HRM using this measure are, therefore, concerned with the judgements these groups make about the extent a particular HRM practice has been operationalised in the workplace. The ÃŽ ± coefficients for the five item measures relating to each of the four areas of HRM practice examined ranged from 0.83 to 0.88, suggesting high internal consistency exists (Browne, 2000). The s tatements about HRM practice on the perceptual measure closely reflect the ones used in the additive measure, but there is not a direct correspondence as that would have resulted in an excessively long measure. Three widely accepted measures of employee attitudes are used. Guest (1997) suggests organisational commitment should be measured using the standard measure developed by Mowday et al. (1979) the organisational commitment questionnaire (OCQ) because this scale captures the extent the employee identifies with the organisation, their desire to remain in the organisation and their willingness to exert effort on behalf of the organisation. An adapted and shortened version of the OCQ is used in this study to measure organisational commitment. Again, respondents are asked to indicate the extent to which they agree with each of the statements using a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree (ÃŽ ±=0.8535). To measure job satisfaction, an adapted and shortened form of the Minnesota satisfaction questionnaire (Weiss et al., 1967) is used. The scale has six items and respondents are asked to indicate how satisfied they are with respect to each of the statements, using a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1=very dissatisfied to 5=very satisfied (ÃŽ ±=0.8664). While organisational fairness has two dimensions distributive and procedural this study is concerned only with procedural fairness and HRM policy and practice. The measure used is an adapted and shortened six-item version of the procedural justice scale used by Moorman (1991). This measures employees perceptions about the way formal procedures are carried out. Respondents are asked to indicate the extent to which they agree with each of the statements using a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree (ÃŽ ±=0.9160). Employer and employee respondents were also asked to provide a range of demographic information. Analysis Data are analysed using SPSS, Version 11, using matched employer and aggregated employee data from 37 organisations. Correlations, using Pearsons r, are completed to explore the relationships between HRM practice and employee attitudes. The multiple linear regression technique is used to explore the differential impacts of the three approaches being tested. The sample In total, 234 organisations were originally contacted to participate in this study. A total of 40 organisations agreed to participate. The person most responsible for operationalising HRM practice was requested to complete the employer survey. Employee participation was voluntary, and the company fully endorsed their participation. The employer participant was requested to distribute the surveys to a representative sample of their workforce, in terms of occupational classification, ethnicity and gender. The targeted population of employees consisted of a total of 1,075 full- and part-time employees from the 40 participating organisations. A total of 626 employees responded (a response rate of 58 per cent) by completing the survey and returning it in the reply-paid envelope provided. In total, 37 usable matched sets of data were obtained. These 37 matched data sets comprise one completed employer questionnaire (total usable employer responses=37) and on average 15 employee questionnai res for each organisation (total usable employee responses=572). The number of actual employee responses received for each organisation varied with workplace size, and ranged from eight to 31. The demographics for the employer and employee samples are reported in Table I. New Zealand is a relatively small country and organisations employing in excess of 100 employees are usually classified as large, with those having between 50 and 99 employees classified as medium and organisations with under 50 employees as small. Three-fifths of the organisations participating in this study can be classified as large; one-fifth are medium, and the remaining five small. Of the 37 participating organisations, 19 are located in the private sector, 18 in the public sector. Around 35 per cent of the participating organisations are located in the service industry, with this group being evenly represented across both sectors. All other organisations are classified in the manufacturing, transport, retail, sales, education and health industries. Both the employer and the employee samples are reasonably a representative of organisations and the composition of the workforce in New Zealand, with the only notable exception being the employee sample is skewed in terms of occupation towards professional and semi-professional groups. Results The first analysis examines the relationship between additive measures of HRM practice and attitudes. The number of practices for each functional area varied considerably between organisations. Generally it is found that there are relatively high levels of practice for the areas of good and safe working conditions (M=15.95, SD=3.22), training and development (M=16.77, SD=2.76), along with recruitment and selection (M=16.52, SD=2.50). EEO is the one area, on the other hand, where a considerably lower mean level of practice exists (M=12.17, SD=5.96). According to prior research, high numbers of HRM practice are associated with positive employee attitudes (Guest, 1999). The results of the analysis for this relationship are reported in Table II. These findings differ from those previously reported. Using aggregated employee means, when levels of organisational commitment (M=3.72, SD=0.78), job satisfaction (M=3.72, SD=0.79) and organisational fairness (M=3.70, SD=0.86) are correlated with the combined additive measure of HRM practice, the results show that higher index scores in the number of HRM practices are not related to higher levels of organisational commitment (r=0.155, df=35, p=>0.05), job satisfaction (r=0.085, df=35, p=>0.05) or organisational fairness (r=0.146, df=35, p=>0.05). When this relationship is examined by functional area the correlations are also found not to be significant. Next the relationship between HRM practice and employee attitudes is examined using first employer self-reports, and second employee self-reports. These results are also reported in Table II. Statistically significant correlations are found to exist between the three attitudes measured and employee assessments of HRM practice for all the functional areas examined. However, no significant correlations are found between employer self-reports about the strength of HRM practice and employee attitudes. Data are then analysed using a regression technique, enabling the predictive qualities of each of the three approaches for assessing HRM practice to be explored. The model used for regressions is shown in Figure 1. All the measures of HRM practices were entered into a multiple regression[1] equation so that the character of the relationship between different measures of HRM practice and employee attitudes could be explored. It is found that nearly 51 per cent of the variance in organisational commitment (R 2=0.506, p The results of the regressions for the three measures of HRM practice, along with the three measures of employee attitudes, are presented in Table III. When the results of the regression for the three different measures of HRM practice are analysed it becomes evident that employee assessments have the greatest level of predictive power for attitudes. The regression reveals that numbers of HRM practice and employer assessments about the strength of HRM practice account for very little of the variance in attitudes. On the other hand, employee assessments of HRM practice appear to be very influential. Around 47 per cent of the variance in organisational commitment is explained by employee assessments of practice across the four HRM areas examined, with even larger and equally significant levels of variance being explained by this for job satisfaction and organisational fairness. If we exclude employee assessments related to EEO from the analysis, as it uniformly records the lowest ÃŽ ² across all three attitudes, the ÃŽ ² statistic for the remaining three functional areas of HRM practice implies that for every increment in employee assessments, levels of attitudes increase by between 0.17 and 0.34. The most statistically significant and consistent increments are in relation to employee assessments of good and safe working conditions, along with training and development, and these are found to apply to all aspects of work-related attitudes measured. Also worth noting is that, not surprisingly, assessments of recruitment and selection practices accounted for the largest variance in levels of organisational fairness. Discussion and concluding remarks Consistent with the work of Appelbaum and Berg (2000), Cully et al. (2000) and Guest (1999), this study also finds that a significant relationship exists between HRM practice and employee work-related attitudes. There is a strong statistically significant relationship when HRM is researched from the employee perspective. However, there was no significant relationship when HRM practice was measured using the additive approach or employer self-reports. These results have implications for current approaches used to assess the HRM practice-employee work-related attitudes relationship. This study demonstrates that by far the greatest correlate of employee attitudes are employees own assessments of the strength of HRM practice. Interestingly, higher levels of HRM practice, using an additive measure, are not found to be significantly associated with attitudes across any of the four functional areas of HRM examined. In fact, it is revealed that higher levels of HRM practice are in some cases related to decreased levels of job satisfaction and organisational fairness. For example, looking at the data for each functional HRM area, it is possible that higher levels of EEO practice may actually have no, or even a negative, effect on employee attitudes, with a strong inverse relationship being found for job satisfaction. Similarly, weak relationships are found when the relationship between employer assessments about operationalised practice and attitudes are examined. So while Guest and Peccei (1994) suggest these areas are important aspects of best practice HRM, this study finds them to be unrelated to attitudes when data are collected from employers. Put together these results suggest that if managers want to maximise employee attitudes, then implementing lots of practices is not sufficient. Practitioners need to be aware that the way they implement their HRM practices may be a more important determinant of employee attitudes than the number of practices they put in place. This builds on the research findings of other recent studies (Armstrong, 2001) that suggest it is possible that it is the quality of the practice that counts and not the quantity. It may be that practitioners may need to undertake regular attitudinal surveys to assess employee reactions to current HRM practice and assess these on a longitudinal basis to identify what is working and what is not. It was beyond the parameters of this study to examine the complex relationship between HRM practice, employee attitudes and business performance; it has, however, explored the narrower relationship between HRM practice (for the areas of good and safe working conditions, training and development, EEO and recruitment and selection) and three employee attitudes (organisational commitment, job satisfaction and organisational fairness). While regressions tell us nothing about the cause-effect nature of relationships between assessments of HRM practice and employee attitudes, these findings strongly suggest that incorporating the employees experience of HRM into analyses exploring the HRM practice, employee attitudes relationship will contribute further to our understanding about what aspects of HRM have the potential to yield the greatest performance outcomes. Arguably, more so, it would appear, than exploring this particular relationship solely using additive measures or employer self-re ports. This study has some limitations. This study found the standard deviations for assessments of HRM practice and work-related attitudes amongst employee groups within each organisation to be reasonably low, showing close agreement. Nonetheless the aggregated data has been developed from a relatively small sample, thus it may not be representative of the bulk of employee views. The evaluative nature of the questions used introduces the possibility of common method variance (i.e. an artificial correlation across questions due to mood or other contaminants (Fiorito, 2002)). Also, the HRM practices used in this study are supposedly best practice; however, there is still insufficient evidence available to confirm that they are indeed best practice. Finally, Gibb (2001) suggests effective HRM is about implementing best practice. While this may very well be true, it is clear from this study that simply introducing best practice, or even assessing the effectiveness of practice from the employers viewpoint, is no guarantee that they have been successfully implemented. If the organisations objective is to improve employees workplace attitudes, then possibly a better way to confirm which HRM practices are having the greatest impact, and hence are effective, is to correlate employees assessment of them with employees attitudes. Further studies in this area are now required. References Appelbaum, E., Berg, P. (2000), High performance work systems: giving workers a stake, in Blair, M., Kochan, T. (Eds),The New Relationship: Human Capital in the American Corporation, Brookings Institution Press, Washington, DC, . [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Armstrong, G. (2001), The Change Agenda: Performance through People, The New People Management, CODE, London, . [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Beer, M., Spector, B., Lawrence, P.R., Mills, D.Q., Walton, R.E. (1984), Managing Human Assets, Free Press, New York, NY, . [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Browne, J.H. (2000), Benchmarking HRM practices in healthy work organizations, American Business Review, Vol. 18 No.2, pp.54-61. [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Cully, M., Woodland, S., OReilly, A., Dix, G. (2000), Britain at Work: As Depicted by the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey, Routledge, London, . [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Delaney, J.T., Huselid, M.A. (1996), The impact of human resource management practices on perceptions of organizational performance, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 39 No.4, pp.949-69. [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Ehrlich, C.J. (1994), Creating an employer-employee relationship for the future, Human Resource Management, Vol. 33 No.3, pp.491-501. [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Fiorito, J. (2002), Human resource management practices and worker desires for union representation, in Bennett, J., Kaufman, B. (Eds),The Future of Private Sector Unionism in the United States, M.E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY, . [Manual request] [Infotrieve] (1984), in Fombrun, C., Tichy, N., Devanna, M. (Eds),Strategic Human Resource Management, Wiley, New York, NY, . [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Gibb, S. (2001), The state of human resource management: evidence from employees view of HRM systems and staff, Employee Relations, Vol. 23 No.4, pp.318-36. [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Greenberg, J. (1990), Organisational justice: yesterday, today and tomorrow, Journal of Management, Vol. 16 pp.399-43