Expanding small business Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Expanding small business - Essay Example Sam was told that the company should have adopted change management methods and planned change policies prior to bringing about change. According to Nelson and Winter (1982) routine interactions within the working environment forms the basis of organizational culture and a predictive pattern emerges. Deal and Kennedy 19820 describe it as â€Å"the way we do things here†. The importance of this routine is gaining importance as has been acknowledged by Cohen et al (1972) and Hedberg et al (1976. Topmost in handling change is to motivate the people to achieve the purpose of the change. This means highlighting the glorious future and contrasting it with the disgraceful past. However it has to be conveyed positively with rewards accompanying results. Effective communication will be required to generate support and participation at all levels. Teamwork and togetherness is the core issue here. To bring about active involvements in the procedure the employees have to be given a vision of the future. The vision requires standing up for fair practices with genuine efforts backed by world class products and to inform the customers that they could depend upon the company to be competitive and more efficient. The objectives are the values the vision creates and the value features are the consistent commitment to quality and service to be provided to the customers. For the change to be effective and for the realization of the company vision it is imperative that all the stakeholders support the various steps all along the way. The attempts have to be genuine and in common interest for benefits all round. The primary requirement is to have the knowledge of all sources of power in the company and to harness them and motivate them to work for a common goal. The ideal is to get them to agree on and obtain a consensus to avoid sudden conflicts of interest midway between any initiatives. It is often

Audit and assurance Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Audit and assurance - Essay Example Linked in to this is the growing belief that many firms of auditors are unable to make objective judgments because they are either too close to the clients that they are auditing or they get close to them during recurring audits of the same clients. This is the main area where an auditor’s independence is brought under question. The basic idea of audit is to bring in an independent assessor of the financial statements; the assessor i.e. the auditor should be honest while giving out his conclusion on the financial statements. The auditor issues a report explaining the audit process and gives his opinion as to the truth and fairness of the financial statements i.e. whether they are prepared in accordance with the relevant legal and accounting standards. There are many different types of assurance engagements: An auditor usually gives out two types of assurances, Reasonable or Limited Assurance. A reasonable assurance is of high level while a limited assurance is a moderate level assurance. When giving out a reasonable assurance, the auditor gives out a positive report (means the statement given out would be a positive one as opposed to a normative statement given out in limited assurance). Many companies get their financial statements audited by different audit firms, along with these external audits, companies also assign other assurance services to the existing auditor, this issue has caused a bit of concern over the recent years. The independence of the auditor is questioned when he takes up such assignments along with the external audit assignment. To avoid such situation, the auditor can perform certain strict procedures while performing the external audit along with other assurance services: The treasury selection committee in May 2009 published a report to address the issue of increasing investor’s confidence in a firm, in this report, the main aim of

Website for an organization which has a campaign promoting a core Assignment

Website for an organization which has a campaign promoting a core issue that interests you - Assignment Example Morris Dees SPLC uses current laws to bring lawsuits to change current unjust laws. One example is when Dees sued the United Klans of America on behalf of Beulah Mae Donald. Donald’s son had been killed due to the Klan’s incitement toward violence against blacks. This suit bankrupted the last majorly nationally organized Ku Klux Klan in the United States. By challenging unfair laws and bring lawsuits, the SPLC has challenged and won lawsuits against discrimination against those living in the United States. The primary message is written with photographs at the top. These messages are informative. The website is set up like a news organization. Articles are current news around the United States involving issues of discrimination against minorities, Lesbians, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT), and immigrants. The message is clear. Although America does have more tolerant laws today than in the 1950’s, there is much work to still be done. The target audience is average Americans that might not be aware of incidents of discriminations in their area. An example is the Hate Watch map. The Hate Watch map tracks hate groups. These groups are skinheads, KKK, black panthers, anti-government groups, and any group that promotes hate against others. The map shows the locations of hate group members and more information on each group. It must be noted that although the SPLC was founded during the Civil Rights Movement, the group is not anti-white or pro-black. The SPLC was founded to promote equality among all Americans. The SPLC also has teaching material for educators to teach children. These messages are targeted toward the younger audience. These materials, books, worksheets, videos, and recordings are provided for free. History and current events are covered in these materials. The materials can be requested by a teacher or adult for free. The noise or confusion that

Law and Ethics in Healthcare Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Law and Ethics in Healthcare - Essay Example Therefore, this paper examines HIV/AIDS and confidentiality, which are healthcare issues arising from the conflict between law and ethic values. Salient ethical and legal concerns associated with HIV/AIDS and Confidentiality Safken & Frewer (2007) indicate that law and ethics postulate that medical information demands confidential treatment; thus, the law focuses on protecting such information. Consequently, care providers have an compulsion of promoting confidentiality in their activities. Indeed, HIV-related information has been subject to additional protections because of their sensitiveness. Care providers can only reveal such information based on court orders or the patient’s own will. Initially, patients are protected by regulations that promote personal privacy; hence, a care provider who releases such information infringes into one’s privacy. Although this is important in protecting patient against social exploitation, the process creates health concerns (McLean & Mason, 2003). This apparent since holding information is sometimes not rational as the practice may invite detrimental effects on other parties. According to McLean (2006), the responsibility of countering the harm from spreading to other parties binds care providers. For instance, care providers have a duty of protecting persons with high threats of infection. Additionally, concerns of promoting public health may demand a disclosure of such information. It is worth noting that disclosing information may be essential for individuals who engage in duties that present risks to their clients. These principles present strong moral and legal concerns to care providers in healthcare. Important primary ethical principles for managing the presented issues Healthcare providers can utilize concepts presented by some primary ethical principles in addressing this case. An ideal scheme that can inform healthcare providers is the standard of beneficence. Beneficence advocates for an idea of do ing good that demands one to analyze the matter critically to institute the best position of addressing the concerns (McLean, 2006). Importantly, the beneficence demands one to adopt the most genuine position while considering the necessity of bettering the condition of the involved parties. Since the HIV/AIDS and confidentiality subject, present a controversial environment, genuine assessment is the only solution to the case. This means that healthcare providers should access the implication of each procedure to identify the best approach to accord to the matter (Leslie & Bernard, 2001). Additionally the ideology of concert could be beneficial in addressing the concerns. This principle binds competent individuals with a responsibility of presenting their professional advice to the society (McLean & Mason, 2003). Professionals may adopt the knowledge of the principle in situations where parties involved fail to present genuine decision due to their state (Leslie & Bernard, 2001).The issues presented by the HIV/AIDS confidentiality do not entirely mean that the patients may not be in position of adopting reasonable decision as per the demands of the principle of consent. However, the rationality of the practice emerges by the fact that, the environment presented by the health issues raised may demand informed advice (Kaur, 2008). Consequently, healthcare provid

Scientific method Essay Example for Free

Scientific method Essay 1. Epistemology: The theory of knowledge in sociology it is used to refer to the procedures by which sociological knowledge is acquired. The theory of knowledge especially with regard to its methods validity and scope and the dis? nc? on between jus ed belief and opinion. 2. How sociologists conduct their study Interpre? vist Posi? vist Sociologists need to use di%erent ways of ?nding out about the world Seeks to apply the same methods that are used by the natural sciences : RESEARCH. BASED ON LOGIC AND METHOD The study of the ways in which people understand and interpret the world in which they live Use theory to generate hypotheses Interpre? vists wish to understand human behaviour by reconstruc? ng the meanings that people have associated with social situa? ons in which they have found themselves and with their own ac? ons Posi? vists seek to explain human behaviour by reference to social forces ac? ng upon people Interpre? Vist Approaches Posi? vist Approaches  important to think about di%erences in suicidal behaviour between di%erent groups of men He wanted to demonstrate how even this most individual of acts is shaped by social forces the need to research suicide sociologically, and that we need to collect qualita? ve as well as quan? ta? ve data on this topic. Posi? vism: Can deal only with observable things and that phenomena in any form have to be studied in a scien c manner. It does not take in account of the individual’s interpreta? on of the situa? on.

Lou Gehrig Disease Essay Example for Free

Lou Gehrig Disease Essay Lou Gehrig Disease is a term used in the United States that also refers to ALS or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. It was named after the famous Lou Gehrig, a baseball player for the New York Yankees between the 1920’s to the 1930’s. His career in baseball was cut short when he became afflicted with the disease ALS is a fatal and progressive disease which is characterized by the degeneration or deterioration of nerve cells within the brain, specifically those involved in motor functions that control the movements of voluntary muscles. As it is a disease that involves the motor neurons, ALS can cause body and muscle weakness as well as deterioration or wasting away of the whole body due to the degeneration of motor neurons which cease to send impulses from the brain to various muscles of the body. As is the tendency of things that cease to serve their function, the body muscles gradually become weak due to inactivity and later on, begin to develop muscle twitching. An end result is muscle wastage and atrophy due to denervation so that an individual afflicted with the disease cease to have control of his own voluntary movements with the exception of the eyes. In ALS, the individual usually retains their mental or cognitive functioning except in such cases when ALS is associated with fronto-temporal dementia. However, several studies have indicated that many individuals with ALS have slight changes cognitively in instances when neuropsychological testing is utilized. The nerves that transmit sensations as well as the autonomic nervous system is usually not affected. ALS affects all people with no preference for race or ethnicity and is regarded as one of the most common diseases that affect the brain and muscles worldwide. Annually, 2 out of 100,000 individuals become afflicted with ALS (Ropper and Brown 2005). It commonly occurs in middle to older adulthood, with ages ranging from 40 to 60 years of age although it is not unlikely for other age groups to contract the disease and men have an increased risk for the disease as compared to women. The affected parts of the body which is usually affected by ALS depend on the motor nerve cells that damage the body. Two-thirds of ALS cases consist of individuals experiencing ALS that initially occurs in the limbs. Individuals may notice a significant change in walking or running and may initially pass this off as clumsiness or awkwardness. Other people report onset of the disease through their arms and hands and report difficulty in going about simple tasks such as writing or buttoning a shirt. One-third of ALS cases, meanwhile, are bulbar at the beginning. Individuals may report difficulty in talking and speech may become slurred and incoherent. The first signs are commonly a decrease in the speech volume and an increased nasal tone. Eventually, individuals experience dysphagia (Difficulty in swallowing) as well as decreased mobility of the tongue. This would eventually lead to the inability to talk and loss of protection of the airway during swallowing. The initial onset of the symptoms and the body parts which it initially affects does not really matter as this will eventually spread throughout the body during the progression of the disease. Aside from the above symptoms, this could also include spasticity of muscles, an exaggeration of reflexes and the occurrence of Babinski’s sign which normal for babies but abnormal for adults. Furthermore, individuals may also experience labile emotions such that they may display uncontrolled bouts of laughter followed by instances of sadness or an increased frequency of mood swings due to the degeneration of bulbar motor nerve cells. There is no definitive test to diagnose ALS although many believe that the presence of motor nerve cells in a single limb may strongly indicate ALS. The diagnosis and confirmation that it is indeed ALS is commonly based on ruling out other diseases that may bring about similar symptoms produced by ALS that include Lyme disease, Syphilis, HIV as well as tick-borne Encephalitis (el Alaoui-Faris 1990). In a research conducted by Passinetti et al (2006), it was found out that individuals with ALS have lower levels of three proteins that are found in the cerebro-spinal fluid as compared to individuals who do not have the disease. These proteins include the carboxyl-terminal fragment of neuroendocrine protein, Cystatin C, and TTR. As such, this method has provided a means to diagnose patients with ALS at a sooner time, thus allowing them to receive the necessary medical attention and provide an earlier relief of symptoms. As of now, there is no drug or therapy that could completely cure ALS although Riluzole, the first drug for ALS has gained the approval from the Food and Drug Administration. This drug is said to decrease the release of glutamate within the body and such, is said to decrease nerve cell injury and damage. It also provides several effects that protects neurotransmitters through blocking and preventing calcium and sodium (Hubert et al 1994), the prevention of protein kinase C formation and antagonism of the N-methyl d-aspartate receptors (Beal et al 2005). The patient’s survival is thereby lengthened and increases the time before ventilation support is needed References: Beal, MF et al. (2005). Neurodegenerative Diseases: Neurobiology, Pathogenesis and Therapeutics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. el Alaoui-Faris, M et al (1990). Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis syndrome of syphilitic origin. 5 cases. Rev Neurol (Paris) 146 (1): 41–4. Hubert, JP et al (1994). Antagonism by riluzole of entry of calcium evoked by NMDA and veratridine in rate cultured granule cells: evidence for a dual mechanism of action. Br. J. Pharmacol. 113 (1): 261–267 Phukan, et al (2007). Cognitive impairment in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Lancet Neurol 6 (11): 994–1003. Ropper, AH and Brown, RH (2005). Syndrome of muscular weakness and wasting without sensory changes section of Degenerative diseases of the nervous system. In Adams and Victors Principles of Neurology, 8th ed. , pp. 938–949. New York: McGraw-Hill. Pasinetti, G et al (2006). Identification of potential CSF biomarkers in ALS. Neurology 66 (8): 1218–22.

Philosophy of the Italian American Mafia

Philosophy of the Italian American Mafia The Italian mafia came to power in America in the 1920s from Sicily, Italy (Staff). It became known as organized crime (also known as the Mob) and became centered in New York City, divided among five major crime families, which included nineteen additional family units around the country (Jrank). The five major families were the Bonnano, Columbo, Gambino, Genovese, and Lucchese families who were organized through the efforts of Salvatore Charles (Lucky) Luciano. (Jrank). This was the beginning of the very powerful counterculture American crime syndicate. A counterculture is a subcultural practice, which is consciously intended to challenge the values of the larger society, rejecting the major values, norms, and practices of the larger society, and replaces them with a new set of cultural patterns (Thomas). From a sociological perspective, which is a look beyond commonly held beliefs to the hidden meanings behind human actions, Lucky Lucianas special contribution to the success of the mafia depended on his running the show like a legitimate business, based on profit and loss capitalism as a board of directors would be run by a CEO (Thomas 4). One major difference, however, was that Luciano, as the CEO, conducted business as an absolute dictator who saw no limitations on taking down oppositional viewpoints through violence. It was like an inner government within the larger society that had factions within (like political parties, in this case opposing families) that conducted wars against each other. Sociological Imagination as defined by C. Wright Mills is the ability to see the connection between the larger world and your personal life. It is also the capacity to range from the most impersonal and remote [topics] to the most intimate features of the human self-and to see the relations between the two (Thomas 5). Luciano started out his career in a legitimate business as a clerk for a hat company around 1914. But by 1916, he was dealing with drugs and had his major run-in with the law, which earned him six months at a reformatory for that crime (Editors). From that time on, Luciano got involved with other questionable businesses such as bootlegging, prostitution, gambling, loan sharking (charging very high interest rates), drug distribution as a natural extension of bootlegging, and labor racketeering (Jrank, 2/5). All of these enterprises had certain small levels of legitimacy but always ended up tinged with major levels of criminality, illegal operations, and various deviant l egal practices. Luciano and his fellow colleagues saw no conflicts in carrying out these controversial businesses with an iron hand and with few moral and ethical considerations. Ethnocentrism is defined by W. LaVerne Thomas as the tendency to view ones own culture and group as superior. In addition, it is the belief that the characteristics of ones group or society are right and good, helping to build group unity. (Thomas, 35). This kind of situation was a very dominant characteristic of the American mafia organization in its heyday. It was initiated from Sicilian culture in Italy, and nearly all the bosses and godfathers who led the family organizations had roots in Italian culture that came from Sicily. The New York mafia was dominated by New Yorks five major families previously mentioned, along with other more minor Italian families with names like Profaci, Gagliano, Mangano, Marazano, and Masseria. (Bio, 2/4). The only way to move up in the organization of the New York mafia was to be geographically located in the New York City area and be of Italian (preferably Sicilian) heritage. There were major exceptions to the Italian rule, however, most notably Lu cky Lucianos most trusted and important Jewish friends and allies from his youth-Meyer Lansky and Benjamin Bugsy Siegel. (Bio, 1/4). Nevertheless, neither of those two non-Italians was ever able to climb to the very top of the leadership of the mafia organization or lead one of the major or minor Sicilian crime families. There were also other ethnic communities that competed with the American Italian mafia-primarily the Irish, Russians, and Polish organizations. Thomas defines Cultural relativism as an attitude in which there is a belief that cultures should be judged by their own standards rather than by applying the standards of another culture. In other words, it is the attempt to understand cultural practices from the points of view of the members of the society being studied, (Thomas, 36), In the case of the American mafia that was based on Sicilian origins; this means that ethics and morality came from a culture that is male-dominant, sexist, and machismo. There was always a defined code: It was a mixture of ethics, friendship, family, property, and lifestyle intermixed with violence, corruption, trust, faith, and a certain sense of honor. (Gambetta). The family always came first with a strong sense of loyalty. It was run as a real true government, but a clandestine one that was better obeyed and even better understood. (Reppetto) I cannot say that I agree with the basic philosophy of the Italian American mafia as described in this paper as an example of a good countercultural philosophy. Although they seem to have an organized structure that imitates the structure of our overall American government and society working within a capitalistic for-profit basis, what it is definitely missing at its core is a reasonable moral and ethical code based on democratic principles. They are totalitarian in nature, prone to violence against the poor and less powerful, and definitely ethnocentric, sexist, and out primarily for their own good. They do not care for the needs of the common man, only themselves. This is how they basically keep themselves in control and have power over everyone else. This is how they try to be above the common laws and liberties of the land. Their very existence flies in the face of the US Constitution. Even after Lucky Luciano was in prison at the tail end of his career, he tried to offer the US help in the war effort during World War II by using his criminal connections in Italy to advance the Allies cause. (Bio) This effort, of course, was rejected by the US government, but it certainly showed how Lucianos ethics and moral base was constantly challenged and off base. Even later than that, after Lucky Luciano was deported to Italy, never to return to the US legally, he traveled to Cuba where he was also later deported back to Italy because of criminal activity, where he remained under surveillance and not allowed to leave Naples. He was still involved with drug trafficking at that time until his death at a Naples Airport in January of 1962. Ironically, he was on his way to meet with a film and television producer who was going to make a movie about his life as an infamous hero/villain of the 20th century. In my opinion, Lucky Luciano is certainly more than a footnote of history, but he and the mafia are definitely not proud examples of a morally acceptable counterculture lifestyle. Works Cited Editors, Biography.com. The biography.com website. 15 June 2015. 9 march 2017. Gambetta, D. The Sicilian Mafia. 1993. Harvard University Press. Jrank, law. law.jrank.org. 2015. 10 march 2017. Reppetto, T. American Mafia: A History of Its Rise to Power. Kindle. Staff, history.com. history.com. 2009. 9 march 2017. Thomas, W. LaVerne. Cultural Diversity. Holt, Rinehart, Winston. Holt Sociology The study of Human Relationships. Austin: A Harcourt Education Company , 2003. 39.