Business Law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 3

Business Law - Essay Example The current generations of businesses have discovered secrets to achieving their goals, growing their organizations and keeping competition at bay. While growth and profit earning strategies were the main focus for many businesses in the past, the current trend is different. Businesses are targeting more than just earning high incomes and increasing their profits. They have discovered that they can achieve their visions and missions through confronting the existing social and environmental challenges, allowing the profit earning motive to be a secondary factor.Therefore, organizations are building their market share and growing their revenues through corporate social responsibility innovation. This entails innovating and applying powerful ways of addressing the existing social and environmental challenges (Hollender and Bill, 159). However, the application of social responsibility innovation to act as a marketing strategy, without championing for any social and environmental benefit, is harmful to an organizations brand. This is because; consumers have become more enlightened and aware of the application of charity and good-deeds as a marketing ploy by organizations. Therefore, the current generation of the consumer goes beyond looking at the billions pumped into the corporate citizenship programs, to look at the sustainability and the benefits obtainable by the society. There are various innovative corporate social responsibility techniques that are applied by organizations to achieve the sustainability of corporate citizenship.... This is vital to maintain strong drivers of the organization, who steers it towards its targets (Hollender and Bill, 70). Microsoft Corporation history, vision and mission This is a multinational corporation with its origin in the USA, dealing with a variety of products and services related to computers and computing (Harnick, n.p.). The company is ranked as the largest software maker in the world, based on software revenue collection, and the world’s most valuable company. In the â€Å"CR’s 100 Best Corporate Citizens 2012† (CR100), which gives the rank of the top 100 highly ranked socially responsible organizations, Microsoft Corporation was ranked as the third best (Harnick, n.p.). The company was founded in 1975 to develop interpreters for the then Altair 8800 microcomputer (Harnick, n.p.). However, the company eventually diversified into manufacturing into personal computer operating systems and software. According to the current standings, the company has d ominated the field of computer operating systems, office suite and online visual communication media (Harnick, n.p.). The mission of the company is to provided professional and value added services in the technology industry, with a high customer service and the interest of the customers in mind. Its vision is to build a customer service-based professional services consulting company, which will specialize in information technology consulting (Harnick, n.p.). Microsoft Corporation stakeholder analysis Stakeholders refer to the people or entities that are party to or affected in one way or the other by the operations of an organization. Microsoft Corporation has the founder,

Multiculturalism - Freedom, Recognition and Authenticity Essay

Multiculturalism - Freedom, Recognition and Authenticity - Essay Example It is often thought that this is the best framework that would accommodate different parts of the population, especially if they come from various cultural, religious or other backgrounds (Appiah 2007, p. 14). Nevertheless, I have considered some of the peculiarities of it and came to a conclusion that that it may be flawed to a certain extent. A. That is exactly what I wanted to talk about. Do not you, wise men, think that this is too unrealistic? Equal respect is truly a platform that the stability of a diverse society rests on, but it is too abstract, especially when it comes to actual application (Abbey 2000, p. 118). B. Our friend is absolutely right here, equality is something that can hardly be achieved in a society where citizens are different in numerous aspects, starting from the level of income and up to the very place where they live. It is virtually impossible to create equal conditions for everyone. A. C, my friend, I can see where you are going with this, but I would like to point out that the politics of equal respect, the one that you like so much, is actually inhospitable to difference (Ferrelly 2004, p. 88). B. I fully agree. C, you see, diversity is a factor that is dynamic, it is not static; in other words, one can hardly make a set of coordinates that would include all the differences and find harmony between them. In addition to that, acknowledgement of difference requires a constant change with in the social framework. A. Exactly! Do not you see that this is absolutely the opposite of what the system was designed for. The universal application that you have mentioned relies on one size fits all ideology. In other words, while claiming to respect the difference, this politics actually eliminates it (Fraser & Honneth, 2003, p. 30). B. Indeed, if two groups of people believe in different, sometimes opposite values, do you think that there can be a single policy that would unite them. Nevertheless, if the principle of

Walkers presentation of Sofia and Harpo Essay Example for Free

Walkers presentation of Sofia and Harpo Essay Alice walker uses a variety of techniques to present the characters of Sofia and Harpo during page 60 of The Color Purple. I will be exploring a number of lexical, grammatical and phonological choices, as well as other techniques, in the order they appear in the letter and will be discussing how these can lead to the development of attitudes and values. The introduction to the Sofia and Harpo relationship shows the reversal of the fixed stereotype perpetuated by other couples in the novel that a man should lead and a woman should follow. Previous letters depict Harpo as the feminine, subservient man, crying like his heart gon break. While Sofia is much the dominant figure in the way she is marching like going to war. In not conforming to the basic male-female stereotypes we see Sofia working on the roof while Harpo is happy to hold the baby and give it a kiss. However, once Harpo sees that he is losing face he begins to eat gluttonously as he believes that physical strength leads to power. Although this gluttony could in fact be comfort eating and so is associated with his feminine image. Harpos need for control then extends to the bedroom, where Sofia says once he git on top of me I think bout how thats where he always want to be. The situation here as well as the previously accumulating tensions has led Sofia to believe that she need a vacation. Walker states that Sofias sisters are all big strong healthy girls, the words big and strong both have very powerful connotations. The two words are used very commonly and are short and simple; this reflects the simplicity of the sisters in terms of erudition but the physical power in terms of strength and dominance. Both words are mono-syllabic and consonance on the g sound differs between the two words. The word big is a very short sounding word and also has connotations for pregnancy and reflects how Sofias sisters can face what life has thrown at them in terms of relationships. The word strong, however, has a continuous sound created by the nasal sound on the n. This sound portrays an image of continuing struggle to be a woman. Walker compares the attributes of the sisters to that of amazons, a tribe of women warriors; reflecting how Sofias sisters are striving to turn around the appearance of women as being the inferior race. An image is created of the sisters appearing to rescue Sofia from the grasps of an evil husband named Harpo. Even though Sofia is in fact similar to her sisters in terms of physical appearance, she lacks emotional strength to tackle the problem of Harpo, as deep down she still loves him. Sofia needs to be given strength from the rest of her family to eventually gather enough courage to leave.

Hitler Essay -- essays research papers

Adolft Hitler HITLER, Adolf (1889-1945). The rise of Adolf Hitler to the position of dictator of Germany is the story of a frenzied ambition that plunged the world into the worst war in history. Only an army corporal in World War I, Hitler became Germany's chancellor 15 years later. He was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau-am-Inn, Austria, of German descent. His father Alois was the illegitimate son of Maria Anna Schicklgruber. In middle age Alois took the name Hitler from his paternal grandfather. After two wives had died Alois married his foster daughter, Klara Poelzl, a Bavarian, 23 years younger than he. She became Adolf's mother. Hitler's rambling, emotional autobiography 'Mein Kampf' (My Struggle) reveals his unstable early life. His father, a petty customs official, wanted the boy to study for a government position. But as young Hitler wrote later, "the thought of slaving in an office made me ill . . . not to be master of my own time." Passively defying his father, the self-willed boy filled most of his school hours with daydreams of becoming a painter. His one school interest was history, especially that of the Germans. When his teacher glorified Germany's role, "we would sit there enraptured and often on the verge of tears." From boyhood he was devoted to Wagner's operas that glorified the Teutons' dark and furious mythology. Failure dogged him. After his father's death, when Adolf was 13, he studied watercolor painting, but accomplished li...

Organizational Culture and Performance Essay

The concept of organizational culture has drawn attention to the long-neglected, subjective or ‘soft’ side of organizational life. However, many aspects of organizational culture have not received much attention. Instead, emphasis has been placed primarily on the cultural and symbolic aspects that are relevant in an instrumental/pragmatic context. The technical cognitive interest prevails. Culture then is treated as an object of management action. In this regard, Ouchi and Wilkins (1985: 462) note that ‘the contemporary student of organizational culture often takes the organization not as a natural solution to deep and universal forces but rather as a rational instrument designed by top management to shape the behavior of the employees in purposive ways’. Accordingly, much research on corporate culture and organizational symbolism is dominated by a preoccupation with a limited set of meanings, symbols, values, and ideas presumed to be manageable and directly related to effectiveness and performance. This is in many ways understandable, but there are two major problems following from this emphasis. One is that many aspects of organizational culture are simply disregarded. It seems strange that the (major part of the) literature should generally disregard such values as bureaucratic-‘meritocratic’ hierarchy, unequal distribution of privileges and rewards, a mixture of individualism and conformity, male domination, emphasis on money, economic growth, consumerism, advanced technology, exploitation of nature, and the equation of economic criteria with rationality. Instrumental reason dominates; quantifiable values and the optimization of means for the attainment of pre-given ends define rationality (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1947; Marcuse, 1964). Mainstream organizational culture thinking – in organizations but also in academia – tend to take this for granted. The values and ideas to which organizational culture research pays attention are primarily connected with the means and operations employed to achieve pre-defined and unquestioned goals. A second problem is that subordinating organizational culture thinking to narrowly defined instrumental concerns also reduces the potential of culture to aid managerial action. Organizational culture calls for considerations that break with some of the assumptions characterizing technical thinking, i.e. the idea that a particular input leads to a predictable effect. This chapter thus shows some problems associated with the use of the term culture that does not take the idea of culture seriously enough and presses the concept into a limited version of the technical cognitive interest. It argues for a ‘softer’ version of this interest as well as for thinking following the other two cognitive interests (as sketched in Chapter 1). A basic problem in much management thinking and writing is an impatience in showing the great potential of organizational culture. Associated with this is a bias for a premature distinction between the good and the bad values and ideas, trivialization of culture, overstressing the role of management and the employment of causal thinking. Premature normativity: the idea of good culture Associated with the technical interest of optimizing means for accomplishment of goals is an underdeveloped capacity to reflect upon normative matters. Viewing cultures as means leads to evaluations of them as more or less ‘good’, i.e. as useful, without consideration whether this goodness is the same as usefulness or if usefulness may be very multidimensional. The more popular literature argues that ‘good’ or ‘valuable’ cultures – often equated with ‘strong’ cultures – are characterized by norms beneficial to the company, to customers, and to mankind and by ‘good’ performance in general: Good cultures are characterized by norms and values supportive of excellence, teamwork, profitability, honesty, a customer service orientation, pride in one’s work, and commitment to the organization. Most of all, they are supportive of adaptability – the capacity to thrive over the long run despite new competition, new regulations, new technological developments, and the strains of growth. (Baker, 1980: 10) Good cultures are, according to this author, cultures that incorporate all good things in peaceful co-existence. Also many other authors eager to appeal to practitioners focus on highly positive-sounding virtues, attitudes, and behaviour claimed to be useful to the achievement of corporate goals as defined by management (e.g. Deal and Kennedy, 1982; Trice and Beyer, 1985). They are largely instrumental in character, without considering any ambiguity of the virtue of culture or what it supposedly accomplished in terms of goal realization. The assumption that culture can be simply evaluated in terms of right and wrong come through in embarrassing statements such as that ‘the wrong values make the culture a major liability’ (Wiener, 1988: 536) has already been mentioned. Similarly, Kilmann et al. (1985: 4) argue that ‘a culture has a positive impact on an organization when it points behavior in the right direction†¦. Alternatively, a culture has negative impact when it points behavior in the wrong direction’. According to Wilkins and Patterson (1985: 272): ‘The ideal culture †¦ is characterized by a clear assumption of equity †¦ a clear sense of collective competence †¦ and an ability to continually apply the collective competence to new situations as well as to alter it when necessary.’ Kanter (1983) talks about ‘cultures of pride’, which are good, and ‘cultures of inferiority’, which any sane person will avoid. This type of functionalist, normative, and instrumentally biased thinking is also found in Schein’s (1985) book, in which culture is seen as a pattern of basic assumptions that has ‘proved’ to be valid for a group coping with problems of external adaptation and internal integration. Basically, culture in this literature is instrumental in relation to the formal goals of an organization and to the management objectives or tasks associated with these goals (i.e. external and internal effectiveness). It is assumed to exist because it works – or at least used to work. Of course, changed circumstances can make a culture dysfunctional – calling for planned, intentional change – but the approach assumes that culture is or can be ‘good’ for some worthwhile purpose. As will be shown later ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are not, however, self-evident, especially when it comes to complex phenomena such as culture. A bias towards the ‘positive’ functions of culture and its close relation to issues such as harmony, consensus, clarity, and meaningfulness is also implicit in many of these studies (see Martin and Meyerson, 1988). Symbols and cultural aspects are often seen as functional (or dysfunctional) for the organization in terms of goal attainment, meeting the emotional-expressive needs of members, reducing tension in communication, and so on. Instrumental/functional dimensions are often emphasized, for instance, in studies of rites and ceremonies (e.g. Dandridge, 1986; Trice and Beyer, 1984). The typical research focus is on social integration (Alvesson, 1987). Culture is understood as (usually or potentially) useful – and those aspects of culture that are not easily or directly seen as useful remain out of sight, e.g. on gender and ethics. The most common ideas guiding organizational analysis draw upon such metaphors for culture as tool, social glue, need satisfier, or regulator of social relations. Problems include the premature use of moral judgement, in a way hidden behind technical understanding in which culture is viewed as a tool and presumably as easy to evaluate in terms of its goodness as a hammer. But few issues are simply good or bad, functional or dysfunctional. Some things that may be seen as good may be less positive from another angle. A ‘clear sense of collective competence’ – to connect to the citation above – does in itself sound positive and is good for self-esteem and commitment, but a high level of self-confidence may be a mixed blessing as it easily forms a part of, or leads to, fantasies of omnipotence, and may obstruct openness, reflection, willingness to listen to critique and take new external ideas seriously (Brown and Starkey, 2000). Cultural themes thus call for careful consideration, where normative judgement should be applied with great caution. Normative talk easily prevents more nuanced interpretation. Trivialization of culture As argued above, the consequence of the functionalist/pragmatic approach is that culture tends to be reduced to those limited aspects of this complex phenomenon that are perceived to be directly related to organizational efficiency and competitive advantage (see, e.g. Barney, 1986; Kilmann et al., 1985). This means a rather selected interest in organizational culture. But much worse is a tendency to emphasize mainly the superficial aspects of these selected parts of organizational culture. These superficial aspects have the advantage that they are compatible with technical thinking, presumably accessible to managerial interventions. Culture may even be equated with certain behavioural norms viewed as ‘an excellent vehicle for helping people understand and manage the cultural aspects of organizational life’ (Allen, 1985: 334). In marketing, market-oriented culture is frequently defined as the key to strong performances (Harris and Ogbonna, 1999), culture here implying certain behaviours. The problem, of course, is that norms are not the best vehicle for understanding culture. Whereas norms tell people how to behave, culture has a much broader and more complex influence on thinking, feeling, and sense-making (Schneider, 1976). Again, Barney (1986), Pfeffer (1994) and others argue that to serve as a source of sustained competitive advantage culture must be ‘valuable, rare, and imperfectly imitable’. If this statement is to make any sense at all, culture must be interpreted as highly normative, accessible to evaluation in terms of frequency (i.e. quantifiable), and capable of being copied a t will. This conception deprives culture of the richness that is normally seen as its strength. At the same time, any culture may be seen as vital for competitive advantage (or as disadvantage), as it is arguably, highly significant and not easy to imitate. As Pfeffer (1994), among others, notes, many of the earlier identified sources of competitive advantage, such as economies of scale, products or process technology, access to financial resources and protected or regulated markets, become of diminishing significance as a consequence of more fragmented markets with an increasing need for flexibility in production, shorter product life cycle, internationalizations and de-regulations. A company’s competence and ability to manage people – to a considerable degree overlapping organizational culture – are not easy to imitate. Even to describe and analyse culture is difficult, as indicated by all the management texts providing only superficial and trivial descriptions of culture, such as norms about ‘market-oriented’ behaviour. The trivialization of organizational culture is not, however, solely restricted to writings promising the quick fix. Despite an effort to define organizational culture on a deeper level, emphasizing basic assumptions, Schein (1985) in most of his empirical examples tends to address the more superficial aspects. One example concerns the acquisition of a franchised business: The lack of understanding of the cultural risks of buying a franchised business was brought out even more clearly in another case, where a very stuffy, traditional, moralistic company whose management prided itself on its high ethical standards bought a chain of fast-food restaurants that were locally franchised around the country. The company’s managers discovered, much to their chagrin, that one of the biggest of these restaurants in a nearby state had become the local brothel. The activities of the town were so well integrated around this restaurant that the alternative of closing it down posed the risk of drawing precisely the kind of attention this company wanted at all costs to avoid. The managers asked themselves, after the fact, ‘Should we have known what our acquisition involved on this more subtle level? Should we have understood our own value system better, to ensure compatibility?’ (Schein, 1985: 34–5) Here the problem seems to be lack of knowledge on a very specific point – what the company was buying – rather than lack of understanding of the company’s own value system. Most ordinary, ‘respectable’ corporations, whatever their organizational culture, would probably wish to avoid becoming owners of brothels. Prostitution is broadly seen as illegitimate, not only by those who Schein views as ‘very stuffy, traditional, moralistic’ people. Apart from the moral issue, there is of course the risk that bad publicity would follow and harm the company. Managerialization of culture Another aspect of adapting culture to technical concerns, and the reduction of complexity and depth contingent upon such concerns, is the confusion of organizational culture with the firm’s management ideology. Frequently what is referred to as organizational or corporate culture really stands for the ideals and visions prescribed by top management (Alvesson, 1987; Westley and Jaeger, 1985). It is sometimes held that the best way to investigate ‘corporate culture’ is through interviews with top managers, but the outcome of this approach tends to be a description of the espoused ideology of those managers that ‘only skim the culture that surrounds the top executives’ (Czarniawska-Joerges, 1992: 174). Denison (1984) in a survey claiming to study corporate culture, for example asked one manager per company in a large number of companies to fill in a questionnaire. Organizational culture and managerial ideology are in most cases not the same, partly due to the lack of depth of ideology compared to culture, partly due to variation within organizations and discrepancies between top management and other groups. To differentiate between corporate culture as prescribed and manager-led and organizational culture as ‘real culture’ and more or less emergent from below is one possibility (Anthony, 1994). However, management ideology is not necessarily very different from organizational culture – there are cases where management ideology powerfully impregnates cultural patterns (Alvesson, 1995; Kunda, 1992). But this needs to be empirically investigated and shown, and cannot be assumed. Management ideology is but one of several expressions of organizational culture. In most discussions of the relationship between culture and performance, authors focus on values espoused by senior managers, to a higher or lower degree shared by larger groups, while the complexity and variety of culture is neglected.1 From a management point of view, the managerialization of organizational culture immediately appears appealing; but arguably deeper, less conscious aspects of cultural patterns than those managers are already aware of and promote are more valuable, at least in the long run, to focus on. Rather than smoothing over differences and variations in meanings, ideas and values within organizations, highlighting the latter is significant as a basis of informed management thinking and action. Loosening the grip of premature practicality The three weaknesses of much organizational culture thinking reviewed above are related to the wish to make culture appear as of immediate interest to practitioners, and to fit into a predominantly technical cognitive interest in which culture is reduced to a tool. Cultural studies should be permitted to develop unrestricted by, or at least more loosely connected to, concerns for practicality. It is important here is to recognize the contradiction between sophisticated thinking and easily applicable practical concerns: The more rigorously (anthropologically) the term (culture) is applied, the more the concept of organizational culture gains in theoretical interpretative power and the more it loses in practicality. In the effort to overcome this contradiction the danger is that theoretical rigour will be lost in the interest of practicality. (Westley and Jaeger, 1985: 15) Even if one wants to contribute to practicality, rather than to anthropology, this still calls for another kind of intellectual approach than most of the authors cited above exemplify. Oversimplification and promises of ‘quick fixes’ do not necessarily serve narrow pragmatic interests, neither those of managers nor of others. Making things look clear-cut and simple may mislead. Practitioners might benefit much more from the pro-managerial and pragmatic organizational culture literature if it stopped promising recipes for how to manage and control culture and instead discussed other phenomena which managers might, with luck and skill, be able to influence – for example, specific cultural manifestations, workplace spirit and behavioural norms. Learning to ‘think culturally’ about organizational reality might inspire enlightened managerial everyday action rather than unrealistic programmes for culture change or bending patterns of meaning, ideas and valu es to managerial will. Before assuming that culture is functional or good for organizational or managerial purposes, it makes sense to distinguish among possible consequences and to recognize that they may conflict. Critical reflection and learning may be a good thing, consensus facilitating control and coordinated action another, and reduction of anxiety a third; but not all these good things may be attainable at the same time and they may contradict each other. Perhaps more important, contradictory interests – those of professions, divisions, classes, consumers, environmentalists, the state, owners, top management, etc. – may produce different views on what is good, important, and appropriate. Also within complex organizations, corporate goal-attainment may presuppose considerable variation in cultural orientations. Most aspects of culture are difficult to designate as clearly good or bad. To simplify these relationships runs the risk of producing misleading pictures of cultural manifestati ons. Instead, the focus must become the tensions between the creative and destructive possibilities of culture formation (Jeffcutt, 1993). Approaches to the cultureÂâ€"performance relationship There are different ideas regarding to what extent organizational culture can be used as a managerial tool. I will point at and discuss three versions of how managers can work with culture. These represent the relative significance of management versus culture: can management control culture or must management adapt to culture? Cultural engineering: corporate culture as managerial design In the most instrumentally oriented of these formulations, culture is conceived as a building block in organizational design – a subsystem, well-demarcated from other parts of the organization, which includes norms, values, beliefs, and behavioural styles of employees. Even though it may be difficult to master, it is in principle no different from other parts of the organization in terms of management and control. The term ‘cultural engineering’ captures the spirit of this position, which is sometimes called the ‘corporate-culture school’ (Alvesson and Berg, 1992). Kilmann (1985: 354) recognizes that there is considerable disagreement about what culture is but concludes that ‘it is still important to consider what makes a culture good or bad, adaptive or dysfunctional’. He describes culture almost as a physical force: ‘Culture provides meaning, direction, and mobilization – it is the social energy that moves the corporation into allocation †¦ the energy that flows from shared commitments among group members’ (p. 352) and ‘the force controlling behaviour at every level in the organization’ (p. 358). He believes that every firm has a distinctive culture that can develop and change quickly and must be managed and controlled: ‘If left alone, a culture eventually becomes dysfunctional’ (p. 354). The underlying metaphor then clearly comes from technical science. The crucial dimension of culture, according to Kilmann, is norms; it is here that culture is ‘most easily controlled’. More precisely, it is the norms that guide the behaviour and attitudes of the people in the company that are of greatest interest and significance, because they have a powerful effect on the requirements for its success – quality, efficiency, product reliability, customer service, innovation, hard work, loyalty, etc. This is the core of most (American) texts on corporate culture (e.g. Deal and Kennedy, 1982; Peters and Waterman, 1982; Sathe, 1985; Wiener, 1988). There are many difficulties with this model. Norms refer to a too superficial and behaviour-near aspect to really capture culture, at least as defined in this book. Norms and behaviours are affected by many dimensions other than culture. Within a culture there are a number of norms related to the enormous variety of different behaviours. The point with culture is that it indicates the meaning dimension, i.e. what is behind and informs norms. A related problem with this behaviour-near view on culture is the tendency to see culture as more or less forcefully affecting behaviour. For example, Sathe (1985: 236) argues that ‘the strength of a culture influences the intensity of behavior’, and the ‘strength’ of a culture is determined by ‘how many important shared assumptions there are’, how widely they are shared, and how clearly they are ranked. A ‘strong’ culture is thus characterized by homogeneity, simplicity, and clearly ordered assumptions. In a ‘complex’ culture – by definition any culture – assumptions will probably be very difficult to identify and rank, and it can even be argued that such a measurement approach distorts the phenomena it is supposed to study. As Fitzgerald (1988: 9–10) has put it: Values do not exist as isolated, independent, or incremental entities. Beliefs and assumptions, tastes and inclinations, hopes and purposes, values and principles are not modular packages stored on warehouse shelves, waiting for inventory. They have no separate existence, as do spark plugs in an engine; they cannot be examined one at a time and replaced when burned out†¦. They have their own inner dynamic: Patriotism, dignity, order, progress, equality, security – each implies other values, as well as their opposites. Patriotism implies homeland, duty, and honor, but also takes its strength from its contrast to disloyalty; dignity requires the possibility of humiliation and sham e.

What Is an Epigraph vs an Epigram or Epitaph

Each of these words beginning with epi- (from the Greek word for upon) has multiple definitions, but here are the most common meanings. Definitions An epigram is a brief, witty statement in prose or verse--similar to an aphorism.An epigraph is a brief quotation set at the beginning of a text (a book, a chapter of a book, an essay, a poem) to suggest its theme.An epitaph is a brief inscription in prose or verse on a tombstone or monument. None of these words, by the way, should be confused with epithet--an adjective expressing some quality or attribute that is characteristic of a person or thing. Examples He spoke in epigrams about events in the morning paper, prefacing his lectures each day with a few minutes of commentary, invariably sardonic, about a political event that had caught his eye.(Harrison E. Salisbury, A Journey for Our Times. Harper Row, 1983)I believe, as the epigraph to my book states, that the deepest human life is everywhere.(Scott Samuelson, The Deepest Human Life: An Introduction to Philosophy for Everyone. University of Chicago Press, 2014)The cerulean-eyed Paul Newman once wryly predicted his epitaph: Here lies Paul Newman, who died a failure because his eyes turned brown. Practice My father had a favorite _____ that he repeated probably 20 times for me as I grew up: When preparedness meets opportunity, thats luck.(Joe Flynn, Taylor to TQM, 1998)I am curious, about all of it, all the time,† Studs Terkel once said. Curiosity never killed this cat --thats what Id like as my _____.The _____ to Jay McInerneys novel Bright Lights, Big City is a quotation from Hemingways novel The Sun Also Rises. Answers to Practice Exercises My father had a favorite  epigram  that he repeated probably 20 times for me as I grew up:  When preparedness meets opportunity, thats luck. (Joe Flynn, Taylor to TQM, 1998)Curiosity never killed this  cat -- thats  what Id like as my  epitaph.The  epigraph  to Jay McInerneys novel  Bright Lights, Big City  is a quotation from Hemingways novel  The Sun Also Rises.

Greek Debt Crisis Essay Online For Free - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 8 Words: 2351 Downloads: 1 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Economics Essay Type Cause and effect essay Did you like this example? Introduction This paper will examine the social welfare and economic implications of the recent 2015 referendum on Greek bailout conditions offered by the ECB and IMF, starting with and examination of the history behind the crisis, the resulting series of financial bailouts along with the conditions imposed and their economic and social welfare ramifications, and the potential irrelevancy of the recent 2015 referendum on the actual outcome of the negotiations. The Background to the Greek Debt Crisis The Greek debt crisis essentially started in late 2009, after economic reports about the Greek governments current deficit and debt levels made clear that the Greek government had deliberately under-reported their current deficit and financial situation in 2008 and 2009, with the deficit at the end of 2009 estimated independently at 12.5% of Greek GDP, twice the amount reported by official Greek governmental figures during that time (Simitis, 2014). These issues were further exacerbated by the revelation that Greek sovereign debt exceeded the 91.4% of Greek GDP previously reported, and actually stood at 126.8% of total Greek GDP due to a number of debts and liabilities within the Greek public sector that had been over-looked during the previous reports issued by the Greek Ministry of Finance (Simitis, 2014). These discrepancies in reporting raised serious concerns over Greeces ability to accurately report its current financial situation, and the resulting sovereign debt ratio of 12 8% of GDP raised serious questions over the governments ability to meet its current financial obligations (Ardagna and Caselli, 2014). The results of the revelations, occurring during the aftermath of the recent global financial crisis, led to a downgrading of Standard and Poors credit rating of Greece to BB+, a rating which indicates a significant possibility of default on borrowing (Standard and Poor, 2015). This caused the interest rates of 5 year bonds issued by the Greek government to rise to 5.385% in November 2009, a figure 1.42% higher than the average rate of all other similar Euro-zone government bonds during that time (Simitis, 2014). This also occurred at a time where the Greek government was running a significant structural deficit, with governmental spending at 53.2% of GDP, and public revenue of only 37.8% (Ardagna and Caselli, 2014). In other words, only further borrowing would be able to sustain the current level of Greek public services, borrowing which had just be came exponentially more expensive to maintain. Given the developing crisis in the Eurozone, the European Central Bank (ECB) chose to step in and offer assisted bailouts and loans using funds appropriated from other EU member states and the IMF (Baimbridge and Whyman, 2014). To this end, the Commission, the ECB and the IMF established the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF, 2015). The EFSF issued a bailout loan of à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬110bn in 2010 to the Greek government, which came with the condition that tight austerity measures be put into place, including a number of cuts across a broad spectrum of public services and a series of tax increases to boost governmental revenue (Ardagna and Caselli, 2014). Similar conditions were given to other recipients of bailout loans from the EFSF, including Ireland and Portugal, who as of 2014 have successfully reduced their national debt levels and current account deficit to that specified by the bailout conditions (Baimbridge and Whyman, 20 14). However, the Greek government was hit with a further recession in 2011, with GDP growth contracting by 9.6% in the 4th quarter of 2010, and then a further 10.4% fall in the 1st quarter of 2011 (World Bank, 2015). The continuing economic problems faced by Greece were due to a number of factors, including a severe fall in revenue from both tourism and shipping due to the global economic crisis, two of Greeces most important industries, and significant discrepancies between total taxes owed and total tax revenue, with total tax income in 2012 being à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬51.99bn, against the expected à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬110.79bn as reported by a State Audit Council report (Argitis and Nikolaidi, 2014). These conditions meant that Greece was unable to continue to meet its financial obligations in 2012 and again faced the possibility of sovereign debt default, requiring another bailout loan to be made by the EFSF of another à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬130bn, with additional conditions attached that requir ed Greece to cut public spending by a total of à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬3.3bn by the end of the year, followed by further cuts of à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬10bn by the end of 2013, and again in 2014 (Ardagna and Caselli, 2014). Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Greek Debt Crisis Essay Online For Free" essay for you Create order The Ramifications of the Imposed Bailout Conditions The austerity measure conditions that were included as conditions on the two separate bailout loans to the Greek government were met with strong resistance from the Greek populace, and a number of anti-austerity demonstrations and riots occurred throughout the country in 2010, 2011 and 2012 (Simitis, 2014). The public reactions to the suggested austerity measures have been suggested to be responsible for the Greek governments delay in more fully and efficiently implementing the necessary austerity measures and tax collection reforms necessary to close the gap between public spending and revenue (IMF, 2014). Despite the social and economic issues resulting from the Greek populaces resistance to the bailout conditions, in 2014 the Greek economy appeared to be on the road to recovery, with improved economic performance and growth across the Eurozone driving recovery in both the tourism and shipping industries, and the achievement of a structural surplus, mainly due to a series of s tringent cuts to governmental spending and public services, including the closure of the state-owned broadcasting company ERT (IMF, 2014). These improved economic conditions allowed Greece to once again issue government bonds on the private equities market since the initial bailout had been implemented, allowing the Greek government a much-needed source of finance to cover any future spending gaps, with Greek government-issued 5 year bonds being traded at interest rates of 4.95% in mid-April of 2014, at their lowest rates since the start of the 2009 debt crisis (IMF, 2014). An early parliamentary election was called in late 2014 after the current parliament was unable to vote in a new President for the 2015-2020 term with a parliamentary majority (Ardagna and Caselli, 2014). The Syriza party, which had been highly vocal in recent years about their lack of support for the austerity conditions imposed on Greece by the IMF and ECB, won a near majority and formed a coalition with a m inority right-wing party in order to have the Syriza party leader Alexis Tsipras elected to the Presidential position. Upon gaining office, Mr Tsipras stated his refusal to respect the current bailout conditions imposed by the EFSF, with the intent of renegotiating more favourable terms (Ardagna and Caselli, 2014). The ECB and IMF responded by suspending any and all aid payments to Greece until either the existing deal was upheld or a new mutually-acceptable deal was agreed upon. The resulting uncertainty caused significant economic and social upheaval within the country; the Athens stock exchange experienced its worst loss in total value in the following week since the 2011 recession, while interest rates of Greek bonds rose sharply in the private market, eventually reaching a peak of 24.19% in early June, severely reducing the newly-established governmental ability to raise finance in the private equities market (Dellas and Tavlas, 2013). The resulting economic uncertainty caus ed a run on Greek banks, where customers were desperate to withdraw all their cash to protect against the risk of a banking industry collapse, which ironically severely increased the likelihood of such a collapse occurring (Mankiw and Taylor, 2014). In response to this socio-economic panic, the government issued a series of capital control measures that restricted the current opening hours of Greek banks while only allowing daily withdrawals of à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬60 from personal accounts either through the bank or ATM (The Economist, 2015a). The government also placed restrictions on foreign transactions and foreign currency trading, to prevent Greek investors from transferring their funds to a currently more stable currency. However, these measures only served to deepen the social welfare issues within the country, as the number of foreign imports dropped dramatically due to the restrictions placed on foreign transactions, including in a number of key areas such as medical equipmen t, medication, food and farming materials, leading to severe social welfare issues during the negotiation period (The Economist, 2015b). The 2015 Referendum After a series of negotiations with the ECB and IMF that failed to reach agreement on the conditions of a new deal, Mr Tsipras, the Greek President, called for a public referendum on the proposed conditions put forward by the ECB and IMF in the latest meetings of June 25th. The announcement was made on June 26th, with the referendum to be held on the 6th of July (The Economist, 2015c). This is an incredibly short length of time to ruminate on a complicated issue, one which could have profound effects for the social, political and economic future of ones country. The referendum paper itself also does not contain any details on the June 25th proposals, it merely asked whether the respondent is willing to accept them or not in a straightforward Yes or No ballot (The Economist, 2015c). Mr Tsipras, who campaigned for the No vote, listed those proposals during his campaign, including a controversial suggestion to raise taxes on tourism-related income that was later retracted by the ECB o n June 26th, the day Mr Tsipras called the referendum (The Economist, 2015c). Despite the public excitement surrounding the referendum itself, it is clear that the referendum was a tool that would have failed to provide a welfare maximising outcome regardless of the result. As Arrow (1950) notes, it is impossible for a ranked-order voting system with three or more options to provide a welfare-maximising solution that satisfies three criteria of fairness; first, that each individual holds a set of ordinally-ranked preferences that do not change with the introduction of alternative options; that the final outcome should satisfy the majority of voters; and that no one individual has dictatorship power over the vote. While the referendum at first appears to be a ranked order voting system with only two options, which would negate the relevance of Arrows Impossibility Theorem, the options themselves are not clearly defined. The majority No vote of 61.3% (BBC, 2015) merely rejected a s pecific set of conditions which were already irrelevant and out-dated at the time of the referendum. The results did not indicate whether those voters wish to accept different conditions, or to exit the Eurozone altogether, suggesting that there were more than two reasons for choosing one of the options that voters were inherently unable to express. Thus, those who voted No while expecting it to lead to a Greek exit from the Eurozone or a rejection of all further austerity measures would be ultimately disappointed. The referendum was also biased in terms of Arrows (1950) fairness criteria in one major way; there was indeed one individual with dictatorship power over the vote itself. The referendum results were merely used to gather public opinion on an out-dated bailout condition offer; the results were not legally-binding, and in the event of a Yes vote Mr Tsipras would still be free to return to the negotiating table and attempt to renegotiate further with the ECB and IMF (The Economist, 2015c). The referendum was clearly used as a means for Mr Tsipras to gain leverage during negotiations in the case of a No vote, potentially to imply that Greek voters would support withdrawing from the Eurozone altogether if necessary, though as noted those voters would end up disappointed along with the rest who voted against further austerity measures, as despite the referendum results Mr Tsipras agreed to a further à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬86bn bailout from the EFSF on the 14th of August, with 4 main conditions to the deal: a structural surplus of 3.5% of GDP to be met by 2018; a series of pension system reforms intended to cut public sector pension spending ( a condition with serious social welfare implications for the elderly and retired); reforms to labour and product markets to increase competitiveness; and a series of banking sector reforms intended to recapitalise the private banking sector (Wearden and Fletcher, 2015). Conclusion The 2015 Greek Referendum bailout conditions referendum was never capable of offering a welfare-maximising solution for voters; in fact, it barely offered any social, political or economic solution at all. Voters rejected a set of conditions that had already been altered at the time of the referendum, and were subsequently presented with a new bailout deal containing further harsh austerity measures such as cuts to public pension funding. It is doubtful whether the results of the referendum actually offered Mr Tsipras additional leverage in subsequent negotiations, but it is clear the Referendum results had little impact beyond this meagre measure References Ardagna, S and Caselli, F (2014), The Political Economy of the Greek Debt Crisis: A Tale of Two Bailouts, American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, Volume 6, Issue 4, pp291-323 Argitis, G and Nikolaidi, M (2014), The Financial Fragility and the Crisis of the Greek Government Sector, International Review of Applied Economics, Volume 28, Issue 3, pp273-291 Arrow, K (1950), A Difficulty in the Concept of Social Welfare, Journal of Political Economy, Volume 58, Issue 4, pp328-346 Baimbridge, M and Whyman, P (2014), Crisis in the Eurozone: Causes, Dilemmas and Solutions, 1st Ed, London: Palgrave-MacMillan BBC (2015), Greece debt crisis: Greek voters reject bailout offer [Online], Available; https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-33403665 Dellas, H and Tavlas, G (2013), The gold standard, the euro, and the origins of the Greek sovereign debt crisis, CATO Journal, Volume 33, Issue 3, pp491-520 Economist, The (2015a), How Capital Controls Work [Online], Available; https://www.economist.com/node/21656439 Economist, The (2015b), Greeces Economy Under Banking Controls: When Banks Die [Online], Available; https://www.economist.com/node/21657000 Economist, The (2015c), How Greeces referendum works [Online], Available; https://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/07/economist-explains-2 EFSF (2015), About EFSF [Online], Available; https://www.efsf.europa.eu/about/index.htm IMF (2014), IMF Country Report No. 14/151: Greece, New York: International Monetary Fund Mankiw, G and Taylor, M (2014), Macroeconomics, 2nd Ed, London: W H Freeman Simitis, C (2014), The European Debt Crisis: The Greek Case, 1st Ed, Manchester: Manchester University Press Standard and Poor (2015), Ratings Criteria [Online], Available; https://www.standardandpoors.com/en_EU/web/guest/ratings/ratings-criteria/-/articles/criteria/governments/filter/all Wearden, G and Fletcher, N (2015), Eurozone finance ministers agree to third Greek bailout as it happened [Online], Available; https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2015/aug/14/greek-bailout-vote-and-eurozone-gdp-growth-figures-live-updates#block-55ce5ef8e4b076bafa06f640 World Bank (2015), World Development Indicators: Greece [Online], Available; https://data.worldbank.org/country/greece