Behavioral Perspectives

Follet, Munsterberg and Mayo are mostly known for behavioral- science approach theory. They are more focused on the human and psychological factors, which are likely to affect the workers. A considerable philosophy of the theory illuminates employee relationship and motivation, information processing and organizational development. The three are also considered the founders of organizational psychology and behavioral approaches in the theories of management. Follet is an American social worker, a pioneer in the organizational theory and organizational behavior. He is works as a management consultant. Her theory criticized the poor handling of employees and urge managers to be friendly. In doing so, they should grant them the liberty to collaborate, socialize and work in teams. Munsterberg, on the other hand, states that only workers with standard mental capability and moral standards should be hired. Moreover, increased employee motivation, job performance, and employee retention are very imperative. In other words, he encourages matching an employee merits with his or her job description. Elton Mayo, who started human relations movement is best known for Hawthorne studies which were conducted at the western electric company. His theory is based on the soft ways for successful management. According to him, individual's work performance depends greatly on job satisfaction. He contributed significantly to behaviorism movement in the management field. However, Marx, Weber, and Taylor oppose such positions and call for employees liberations. For instance, Marx is against the bourgeois who use other people to become rich. They are uncomfortable with the states of affairs that use other people as instruments of making wealth. Even though Marx, weber and Taylor contrast them, Follet, Munsterberg and Mayo transformed the way modern employers relate to their employees. Q2Organizational structure defines how organizational activities are coordinated, and directing supervisions of the allocated tasks towards the achievement of organizational goals. Major types of the organizational structure include functional, divisional and matrix. Functional structure refers to the grouping of the organization departments according to purposes. It is useful for small organizations with flexible departments which can solely rely on the skills, talents, and knowledge of employees. Divisional structure is used by large organizations which operate in different geographical areas. The organization is divided into divisions which areas separately managed towards achieving the common set goals. It is useful in the sense that its desires can be met rapidly and more specifically since each division operates independently. Q3Everyone in a workplace possesses different personalities. The use of personality test immensely employs the use of the big five personality traits which includes openness, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. In a workplace, personality traits can help in revealing strengths and weaknesses of the employees. Moreover, it helps in determining levels of emotional intelligence among employees, a key tool for effective communication. In addition to this, personality traits help in creating awareness and enhancing excellent teamwork among employees. Finally, personality traits it helps in promoting a deeper understanding of employee capabilities based on their strengths and capabilities, thus making it easier to delegate the duties. Q4 Perceptual distortions refer to the variations of a person's response to a stimulus from the common perception. Majorly, it occurs as a result of intellectual biases of an individual. The major causes of perceptual distortions include but not limited to stereotyping, halo effect, pre-deposition, recency effect, pre-deposition effect, primacy effect, and prejudice. An example of perceptual distortion is that of an individual who is suffering from anorexia and holds a biased self-image. Such people see their bodies as overweighed and unsightly whereas others perceive them as the undernourished as well as underweighted. Q5 Impression management refers to a self-presentation system which focuses on improving a person's image in the eyes of others. Typically, it refers to a process in which people attempt to influence the perception of others. Managers synonymously implement the use of impression management to present themselves to their employees, the public and to their peers as a way of impelling the insights of their appearance. The underlying motives and basic governing factors of impression management culminates in the awareness of being a potential monitoring instrument and the kind social status. Additionally, cultural norms, personal goals, and social perspectives form other impression motives and governing factors for managers. The duo reveals the assertions, which leads to a dynamic way of presentational aspects. Managers tend to impress their employees, peers and the public through the types of clothes they put on, which have specific designs and fashions. Politicians wear nice suits, carries an expensive suitcase and move inexpensive cars so as to impress the public as they woe for votes. Christianity is another strategy used by managers to impress peers and the public alleging that their ways are pure. Q6 Stress refers to a hypersensitive response of the body to any kind of emotional strain. It occurs as a result of personal conflict between the job workload or demands and the little amount of time an employee has to meet these demands, hence lack of control. The common demands that may lead to stress in the workplace include poor organization of the work, poor work design, poor working conditions, poor management and lack of supervisory support. Moreover, job monotony and excessive workload are also sources of stress in a workstation. The general responses to stress that can be experienced are majorly classified into physical, Emotional responses. Physical stress occurs in the general body and includes pains, aches and other diseases that may be caused by stress. Physical stress is accompanied by frequent headaches, chest problems, back pain and aching stomach. It is also characterized by insufficient sleep and high blood pressure. On the other hand, Emotional responses are experiences involving feelings and thoughts during stressful circumstances. Such responses include depression and anxiety, withdrawing socially and becoming more forgetful. Anger, lack of focus and becoming more restless are other emotional responses to stress. Excessive stress is fatal and prevention measures should be put in place. In order to deal with stress, one should first trace the origin and know the causes of stress and develop healthy responses to curb the situation. Relaxing the mind and having sufficient sleep are important techniques suppressing stress. Avoid being lonely, talk to other people and seek for their help. Finally, talking to the supervisor about the stressing issue can help solve the situation. This can be perfected by improving working conditions.

CMR Enterprise Essay

This particular case depicts the history and issues faced by a relatively small company active in the custom architectural millwork industry for the past 25 years. The new owners wanted the newly-acquired company to grow even further. The first few months seems to have been a success – Marcus spent a lot of his time with employees and customers, learning the field since he was, as mentioned in the text, an â€Å"outsider†. However, keeping the company’s integrity and image intact was a priority. However, the problems outlined in the case seems to start – or at least have been worsened – with what will become CMR’s largest account, Blackstone Homes. Problem Identification After reviewing the text in question, three major problems stand out: 1) Customers change requests: When Blackstone Homes sell a house, it does – of course! – come with a pre-finished and installed kitchen, included in the price. However, if the customer wishes, he or she would visit CMR’s showroom and they would build these woodwork according to their new specifications. The added cost will then be charged to the contractor, which will later add it to their bills. This takes time and lead to price increases. This is, in part, what contributed to the clash with Blackstone Homes. 2) IT solution not adapted: InfoCentral, the software implemented by Marcus, does not work out as intended and do not fit the business needs. It is not always updated as required by the employees. According to the text, it may be helpful for the commercial and financial/accounting side, but is lacking several features for its residential counterpart to be really as useful as it can be. 3) Deteriorating business relationship The business relations between the two companies started well and was fulfilling for both part. When the business expended, so did the problems. The root cause seems to be the change requests made by the homeowners. This lead to late delivery, poorly reviewed performance and then the 7% price increase. Future homeowners started considering the prices charged by CMR to be too high. We could therefore expect lower level of sales and revenues in the future. Alternatives generation While we will mostly concentrate our alternatives on the three points mentioned above, we will also include other alternatives, even if they may not be realistic or feasible in the short/medium term. 1) Review customers change requests: We obviously cannot stop change requests and modifications made by the customers. The company and its employees pride themselves by offering flexibility and higher customers’ satisfaction. It would be therefore self-destructive for CMR to put a term to these showrooms. Any person also deserve to have reasonable alternative options when they are buying an object, a home more than anything. However, there is a clear misunderstanding between CMR and Blackstone Homes regarding the fixed allowances for kitchen ($6,000) and the final cost of the installation. In order to solve this issue, it may be a good thing to review the billing part: Instead of having the installation costs â€Å"forwarded† to the contractor, all expenses over $6,000 (parts + labor) should be charged to the homeowners themselves; customers can have access to all options made available by CMR, whilst eliminating cost forwarding and the said related disagreements. 2) Software adaptation It seems clear from the text that the whole issue also come in part from InfoCentral. In order to remediate this issue, we would suggest that all account managers from CMR and employees involved with this software should meet and discuss its performance. What should be changed, what must be kept, or what should be included in order to fit everyone’s needs. However, for any IT solution to bring tangible additional value, it must be easy to use and should not impose additional work. It is supposed to simplify the work, not making it more complicated. 3) The right people on the right place Again, according to the text, there was a clear misunderstanding between both parties; it was even referred as a â€Å"shouting contest†, which is far from being a normal and healthy business relationship. The Key Account Managers (from both sides) could not agree on contract terms and conditions. It could therefore be a good thing to change points of contact and see if the situation can be resolved; a stronger relation, transparency, honesty and â€Å"business awareness† between the two companies might also help straighten things out. 4) Additional ideas The solution to increase profit may not be by simply increasing selling price. We would suggest CMR to run an audit on their Supply Chain, Logistics and Selling, General & Administrative Expenses to see if cost reductions are possible. Could modern machinery help cut their production costs? Could they outsource some of their non-core business or reduce raw material costs by creating a joint-venture with a competitor? Chasing down inefficiencies in the production line can be even more effective than a price increase. Recommendations Using the previous points, we would suggest the three following recommendations: 1) Change the billing process: If possible, all additional costs over $6,000 should be charged to the homeowner directly. In order to make this easier for the customers, offering various financing options may be a good idea. 2) Adapt InfoCentral: Review, correct and revamp the software in order to meet real business needs. May be a good thing to check what competitors are using. 3) Organize recurrent meetings: The situation with Blackstone did not get bad in one day. It may be a good idea to set up weekly or monthly operational reviews; meetings lasting no longer than 30 minutes, where all potential issues can be discussed among stakeholders and managers. The idea is not to let such situation worsen and take the correct actions as soon as possible.

Explaining my scheme Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Explaining my scheme - Essay Example In this chapter, an overview is given in Section 4.2. Then, Section 4.3 illustrates how the initial labels are allocated and how the different relationships are determined. Section 4.4 describes how insertions are handled and how different relationships are preserved. A validation of the relationships using algebra is shown in Section 4.5. Finally, in Section 4.6, the chapter ends with a general conclusion that leads to the following chapter which discusses the scheme from the point of view of implementation. The proposed scheme is based on the parent-child grouping to facilitate the identification of parent-child and sibling relationships faster, based on a simple comparison. Parent-child grouping was also selected due to the high number of xml documents that come with this type of relationship (Goldman & Widom, 1997). Again, parent-child and sibling grouping facilitate smother insertions of new nodes, given the fact that in this form of grouping only a simple tree structure will be dealt with rather than the whole tree (Cohen, Kaplan & Milo, 2002). The advantage of allowing smoother insertion builds on the prefix GroupID labelling scheme but does not determine a fixed number of nodes to be inserted. Gusfield (1997) also observed that when dealing with parent-child groupings, labelling can be thought of as being easier, faster and more accurate as it deals with a simple tree structure. The simple structure has to do with a root node and its direct children nodes. Another critical characteristic of the scheme is that it uses two labels for each node in order to facilitate the processing nodes within the same group that uses their simple local labels. This is in contrast with multiplication-based scheme where the global label is used to connect a group to the whole tree which helps in identifying relationships between nodes belong to different group (Milo & Suciu, 1999). Based on existing schemes such

Parenting stratagies in Saudi Arabia Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Parenting stratagies in Saudi Arabia - Essay Example Families, or more specifically parents, have the greatest impact on children’s development and characters (Sanders, 2012). Methods of education differ according to differences in communities. Sumargurgi et al. (2013) studied an Indonesian community and they indicated that many Indonesian parents still use ineffective methods of dealing with their children, such as screaming. Developing countries tend to have high rates of behavioural and emotional problems in children (Mejia et al., 2012). My own philosophy about psychologists came from working in a parenting program in Saudi Arabia. It can be linked to Foucault’s philosophy, which focuses on parenting without using violence-based strategies because these are incompatible with learning. Some research is based on explaining the parenting methods used in Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia and whether they using positive or negative strategies with children. A Saudi study indicated that 7% of parents were satisfied with their parenting performance and reported that did not need to know more about parenting techniques (â€Å"King Abdulaziz ...†, 2011). This essay aims to understand the parental methods used by Saudi parents with their children, to explain the education methods utilised by the Saudi community, and to identify whether those methods are effective or ineffective. It also assumes that there are differences in the parenting methods of Saudi parents, which are linked to Foucault’s concepts of an ethic of care, discipline and punishment, knowledge, governmentality, and pastoral power. An explanation is provided of how these concepts operate within my personal philosophy and professional philosophy of Altuwajery. From my perspective, Saudi families have strong relationships between children and parents, even after the children marry. There is a strong correlation at the relationship level between discipline and family cohesion. The relationship between Saudi families is closer than average

Management (definition) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Management (definition) - Essay Example The perspectives hence interpolate the events in the organization for instance rules and regulations, trade unions, conflicts differently, (Dale 2001). The unitary organization is viewed as being harmonious and integrated whole unit just like a united family. The management and the rest of the staff members all shares a common goal and they lay a lot of emphasize on cooperation that is mutual. This perspective approaches the organization paternally where it requires all the employees to be loyal. 1. This perspective approaches the organization as a one harmonious and integrated entity. This makes the employees feel wanted by the organization. They hence develop a lot of commitment, derive job satisfaction from what they do and this in the long run increases the organizational productivity. The organization life is mutual and people are friendly towards each other, (Mark 2001). 2. The organization is guided by a common objective. This is very advantageous as all the members of the organization including the management and staff cohesively works towards the attainment of a common goal which is unanimously agreed upon by the two parties as a whole. There is therefore the spirit of togetherness in the every day life of the organization. 1. ... The trade union serves as a representative of the employees to the employer and assists the employees in making trade agreements, in collective bargaining and negotiations. In a unitary organization therefore, the employees are not represented and their voice is not raised. They remain loyal to the organization and cooperate with the management, (Hoyer 2001). 2. Organizational conflicts are perceived to be disruptive to the normal running of the organization. They are associated and are said to result to the breakdown in communication, friction between individuals, and agitation. By shielding the organization from healthy conflicts, this perspective bars the organization from realizing the benefits of a healthy conflict. Healthy conflicts keep the employees and the management as well informed on the general feeling of the organizational issues. The conflicts also bring home the various points of views from the different people in the organization. 3. The organization only recruits employees who do not demonstrate a pluralistic character. This blacklists potential employees from working in the organization. In regard to this, the organization may leave out the best talent. This may affect the firm's productivity as well as the life of the organization. The pluralist perspective From this perspective, the organization is viewed as having divergent and powerful sub-groups of which each group has its individual loyalties that are legitimate, set objectives as well as its own leaders. These sub-groups primarily are the employees and the management, (Thomson and Rampton 2003). Advantages The responsibilities or the management lessens since all the management does is co-ordinate the employees in the organization as well as the organizational life. The burden

Math paradoxes - geometric series Speech or Presentation

Math paradoxes - geometric series - Speech or Presentation Example The key concept here is that there are an infinite number of rooms, so that our logic – which would terminate in the ‘real world’- can go on forever. This is called ‘Hilbert’s infinite hotel paradox’ and the famed hotel is often jokingly referred to a â€Å"Hilberts† analogously to â€Å"Hiltons†! Infinity is a very hard concept to understand and possess the most absurd properties of any mathematically definable object. Cantor was the first mathematician to study the properties of infinite sets in greater detail. Suppose you group together all the even numbers (2, 4, 6, 8, 10†¦) and all the perfect squares (1, 4, 9, 16†¦) separately into two groups. Which group has more members? If selection was from a small set, say from the first 100 numbers, then the answer is fairly obvious. There are 50 even numbers in the list from 1 to 100 while there are only 10 perfect squares. As the set grows larger, we expect the ratio to remain the same. However, if the grouping is from the entire set of integers, then lo and behold, we find the rather unusual result that both the groups have exactly the same number of members! This is because, for every even number from the first set we can find a perfect square in the other set. Thus, since for every element in the first set there i s a corresponding element in the next set, we have to conclude that no set has more members than the other; as if this were to be so, some even number would have no perfect squares to relate to. Series’ show the remarkable properties of â€Å"Convergence and â€Å"Divergence†. These properties happen to be very well studied as they find applications in most branches of engineering. Take an apple pie and cut it in half. Cut one of these halves in half again and repeat the process. Initially you have 1 object (in this case a pie). It then becomes . The third iteration reduces it to . It is easy to see where we are going.

Byzantine Women and Their Role in Byzantine History Essay

Byzantine Women and Their Role in Byzantine History - Essay Example The focus then becomes women and their roles in Byzantine society. Women’s challenges, power relationships, and even their daily routines are revealed in these stories of holy individual women, from all walks of life. Each of the saints is used to illustrate to a greater or lesser degree, the following aspects of Byzantine women’s lives: Marital violence Transvestite monks Travel for women Married women as saints The conclusion is then reached that the Vitae of the Holy Women of Byzantium are valuable historical tools, of interest to modern audiences because of their relevance to modern women’s rights movements. The Essay Introduction This paper explores the information to be gained from accounts of the lives of holy women in Byzantium as they are recounted in texts called vitae – the stories of these women’s lives as summarized by biographers, showing their holiness and aspects of their lives relating to their sainthood (B). The stories are used to illustrate how such accounts are highly valuable to assist the modern historian to derive some knowledge and clarity about these women and their lives and position in their society (A). While the focus will remain on the women and their role in Byzantine society, some points are also to be made about the social, economic, cultural and political conditions within Byzantine society (A). Women’s challenges, power relationships, and even their daily routines are revealed in these stories of holy individual women, from all walks of life (D). With this in mind, the essay begins with an overview of the contents of these vitae. It then explores the dynamic and relevant information revealed through these texts, in the descriptions, sometimes seemingly incidental descriptions, giving clues as to the politics and culture of the time. Especially the roles, conditions and behaviors of these women are then highlighted, and provide insight into the lives of these historical women, for comp arison with modern women, and their striving toward equity and respect in modern, western societies (C). It is concluded that the texts provided, while not completely factually accurate as they could be, do give a modern reader and researcher valuable insight into more than just the biographical details of a group of admirable and notable Holy Women in Byzantium. The Vitae and Byzantine Society Written to prove the holiness of a particular person before the recognition of a person as holy by the church, a person’s vita would illustrate why that individual had the qualities required to be what is today understood as a Saint (General Introduction, p. viii). What is convenient to the modern historian, though, is that the descriptions and comments the writers of a vita would use to illustrate the life of the potential saint, are valuable personalized and direct clues which reveal many aspects of the daily lives of people in Byzantine society. To some degree, also, historical even ts described in these texts assist to verify dates, rulers, political conditions and even the general societal and cultural attitudes of ordinary people in this society. It appears that the outward signs of religious devotion in this society often depended on the philanthropic acts of