Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Analysis of Decline and Rise of Various Business Activities in the U.K. Essay

In this task, I will need to decide what the core activity is in each of my two businesses and whether they are dealing with products, services or both. In the UK some of these business activities are becoming more common and others are becoming less common. I will need to find out the broad trends for these business activities and how they affect the businesses that I am investigating. The legal status of Freelance Audio Productions is an equal partnership between Martin and Nikki Rider. The company was set up in 1986, but has only been trading as Freelance Audio Productions for four years. The company doesn’t make a product, the service it provides is audio production based which includes performance arts, supplying of equipment and supplying of production services and facilities. FAP falls into the category of the Tertiary Sector. There are many departments that operate within FAP, but there are two departments that control most of Freelance Audio Productions. These are Sta ge sound and Showbiz. Stage Sound. FAP Stage Sound has been in operation for fourteen years but has only been working under Freelance Audio Productions for the last four years. FAP Stage Sound specialises in renting out sound equipment and educating young trainees. FAP Stage Sound is a continuously growing business which is also shown in the trend of the tertiary sector. Showbiz. FAP Showbiz controls all of the private singing and dancing lessons and the Pop School. FAP Pop School is the newest addition to Freelance Audio Productions. The main target of this is to educate people, mainly children, form the ages of two upwards in the field of music and dance. Girls and boys of all ages learn to sing and dance and put together routines. Shows are then put on as large events where many tickets are sold but little profit is made. Graph showing the Tertiary sector total. (See Appendix 1) FAP and connections with the sectors. Freelance Audio Productions works under the tertiary sector in the departments of other services and education. The Stage Sound aspect of FAP comes under other services, and the private lessons and Pop School comes under education. (See Appendix 2) Freelance Audio has no direct connections with any of the other sectors, but, the other departments in the Tertiary Sector play a large part in the success or failure of FAP. Martin Rider has a community web site on the Internet, and does a lot of theatrical work. As the Internet industry is doing very well at the moment, and FAP is hoping to spread all over the UK, communications help a lot to promote this business. The best way to promote the business locally is while shows are going on. The department leisure includes theatre and public events, and locally, FAP is involved with all theatrical work and most public events. Leisure is one of the fastest growing industries in the tertiary sector which gives an indication on how well FAP should be doing. (Appendix 4) FAP can be affected by the secondary sector. The only way that FAP is affected by any other sectors is the fluctuations in manufacturing of electrical goods in the secondary sector. This can cause problems when attempting to purchase specialised equipment for shows or upgrading the current range of products. Conclusion. Although currently small, Freelance Audio Productions is growing very fast as a result of the tertiary sector departments that it is part of. Over the next few years, new contacts with other businesses in the UK will be made, and maybe other sectors will come as a part of the company. The legal status of Lantra is a charitable limited company. Lantra is owned and run by a board of directors. If Lantra goes ‘bust’ or ‘bankrupt’, each director has a liability of one pound. Lantra has a very complicated range of services. Most of the services is education, training and policy work for the government. Most of the work is in the land based sector, which is to do with farming, agriculture and environmental conservation. Lantra sets the standards that the GNVQs are set upon. The GNVQs for land based studies is set by Lantra. There are three operating Companies which work under the ‘umbrella’ company, Lantra. These are called, Lantra Awards, Lantra National Training Organisation and Lantra Agenda. These are explained in depth in the following text. Lantra Awards. Lantra Awards is a new organisation within the Lantra. The aim of this company is to ‘provide an innovative and responsive awarding service’. Lantra Awards assesses trainees, and if the needed standards are met, appropri ate awards are rewarded to them. The awards given are recognised by the government and can help acquire a job or an apprenticeship. Lantra Agenda. Lantra Agenda training specialises in management training and consultancy services and the co-ordination of work based training. Agenda courses range from increasing personal dynamics and communication effectiveness to waste management and include a range of health, safety and quality assurance courses. Below are some of the services that Lantra Agenda Provide. Although some are training, they are referred to as a product as they are sold to external agencies also. Management training and business consultancy – Business development consultancy – Benchmarking – Management and supervisory training – Train the trainer programmes Vocational Programmes – National Traineeships – Modern Apprenticeships (Skillseekers in Scotland) – Approves centre for N/SVQs – Assessment and certification in key skills, hazardous operations and safety training and management. Lantra National Training Organisation (Lantra NTO). Lantra NTO has a wide ranging selection of activities which spans from conducting labour market research to supporting local training providers. The key role of Lantra NOT is to link government and industry. There are eleven industry groups that work in Lantra NTO. These are: – agricultural crops – agricultural livestock – production horticulture – landscaping – environmental conservation – game conservation – fish farming – agricultural and garden machinery – fencing – floristry – professions allied to veterinary science Graph showing the Tertiary sector total. (See Appendix 1) Lantra and connections with the sectors. Lantra is a peculiar organisation as it is based in not only the tertiary sector, but the primary sector also. Lantra is primarily based in the tertiary sector as it deals with training, education, and the selling of a product, retail. Previously, Lantra was a primary sector, land based organisation. As recent trends show, the primary sector is in rapid decline (Appendix 3) so the company had to think up a new idea to save the business. This is when selling training courses as a product and the company Lantra Awards came into play. These two ideas brought Lantra into the Tertiary sector which is an overall higher earning sector (Appendix 1). This would have both increased the companies value and broadened the types of customers. If the Primary sector decreases, Lantra will be injured as the company still relies mainly on the land based agricultural departments. If the need for more farms arrives, this would be perfect for the training aspect of Lantra as the business would rocket. Conclusion. Even though Lantra is in the primary sector, which is decreasing, the departments which are in the tertiary sector provide a safety net and a higher income. I think that Awards and Agenda will take over and NTO will slowly disappear as the need for agricultural based activities is in decline.

Tuesday, July 30, 2019

Importance of arts Essay

Now we must study the following questions: What significance does art acquire if we assume that our interpretation of it is correct? What is the relation between aesthetic response and all other forms of human behavior? How do we explain the role and importance of art in the general behavioral system of man? There are as many different answers to these questions as there are different ways of evaluating the importance of art. Some believe art is the supreme human activity while others consider it nothing but leisure and fun. The evaluation of art depends directly on the psychological viewpoint from which we approach it. If we want to find out what the relationship between art and life is, if we want to solve the problem of art in terms of applied psychology, we must adopt a valid general theory for solving these problems. The first and most widespread view holds that art infects us with emotions and is therefore based upon contamination. Tolstoy says, â€Å"The activity of art is ba sed on the capacity of people to infect others with their own emotions and to be infected by the emotions of others. †¦ Strong emotions, weak emotions, important emotions, or irrelevant emotions, good emotions or bad emotions – if they contaminate the reader, the spectator, or the listener – become the subject of art. This statement means that since art is but common emotion, there is no substantial difference between an ordinary feeling and a feeling stirred by art. Consequently, art functions simply as a resonator, an amplifier, or a transmitter for the infection of feeling. Art has n6 specific distinction; hence the evaluation of art must proceed from the same criterion which we use to evaluate any feeling. Art may be good or bad if it infects us with good or bad feelings. Art in itself is neither good nor bad; it is a language of feeling which we must evaluate in accordance with what it expresses. Thus, Tolstoy came to the natural conclusion that art must be evaluated from a moral viewpoint; he therefore approved of art that generated good feelings, and objected to art that, from his point of view, represented reprehensible events or actions. Many other critics reached the same conclusions as did Tolstoy and evaluated a work of art on the basis of its obvious content, while praising or condemning the artist accordingly. Like ethics, like aesthetics – this is the slogan of this theory. But Tolstoy soon discovered that his theory failed when he tried to be consistent with his own conclusions. He compared two artistic impressions:  one produced b y a large chorus of peasant women who were celebrating the marriage of his daughter; and the other, by an accomplished musician who played Beethoven’s Sonata. The singing of the peasant women expressed such a feeling of joy, cheerfulness, and liveliness that it infected Tolstoy and he went home in high spirits. According to him, such singing is true art, because it communicates a specific and powerful emotion. Since the second impression involved no such specific emotions, he concluded that Beethoven’s sonata is an unsuccessful artistic attempt which contains no definite emotions and is therefore neither remarkable nor outstanding. This example shows us the absurd conclusions that can be reached if the critical understanding of art is based upon the criterion of its infectiousness. Beethoven’s music incorporates no definite feeling, while the singing of the peasant women has an elementary and contagious gaiety. If this is true, then Yevlakhov is right when he states that â€Å"‘real, true’ art is military or dance music, since it is more catchy.† Tolstoy is consistent in his ideas; beside folk songs, he recognizes only â€Å"marches and dances written by various composers† as works â€Å"that approach the requirements of universal art.† A reviewer of Tolstoy’s article, V. G. Valter, points out that â€Å"if Tolstoy had said that the gaiety of the peasant women put him in a good mood, one could not object to that. It would mean that the language of emotions that expressed itself in their singing (it could well have expressed itself simply in yelling, and most like ly did) infected Tolstoy with their gaiety. But what has this to do with art? Tolstoy does not say whether the women sang well; had they not sung but simply yelled, beating their scythes, their fun and gaiety would have been no less catching, especially on his daughter’s wedding day.† We feel that if we compare an ordinary yell of fear to a powerful novel in terms of their respective infectiousness, the latter will fail the test. Obviously, to understand art we must add something else to simple infectiousness. Art also produces other impressions, and Longinus’ statement, â€Å"You must know that the orator pursues one purpose, and the poet another. The purpose of poetry is trepidation, that of prose is expressivity,† is correct. Tolstoy’s formula failed to account for the trepidation which is the purpose of poetry. But to prove that he is really wrong, we must look at the art of military and dance music and find out whether the true purpose of that art is to infect. Petrazhitskii assumes  that aestheticians are wrong when they claim that the purpose of art is to generate aesthetic emotions only. He feels that art produces general emotions, and that aesthetic emotions are merely decorative. â€Å"For instance, the art of a warlike period in the life of a people has as its main purpose the excitation of heroic-bellicose emotions. Even now, military music is not intended to give the soldiers in the field aesthetic enjoyment, but to excite and enhance their belligerent feelings. The purpose of medieval art (including sculpture and architecture) was to produce lofty religious emotions. Lyric appeals to one aspect of our emotional psyche, satire to another; the same applies to drama, tragedy, and so on †¦ Apart from the fact that military music does not generate bellicose emotions on the battlefield, the question is not properly formulated here. Ovsianiko-Kulikovskii, for example, comes closer to the truth when he says that â€Å"military lyrics and music ‘lift the spirit’ of the army and ‘inspire’ feats of valor and heroic deeds, but neither of them leads directly to bellicose emotions or belligerent affects. On the contrary, they seem to moderate bellicose ardor, calm an excited nervous system, and chase away fear. We can say that lifting morale, calming nerves, and chasing away fear are among the most important practical functions of ‘lyrics’ which result from their psychological nature. It is therefore wrong to think that music can directly cause warlike emotions; more precisely, it gives bellicose emotions an opportunity for expression, but music as such neither causes nor generates them. Something similar happens with erotic poetry, the sole purpose of which, according to Tolstoy, is to excite lust. Anyone who understands the true nature of lyrical emotions knows that Tolstoy is wrong. â€Å"There is no doubt that lyrical emotion has a soothing effect on all other emotions (and affects) to the point that at times it paralyzes them. This is also the effect it has on sexuality with its emotions and affects. Erotic poetry, if it is truly lyrical, is far less suggestive than works of the visual arts in which the problems of love and the notorious sex problem are treated with the purpose of producing a moral reaction. Ovsianiko-Kulikovskii is only partly correct in his assumption that sexual feeling, which is easily excited, is most strongly stirred by images and thoughts, that these images and thoughts are rendered harmless by lyrical emotion, and that mankind is indebted to lyrics, even more than to ethics,  for the taming and restraining of sexual instincts. He underestimates the importance of the other art forms, which he calls figurative, and does not remark that in their case also emotions provoked by images are counteracted by the nonlyrical emotion of art. Thus we see that Tolstoy’s theory does not hold in the domain of the applied arts, where he thought its validity to be absolute. As concerns great art (the art of Beethoven and Shakespeare), Tolstoy himself pointed out that his theory is inapplicable. Art would have a dull and ungrateful task if its only purpose were to infect one or many persons with feelings. If this were so, its significance would be very small, because there would be only a quantitative expansion and no qualitative expansion beyond an individual’s feeling. The miracle of art would then be like the bleak miracle of the Gospel, when five barley loaves and two small fishes fed thousands of people, all of whom ate and were satisfied, and a dozen baskets were filled with the remaining food. This miracle is only quantitative: thousands were fed and were satisfied, but each of them ate only fish and bread. But was this not their daily diet at home, without any miracles? If the only purpose of a tragic poem were to infect us with the author’s sorrow, this would be a very sad situation indeed for art. The miracle of art reminds us much more of another miracle in the Gospel, the transformation of water into wine. Indeed, art’s true nature is that of transubstantiation, something that transcends ordinary feelings; for the fear, pain, or excitement caused by art includes something above and beyond its normal, conventional content. This â€Å"something† overcomes feelings of fear and pain, changes water into wine, and thus fulfills the most important purpose of art. One of the great thinkers said once that art relates to life as wine relates to the grape. With this he meant to say that art takes its material from life, but gives in return something which its material did not contain. Initially, an emotion is individual, and only by means of a work of art does it become s ocial or generalized. But it appears that art by itself contributes nothing to this emotion. It is not clear, then, why art should be viewed as a creative act nor how it differs from an ordinary yell or an orator’s speech. Where is the trepidation of which Longinus spoke, if art is viewed only as an exercise in infectiousness? We realize that science does not simply infect one person or a whole society with thoughts and ideas, any more than technology helps man  to be handy. We can also recognize that art is an expanded â€Å"social feeling† or technique of feelings, as we shall show later. Plekhanov states that the relationship between art and life is extremely complex, and he is right. He quotes Tairfe who investigated the interesting question of why landscape painting evolved only in the city. If art were intended merely to infect us with the feelings that life communicates to us, then landscape painting could not survive in the city. History, however, proves exactly the opposite. Taine writes, â€Å"We have the right to admire landscapes, just as they had the right to be bored by it. For seventeenth-century man there was nothing uglier than a mountain. It aroused in him many unpleasant ideas, because he was as weary of barbarianism as we are weary of civilization. Mountains give us a chance to rest, away from our sidewalks, offices, and shops; we like landscape only for this reason.† 6 Plekhanov points out that art is sometimes not a direct expression of life, but an expression of its antithesis. The idea, of course, is not in the leisure of which Taine speak s, but in a certain antithesis: art releases an aspect of our psyche which finds no expression in our everyday life. We cannot speak of an infection with emotions. The effect of art is obviously much more varied and complex; no matter how we approach art, we always discover that it involves something different from a simple transmission of feelings. Whether or not we agree with Lunacharskii that art is a concentration of life, we must realize that it proceeds from certain live feelings and works upon those feelings, a fact not considered by Tolstoy’s theory. We have seen that this process is a catharsis – the transformation of these feelings into opposite ones and their subsequent resolution. This view of course agrees perfectly with Plekhanov’s principle of antithesis in art. To understand this we must look at the problem of the biological significance of art, and realize that art is not merely a means for infection but something immeasurably more important in itself. In his â€Å"Three Chapters of Historic Poetics,† Veselovskii says that ancient singing and playing were born from a complex need for catharsis; a cho rus sung during hard and exhausting work regulates muscular effort by its rhythm, and apparently aimless play responds to the subconscious requirement of training and regulation of physical or intellectual effort. This is also the requirement of psychophysical catharsis formulated by Aristotle for the drama; it manifests itself in the  unsurpassed mastery of Maori women to shed tears at will, and also in the overwhelming tearfulness of the eighteenth century. The phenomenon is the same; the difference lies only in expression and understanding. We perceive rhythm in poetry as something artistic and forget its primitive psychophysical origins. The best repudiation of the contamination theory is the study of those psychophysical principles on which art is based and the explanation of the biological significance of art. Apparently art releases and processes some extremely complex organismic urges. The best corroboration of our viewpoint can be found in the fact that it agrees with Bucher’s studies on the origins of art and permits us to understand the true role and purpose of art. Bucher established that music and poetry have a common origin in heavy physical labor. Their object was to relax cathartically the tremendous stress created by labor. This is how Bucher formulated the general content of work songs: â€Å"They follow the general trend of work, and signal the beginning of a simultaneous collective effort; they try to incite th e men to work by derision, invective, or reference to the opinion of spectators; they express the thoughts of the workers about labor itself, its course, its gear, and so forth, as well as their joys or sorrows, their complaints about the hardness of the work and the inadequate pay; they address a plea to the owner, the supervisor, or simply to the spectator.† The two elements of art and their resolution are found here. The only peculiarity of these songs is that the feeling of pain and hardship which must be solved by art is an essential part of labor itself. Subsequently, when art detaches itself from labor and begins to exist as an independent activity, it introduces into the work of art the element which was formerly generated by labor: the feelings of pain, torment, and hardship (which require relies are now aroused by art itself, but their nature remains the same. Biicher makes an extremely interesting statement: â€Å"The peoples of antiquity considered song an indispensable accompaniment of hard labor.† From this we realize that song at first organized collective labor, then gave relief and relaxation to painful and tormenting strain. We shall see that art, even in its highest manifestations, completely separate from labor and without any direct connection thereto, has maintained the same functions. It still must systematize, or organize, social feeling and give relief to painful and tormenting strain. Quintilian puts it this way: â€Å"And  it appears as if [music] were given to us by nature in order to make labor bearable. For instance, the rower is inspired by song; it is useful not only where the efforts of many are combined, but also when it is intended to provide rest for an exhausted worker.† Thus art arises originally as a powerful tool in the struggle for existence; the idea of reducing its role to a communication of feeling with no power or control over that feeling, is inadmissible. If the purpose of art, like Tolstoy’s chorus of peasant women, were only to make us gay or sad, it would neither have survived nor have ever acquired its present importance. Nietzsche expresses it well injoyful Wisdom, when he says that rhythm involves inducement and incentive: â€Å"It arouses an irresistible desire to imitate, and not only our legs but our very soul follow the beat. †¦ Was there anything more useful than rhythm for ancient, Superstitious mankind? With its help everything became feasible – work could be performed magically, God could be forced to appear and listen to grievances, the future could be changed and corrected at will, one’s soul could be delivered of any abnormality. Without verse man would be nothing; with it, he almost became God.â €  It is quite interesting to see how Nietzsche explains the way in which art succeeded in acquiring such power over man. â€Å"When the normal mood and harmony of the soul were lost, one had to dance to the song of a bard – this was the prescription of that medicine †¦ First of all, inebriation and uncontrolled affect were pushed to the limit, so that the insane became frenzied, and the avenger became saturated with hatred.† Apparently the possibility of releasing into art powerful passions which cannot find expression in normal, everyday life is the biological basis of art. The purpose of our behavior is to keep our organism in balance with its surroundings. The simpler and more elementary our relations with the environment, the simpler our behavior. The more subtle and complex the interaction between organism and environment, the more devious and intricate the balancing process. Obviously this process cannot continue smoothly toward an equilibrium. There will always be a certain imbalance in favor of the environment or the organism. No machine can work toward equilibrium using all its energy efficiently. There are always states of excitation which cannot result in an efficient use of energy. This is why a need arises from time to time to discharge the unused energy and give it free rein in order to reestablish our equilibrium with the rest of the  world. Orshanskii says that feelings â€Å"are the p luses and minuses of our equilibrium.† These pluses and minuses, these discharges and expenditures of unused energy, are the biological function of art. Looking at a child, it is evident that its possibilities are far greater than actually realized. If a child plays at soldiers, cops and robbers, and so on, this means, according to some, that inside himself he really becomes a soldier or a robber. Sherrington’s principle (the principle of struggle for a common field of action) clearly shows that in our organism the nervous receptor fields exceed many times the executing effector neurons, so that the organism perceives many more stimuli than it can possibly attend to. Our nervous system resembles a railway station into which five tracks lead, but only one track leads out. Of five trains arriving at this station, only one ever manages to leave (and this only after a fierce struggle), while the other four remain stalled. The nervous system reminds us of a battlefield where the struggle never ceases, not even for a single instant, and our behavior is an infinitesimal part of what is really included in the possibilities of our nerv ous system, but cannot find an outlet. In nature the realized and executed part of life is but a minute part of the entire conceivable life Oust as every life born is paid for by millions of unborn ones). Similarly, in our nervous system, the realized part of life is only the smallest part of the real life contained in us. Sherrington likens our nervous system to a funnel with its narrow part turned toward action, and the wider part toward the world. The world pours into man, through the wide opening of the funnel 154), thousands of calls, desires, stimuli, etc. enter, but only an infinitesimal part of them is realized and flows out through the narrowing opening. It is obvious that the unrealized part of life, which has not gone through the narrow opening of our behavior, must be somehow utilized and lived. The organism is in an equilibrium with its environment where balance must be maintained, just as it becomes necessary to open a valve in a kettle in which steam pressure exceeds the strength of the vessel. Apparently art is a psychological means for striking a balance with the environment at critical points of our behavior. Long ago the idea had been expressed that art complements life by expanding its possibilities. Von Lange says, â€Å"There is a sorry resemblance between contemporary civilized man and domestic animals: limitation and monotony. Issuing from the patterns of bourgeois  life and its social forms, these are the main features of the individual existence, which lead everybody, rich and poor, weak and strong, talented and deprived, through an incomplete and imperfect life. It is astonishing how limited is the number of ideas, feelings, and actions that modern man can perform or experience.† Lazurskii holds the same view when he explains the theory of empathy by referring to one of Tolstoy’s novels. â€Å"There is a point in Anna Karenina where Tolstoy tells us that Anna reads a novel and suddenly wants to do what the heroes of that novel do: fight, struggle, win with them, go with the protagonist to his estate, and so on.† Freud shares this opinion and speaks of art as a means of appeasing two inimical principles, the principle of pleasure and that of reality. Insofar as we are talking about the meaning of life, these writers come closer to the truth than those who, like Grant-Allen, assume that â€Å"aesthetics are those emotions which have freed themselves from association with practical interests.† This reminds us of Spencer’s formula: he assumed that â€Å"beautiful is what once was, but no longer is, useful.† Developed to its extreme limits, this viewpoint leads to the theory of games, which is accepted by many philosophers, and g iven its highest expression by Schiller. The one serious objection against it is that, in not recognizing art as a creative act, it tends to reduce it to the biological function of exercising certain organs, a fact of little importance for the adult. Much more convincing are the other theories which consider art an indispensable discharge of nervous energy and a complex method of finding an equilibrium between our organism and the environment in critical instances of our behavior. We resort to art only at critical moments in our life, and therefore can understand why the formula we propose views art as a creative act. If we consider art to be catharsis, it is perfectly clear that it cannot arise where there is nothing but live and vivid feeling. A sincere feeling taken per se cannot create art. It lacks more than technique or mastery, because a feeling expressed by a technique will never generate a lyric poem or a musical composition. To do this we require the creative act of overcoming the feeling, resolving it, conquering it. Only when this act has been performed – then and only then is art born. This is why the perception of art requires creativity: it is not enough to experience sincerely the feeling, or feelings, of the author; it is not enough to understand the structure of the work of art; one must also  creatively overcome one’s own feelings, and find one’s own catharsis; only then will the effect of art be complete. This is why we agree with Ovsianiko-Kulikovskii who says that the purpose of military music is not to arouse bellicose emotions but, by establishing an equilibrium between the organism and the environment at a critical moment for the organism, to discipline and organize its work, provide appropriate relief to its feelings, to chase away fear, and to open the way to courage and valor. Thus, art never directly generates a practical action; it merely prepares the organism for such action. Freud says that a, frightened person is terrified and runs when he sees danger; the useful part of this behavior is that he runs, not that he is frightened. In art, the reverse is true: fear per se is useful. Man’s release per se is useful, because it creates the possibility of appropriate flight or attack. This is where we must consider the economy of our feelings, which Ovsianiko-Kulikovskii describes thus: â€Å"The harmonic rhythm of lyrics creates emotions which differ from the majority of other emotions in that such ‘lyric emotions’ save our psychic energies by putting our ‘psychic household’ into harmonic order.† This is not the same economy of which we talked earlier, it is not an attempt to avoid the output of psychic energies. In this respect art is not subordinated to the principle of the economy of strength; on the contrary, art is an explosive and sudden expenditure of strength, of forces (psychic and otherwise), a discharge of ene rgy. A work of art perceived coldly and prosaically, or processed and treated to be perceived in this way, saves much more energy and force than if it were perceived with the full effect of its artistic form in mind. Although it is an explosive discharge, art does introduce order and harmony into the â€Å"psychic household,† of our feelings. And of course the waste of energy performed by Anna Karenina when she experienced the feelings and emotions of the heroes of the novel she was reading, is a saving of psychic forces if compared to the actual emotion. A more complex and deeper meaning of the principle of economizing emotions will become clearer if we try to understand the social significance of art. Art is the social within us [55], and even if its action is performed by a single individual, it does not mean that its essence is individual. It is quite naive and inappropriate to take the social to be collective, as with a large crowd of persons. The social also exists where there is only one  person with his individual experiences and tribulations. This is why the action of art, when it performs catharsis and pushes into this purifying flame the most intimate and important experiences, emotions, and feelings of the soul, is a social action. But this experience does not happen as described in the theory of contaminati on (where a feeling born in one person infects and contaminates everybody and becomes social), but exactly the other way around. The melting of feelings outside us is performed by the strength of social feeling, which is objectivized, materialized, and projected outside of us, then fixed in external objects of art which have become the tools of society. A fundamental characteristic of man, one that distinguishes him from animals, is that he endures and separates from his body both the apparatus of technology and that of scientific knowledge, which then become the tools of society. Art is the social technique of emotion, a tool of society which brings the most intimate and personal aspects of our being into the circle of social life. It would be more correct to say that emotion becomes personal when every one of us experiences a work of art; it becomes personal without ceasing to be social. â€Å"Art,† says Guyau, â€Å"is a condensation of reality; it shows us the human machine under high pressure. It tries to show us more life phenomena than we actually experience.† Of course this life, concentrated in art, exerts an effect not only on our emotions but also on our will â€Å"because emotion contains the seed of will.† Guyau correctly attributes a tremendous importance to the role played by art in society. It in troduces the effects of passion, violates inner equilibrium, changes will in a new sense, and stirs feelings, emotions, passions, and vices without which society would remain in an inert and motionless state. It â€Å"pronounces the word we were seeking and vibrates the string which was strained but soundless. A work of art is the center of attraction, as is the active will of a genius: if Napoleon attracts will, Corneille and Victor Hugo do so too, but in a different way. †¦ Who knows the number of crimes instigated by novels describing murders? Who knows the number of divorces resulting from representations of debauchery?† â€Å"Guyau formulates the question in much too primitive a way, because he imagines that art directly causes this or the other emotion. Yet, this never happens. A representation of murder does not cause murder. A scene of debauchery does not inspire divorce; the  relationship between art and life is very complex, and in a very approximate way it can be described as will be shown. Hennequin sees the difference between aesthetic and real emotion in the fact that aesthetic emotion does not immediately express itself in action. He says, however, that if repeated over and over again, these emotions can become the basis for an individual’s behavior; thu s, an individual can be affected by the kind of literature he reads. â€Å"An emotion imparted by a work of art is not capable of expressing itself in immediate actions. In this respect aesthetic feelings differ sharply from actual feelings. But, since they serve an end in themselves, they justify themselves and need not be immediately expressed in any practical activity; aesthetic emotions can, by accumulation and repetition, lead to substantial practical results. These results depend upon the general properties of aesthetic emotion and the particular properties of each of these emotions. Repeated exercises of a specific group of feelings under the effect of invention, imagination, or unreal rnoods or causes that generally cannot result in action do not require active manifestations, and doubtless weaken the property common to all real emotions, that of expression in action. †¦Ã¢â‚¬  â€Å"I Hennequin introduces two very important corrections, but his solution of the problem remains quite primitive. He is correct in saying that aesthetic emotion does not immediately generate action, that it manifests itself in the change of purpose. He is als o correct when he states that aesthetic emotion not only does not generate the actions of which it speaks, but is completely alien to them. On the basis of Guyau’s example, we could say that the reading of novels about murder not only does not incite us to murder, but actually teaches us not to kill; but this point of view of Hennequin’s, although it is more applicable than the former, is quite simple compared with the subtle function assigned to art. As a matter of fact, art performs an extremely complex action with our passions and goes far beyond the limits of these two simplistic alternatives. Andrei Bely says that when we listen to music we feel what giants must have felt. Tostoy masterfully describes this high tension of art in his Kreutzer Sonata: † Do you know the first place? Do you really know it?† he explains. Oh! †¦ A sonata is a frightening thing. Yes, this part, precisely. Music, generally, is a frightening thing. What is it? I don’t understand. What is music? What does it do? And why does it do whatever it does? They say that music elevates our  soul. Rubbish, nonsen se! It does work, it has a terrible effect (I am talking for myself, but it certainly does not lift the soul. It does not lift the soul, nor does it debase it, but it irritates it. How can I put it? Music makes me oblivious of myself; it makes me forget my true position; it transfers me into another position, not mine, not my own: it seems to me, under the effect of music, that I feel what I don’t feel, that I understand what I actually don’t understand, can’t understand. †¦ â€Å"Music immediately, suddenly, transports me into the mood which must have been that of the man who wrote it. I become one with him, and together with him I swing from one mood into another, from one state into another, but why I am doing it, I don’t know. That fellow, for instance, who wrote the Kreutzer Sonata, Beethoven, he knew why he was in that state. That state led him to certain actions, and therefore, for him, that state was sensible. For me, it means nothing, it is completely senseless. And this is why music only irritates and achieves nothing. Well, if I play a military march, the soldiers will march in step, and the music has achieved its purpose; if dance music is played, I dance, and the music achieves its purpose. Or, if Mass is sung and I take communion, well, here too the music has achieved its purpose; otherwise, it is only irritation, and no one knows what to do with this irritation. This is why music occasionally has such a horrible,terrifying effect. In China music is an affair of state, and this is how it should be †¦ â€Å"Otherwise it could be a terrifying tool in the hands of anybody. Take for instance the Kreutzer Sonata. How can one play its presto in a drawing room, amidst ladies in decollete? Play it, and then busy oneself, then eat some ice cream and listen to the latest gossip? No, these things can b e played only in the face of significant, important circumstances, and then it will be necessary to perform certain appropriate acts that fit the music. If it must be played, we must act according to its setting of our mood. Otherwise the incongruity between the place, the time, the waste of energy, and the feelings which do not manifest themselves will have a disastrous effect.† This excerpt from The Kreutzer Sonata tells us quite convincingly of the incomprehensibly frightening effect of music for the average listener. It reveals a new aspect of the aesthetic response and shows that it is not a blank shot, but a response to a work of art, and a new and powerful stimulus for further action. Art requires a reply, it incites  certain actions, and Tolstoy quite correctly compares the effect of Beethoven’s music with that of a dance tune or a march. In the latter case, the excitement created by the music resolves itself in a response, and a feeling of satisfied repose sets in. In the case of Beethoven’s music we are thrown into a state of confusion and anxiety, because the music reveals those urges and desires that can find a resolution only in exceptionally important and heroic actions. When this music is followed by ice cream and gossip amidst ladies in d’collet, we are left in a state of exceptional anxiety, tension, and disarray. But T olstoy’s character makes a mistake when he compares the irritating and stimulating effect of this music to the effect produced by a military march. He does not realize that the effect of music reveals itself much more subtly, by means of hidden shocks, stresses, and deformations of our constitution. It may reveal itself unexpectedly, and in an extraordinary way. But in this description, two points are made with exceptional clarity: First, music incites, excites, and irritates in an indeterminate fashion not connected with any concrete reaction, motion, or action. This is proof that its effect is cathartic, that is, it clears our psyche, reveals and calls to life tremendous energies which were previously inhibited and restrained. This, however is a consequence of art, not its action. Secondly, music has coercive power. Tolstoy suggests that music should be an affair of state. He believes that music is a public affair. One critic pointed out that when we perceive a work a work of art we think that our reaction is strictly personal and associated only with ourselves. We believe that it has nothing to do social psychology. But this is as wrong as the opinion of a person pays taxes and considers this action only from his own viewpoint own, personal budget, without bearing in mind that he participate the huge and complex economy of the state. He does not reflect that by paying taxes he takes part in involved state operations whose existence he does not even suspect. This is why Freud is wrong when he says that man stands face to face with the reality of nature, and that art be derived from the purely biological difference between the principle of enjoyment toward which all our inclinations gravitate, and that of reality which forces us to renounce satisfaction and pleasure. Between man and the outside world there stands the social environment, which in its own way refracts and directs the stimuli acting upon the individual and guides all  the reactions that emanate from the individual. applied psychology it is therefore of immense significance to know I as Tolstoy puts it, music is something awesome and frightening to average listener. If a military march incites soldiers to march proudly in a parade, what exceptional deeds must Beethoven’s music inspire! Let me repeat: music by itself is isolated from our everyday behavior; it does not drive us to do anything, it only creates a vague and enormous desire for some deeds or actions; it op ens the way for the emergence of powerful, hidden forces within us; it acts like an earthquake as it throws open unknown and hidden strata. The view that art returns us to atavism rather than projecting us into the future, is erroneous. Although music does not generate any direct actions, its fundamental effect, the direction it imparts to psychic catharsis, is essential for the kind of forces it will release, what it will release, and what it will push into the background. Art is the organization of our future behavior. It is a requirement that may never be fulfilled but that forces us to strive beyond our life toward all that lies beyond it. We may therefore call art a delayed reaction, because there is always a fairly long period of time between its effect and its execution. This does not mean, however, that the effect of art is mysterious or mystical or that its explanation requires some new concepts different from those which the psychologist sets up when he analyzes common behavior. Art performs with our bodies and through our bodies. It is remarkable that scholars like Rutz and Sievers, who studied perceptual proc esses and not the effects of art, speak of the dependence of aesthetic perception on a specific muscular constitution of the body. Rutz was the first to suggest that any aesthetic effect must be associated with a definite type of muscular constitution. Sievers applied his idea to the contemplation of sculpture. Other scholars mention a connection between the basic organic constitution of the artist and the structure of his works. From the most ancient times, art has always been regarded as a means of education, that is, as a long-range program for changing our behavior and our organism. The subject of this chapter, the significance of applied arts, involves the educational effect of art. Those who see a relationship between pedagogy and art find their view unexpectedly supported by psychological analysis. We can now address ourselves to the last problems on our agenda, those of the practical effect of art on life  and of its educational significance. The educational significance of art and its practical aspects may be divided into two parts. We have first criticism as a fundamental social force, which opens th e way to art, evaluates it, and serves as a transitional mechanism between art and society. From a psychological point of view, the role of criticism is to organize the effects of art. It gives a certain educational direction to these effects, and since by itself it has no power to influence the basic effect of art per se it puts itself between this effect and the actions into which this effect must finally resolve itself. We feet therefore that the real purpose and task of art criticism is different from its conventional one. Its purpose is not to interpret or explain a work of art, nor is its purpose to prepare the spectator or reader for the perception of a work of art. Only half of the task of criticism is aesthetic; the other half is pedagogical and public. The critic approaches the average â€Å"consumer† of art, for instance, Tolstoy’s hero in The Kreutzer Sonata, at the troublesome point when he is under the incomprehensible and frightening spell of the music and does not know what it will release in him. The critic wishes to be the organizing force, but enters the action when art has already had its victory over the human psyche which now seeks impetus and direction for its action. The dualistic nature of criticism obviously entails a dualistic task. The criticism which consciously and intentionally puts art into prose establishes its social root, and determines the social connec tion that exists between art and the general aspects of life. It gathers our conscious forces counteract or, conversely, to cooperate with those impulses which have been generated by a work of art. This criticism leaves the domain of art and enters the sphere of social life, with the sole purpose of guiding the aesthetically aroused forces into socially useful channels. Everyone knows that a work of art affects different people in different ways. Like a knife, or any other tool, art by itself is neither good nor bad. More precisely, it has tremendous potential for either good or evil. It all depends on what use we make of, or what task m sign to, this tool. To repeat a trite example: a knife in the hands surgeon has a value completely different from that of the same knife the hands of a child. But the foregoing is only half the task of criticism. The other half consists in conserving the effect of art as art, and preventing the read spectator from wasting the forces aroused by art by  substituting for its powerful impulses dull, commonplace, rational-moral precepts. Few understand why it is imperative not only to have the effect of art shape and excite the reader or spectator but also to explain art, and to explain it in such a way that the explanation does not fill the emotion. We can readily show that such explanation is indispensable, our behavior is organized according to the principle of unity, which is accomplished mainly by means of our consciousness in which any emotion seeking an outlet must be represented. Otherwise we risk creating a conflict, and the work of art, instead of producing a catharsis, would inflict a wound, and the person experiences what Tolstoy when his heart is filled with a vague, incomprehensible emotion of depression, impotence, and confusion. However, this does not mean that the explanation of art kills the trepidation of poetry mentioned by Longinus, for there are two different levels involved. This second element, the element of conservation of an artistic impression, has always been regarded by theoreticians as decisively important for art criticism but, oddly enough, our critics have always ignored it. Criticism has always approached art as if it were a parliamentary speech or a non-aesthetic fact. It considered its task to be the destruction of the effect of art in order to discover the significance of art. Plekhanov was aware that the search for the sociological equivalent of a work of art is only the first half of the task of criticism. â€Å"This means,† he said when discussing Belinskii, â€Å"that evaluation of the idea of a work of art must be followed by an analysis of its artistic merits. Philosophy did not eliminate aesthetics. On the contrary, it paved the way for it and tried to find a solid basis for it. This must also be said about materialistic criticism. In searching for the social equivalent of a given literary phenomenon, this type of criticism betrays its own nature if it does not understand that we cannot confine ourselves to finding this equivalent, and that sociology must not shut the door to aesthetics but, on the contrary, open it wide. The second action of materialistic criticism must be, as was the case with many critic-idealists, the evaluation of the aesthetic merits of the work under investigation †¦ The determination of the sociological equivalent of a given work of literature would be incomplete and therefore imprecise if the critic failed to appraise its artistic merits. In other words, the first action of materialistic criticism not only does not eliminate the need for  the second action, but requires it as a necessary and indispensable complement.† A similar situation arises with the problem of art in education: the two parts or acts cannot exist independently. Until recently, the public approach to art prevailed in our schools as well as in our criticism. The students learned or memorized incorrect sociological formulas concerning many works of art. â€Å"At the present time,† says Gershenzon, â€Å"pupils are beaten with sticks to learn Pushkin, as if they were cattle herded to the w atering place, and given a chemical dissociation of H20 instead of drinking water.† It would be unfair to conclude with Gershenzon that the system of teaching art in the schools is wrong from beginning to end. In the guise of the history of social thought reflected in literature, our students learned false literature and false sociology. Does this mean that it is possible to teach art outside the sociological context and only on the basis of individual tastes, to jump from concept to concept, from the Iliad to Maiakovskii? Eichenwaid seems to believe this, for he claims that it is impossible as well as unnecessary to teach literature in the schools. â€Å"Should one teach literature?† he asks. â€Å"Literature, like the other arts, is optional. It represents an entertainment of the mind. †¦ Is it necessary that students be taught that Tatiana fell in love with Onegin, or that Lermontov was bored, sad, and unable to love forever?† Eichenwald is of the opinion that it is impossible to teach literature and that it should be taken out of the school curriculum because it requires an act of creativity different from all the other subjects taught at school. But he proceeds from a rather squalid aesthetic, and all his weak spots become obvious when we analyze his basic position, â€Å"Read, enjoy, but can we force people to enjoy?† Of course, if â€Å"to read† means â€Å"to enjoy,† then literature cannot be taught and has no place in the schools (although someone once said that the art of enjoyment could also he taught). A school that eliminates lessons in literature is bound to be a bad school. â€Å"At the present time, explanatory reading has as its main purpose the explanation of the content of what is being read. Under such a system, poetry as such is eliminated from the curriculum. For instance, the difference between a fable by Krylov and its rendition in prose is Completely lost.† From the repudiation of such a position, Gershenzon comes to the conclusion: â€Å"Poetry cannot and must not be a compulsory subject of education; it is time that it again become a guest  from paradise on earth, loved by everyone, as was the case in ancient times. Then it will once again become the true teacher of the masses.† The basic idea here is that poetry is a heavenly guest and it must be made to resume the role it played â€Å"in ancient times.† But Gershenzon does not concern himself with the fact that these ancient times are gone forever, and that nothing in our time plays the same role it played then. He ignores this fact because he believes that art is fundamentally different from all the other activities of man. For him, art is a kind of a mystical or spiritual act that cannot be recreated by studying the forces of the. According to him, poetry cannot be studied scientifically.† One of the greatest mistakes of contemporary culture,† he says, â€Å"application of a scientific or, more precisely, a naturalistic method to the study of poetry.† Thus, what contemporary scholars consider to be the only possible way of solving the riddle of art is for Gershenzon the supreme mistake of contemporary culture. Future studies and investigations are likely to show that the i creating a work of art is not a mystical or divine act of our soul, I real an act as all the other movements of our body, only much complex. We have discovered in the course of our study that a creative act that cannot be recreated by means of purely conscious operations. But, by establishing that the most important elements in art are subconscious or creative, do we automatically eliminate any and all conscious moments and forces? The act of artistic creation cannot be taught. This does not mean, however, that the educator cannot cooper ate in forming it or bringing it about. We penetrate the subconscious through the conscious. We can organize the conscious processes in such a way that they generate subconscious processes, and everyone knows that an act of art includes, as a necessary condition, all preceding acts of rational cognizance, understanding, recognition, association, and so forth. It is wrong to assume that the later subconscious processes do not depend on the direction imparted by us to the conscious processes. By organizing our conscious, which leads us toward art, we insure a priori the success or failure of the work of art. Hence Molozhavy correctly states that the act of art is â€Å"the process of our response to the phenomenon, although it may never have reached the stage of action. This process †¦ widens the scope of our personality, endows it with new possibilities, prepares for the completed response to the phenomenon, that is, behavior, and also has educational  value †¦ Potebnia is wrong to treat the artistic image as a condensation of thought. Both thought and image are a condensation either of the conscious with respect to the phenomenon involved or of the psyche, which issued from a series of positions preparatory to the present position. But this gives us no right to confuse these biological elements, these psychological processes, on the basis of the vague argument that both thought and artistic image are creative acts. On the contrary, we must emphasize all the ir individual peculiarities in order to understand each as a part of the whole. The tremendous strength that arouses emotions, inspires the will, fortifies energy, and pushes us to action lies in the concreteness of the artistic image which is in turn based upon the originality of the psychological path leading to it.† These considerations need one substantial correction if we move from the field of general psychology into child psychology. When we determine the influence exerted by art, we must take into account the specific peculiarities facing one who deals with children. Of course this is a separate field, a separate and independent study, because the domain of child art and the response of children to art is completely different from that of adults. However, we shall say a few brief words on the subject and trace a basic line along which child psychology intersects this field. There are remarkable phenomena in the art of children. First, there is the early presence of a special structure required by art, which points to the fact that for the child there exists a psychological kinship between art and play. â€Å"First of all,† says Biihler, â€Å"is the fact that the child very early adopts the correct structure, which is alien to reality but required by the fairy tale, so that he can concentrate on the exploits of the heroes and follow the changing images. It seems to me that he loses this ability during so me period of his development, but it returns to him in later years. †¦Ã¢â‚¬  Apparently art does not perform the same function in a child as it does in an adult. The best example of this is a child’s drawing which in many cases is on the borderline of artistic creativity. The child does not understand that the structure of a line can directly express the moods and trepidations of the heart and soul. The ability to render the expressions of people and animals in different positions and gestures develops very slowly in a child, for various reasons. The principal one is the fundamental fact that a child draws patterns, not events or phenomena. Some claim the opposite, but they  seem to ignore the simple fact that a child’s drawing is not yet art for the child. His art is unique and different from the art of adults, although the two have one very interesting characteristic in common. It is the most important trait in art and we shall mention it in conclusion. Only recently was it noticed that certain absurdities or amusing nonsense which can be found in nursery rhymes by inverting the most commonplace events play a tremendously important role in child art. Most frequently the required or desired absurdity is achieved in a nursery rhyme by assigni ng certain functions of object A to object B, and vice versa. †¦ â€Å"The hermit asked me how many strawberries grow at the bottom of the ocean. I answered him: ‘As many as there are red herrings in the forest.’ To understand this nursery jingle the child must know the truth about life: herrings exist only in the ocean, and strawberries only in the forest. He begins to look for the absurd only when he is absolutely sure of the facts.† We, too, feel that the statement, that this aspect of child art comes very close to play, is true; as a matter of fact, it gives us a good explanation of the role and the significance of art in a child’s life. â€Å"We still do not quite understand the connection which exists between nursery rhymes and child’s play. †¦ When evaluating books for small children, critics frequently forget to apply the criterion of play. Most folk nursery rhymes do not issue from games but are play, a game in themselves: a play of words, a play of rhythms, sounds; †¦ these muddles always maintain some sort of ideal order. There is system in this folly. By dragging a child into a topsy-turvy world, we help his intellect work, because the child becomes interested in creating such a topsy-turvy world for himself in order to become more effectively the master of the laws governing the real world. These absurdities could be dangerous for a child if they screened out the real interrela tionships between ideas and objects. Instead, they push them to the fore, and emphasize them. They enhance (rather than weaken) the child’s perception of reality.† Here, too, we observe the same phenomenon of the dualism of art. In order to perceive art, we must contemplate simultaneously the true situation of things and their deviation from this situation. We can also observe how an effect of art arises from such a contradictory perception. Since absurdities are tools for the child to use in understanding reality, it becomes suddenly clear why the extreme leftists in art criticism come up with a slogan: art as a method  for building life. They say that art is building life because â€Å"reality is forged from the establishment and destruction of contradictions. When they criticize the idea of art as the cognition of life and advance the idea of a dialectic perception of the world through matter, they reach agreement with the psychological laws of art. â€Å"Art is an original, chiefly emotional †¦ dialectic approach to building life.† Now we can envision the role of art in the future. It is hard to guess what forms this unknown life of the future will take, and it is even harder to guess what place art will take in that future life. One thing is clear, however: arising from reality and reaching toward it, art will be determined by the basic order of the future flow of life. â€Å"In the future,† sa ys Friche, â€Å"the role of art is not likely to change substantially from its present role. Socialist society will not be the antithesis of capitalist society, but its organic continuation.† If we regard art as an embellishment or ornament of life, such a viewpoint is admissible. However, it basically contradicts the psychological laws of art. Psychological investigation reveals that art is the supreme center of biological and social individual processes in society, that it is a method for finding an equilibrium between man and his world, in the most critical and important stages of his life. This view of course completely refutes the approach according to which art is an ornament, and thereby leads us to doubt the correctness of the above statement. Since the future has in store not only a rearrangement of mankind according to new principles, not only the organization of new social and economic processes, but also the â€Å"remolding of man,† there seems hardly any doubt that the role of art will also change. It is hard to imagine the role that art will play in this remolding of man. We do not know which existing but dormant forces in our organisms it will draw upon to form the new man. There is no question, however, that art will have a decisive voice in this process. Without new art there can be no new man. The p ossibilities of the future, for art as well as for life, are inscrutable and unpredictable. As Spinoza said, â€Å"That of which the body is capable has not yet been determined.†

Bach Fugue 16 in G Minor, BWV 861 Analysis Essay

Johann Sebastian Bach’s Fugue 16 in G Minor is an example of a conventional fugue. What is interesting about this piece is that the body of the fugue is comprised of fragments of the subject and countersubject. The material within the episodes are a unique to this fugue. Also, inversions are found in key spots within the piece, and also create a similarity between the answer and countersubject. Within the first 3 measures, you find Bach brilliantly transcripts the first part of the answer and positions it at the end of the countersubject in an inversion. You also find that there is an inversion between the beginning of the countersubject and the end of the answer. Something similar, using this technique, arises at M. 24 in the alto and soprano voice. The ascending D, E-natural, F-sharp, and G sixteenth note figure is found in an inversion, a descending D, C, B-flat, and A figure, leading into an episode. Normally, episodes do not contain any subject matter, but Bach cleverly placed fragments of the subject and countersubject to aid in modulating to the next closely related key. Measures 8-11, episode one, the fragment(s) are heard throughout every count in different voices, modulating to the relative major of B-flat.; this, as well, occurs in episode two. Episode three, occurring in mm. 24-27, is, to some extent, contrastive to the rest of the piece. Here, tonicization back to the home key takes place, while the bass voice begins to mimic a kind of augmentation. The first note of every eighth two sixteenth figure, in order, outlines the subject of the fugue. Together, these two compositional techniques successfully modulated back to the home key of G Minor. In essence, whether it be the episodes modulating to a new key, or tonicizing back to G Minor, the entire fugue comes solely from the subject. Bach achieves this by using fragments of the subject, inversions, tonicization, and augmentation. With these techniques, J.S. Bach had successfully composed his Fugue 16 in G Minor.

Monday, July 29, 2019

Position essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Position - Essay Example after a high-profile spokesperson named Celerino Castillo, a former high-ranking Drug Enforcement Agency operative, testified and gave first-hand information about the substantial involvement of the CIA in the drug trade. The following discussions center on the issues regarding how the CIA gets involves in drug trades. The CIA was created by a Wall Street investor and lawyer named Clark Clifford through the National Security Act of 1947 (Corruption Enablers in Legal-Judicial Areas, 2009). Corruption was rooted with the CIA when it was created (Stitch, 2009). The leaders of this US government transformed section supported the illegal trade, including Clifford. The CIA got involved in this trade to finance their operations and later on became a money producing machine for some money-hungry operatives. This information was included in Celerino Castillo’s report. In the early 1950’s all the way up to the mid 1970’s the U.S. military participation in Laos, Indochina had a lot to do with illegal drugs. Research shows that heroin and opium were flown by â€Å"Air America† into a lot of different nations, as well as Vietnam (Stitch, 2007). Because of CIA’s drug trafficking, Southeast Asia became the major producer of heroin and opium. It is assumed that Southeast Asia produces 80% or the world’s heroin and opium (Stitch, 2007). The good image of South Vietnam was also tarnished by the drug trade brought in by the CIA from Laos. Cultures like that of the Hmong in Laos delivered 40,000 men for the CIAs underground Laotian military (Stitch, Rodney, 2007). Nevertheless in the development, opium production took over the Hmong people and many became addicted. To back the Hmong drug addiction, the CIAs â€Å"Air America† transferred rare opium beyond the Laotian mountains to the drug test centers. During the mi d-70s, Army health officers gave estimation that roughly twenty percent of American fighters had become addicted to the drugs because of the CIA (Stich

Sunday, July 28, 2019

Identification report Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Identification report - Essay Example The office is a large room on the 3rd floor with minimalistic design. The writing table at the window is almost idle with Tajewski’s computer, a deed box and a phone on its surface. The cabinet standing on the left is filled with files and documents with the external hard drive of 2TB capacity and a flash drive of 15 GB capacity on the bottom shelf. First and foremost, it move on to access and check Tajewski’s computer for suspicious data. Having got a password from his manager, I launch file check in order to identify files that have any coincidences with those that have been stolen. The files need to be examined for any text matches with the stolen ones. Proceeding with the investigation, I detect and check all recent data including deleted files using a files recovery program (Handy Recovery): this will help me to identify if the suspect tried to dispose of the stolen property in this way. Recycler bin is also checked as well as all the folders requiring passwords. Going further, I check all the files in order to identify and collect the data that wasn’t created on this computer and has no PC administrator’s signature. Setting the date filter on files, I sort out all the files that have been created or copied after the theft. All these files must be taken for an expertise to Champlain Forensics, Inc. At my our next step, I perform a detailed check of Mr. Tajowski’s mailings and contacts as it can give us a hint on his complicity for the crime (especially if there are attempts to sell the stolen property to a third party). I make a copy of the mailing history and the contact list. Having finished with the computer, I proceed with check of all external media present in the room. I check all the files on the flash drive as well as on the hard drive sorting them by the date and testing for text match. Next I

Saturday, July 27, 2019

COPD Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

COPD - Case Study Example The chances of having COPD grow the more one smokes and the longer one has been smoking. This is because smoking inflames and irritates the lungs, which consequences in damaging. Over several years, the irritation steers to long-lasting variations in the lung. The partitions of the air-passage thicken and more secretion is generated. Injury to the subtle walls of the alveoli in the lungs results to emphysema and causes the lungs to lose their regular elasticity. The minor alveoli become damaged and contracted (Ellen & Kirkhorn, 2015).  These variations results in the symptoms of coughing, breathing difficulty and phlegm related to COPD. A patient named R.S. comprised of pathological variations in four different partitions of the lungs (pulmonary vasculature, lung parenchyma, peripheral airways and central airways), which are patchily available in R.S. with the COPD. Tobacco smoking is the main risk factor for R.S. patient with COPD, however, other inhaled toxic particles and gases may contribute. Therefore, treating tobacco use and dependence should be regarded as a primary and a speciï ¬ c intervention for R.S. condition. His smoking should be evaluated routinely whenever the patient avails himself to a healthcare facility and should be provided with the best opportunity to treat his condition. This results in an inï ¬â€šammatory reaction in the lungs, which is blown up in this particular patient who is a smoker and drives to the distinguishing pathological destruction of the lungs of the patient (Ellen & Kirkhorn, 2015). Furthermore to lung inï ¬â€šammation, antiproteinases and an imbalance of proteinases in the lungs and oxidative stress are also essential in the pathogenesis of the patient. The variant pathogenic mechanisms generate the pathological variation which, subsequently, develop the following physiological defects in R.S patient: cilliary dysfunction and mucous hypersecretion; hyperinï ¬â€šation and airï ¬â€šow limitation; gas

Friday, July 26, 2019

Women Liberation Is Still a Fiction Research Paper

Women Liberation Is Still a Fiction - Research Paper Example Women are considered more responsible and hence even the domestic front has to be looked after by women of the houses. The paper argues on the fact that women liberation is still a fiction. The indicators which give the impression of women liberation are in fact illusions. Most of the offices in the world today give the statistics of women employees. The figure is encouraging. Ii indicates that so many women have come out from the domestic front and are engaging themselves in the economic activities. In reality, the picture is completely different. It is true that women participate in economic activities but how much they are a part of the economy remains a big question. In most cases, women work as hard as men rather more than men but her contribution is not seen as a worthy one in society. The belief is such that her income is mainly for satisfying unimportant desires and hence do not have an importance that is equal to that of a man. Women today put on bold attire. This is because they are liberated from the clutches of conservatism. Through their dress, they try to show the world that they can express their desires in modern society. Unfortunately, it does not remain so easy for women. A study has proved that men were of the opinion that women should pay attention to the kind of dresses that they wear. They should not put on something which will catch the attention of men because that may cause rape and other sexual offences. (Campbell and Norris, 39). â€Å"Only through eradication of outward ornament can women atone for the vices of their sex†. (Coon, 32). Through this, it can be understood that the existing belief was that female sexuality was a vice and it can only be controlled if women control their appearances. It was expected that the proper norm for women was to put on drab dresses in order to prevent sexual exploitation.  

Thursday, July 25, 2019

Research answers Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Research answers - Essay Example is to study with fun as when you are interested in the subject of the study you can easily focus on it, activate your thinking and memorizing processes. Each day try t dedicate a while to improving your language skills – this will bring results. Read books in English every day. Learn a few new words every day. Try to visit an English-speaking forum as often as possible. Every day read news articles. Every day perform 10 minutes’ listening English text. Try to watch English films as often as possible. To motivate yourself develope a system of rewards and punishments. It is very important for a teacher to explain students why English is useful and necessary for them. Some students have a strong motivation from the very beginning and they do not need teacher’s help/ however a wise teacher can involve these students to motivate other lacking motivation. Encourage students to answer the following questions

Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Identity - the influence between a person and crowd Dissertation

Identity - the influence between a person and crowd - Dissertation Example This proposal provides the exegesis to study the issue of individual and group behaviour in relation to an art or group activity. The point of reference is the film industry in general and marketing commercials in particular. Zimbardo (2010) argues that people often have a profound effect on others. This effect tends to make people on the wider scale tend to behave along lines that are similar to them (Ariely, 2009). In this wise, we can examine the role of directors and important stage managers who get others in a larger crowd to go in a given direction. Knippeberd and Baaren (2009) identify that one of the biggest ways that people tend to influence groups of people is though mimicry. They define mimicry as the process of consciously or unconsciously doing what other people do in a given society. Mimicking is one of the ways people learn and also gain social acceptance. Thus, for instance, we might want to check the impact of an important star in a film or TV commercial on the wider audience. Will the audiences mimic him or her? Or will their countenance and activities change to suit their presence. This provides a basis for studies of the relationship between individuals and the wider group. ... Secondly, what is the role of the crew and production authorities in creating herd behaviour amongst the group? How do the individuals blend into the bigger picture? Thirdly, does the presence of significant personalities in the group affect individuality amongst members of the group? The research questions above will be answered to provide a holistic picture of the main enquiry. To this end, we will want to test a single hypothesis. A hypothesis is a temporal statement made at the beginning of a research, which is tested for its truthfulness or falsity in the actual research (Kothari, 2005). The hypothesis is that â€Å"lesser known actors in groups lose their individuality in order to blend with the wider group†. Thus, the research will reconcile the primary research question with the sub-questions in order to identify whether less known actors and actresses keep their unique identity in films and commercials or they cede it to the group identity. The sub-questions will prov ide an exegesis of why the lesser known actors cede or retain their individuality in group scenes. Research Positioning This section of the proposal will examine the research report. The research approach will involve the application of significant and core concepts of individualism and group identity in the filming of movies and commercials. This heading will discuss important theories and a framework of cases that would be studied in the research. This will set the tone for the discussion of the three cases that would be examined to draw conclusions on the research questions and prove or disprove the hypothesis. The core concept that will be used in this research is the boiling point concept of Gladwell (2000). Gladwell sought to study the point off transition from individualism

Lab report Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Lab report - Essay Example The method of tensile testing is conducted by a ‘tensile testor’ in which the test specimen is clamped and loaded and subjected to a tensile force until the point of failure. ‘Stress-strain curves are an extremely important graphical measure of a material’s mechanical properties’ (Roylance, 2001). Stress is defined as the force of resistance offered against the deformation and Strain is defined as the ratio of the change in length to the original length of the member (Ramamrutham, 2003). The stress-strain curve for the specimen is an important method of characterizing the behavior of the material and adjudging its suitability as a material for any function. Almost all the materials, obey Hooke’s law in the early portion of the curve i.e. at low strain which states that stress is proportional to strain with the constant of proportionality being the Young’s modulus, E: Stress = Strain ? Young’s Modulus. As the strain increases, the linear proportionality comes to an end at a point termed as the proportional limit and marks the beginning of the plastic phase rearrangement of the specimen. Plasticity requires molecular mobility and materials lacking this mobility are usually brittle rather than ductile. â€Å"Polymeric materials behave both as viscous fluids as well as elastic solids. They are viscoelastic materials† (Koustos, 2002). The stress-strain curve of a polymer is different from those of other materials. The critical point in the stress-strain curve is the yield point beyond which the material enters the plastic deformation state. Experimentation The experiment was conducted to obtain the stress-strain curve of polymer samples and study their behavior under the application of tensile force. For this test, polymer samples were loaded and clamped in the tensile testing machine. The tensile testing machine that was used was Instron 1026. The tensile testing machine pulls the sample from both ends an d measures the force required to pull the specimen apart and how much the sample stretches before breaking. The testing was done on four different specimens: PE (polyethylene – from a shopping bag), PP (polypropylene – from plastic folder), Rubber (natural rubber – from a rubber band) and Acetate (cellulose acetate – from an overhead transparency). The specimens were obtained by cutting the polymer samples into appropriate lengths. The thickness and width of the samples were measured before stretching each one of them and putting them in the tensile tester. The dimensions of the specimens are taken with the aid of calipers for precision. Results and Discussion The stress-strain curves for the various test specimens are as follows: Figure 1: Stress-Strain Curve of Rubber (Poly-Isoprene) Figure 2: Stress-Strain Curve of Acetate (Cellulose Acetate) Figure 3: Stress-Strain Curve of PE (Polyethylene) Figure 4: Stress-Strain Curve of PP (Polypropylene) S. no. T est name Tensile Strength (MPa) Elongation at failure 1 PE 11.1 26% 2 PP 23.5 738% 3 Rubber 4.1 575% 4 Acetate 1 181.9 131% 5 Acetate 2 297.3 114% 6 Acetate 3 166.9 93% It can be observed from the graphs that the stress-strain curve of acetate was obtained thrice. The possible explanation for this can be that cellulose acetate exhibits different tensile strengths at different states – dry, wet & after being boiled (Stadlinger). The difference in

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

ECON 5110 HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

ECON 5110 HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT - Essay Example He maintained that the amount of money held was determined by institutional arrangements of the economy and could be treated as a constant on ceteris paribus assumptions (Barber 187). According to Marshall, despite the state of society, there was a certain amount of resources, people of various classes kept in form of currency, and if all remained same, there was a relation between volume of money and price levels. If one increased by five percent, the other would also increase by five percent. In the seventeenth century, many writings on economic policies by businesspersons and merchants existed. These were arguing in favour of policies that supported them. However, despite the biasness, some economists like Francis Bacon and Rene Decartes showed subtle and careful analysis. This seventeenth century economic thinking in England was mercantilist as typified by the doctrine of balance-of-trade. Irrespective of the actual aim of these writers, their doctrines were used to support protectionist interests rather than general economic interest that would be important to the whole economy. Compare to the neoclassical economist whose policies focused on general price levels, output, and income distribution, these economists were more

Monday, July 22, 2019

The United States Educational System-Based on Age Essay Example for Free

The United States Educational System-Based on Age Essay The United States educational system based on age is adapted to United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) levels. In order to define the levels of education uniformly across all countries, this publication used terms to compile worldwide comparable statistics on education. The organization differentiated seven levels of education ranging from preprimary to tertiary. International descriptions of preprimary, primary, and tertiary education are parallel to the classification used in the United States. On the other hand, lower and upper secondary education has slightly dissimilar meanings. Level zero is called as preprimary education or commonly known as early childhood education. â€Å"It usually included education for children aged 3-5, although in some countries, it starts as early as age 2 and in other continues through age 6. In the United States, preprimary education includes kindergarten (Matheson, Salganik, Phelps Perie, 19). † Primary education (level 1) runs from about ages 6-11, or about first through sixth grades in the United States. Specialization rarely occurs in any countries before secondary education. Secondary education covers ages 11 or 12 through 18 or 19 and is divided into two levels: lower and upper secondary (levels 2 and 3). For purposes of statistical comparability, the United States has defined lower secondary education as grades 7 through 9 and upper secondary as grades 10 through 12. â€Å"In the United States, lower secondary education ends with an examination and constitutes the completion of compulsory education (Matheson, Salganik, Phelps Perie, 19). † Upper secondary education immediately follows lower secondary education and includes general or academic, technical, and vocational education, or any combination thereof, depending on the country. An upper secondary attainment level is roughly equivalent to a U. S. high school diploma. The United States Educational System-Based on Age Page 2 Higher education, also referred to as tertiary education, includes three ISCED levels and is equivalent of postsecondary education in the United States. â€Å"Non-university higher education includes education beyond the secondary school level involving programs that terminate in less than a 4-year degree (Matheson, Salganik, Phelps Perie, 19). † This type of education is at ISCED level 5. ISCED level 6 comprises education programs that lead to a 4-year undergraduate degree. These programs are typically located in universities and other 4-year institutions. The highest level, ISCED level 7, includes graduate and professional degree programs. Compulsory education ends at different ages across other countries. In the United States, Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, mandatory schooling ends at age 16, the end point is age 14 in Italy and 15 in Japan. In Germany, full-time compulsory education ends at age 16, although students are required to be enrolled at least part-time through age 18 (Matheson, Salganik, Phelps Perie, 14). After compulsory education, enrollment rates drop off. In the United States, enrollment in secondary education dropped from 72 percent for 17-year-olds to 21 percent for 18-year-olds. In the United States, the first opportunity for students to receive secondary certification is upon completing high school, usually at age 17 or 18. In United Kingdom, students take the examination for the general certificate of secondary education when they are 16. Youth who do not continue to upper secondary schooling and are unemployed are eligible for training programs supported by the government but outside the education system. In Germany, the majority of secondary school students who continue after age 16 and are not preparing for university education participate in vocational training at the upper secondary level, including the countrys dual system of pert-time schooling and part-time apprenticeship. The United States Educational System-Based on Age Page 3 Participation in higher education in the United States and Canada was among the highest in the world in 1992. However, this doest not mean that young adults the age of U. S. college students are more likely to be enrolled in education programs in the United States than in other countries (Matheson, Salganik, Phelps Perie, 15). The disadvantage of ISCED levels are planned mainly for (educational) statistical reasons and for validating quantitative productivity. â€Å"ISCED would have restricted use for the purpose of comparability, recognition, mobility and European cooperation in VET. No sector specific and job specific definitions or typology of skills are available (Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik, 223-240). † ISCED 1997 is in most contemporary and western countries a useful system to categorize school leaving certificates. In countries with complicated educational systems, like Germany, the ISCED 1997 categories cover hardly the community situation. â€Å"Another disadvantage of ISCED 1997 is the risk misclassification, how national diplomas are sorted into the ISCED 1997 codes. Asking the respondent about the ISCED codes increases the interview burden for the respondent (OECD). † Education is associated to numerous aspects of social disadvantage all through an individual’s life span. â€Å"This includes their time in pre-primary education, in the compulsory schooling system during their childhood years, as young adults in post-compulsory education and during the years of adulthood (Machin, 10). † Social disadvantage also matters for the phase of post-compulsory education, where it is evident that educational inequalities linked to family background tend to persist and become larger (Feinstein, 213-229). The possibility of staying on after the compulsory school-leaving age is connected to family setting and social drawback in many countries. Since involvement in higher education improves life likelihood and triumph as an adult, this The United States Educational System-Based on Age Page 4 compounds the previously wide disparity linked to social disadvantage that arise in the childhood years (Machin, 11). Reference: †¢ Feinstein, Lee. â€Å"Mobility in Pupils: Cognitive Attainment during School Life. † Oxford Review of Economic Policy 20 (2004): 213-229. †¢ Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik, Jurgen. How to Measure Education in Cross-National Comparison: Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik/Warner-Matrix of Education as a New Instrument. Mannheim: ZUMA 11 (2005): 223-240. †¢ Machin, Stephen. Social disadvantage and education experiences OECD, Paris, OECD social, employment and migration working papers, Paris: OECD Publications, 2006. †¢ Matheson, Nancy, Salganik, Laura, Phelps, Richard, Perie, Marriane. Education Indicators: An International Perspective, Pennsylvania: DIANE Publishing, 1997. †¢ OECD. Education at a Glance, OECD Indicators 2004, Paris: OECD Publications, 2004.

Sunday, July 21, 2019

International and Domestic Human Resource Management

International and Domestic Human Resource Management INTRODUCTION Human resource management has become an important issue as more and more firms operating internationally are in need to develop an understanding on how to operate competitively in an international business environment (Dowling Welch, 2005). As the global playing field has become more competitive, international companies are forced to  adopt efficient HRM and give more focus to their international than their domestic operations. Due  to the sensitivity of the issue, the concerned HR must address the key issues such as the impact of  globalization, environmental influences, cultural differences, the domestic HRM policies in different  countries and the global workforce involved in the action (Armstrong, 2009). The aim of this essay is to provide a clear overview of the main differences and similarities between  International and Domestic Human resource management. The essay will to some extent discuss the  practice of Human resource management in a domestic and international level together with the  factors that affect this process. Finally, a conclusion will be drawn with an analysis of the research  findings. DEFINITIONS OF DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGMENT When we look at the historic development of Human resource management, we find that it  evolves from the term Personnel management. The gradual development of management  activity from administration of personnel to strategic planning of human resource, has given a  competitive advantage to international companies. Personnel management focused more on  administrative functions and how to control the employee rather than commit the employee to  the organization strategic planning process. But the present Human resource management  system is structured more on the commitment of the staff and involves the employee in the  strategic planning and development process of the organization. It also stress that organizations  should consider their employees as assets than variable costs (Armstrong, 2009, Torrington et al,  2005). It is not quite easy to provide a precise and exact definition of Human resource  management due to the varying and different activities it refers to. One attempt made by Storey  (1995) is HRM is a distinctive approach to employment and management which seeks to  achieve competitive advantage through the strategic development of a highly committed and  capable workforce using an array of cultural, structural and personal techniques. On the other  hand, Human resource management is also defined as representing two activities. One is the  generic term concerned with the key objectives of human activity, which are the staffing,  performance, change management and administrative objectives, and the other activity is the  Human resource approach to carry out the activities stated under the generic term one  (Torrington et al, 2005). In order to clearly see the commonalities and differences shared by Domestic and International  human resource management, identifying the activities which change or evolve when HR goes  International is a vital point. To this effect, a module developed by Morgan (1986) is helpful. The  module presents three dimensions of International Human resource management with various  categories of HR activities, countries involved and employees in International activities. The first  dimension deals with the tasks of Human resource management; the procurement, allocation and  utilization of HR which goes further down to detailed activities mentioned earlier in this paper under  the generic term explanation for HRM. The second dimension deals with three country categories;  the host country where the subsidiary is located, home country of the companys headquarter, other  countries which are source of manpower, finance and other inputs. The third dimension is  concerned with three category of employees; Host-country nationals, Parent-country nationals and  Third-country nationals. Thence, according to Morgan, The interplay between these three  dimensions is what define international Human resource management (Dowling Welch, 2005). At this point, it shows that the elements or issues related to International HRM practice are complex,  higher in number and have broader scope than those found in Domestic HRM practice. In order to  cope up with these complex issues the management may need to choose a strategy-ethnocentric,  Polycentric, regiocentric or geocentric that best fits its business plan. In ethnocentric strategy, a  company uses identical Human resource strategy both at home and in its abroad business activity. The polycentric strategy, with embracing the idea that each country is different in every aspect,  gives foreign subsidiaries autonomy to employ host country nationals and exercises local  appropriate HR practices to the subsidiarys location. Regiocentric approach is when companies are  structured on a regional basis and best regional practices of HR are prescribed. Lastly, geocentric  strategy holds an open for all employment opportunity where, all nationals from the HQ, subsidiary  and third country may be employed. It upholds Best person for the job motto and promotes higher  company integrity with less room for nationality (Storey, 2007). In the next section, the paper will discuss if the HR practices at the domestic level can be  implemented at international level and would try to identify the factors that may facilitate or  hamper this process in general. THE PRACTICE OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGMENT AT DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL LEVEL The increasing business activity at international level has shown the importance of understanding  how Multinational companies can operate efficiently and effectively in the global dimension. In  general, International Human resource management involves the internationalizing company in  different practices such as diverse HR activities than found in the home country, greater involvement  in employees private lives, greater risk of exposure to the human and finance involved, more  external influence from the host country and greater complexity than found at Domestic HRM level  (Dowling Welch, 2005). An International HR manager also needs to address the challenges due to  cross cultural differences, global competition, language and political differences when posted at  international level. Apart from the different intensity level of HR activities and strategic coordination  of different business units, both Domestic and International HRM share same major activities of  HRM. In addition, an International Human resource manager also needs to understand the degree of  soft or hard HRM present in the home base and foreign subsidiaries. Companies with Hard HRM  policy are more business focused and apply cost minimization systems while companies that engage  the employee in participation have Soft HRM policy (Storey, 2007). Dowling Welch (2005) identified some factors that moderate the difference between International  and domestic Human resource management. According to Dowling, these variables are cultural  environment, the industry with which the Multinational is primarily involved, the extent of reliance  of the multinationals on its home country or domestic market and the attitudes of senior  management in international operation. Let us discuss to what extent these variables would act as  moderators between Domestic and International HRM practices. INDUSTRY TYPE One important variable that moderates International and Domestic Human resource management is  the type of industry an MNC is involved in and the international competition it faces. Putting the business playing field in one straight line, let us say we have at one end of the  continuum a multi-domestic industry and the other end a global industry. The multi-domestic end  designates an industry operating in various countries but the completion in that industry type is  specific to the country. While at the other end, the global industry group is about an industry that  operates in different countries but interlinked with other industries in the same group (Dowling   Welch, 2005). Industries that fall under the multi-domestic structure have a free reign and are not strictly  controlled by the Headquarter of the MNC. They exhibit a highly decentralized HR structure and play  a passive role in the transfer of HR practices outside their boarder. Examples for this category can be  distribution agents and insurance companies. The global industry represents a model whereby HR  management transfers management practices abroad and these practices are replicated and put in  use by the subsidiaries. Example for this group includes commercial aircraft companies and  computer manufacturing companies (Dowling Welch, 2004, Beardwell Claydon, 2010). CULTURE The other influential factor in the moderating International and domestic Human resource  management is culture. (Dowling Welch, 2004) Armstrong (2009) define organization culture as the patterns of values, norms, beliefs, attitudes  and assumption that may not have been articulated but shape the way in which the people in the  organization behave and get things done. (Armstrong, 2009, p384). Hofstede in his part put culture  as the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or  category of people from another (Hofstede, 2001, p9). Other authors also have tried to define culture in different ways but in general it is expressed as a  process present in a social environment which holds the rules and regulations and the accepted  norms on how people are expected to behave. According to Hofstede (2001) there are five  independent dimensions of culture that explain the major difference between national groups. The  first is power distance. It is the degree to which members of an organization below the leadership  rank accept and expect the unequal distribution of power. High power distance shows an autocratic  leadership while low power distance denotes a democratic practice. Uncertainty avoidance refers to  the degree in which the people in a society feel uncomfortable for lack of structure and avoid  ambiguity. High uncertainty avoidance exist in countries having a strong rules and job scrutiny as  they try to avoid uncertainties and low uncertainty avoidance is registered in countries promotingà ‚  more lax and flexible social rules and regulations. Hofstede third dimension is the individualism  versus collectivism point. This dimension is concerned with the tendency of peoples response to  identifying themselves either in larger groups or more to themselves. High individualism is scored in  countries like the USA where people mostly identify themselves in small family groups while in low  individualistic countries people prefer to co-habit together and form large social groups. Masculinity  or femininity is the fourth dimension which refers to emotional roles attributed to both genders. It  balances the tough masculine virtue of assertion and aggressiveness with the softer feminine  virtue of emotion and caring. Japan scores high on this regard while Norway is the lowest. The fifth  dimension is the long term versus short term orientation. This dimension deals with the recognition  of status in a society and perseverance. In general understanding the cult ural norms of a foreign country and adapting to the environment would benefit a company in an international level and  more importantly the HR policies of an organization are mostly influenced by the cultural practice  surrounding the organization. Human resource activities like hiring of staff, promoting, rewarding  and dismissal of employees are determined and affected by the cultural practice of the host country (Dowling Welch, 2005). There is a school of thought that stresses the concept of Etics and Emics as an important aspect to  understanding culture in different settings. The Etic concept refers to the culture-common aspect  while the Emic approach deals with culture-specific concepts of behaviour. Understanding the  difference between the two concepts is helpful in cross-cultural business communication. To this  effect identifying which Human resource activity falls under Etic and which falls under Emic is also  crucial as it have an effect on the performance of companies outside their home country (Dowling   Welch, 2005). As noted earlier Emic refers to practices specific to one culture and are not transferrable across  cultures and Etic refers to the common practices found in different cultures and are transferrable  across cultures. Other dimensions of culture that may affect Human resource practices are the  political condition of the country where MNC operate, its economic rank and development and its  legal position. The Multinational companies need to be careful in countries with strong religious  views as they may have both civil and religious laws in use (Dowling Welch, 2005). RELIANCE OF THE MNC ON ITS HOME COUNTRY DOMESTIC MARKET The status of the organizations home domestic market is another moderator differentiating  International Human resource management and Domestic Human resource management. One major factor pushing companies to go outside their home market is the small market demand in  their home country but also the international market may not be their target market for big  companies as they have high demand in their home country. Hence, when analysing company  performance, focusing only on the international market activity may not give the true stand or rank  of an international company. Some international companies originate from small countries with  small domestic demand or saturated domestic market and play a big role in the international  business activity. As an example ABB Company from Switzerland, INTERBREW from Belgium and we  can also mention PHILIPS Electronics originating from The Netherlands. United Nations Conference  on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) made an annual survey on foreign direct investment and with  some detailed analysis made, it published a list and it reveals that Coca cola and McDonalds are  ranked 27th and 39th res pectively. As stated earlier the main reason for this situation is, these big  Multinational companies have high domestic demand in their home country; the USA. This may influence to some extent on their international business practice as well as deprive their managers  an international management experience (Dowling Welch, 2004). MANAGEMENT ORIENTATION The last moderator presented by Dowling Welch, (2004) is the level of orientation of senior  management. Managers from different cultures have different perceptions towards the overall  management system of a company. Lack of knowledge of competitive management skill on an  international level would lead to failure as it may fail to identify and address the issue differently  from the domestic management issue. Beardwell and Claydon (2000) also observe the significance role Multinational companies play in the  world economy and with regard to the interrelation and restructuring of management issue at  international versus the national level wrote Management style, Strategies and policies are  shaped by home business system -the financial, institutional, legal and political framework in  which they developed as domestic firms. Thus there is a persistent country of origin effect in the  behaviour of MNCs whereby the country the MNC originates from, exerts a distinctive effect on the  management style, particularly the management of Human resource. (Beardwell and Claydon,  2010, p19)   On the other hand Taylor et al (1996) presents the exportive, adaptive and integrative models and  explain why the international companies adopt different form of Strategic International Human  resource management. The adoptive models reflect that Human resource policies are designed to  match the local environment of the subsidiary. There would be less transfer of Human resource  practices from the parent company and use differentiation as a priority point. In the exportive  orientation the subsidiary copies Human resource management policies from the parent company. This upholds the integration of global management system and is ethnocentric in nature. The  integrative orientation model is the selection of best HR practice across the world and is more  liberal and flexible in allowing the subsidiary adopts local HR practices (Beardwell and Claydon,  2010). But each orientation requires different consideration in line with the HR policies practiced by  the parent organization. BUSINESS INTEGRATION AND GLOBAL STRATEGY As the global commerce is increasing so has the activities of International Human resource  management becomes an important and more complex than Domestic Human resource  management. While we acknowledge the expanding business activity, there is a school of  thought that support and concur on the alignment of business practices on global scale. The idea  posits three major perspectives towards the practice of Human resource management,  Universalistic, Contingency and Configuration. The Universalistic perspective is about identifying the best standard of Human resource practice  through various and continuous Human resource activities while the Contingency or externally  fit perspective suggests the need for a mix of different policies and practices to get high results  or best HR performance. The Configuration perspective stand for the interaction of business  strategies and HRM practices used to determine business performance (Beardwell and Claydon,  2010). Another observation toward the HR practices in the international level says that, organizations  operating under same environment would be compelled towards a uniform management  practice. This Isomorphic pull as they refer to it or isomorphism has three forms. Management  practices under the Coercive form adopt foreign HR practices due to external pressure, such as  pressures or expectations from the state, Legal or cultural environment. The Mimetic form is  when companies copy HR models from other companies operating on the same line of business  and accept it as the standard form of practice against various uncertainties. The last model is the  Normative and it is a pull resulting from the professionalization functions or widely accepted HR  practices (Brewster et al, 2007). In the practical field most organizations have been confronted with the deregulation of the  market, free global trade and also slow business transactions. To this they have been forced to  apply uniform and cost minimization strategies and as these international companies apply the  prescribed strategies it indirectly put pressure on the host country management system to adopt  /copy same management practice (Bratton and Gold, 2003). EXPATRIATES One important point in International Human resource management is the movement of  employees across national boundaries to foreign country assignments. These employees are  termed as Expatriates while Employees transferred from subsidiary branch into Headquarters  are referred as Inpatriates (Dowling Welch, 2005). As the global business activity of  International companies increased, it demanded high controlling system and follow up of the  subsidiaries business performance. To this effect, MNC have chosen the use of Expatriates,  Parent company nationals, as a controlling mechanism by assigning them in key management  positions in the subsidiary branches of the parent company (Bartlett Ghoshal, 1989). The efficiency of the deployed expatriate may also depend on the adaptability the expatriate on  his/her foreign assignment. A study conducted by Mark Mendenhall and Gary Oddor in 1985  suggests that expatriate success and adjustment depend on several dimensions. The first is self-oriented dimension, which deals with the expat personal competence and adaptability to the  foreign environment. The second dimension is the others-oriented dimension, which consist of  relationship development and willingness to communicate in reference to the reluctance to  assimilate and learn the language of the foreign land. The Third dimension is the perceptual  dimension, which is concerned with the ability of expatriates to comprehend the behaviour of  foreign nationals and the fourth dimension is cultural toughness and this is to gauge how quickly  an expatriate adapts to a harsh environment (Brewster Harris1999). Apart from parent  country nationals, Nationals from host country and third country are also considered as  expatriates. But this paper will focus only on expatriates from parent country nationals to  discuss the main reasons as to why an MNC send an employee on a foreign assignment. Expatriates are assigned in a foreign country as, An agent of direct control- The assigned expatriate is used to control the activities of the subsidiary and ensure its compliance through supervision (Dowling Welch, 2005, Bartlett Ghoshal , 1989) An agent of socialization- The expatriate in question understands the companies values and beliefs and acts as a medium to transfer these qualities of the parent company to the subsidiaries (Dowling Welch, 2005) As network builder- An expatriate having a knowledge pertinent to his/her job qualification will in due course bond with people in different key positions and together build a network of interdependence (Dowling Welch, 2005) As boundary spanner- This refers to activities performed by the expatriate, such as gathering information that bridge internal and external organizational context. It would be the expatriates duty to promote the company profile as well as gather information that may be of use to the betterment of the company (Dowling Welch, 2005) As language nodes- Expatriates with foreign language background would eventually become an asset especially when they repatriate to their home country (Dowling Welch, 2005). The advantages of using expatriates are mainly to maintain organizational control, international  work experience and follow up the fulfilment of the companys objective by the subsidiary. Whereas the disadvantage points are the problem with the adaptability of expatriates to the  foreign environment and the high cost incurred by the parent company to the selection and  training of expatriates (Dowling Welch, 2005). The process of selecting the right person to the  right position is crucial to the success of the oversees mission and it is to noted that an  expatriates success in one environment does not imply that the same expatriate will fill gaps in  all circumstances (Brewster Harris, 1999). To this end, In order to select an expatriate for an international assignment, Dowling Welch  (2005) have set six basic factors which may assist managers in the process. As individual factors  they have set Technical ability, cross cultural suitability and family requirements are listed  essential while in as situational factors country or cultural requirements, language and MNE  requirements need to be analysed and considered in the selection process. In another  perspective Schneider and Barsoux (1997) list nine point they believe are important for the  selection process. They are interpersonal skill, linguistic ability, ability to tolerance and cope up  with uncertainty, motivation to work and live abroad, flexibility, patience and respect, cultural  empathy, strong sense of self and sense of humour. (Dowling Welch, 2005)   In general the extent of the selection criteria is wide and companies need to identify and consider the most important and pertinent points to the position to be filled. CONCLUSION There are various factors that differentiate International Human resource management from  Domestic human resource management. The Globalization of world economies has forced  international companies to adjust and continuously change their company strategy and Human  management systems in order to survive the competition. To this, the function of Human  resource management has become an important subject as it has proved to be a vital point to  the success of International as well as Domestic companies. In this paper various perspectives  towards International Human resource management are discussed briefly. Authors in the field  are also quoted on how the present and future shape of Human resource management is and  would be. In summary, the paper has tried to identify the main similarities and differences  between International and Domestic Human resource management. From the literature review  presented, different internal and external factors are discussed to the complexity of  International human resource management, presented the various interpretation of HRM and  have tried to show how management and the market would dictate the shape of Human  resource management in general.