Mr and Mrs Ramsay †Characterization Essay

The modernist way of thinking in literature brought about new ways of understanding and writing about people. Unlike the 19th century, where neo-classical influences still prevailed at times, writers of the 20th century focus on an individual’s personal experience, feelings, what he is going through and how this affects him. The new way of looking at people (prompted by the advancements in psychoanalysis among others) makes the modern man a complete man – all the things, however small, that define him are taken into consideration – and an important stress in laid on subjectivity as unique and only way of perceiving the world and appropriating it to himself. In her 1924 essay Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown, Virginia Woolf wrote that On or about December 1910, human character changed. I am not saying that one went out, as one might into a garden, and there saw that a rose had flowered, or that a hen had laid an egg. The change was not sudden and definite like that. But a change there was, nevertheless; and, since one must be arbitrary, let us date it about the year 1910. However, perhaps it was only the humans’ change, but also, the way that was written about humans and their life, be it ordinary, outside, and more importantly, their inner life. Such is the case with Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay, the two main characters of Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse. The two are a couple in their fifties, married, and have eight children. They form a beautiful, and to some extent typical family. However, there is a lot that contributes to their division. Mrs. Ramsay is a beautiful woman, aged fifty, who has made an art out of being a woman, more specifically a mother. She is arguably the true protagonist of the book, as her being permeates the existence of the ones around her. She is the one who sets everything into motion – be it dinner parties, marriages, helping the ones around her, she is the one who never disappoints, and never seems to fail. She defines her existence through her being a mother and a wife: Oh, but she never wanted James to grow a day older! r Cam either. These two she would have liked to keep for ever just as they were, demons of wickedness, angels of delight, never to see them grow up into long-legged monsters. Nothing made up for the loss. She loves her children, and would do anything to protect them and their childhood. This is the reason why she tells James, her youngest, that they will be able to go to the Lighthouse the following day, and why she resents her husband so much for stating the contrary obvious and crushing little James’ hopes. Although she is no longer a young woman, Mrs. Ramsay is full of vitality and energy. She is the central figure, around which the action revolves and who, at the same time, sets the action in motion. Her intentions are good: knitting socks for the Lighthouse keeper’s tuberculosis-ridden son, tries to be nice to Charles Tansley, Mr. Ramsay’s student with working class origins whom her children mock, to Augustus Carmichael whose old age and opium addiction are sources of others’ looking down on him. Constantly being surrounded by people has led her to become the gracious hostess and caring mother she is, but also to defining (and also seeing herself) in that position for ever. Having been a mother to small children a big part of her life (the Ramsays have eight children), and still being one, she wishes to keep her children at this age forever, supposedly for their well-being, but perhaps this comes due to a need to protect and go on the same routine she has known, as it is hard for her to think about herself outside these terms. One of the instances in which this is evident is the moment when she can follow her regular string of thoughts for as long as she hears some kind of familiar noises in the background. She is not used to being by herself, and not surrounded by people. However, in some truly honest moments, she does not hide behind different masks (seen as roles she takes, mother, wife, host, friend), and acknowledges her own existence as something deeply personal and private: She took a look at life, for she had a clear sense of it there, something real, something private, which she shared neither with her children nor with her husband. What one can also recognize are remnants of Victorian morals and models, in both her and her husband. She is the central, matriarchal figure, who takes care of her family, a dutiful wife while managing the household (one of her recurring thoughts is that the bill for the greenhouse will be fifty pound, and tries to be a matchmaker for Minta and Paul, but also for Lily Briscoe and Mr.  Bankes, while being beautiful and admired, as Victorian women were expected to be. She has always maintained and upheld a steadfast belief in traditional gender roles – men being strong and hiding weaknesses (for their chivalry and valour, for the fact that they negotiated treaties, ruled India, controlled finance), and women being the ones bringing the family together, and this makes her resent Mr. Ramsay for his confession to her that he feels like a failure. She cannot bear the thought of her husband being a lesser man than who she thinks and wants him to be, a man better than her: She did not like, even for a second, to feel finer than her husband; and further, could not bear not being entirely sure, when she spoke to him, of the truth of what she said (†¦) but it was their relation, and his coming to her like that, openly, so that any one could see, that discomposed her; for then people said he depended on her, when they must know that of the two he was infinitely the more important, and what she gave the world, in comparison with what he gave, negligible. It is interesting to see the way she influences and sometimes dominates the lives of those around her; her husband is restless after her death and while they are still a couple feels he is a disappointment to her and himself. Prue, her daughter, admires her greatly: what a chance it was for Minta and Paul and Lily to see her, and feeling what an extraordinary stroke of fortune it was for her, to have her. Mrs. Ramsay admires Lily Briscoe for her independence (she was an independent little creature, and Mrs.  Ramsay liked her for it), her peculiar charm and her flare of something, that reminds her of herself. In turn, the young painter feels compelled by Mrs. Ramsay’s beauty and personality, that attracts and fascinates Lily, and which she finds impossible to transpose in the painting she is working on. It is only through Mrs. Ramsay, even after her death, that Lily finds her clarity and her vision. Mr. Ramsay is Mrs. Ramsay’s husband and one of the protagonists of the novel. He is a man in his fifties, a father and a metaphysics philosophy teacher. He defines himself through his work and, like an artist, is concerned with whether his work will be remembered, worth remembering, and how long it will survive after he is gone. This is one of the things that constantly drive him. Just like his wife, being raised in the spirit of traditional values and gender stereotypes, in relationships with his children he is tough, insensitive and has the mentality that he must always be authoritarian and must always do things the right way. He is a rationalist, and feels he must stick to sound principles even when it comes to letting his six-year old son James hope that the weather will be fine so as to go to the Lighthouse the following day: But it won’t be fine. While Mrs. Ramsay tries to smooth out what had been harsh before, he has no problem with being harsh as long as it means sticking to the cold truth: What he said was true. It was always true. He was incapable of untruth; never tampered with a fact; never altered a disagreeable word to suit the pleasure or convenience of any mortal being, least of all of his own children. †¦). His duty, his fatherly duty is to make sure his children are prepared for their grown-up life from the beginning, although he is unaware of the fact that his presence stifles them: his own children, who, sprung from his loins, should be aware from childhood that life is difficult. Through the eyes of Lily Briscoe, he is not good enough for Mrs. Ramsay, while through the eyes of his son James, who wants to take his place in a typical Oedipus’ complex, he is too harsh and cold, but he is also admired for his intelligence. Had there been an axe handy, a poker, or any weapon that would have gashed a hole in his father’s breast and killed him, there and then, James would have seized it. Such were the extremes of emotion that Mr. Ramsay excited in his children’s breasts by his mere presence. These do not mean that he and Mrs. Ramsay do not complement and complete each other. As it is observed in the first chapter of the novel, He found talking much easier than she did, but she felt herself very beautiful. He is the talkative one, the intellectual one, but it is her presence that attracts people. Moreover, both of them are dutiful persons. If Mrs. Ramsay thinks her duty is with her family and trying to keep everyone happy and being a gracious host, Mr. Ramsay sees his duty in his work, his duty is to leave something valuable behind. The Ramsays are polar opposites, and can embody the Jungian archetypes of animus and anima. Among others, he has a constant need for approval and for people to tell him that his work is important and valuable. These (new to the time) ideas are what torment him so much as to make him confess to his wife that he feels like a failure, in hope of reassurance and sought-for comforting. However, this situation is new to what both of them have known about the way each other is supposed to be or feel, or the way they should handle it. This explains the distance that is created between them upon hearing each other’s take on the situation. Their inability to show true empathy can be a result of their Victorian ideas about their spouse and marriage and their own role there being put to the test. Victorian society would not have permitted for men to show weakness, not to mention confessing it to their own wives, their obvious inferior, and for women to think that they can even for a moment be better than their husbands. At the turn of a century and an age, they as individuals are confronted with new ideas, new sides of themselves they do not know how to reconcile with the other, traditional ideas everyone including themselves had taken as unmovable. This difficulty is seen in the stream of thoughts of both of them, but also has, as visible result, a cut/breach in communication between them, which leads to a possible estrangement/alienation from the other. What they fail to see is that the 20th century society and way of life gave way to a better way of communicating, they way one felt was important, and no one was supposed to play a previously defined part, and that this is the way things should be. This is seen in how they react to Mr. Ramsay’s moment of complete honesty – Mrs. Ramsay cannot bear the thought of him telling her this and of actually having to be the better one, while Mr. Ramsay cannot get the comfort and reassurance he needs. Indeed, as Virginia Woolf wrote in her essay, human character did change at the beginning of the 20th century. People, both women and men, became more aware of themselves, and most importantly, became aware of their inner life and the attention it deserved. But this could not have been possible without the insight modernist writers offered through their books. What they tried to do, using the stream of consciousness technique, is depict the way human minds work, the messy, not completely coherent ways that this happens, the way in which we perceive a moment and how intense we live it and how much happens within us during that moment as opposed to the measured moment (the irst pages of the first chapter, when the same moment is presented through the eyes and inner thoughts of three characters). What they achieved, however, was to show that human beings are different (as Lily Briscoe says, fifty eyes are not enough to get round one person), and that everyone tries to find meaning in fleeting moments, albeit differently, and that society was wrong in fitting them into stereotypes. And this too helped change the remnants of the Victorian society and turn people of the age into modern souls.

Lawrence’s Presentation of Elizabeth Bates in Odour of Chrysanthemums Essay

Odour of Chrysanthemums is a short story by D. H. Lawrence, written in the autumn of 1909. It is set in Nottinghamshire and tells the tale of a coal miner’s wife, a young mother, waiting for her abusive husband Walter to come home. She blames his drinking for his absence. It turns out he has been killed in a pit accident. The story describes the setting before the discovery of his death and the aftermath. The main character in the story is Elizabeth Bates, mother of two and wife to Walter, the coal miner. Elizabeth, the protagonist of the story, is first introduced by Lawrence in a descriptive tone. He describes her as being a tall woman of imperious mien, handsome, with definite black eyebrows. The fact he calls her handsome, a word usually used for describing men, shows that she may carry some male qualities, such as strength. Also, Elizabeth has smooth, black hair parted exactly. Along with her dark eyebrows, this darkness could show a stern side and her hair being parted exactly shows precision and order of which she may have in her life; a routine, a daily schedule. She closed and padlocked the door also, which shows her need for security. Lawrence writes about Elizabeth standing steadily for a few moments watching the miners as they passed along the railway shows that she is curious to know where her husband is. She calls her son, John, and when he replies and she cannot see him she looks piercingly through the dust. She is afraid that he is at the brook, which she had previously told him to avoid. When she sees him hiding before the raspberry canes, she was pleased and gently asked him to come inside. This shows that she is a responsible mother who looks out for her children’s safety and security. This is a major theme given off in Elizabeth’s character. On his way into the house, John tears the wisps of chrysanthemums and drops the petals in handfuls along the path. Elizabeth says ‘Don’t do that- it does look nasty’. Chrysanthemums are a symbol in the book and her saying this indicates that she does not like the flowers. However, she picks one herself and when they get home, instead of disposing of it; she tucks the little flower into her apron. Keeping the chrysanthemum shows that the flowers have meaning to Elizabeth; this also reflects the reason as to why she finds them â€Å"nasty†, indicating to the reader that they do not hold the most pleasant memories for her. After this first appearance of chrysanthemums, Elizabeth and her father begin suspecting her husband has gone drinking yet again. The reader also finds out the fate of Elizabeth’s husband, though it is through mere foreshadowing. â€Å"Her husband did not come home.† Elizabeth channels her husband through her son when she sees him struggling with a knife and a piece of wood. She saw herself in his silence and pertinacity and the father in her son’s indifference to all but himself. She then pieces together what Walter was doing and glances at the clock, which shows impatience and, again, curiosity. When she ventures out to strain the potatoes in the yard she again watches the men trooping home, fewer and fewer. You can tell she is getting more anxious on why her husband has not returned. We see Elizabeth’s temper when she finished her barely eaten meal rose up from the table with evident anger and exclaimed how scandalous it is for a man to not come home to his dinner and hints that he has gone to the pub while she waits. Walter seems to be a recognizable brand of â€Å"bad husband,† and Elizabeth, the put-upon wife and mother, seems to be a clear victim. Her frustration and harsh words about Walter seem fully justifiable. Elizabeth clearly sees herself as having wasted her life with Walter, missing out on a better life she could have had with someone else. However when she comes down from putting the children to bed Lawrence describes the room as empty, which could show that her life is in fact empty without her husband. Elizabeth is certain of disaster as the story leads on, which we see from the very start. The story reaches its climax when Walter’s mother turns up at Elizabeth’s house. We see juxtaposition between Elizabeth and the grandmother. The elder woman is described to be very troubled, weeping without wiping her eyes, the tears running however stopped by Elizabeth’s directness when she said ‘Is he dead?’ We also see the difference of the two when Lawrence describes Elizabeth as having her thoughts elsewhere. She thought about the economic difficulties his death could bring upon her, and if he was hurt she was thinking of how tiresome he would be to nurse. Lastly she considers the children. The fact she shows little emotion towards the fact that her husband may well be dead agrees with the ea rlier point of Elizabeth being a long-suffering wife who deserves sympathy. Her response to Walter’s death reveals that she is not as blameless for her unhappiness as she first appears. At first, Walter seems to be the clear cause of Elizabeth’s difficult life. When his death is finally reviled the old woman drops into a chair and starts to wail and weep (a typical response to such news) but Elizabeth tells her to hush and not to wake the children, appearing to not be affected. When they both heard the details of his horrific death the grandmother continues to wail and cry, and Elizabeth again tells her to be quiet and not to wake the children. This shows her maternal side, and is showing the grandmother that she is a good mother like she herself boasts about. Elizabeth’s dismal view of her fate changes once Walter’s corpse is brought home. As Elizabeth and her mother-in-law undress and wash Walter’s body, much like a parody of the two women attending to the body of Christ, Elizabeth confronts her role in the marriageâ€⠄¢s failure. When she looks at the corpse, she realizes that for years, she has not really seen Walter. He was her husband but distant from her, and she feels â€Å"ashamed† because she had not allowed him to be himself. Instead of feeling anger and resentment, she recognizes that her own expectations and refusals helped tear them apart. She describes her unborn child as ice in her womb, ice of fear. She has no-one to support her anymore. This may be the reason why she ‘winced with fear and shame’ from the death. The pity she feels for Walter sharply contrasts with her earlier harsh view of him, serving as an epiphany—she suddenly recognizes Walter as a human being, rather than simply a difficult burden. Elizabeth realizes she has been culpable in her own unhappiness. At the end of the story, she submits to both life and death as her â€Å"masters,† humbled by her own mistakes and about to carry on with a new perspective.

American Revolution Essay

? The Northern Native Americans were known as â€Å"savages† by the European settlers, but actually they created some of the greatest civilizations in history. The lands and social cultures that European explored thought they â€Å"discovered† had in fact been developed way before they had arrived. When the European settlers arrived in North America they found an unknown continent largely populated by around 350 Native American civilizations. The Northern Native Americans ways of life may have differed but they were all able maintain and create advanced civilizations with an effective use of land and agriculture, a well-organized social structure and adequate living arrangements . One of the main reasons why Northern Native Americans were able to create such strong civilizations was due to their effective use of land and agriculture. With different native societies being located in the Southwest, South and Northeast of America, they all had to overcome different climatic and geographical hardships to survive. The Pimas and Papagos had to deal with the overwhelming fact of Southwest dryness and find a way to create an effective civilization that would thrive. The Pimas and the Papagos were able to make irrigation farming possible with narrow bands of vegetation in wet sands found along rivers to the Gulf of Meixco and Californina for nearly 3,000 years before European colonization. The Natchez and the Indians of Florida in the South lived in a climate that was perfect for farming with wide-ranging fertile plains and rich bottom land which made farming even more possible. Since agriculture is such a large part in all Native American civilizations, with the perfect climate and geography for farming enough food and plants were grown to support thousands of people. The Native Americans of the Northeast were blessed with varied geographical features but not as blessed with having to deal with growing seasons since it got very cold in the winter. In the Northeast cultivation became strongest support of the Native American economy. The Iroquois women were able to grow and harvest food to support 50 longhouses. Due to the way the Native Americans were able to adjust to their geographic and climatic hardships farming became prosperous. Along with agriculture, social structure is also a key factor in a successful civilization. The Pimas settlements were located a large distance apart and were governed by assemblies of men with one headman to manage the irrigation works. The Pueblo people had a strict code of behavior to abide by along with a government system and ceremonies of rituals. The Natchez had their own leader they called the Great Sun and they lived in a class based society where public torture and human sacrifice was common. The Indians of Florida had a similar social structure living in chiefdoms that were characterized by a class system. The Iroquois nation founded a confederacy that was able to control the period of persistent violence. This confederacy became one very powerful as it suppressed violence and outlawed warfare among member nations. By forming some sort of government, each Native American civilization were able to control their people and reach stability. The advanced civilizations would not have been stable if ample living arrangements for the large population of Native Americans did not exist. In the Southwest, the Pimas and Papagos lived in detached settlements that were separated up to a mile apart which allowed limited interaction with other people. The Pueblos lived a communal village life, living in dwellings of interconnected apartments. Due to the commitment of communal village life, the Pueblos populated the oldest continuously occupied towns in the United States. In the South, the Indians lived in villages of twenty to large towns of thousands; depending on their ways of life. The Iroquois of the Northeast lived in 400ft long homes called longhouses that housed dozens of families. Their villages were surrounded by wood walls which was evidence of conflict between groups. Algonquian communities consisted of smaller independent villages than those of the Iroquois people. The statement â€Å"By the eve of European Conquest, North Native Americans had constructed good civilizations† is true because way before the European settlers believed they found a â€Å"new world† the Native Americans were advancing and establishing strong civilizations on their own. When the Europeans came to settle, they encountered hundreds of Native American communities that were highly advanced for the time period. Even with limitations of their homeland due to geographic and climatic hardships, the North Native Americans were able to create livable and advanced civilizations. These civilizations thrived due to the Native Americans being able to adjust to their surrounding allowing great use of land for agriculture, strong social structures and organized living. .

Organic Synthesis Sterine, (S)-Phenyl-1-Propanol and 1, Assignment

Organic Synthesis Sterine, (S)-Phenyl-1-Propanol and 1, 4-Dyhydrobenzoic Acid - Assignment Example Synthesis of organic compounds takes two forms; total or methodology. In total synthesis a whole organic compound is formed from naturally available substances. It involves many procedures until a complete compound is constructed. In the process, a variety of compounds are formed which are called intermediates. Alternatively, methodology approach put more emphasis on the process that gives good yield. Therefore, The reactions are manipulated to meet quality checks.(S)-Phenyl-1-propanol is a liquid whose boiling point and density is 94.5oC and 0.99g/cm3 respectively. It is viscous and mixes with organic solvents like benzene and toluene but does not dissolve in water. It is mostly used to transfer heat in thermal systems. On safety front, the substance is not classified as dangerous, however, it can cause harmful effects when swallowed or come into contacts with parts of the body like eyes and skin. One of the methods of preparing it is reacting benzeldehyde with diethylzinc and (Dime thylamino)isoborneol. DAIB is strong electron oxidant used in many chemical reactions. 1, 4-dihydrobenzoic acid is formed through reduction of benzoic acid in sodium dissolved in ammonia by a process called birch reaction. Generally, when benzene having an electron donating substituent are reduced, 1,4-dihydro compounds are formed.Styrene or vinyl benzene is a colourleess viscous liquid that is highly volatile. It is also a monomer used to produce polystyrene which has wide applications in plastic packaging.

Temporal Analysis in Crime Analysis Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Temporal Analysis in Crime Analysis - Assignment Example Analyzing the subject requires time to observe on their changing characters and reasons of change. Crime analysis is a complex task that requires not only adequate time but also resources. It requires human skills and higher level of training to execute this kind of analysis. Other forms of analysis such as qualitative analysis involve using the available data and records to come up with a particular finding and advice on the most appropriate directions to take based on the results of the analysis. In crime analysis, it requires the utilization of numerous strategies/techniques to come up with the most feasible solution to crime related issues. In crime analysis, the analyst should utilize both the available data and also he should also be able to visit the crime scene to correct the necessary data (Bruce, Hick, Cooper & International Association of Crime Analysts, 2004). The crime series entails the flow of events that took place from the time the crime is yet to be up to the time it had been committed. The use of temporal analysis plays a significant role in the analysis of crime series. Good example of temporal analysis is spatial analysis. This is where ellipses are established to help identify the distribution of crime incidence (Weisburd, Groff & Yang, 2012). Bruce, C. W., Hick, S. R., Cooper, J. P., & International Association of Crime Analysts.(2004). Exploring crime analysis: Readings on essential skills (2nd ed.). NorthCharleston, S.C: BookSurge.

Criminology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 6

Criminology - Essay Example Wade. Romney overtly expressed his distaste for abortion and was proud of his Pro-Life views. He actively sought the support of people who wished to overturn the Roe vs. Wade and further established that his presidency would discontinue the Federal funding provided to organization that supported abortion. On the other hand, democratic nominee Obama had openly criticized Romney for his lack of consistency over the matter, as he had expressed an inclination towards the Pro-choice stance on the matter; Obama campaign was quick to criticize this move on Romney’s part and accused him of ‘playing politics’. (CNN, 2012) It was indeed ostensible that Romney, a former proponent of the Pro-choice stance on the matter had quickly molded his views according to the Republican point of view. This was a questionable move on part of the Romney campaign that may have lead to the loss of support, however Obama campaign had not only promised to preserve the Roe vs. Wade ruling but also gave people the hope that they would actively work to reduce the need for abortion in the society (CNN, 2012). He believed in maintaining the federal funding provided to family planning agencies, but he had elucidated on the fact that he wished to protect women’s interest without infringing upon their rights and wanted to embolden the efficacy of other methods that would prevent an unwanted conception. From a sociological perspective, Abortion represents a symbolic interactionist social issue, because it is an issue that entails multiple facets that has to be taken into account and rouses several different interpretations that leads to a disparity in public opinion. In other words, individuals may regulate their opinion on an issue according to their interpretation of the matter, which is subjected to change. Abortion is a multifaceted issue, it legalization and

Freedom of press Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Freedom of press - Assignment Example However, internet journalism suffers from a lack of structure that often results in ethical breaches and creation of content that is not informative or reliable. While the potential for internet as a tool for mass information is great; its biggest advantage is also its greatest weakness. With so many players in the information sector and a emphasis on being the first one to break a news; there is no check on the quality of the material is produced and distributed, no benchmarks in place and no enforcement of journalistic standards. â€Å"It is clear that digital journalism can allow for greater commitment to editorial standards. From better linking to primary sources of information, to greater commitment to transparency, there has never been an age more able to incorporate open, high-quality journalism† (Riordan). The problem is that online with so much free content available, websites are in a desperate race to get the most viewers and increase ad revenues. There is a significant occurrence of â€Å"Click-bait† in internet media outlets, where readers are enticed by sensational, often exaggerated headlines into going to a website link for a news article which may be unrelated to the exact heading. The practice is done to increase the number of users for a certain website and it compromises the integrity of the news. The worse scenarios are in which the news itself is falsified to create reader interest, one innocent example of this phenomena are related to the launch of the iphone 6 which was soon accompanied by news stories about the phone bending under slight pressure or people falling to pranks about charging the phone. These news stories were debunked within a few days but created a significant interest among fans and critics of the phone alike. More seriously, in the Gaza-Isreal conflict a lot of the news that was passed around on social media was

Music and Adolescence Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Music and Adolescence - Essay Example Each adolescent has their own individual preferences with the type of music they regularly listen to. Some of the past research studies have tried examining how the music preferences of the listeners affect their mood (happiness, sadness, anger, fear, tenderness, power, brightness, melancholy, relaxation, and grace) (Zacharopoulou & Kyriakidou, 2009) while others have tried to examine the impact of tempo, rhythmic clarity, rhythmic complexity, pitch level, harmonic complexity, variation of loudness, variation of tempo, rapid changes in loudness, and rapid changes of tempo over the listeners’ mood (Saarikallio & Erkkilà ¤, 2007). To determine the common type of music that captures the interest of the adolescence, a quantitative and qualitative research survey study combined with a personal one-on-one interview with a couple of randomly selected individuals will be invited to participate in the study. Basically, the proposed research study will be conducted to examine the factors that could possibly contribute to the listeners’ preferences.

ECDIS Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

ECDIS - Essay Example Data supply is still a weak point of ECDIS at present. The hydrographical services are public authorities, who have now to switch from production of paper nautical charts to digital ECDIS data. Raster data is provided by official sources and fills the gaps in ECDIS data. The scanned paper charts cannot provide any real alternative to ECDIS data. Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS) has been in vogue in shipping industry for over two decades now. ECDIS, however, can have a much wider application than in shipping, because electronic display and information can be used in aviation charts, street maps, railway maps, etc. In all these and other likewise segments of transport and communication, electronic display and information can be presented on a computer using the same methodology. However it is in shipping that the system is widely used and we shall restrict our discussion to the electronic nautical charts.Moreover ECDIS was initially developed for shipping, and it is in that industry that its use is wide-spread and likely to increase manifold in the future.. Electronic chart presentation is only one aspect of ECDIS. ECDIS is also an information system. ... ECDIS is also an information system. As an information system, ECDIS enables the user to access additional information on the items displayed in the graphics presentation; for instance, about a lighthouse. This may be marked on the chart by a tower symbol. The system can give further information on this object, for example, about its appearance, structure, and its current status, that is, for instance, it used to be operational once, but is no longer so, and is now preserved as a monument. The data may enable one to access, if required, further data about a detailed history of the lighthouse and view a digitalised photo of this object. The quantum and quality of the information available on the individual objects depends on how up-to-date, accurate and well maintained the data base is, not on the ECDIS itself. ECDIS stores these various details in a geographic-object oriented data base, so that ECDIS can be said to belong to the group of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The parts of ECDIS computer For the user, who is the navigator, ECDIS is only one item of equipment among many on the bridge of a modern ship. Operating the ECDIS is not the main duty of a ship's officer. Rather, the system replaces the conventional chart table and is intended to make all types of work traditionally connected with the paper nautical chart easier, more precise and faster. These include route planning, entry of observations, instructions and notes, position determination and updating charts with the aid of the Notices to Mariners (NtM). ECDIS represents an item of equipment consisting of hardware, software and the data. The hardware of the ECDIS is a computer with graphics capability, a high performance PC or a graphics workstation installed in a console linked with

Learning Style Inventory Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Learning Style Inventory - Essay Example My achievement style manifests itself through my belief in giving and asking for honest feedback, my commitment to making things better, and a focus on achieving excellent standards. Finally, my power style manifests through my tendency to be dictatorial, rather than guiding, my aggressive attitude, and the tendency to feel threatened by anyone I perceive to undermine my authority. I think my limiting style is my power style, which has increased my tendency to associate what I am worth at the workplace with how much I can dominate and control others. One behavior that I would like to change in this style is my tendency to be dictatorial, where I would like to be more guiding and nurturing as a manager, which will allow me to have a better relationship with my workers and subordinates.Impact on Management Style  My personal thinking styles portend a very important impact on my style as a manager. I scored quite highly in my self-actualizing qualities. In my personal life, I tend to live for and by the moment. In my workplace, I find that all my workmates are responsible for what they do, and to obtain their goals we all need to be responsible for our actions. I also strive to be self-developing and have an urge to keep learning. This is an important perspective in my work in management since I can assign my team tasks that are based on learning curves. When I see a team member who is in need of a new skill, I use the opportunity to better their experiences. In organizing terms., I have the ability to select the best team for completion of the task. I am also able to distinguish the qualities each member exhibits and how it specifically fits within the task. With regards to leadership, I feel that I can lead the team in case of obstacles while I am also accepting their flaws and make attempts to work around these issues. The fact that I have a high score in achievement proves that I have the ability to show initiative in effecting changes. I feel able to begin a reformation to improve the team’s efficiency. With regards to planning, I am able to lead in making proper adjustments. I also have the ability to organize various tasks based on things that need to be done under my guidance and according to my standards. Over time, I also feel that I have got more lenient, which has lessened my tendency to make unattainable goals and standards for my team members. While I am available to show them the things that need to be done as a leader, I also expect them to do their part in their tasks. Genesis of Personal Style I assume that my upbringing has had a major effect on my personal styles. For instance, my parents were very controlling and demanding. Growing up, I was always required and expected to do a thing right or not attempt to do it in the first place, which caused me into always seeking to be in control and have power so as to make sure I had the ability to do things right. My father was never particularly satisfied with most things I did, which was also responsible for my very high need to achieve. I

Human Trafficking of Young Women to be sold in Prostitution Essay Example for Free

Human Trafficking of Young Women to be sold in Prostitution Essay Before going into details, it seemed important to define what human trafficking is. Human trafficking regardless of its type is a criminal offense. The UN Convention against transnational crime define human trafficking as â€Å"the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of a persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the use of power, or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation† (UN Resolution 25, 2001, cited by Vandermey, Meyer, Rys, and Sebranek 2009, p. 246). Under Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, the US Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are working hard not only to make sure the laws are put into practice, but also to contain this problem (Hart 2009, p. 43). The most severe forms of human trafficking have been defined in U. S. law as sex trafficking in which â€Å"a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained eighteen years of age†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Troubnikoff 2003, p. 3). In order to perpetrate this crime, it needs at least twelve to fifteen people who will be actors. These include an agency manager, office staffs (at least three), recruiters (at least two), a coordinator, drivers, safe house, document vendors, corrupt public officials, operator, cook, and at least six armed men who will take charge of the â€Å"recruits. † It also needs an office space, office equipments, and a safe house. This crime model further needs mobile communication equipments, tainted cars, and high powered guns, and contacts with other transnational crime syndicates are essential in this operation that will facilitate the deployment of women to their prospective clients. Where and how this crime model operates? This type of crime operates in countries where many people are poor and are longing to escape from the grinding poverty. Among their base of operation are the third world countries in Asia, the former Soviet republics especially Russia and Africa. They can easily prey on young women through their promise of dollar earnings plus other benefits that are not available in their country. This crime model operates on two fronts: by fronting a fake man power agency which lured young women into prostitution under a false pretenses of high paying jobs as waitresses, dancers, models, and au pairs abroad, and by kidnapping beautiful young women. The ‘hired’ and kidnapped women will then be required to stay in the safe house where they will be strictly guarded on a twenty four hour basis. The role each actor played On the democratic front, the roles each actor played in this crime model are crucial and communication with clients as well as secrecy is of utmost importance. The roles played by the recruiters, coordinators, the armed men, and the agency manager are the most crucial as they are the ones that are most exposed to their victims. They would be the one that will be subject of the victims’ families rage if their crimes are divulged as well as the object of police manhunt. Thus, they would need to create fictitious names, addresses, and pertinent information. Like in ordinary manpower agencies, the manager confirms the applicants’ application and provides assurance to their â€Å"client† as well as direction of the entire operation. The recruiters are responsible for recruitment and hiring of women. But they need to be very careful because of the government drive to contain the problem of human trafficking. Indeed, they need to use all their convincing power that they offer real job. The agency manager is also the head of the entire operation and is responsible to make their operation smooth and successful. The role played by the coordinator is also important. He is the one that has contact with the clients. In other words, he holds key position and is in contacts â€Å"in some segments† of the operation, and â€Å"organize their services (Zhang 2007, p. 97). Zhang pointed out that the coordinator is central to human trafficking operation though they have â€Å"nothing more than the right connection for to acquire the necessary services for a fee† (p. 97). Drivers, cook, and safe house operators are also important actors towards the deployment of women. Under the law all these actors are equally liable for the crime. But the operation of this crime will not be successful at all without the connivance of a corrupt public official. Corrupt government officials who hold vital responsibility towards the review and issuance of travel documents makes the operation highly successful. The document vendors provide real or false document needed for the deployment. But on the autocratic front, the most critical role played by the actors is that of the armed men who must insure that no one could get away or escape. It is critical because if any of the victims escape, the full force of the law will surely hunt them, as well as those behind them. These men therefore need to be heartless, ruthless, and hardened criminals who would not hesitate to shot or kill anyone would attempt to escape. The Blue print of deceit Ciment and Shanty (2008) asserted that there are various schemes of deceits human traffickers employed to collect and traffic women for prostitution. Among these methods is deception, the recruitment of prostitutes, purchase or rent from relatives, boyfriends, and friends, Kidnapping, and as payment of debt (p. 220). This crime model is a rich source of illegal money as according to estimates, a single individual or a group involved in trafficking women and children for commercial sex â€Å"can make about US$122,000 from one woman in a year† Ciment, J. D. and Shanty, F. G. 008, p. 221) or an estimated 12 billion dollars annually. Deceptions of women are usually done through the form of either false promise of employment or false promise of marriage, or in some cases, a false promise of education. False marriages and mail order brides are used a means of deception to bring women for overseas prostitution. But all these promises are broken once the women are in the hands of the traffickers. They are then turned over to the safe house operators who insure maximum security with the help of armed men assigned to secure any possibility of escape. Recruitment of prostitutes also involved deception as despite these women knew what type of job awaits them. Ciment and Shanty noted that what they are not aware of is â€Å"the degree of exploitation to which they will be subjected (p. 220). The danger for this operation however is that when the supposed victims verify the identity of employment agency with proper government authorities regarding the legality of such employment agency, or the truth about the offered job with embassy of the particular country where the jobs are supposedly available. The same with the mail order bride, there is a need to verify the information of the man to be marrying with the embassy of the country where that man lives. If this is the case, there is a tendency that the whole operation will be disrupted as when formal complaints is made with government authorities regarding the discovery, the whole operation might be disrupted This operation therefore requires careful planning especially with regards to hiring, keeping and deploying women. One particular problem for them is that the families of these women are keen on the developments regarding their daughter’s longing to work abroad. In other words, they might be sensitive to anything that might be suspicious relating to working abroad. With various laws that apply to this crime such as kidnapping, illegal detention, illegal recruitment, exploitation of women and children and anti-human trafficking laws, they can easily be rapt by the authorities. That is, the families and friends of the victims can report to the authorities what ever they perceived as irregularity on the processes, the very time their daughter left their home as they are supposedly in touched with her, all through out the entire processes. In other words any thing that would create suspicion would mean risk for this business; risk in the sense that these families and friends might report to the police the disappearance of their daughters. Thus, they need to carefully lay out plans for deceitful their schemes. They might even involved in civic duties and social functions, befriend people in high places, and to even to the point of disguising as philanthropist in order to project an image that will unlikely to be suspected of crime involvement, and be generous to the families of the victims during the initial stages of the hiring. The actors in this crime model therefore appear harmless, genuinely concern, and would hardly be suspected of any crime involvement. Outwardly, they are not dangerous, dignified, and innocent but inside; they are ruthless, cruel and hardened criminals. The actors of this crime group however will use its entire means to control these women once they have gotten in their hands these women. They will confiscate all communication devices such as cell phones and devices, as well as passports and other travel documents to ensure no one will dare of escape. In order to appease the families of the ‘hired victims’ the agency might provide cash incentives or advance payment to which after everything has been facilitated particularly the deployment of women to their prospective clients, the office will banish in the thin air to transfer to a new location with a new name, new address, new schemes, but the same people, the same processes, and the same modos operande. Upon hiring of women, they need to provide assurance that everything is fine to avoid any suspicion. However, when this democratic approach proved ineffective, they will use violence to silence the families of the victims. Beeks and Amir (2006) cited that once a woman is in trafficker’s hands, the latter uses any and all means to control her: violence, including sexual assault, threats to the victim’s and her family’s lives, drugs, and threat to turn the woman over to unsympathetic authorities (p. 68). Beeks and Amid stated, â€Å"many women refuse to cooperate with the authorities because there was little or no protection, and they faced deportation, and threats against their families if they cooperate with foreign law enforcement† (p. 68). The extent of this crime model Trafficking of women for prostitution is the worst of all the types of human trafficking. According to Ciment and Shanty, there are an estimated 800,000 to 900,000 individuals that trafficked each year to which the majority come from Southeast Asia, particularly Myanmar, India, Thailand, and Cambodia. The former Soviet Union is now seen to be growing source of trafficking for prostitution and the sex industry (p. 195). The extent of human trafficking is not only confined in Asian countries and the former Soviet Union. Nicola (2009) noted that trafficking in human beings for sexual exploitation, â€Å"has involved all the European Union and more in general Western European countries in the past twenty years (p. 3). The extent of human trafficking for prostitution apparently is global because the demand for commercial sex is global. There are no doubts that about the global extent of trafficking in women for prostitution as according to Jeffereys (1997) prostitution has been â€Å"industrialized internationally† (p. 307). Jeffreys pointed out that prostitution is a result of the increasing â€Å"internationalization of the world economy, in which local communities in the third world become an integral part of the industrialized countries† (p. 308). Jeffreys explained that as a consequence of the lost traditional resources, such as land, paid labor or other means of income were felt greatly by women and girls who have to take care of children and family because of tradition or the disappearance of male support (p. 308). Jeffreys asserts, â€Å"Military prostitution and sex tourism have increased the global demand for prostitution† (p. 309).

Project Management and Innovation Past and Future Essay Example for Free

Project Management and Innovation Past and Future Essay It is unsurprising that development of innovation is often run as a project. Yet, theoretically both project management and innovation studies have evolved over time as distinctively separate disciplines. In this paper we make an attempt to conceptualize the innovation project management and past as well as future of same. By doing so, we contribute to the nascent academic debate on the interplay between innovation and project management. This paper is concerned with three topics and the interplay between them, namely â€Å"Innovation†, â€Å"Research and Development (RD)† and â€Å"Project Management†. The interest in these topics has exploded recently as they emerged both on the policy agenda and in the corporate strategies. The contribution of technological innovation to national economic growth has been well established in the economic literature. In the last couple of decades, new technologies, new industries, and new business models have powered impressive gains in productivity and GDP growth. While originally there was a tendency to equate RD and innovation, contemporary understanding of innovation is much broader than purely RD. RD is one component of innovation activities and knowledge creation among others. Innovation emerges as a pervasive and complex force, not only in the high-tech sectors in advanced economies, but also as a phenomenon existing in low-tech industry of developing, or catching-up economies. Still, the link between RD and innovation is often at the core of the innovation studies. Presently, we are witnessing â€Å"projectification† of the world as a growing number of specialists organise their work in projects rather than on on-going functional basis. The connection between RD and project management has a long history. Most tools of project management have been developed from the management of RD, often with military purposes (Lorell, 1995). The most vivid example of managing RD projects in the public sector is the PRINCE2 method (UK OGC, 2005). Due to the above mentioned difference between RD and innovation, RD projects should be distinguished from innovation projects too. Innovation is a non-linear process, not necessarily technology-led and may not necessarily result from formal RD investments. Innovation is the exploration and exploitation of new ideas and recombination of existing knowledge in the pursuit of sustained competitive advantage. Besides, both innovation and RD projects by their nature differ from conventional projects. Thus, there is a need to examine the Innovation Project Management (IPM) as a distinctive area of managing innovation in projects, using the tools and methods of the project management. The Evolution of Project Management Theory The genesis of the ideas that led to the development of modern project management can arguably be traced back to the protestant reformation of the 15th century. The Protestants and later the Puritans introduced a number of ideas including ‘reductionism’, ‘individualism’ and the ‘protestant work ethic’ (PWE) that resonate strongly in the spirit of modern project management. Reductionism focuses on removing unnecessary elements of a process or ‘ceremony’ and then breaking the process down into its smallest task or unit to ‘understand’ how it works. Individualism assumes we are active, independent agents who can manage risks and create ideas. These ideas are made into ‘real things’ by social actions contingent upon the availability of a language to describe them. The PWE focuses on the intrinsic value of work. Prior to the protestant reformation most people saw work either as a necessary evil, or as a means to an end. For Protestants, serving God included participating in and working hard at worldly activities as this was part of God’s purpose for each individual. From the perspective of the evolution of modern project management, these ideas were incorporated into two key philosophies, Liberalism and Newtonianism. Liberalism included the ideas of capitalism (Adam Smith), the division of labour, and that an industrious lifestyle would lead to wealthy societies Newton saw the world as a harmonious mechanism controlled by a ‘universal law’. Applying scientific observations to parts of the whole would allow understanding and insights to occur and eventually a complete understanding. LITERATURE REVIEW In this paper we seek to establish bridges between two distinctive disciplines – project management and innovation management (innovation studies). Despite seemingly interrelated nature of both subjects, these two research domains have been developing relatively isolated from each other. Innovation Studies Innovation studies are rooted in the seminal writing of Joseph Schumpeter in the 1920s-1930s (e. g. Schumpeter, 1934), whose ideas started to gain popularity in the 1960s, as the general interest among policymakers and scholars in technological change, RD and innovation increased. The field formed as a distinctive academic discipline from the 1980s. Scholars like Richard Nelson, Chris Freeman, Bengt-Ake Lundvall, Keith Pavitt, Luc Soete, Giovanni Dosi, Jan Fagerberg, Bart Verspagen, Eric von Hippel and others have shaped and formed this discipline. The seminal publications in the area include, inter alia, Freeman (1982), Freeman and Soete (1997), Lundvall (1992), Nelson and Winter (1977, 1982), von Hippel (1988). Regarding the definition of innovation – a general consensus has been achieved among innovation scholars who broadly understand this phenomenon as a transformation of knowledge into new products, processes and services. An in-depth review of the innovation literature is beyond the scope of this paper (refer to Fagerberg (2004) for such analysis). Our intention is to outline main directions of research. In a recent paper, Fagerberg and Verspagen (2009) provide a comprehensive analysis of the cognitive and organizational characteristics of the emerging field of innovation studies and consider its prospects and challenges. The authors trace evolution and dynamics of the field. Reflecting the complex nature of innovation, the field of innovation studies unites various academic disciplines. For examples, Fagerberg and Verspagen (2009) define four main clusters of innovation scholars. They are â€Å"Management† (cluster 1), â€Å"Schumpeter Crowd† (cluster 2), â€Å"Geography and Policy† (cluster 3. 1), Periphery† (cluster 3. 2) and â€Å"Industrial Economics† (cluster 4). For the purposes of our analysis we shall have a closer look at the â€Å"Management† cluster, since it is here where the connection between innovation and Project Management can be found. In fact â€Å"Management† is the smallest cluster within the entire network of innovation scholars, consisting of only 22 scholars, mainly sociologists and management scholars, with a geographical bias towards the USA. This small number of scholars (22) is in sharp contrast with the biggest clusters ? â€Å"Geography and Policy† (298 scholars) or â€Å"Schumpeter Crowd† (309). In terms of publication preferences, apart from Research Policy, the favorite journal for innovation scholars, members of â€Å"Management† cluster see management journals as the most relevant publishing outlets, particularly Journal of Product Innovation Management, Management Science and Strategic Management Journal. Fagerberg and Verspagen (2009, p. 29) see a strong link between innovation and management and provide a following description: â€Å"Management is to some extent a cross-disciplinary field by default and firm-level innovation falls naturally within its portfolio. †¦. So between innovation studies and management there clearly is some common ground†. Project Management The project management as a human activity has a long history; e. g. construction of Egyptian pyramids in 2000 BC may be regarded as a project activity. However, the start for the modern Project Management era, as a distinctive research area, was in the 1950s. Maylor (2005) determines three major stages of the PM historical development. Before the 1950s, the PM as such was not recognized. In the 1950s, tools and techniques were developed to support the management of complex projects. The dominant thinking was based on â€Å"one best way† approach, based on numerical methods. The third stage, from the 1990s onwards is characterized by the changing environment in which projects take place. It is more and more realized that a project management approach should be contingent upon its context. It is also noted that a shift is observed over time in development of project management – from focus on sole project management to the broader management of projects and strategic project management (Fangel, 1993; Morris, 1994; Bryde, 2003). Reflecting these changes in the managerial practices, the body of academic literature on PM has evolved and burgeoned. International Journal of Project Management and Project Management Journals became the flagship publication outlets for PM scholars and practitioners. A large number of (managerial) handbooks outlining the methods and techniques of PM have been published, e. g. Andersen et al (2004), Bruijn et al (2004) Kerzner (2005), Maylor (2005), Meredith and Mantel (2006), Muller (2009), Roberts (2007), Turner (1999), Turner and Turner (2008). Despite a growing number of publications, there is no unified theoretical basis and there is no unified theory of project management, due to its multidisciplinary nature (Smyth and Morris, 2007). Project management has a more applied nature than other management disciplines. Although the PM has formed as a distinct research field, there is no universal, generally accepted definition of a project and project management. Turner (1999) develops a generic definition of a project: A project is an endeavor in which human, financial and material resources are organized in a novel way to undertake a unique scope of work, of given specification, which constraints of cost and time, so as to achieve beneficial change defined by quantitative and qualitative objectives. There have been several attempts to provide an overview of the state-of-the-art research in PM and outline its trends and future directions (e. g. , PMI, 2004; Betts and Lansley, 1995; Themistocleous and Wearne, 2003; Crawford et al, 2006; Kloppenberg and Opfer, 2002). In a recent article, Kwak and Anbari (2009) review relevant academic journals and identify eight allied disciplines, in which PM is being applied and developed. These disciplines include such areas as Operation Management, Organizational Behavior, Information Technology, Engineering and Construction, Strategy/Integration, Project Finance and Accounting, and Quality and Management. Notably, one of these eight allied disciplines is â€Å"Technology Application / Innovation / New Product Development / Research and Development†. The authors found that only 11% of journal publications on the subject of project management fell under the â€Å"Innovation† heading. Yet, importantly, this area showed sustained upward interest, and hence the number of publications, since the 1960s. Overall, Kwak and Anbari (2009) conclude that the mainstream PM research proceeds largely in the â€Å"Strategy / Integration / Portfolio Management / Value of PM / Marketing† direction (30% of all publications examined by the authors). PM AND INNOVATION: THE PAST Projects in one form or another have been undertaken for millennia, but it was only in the latter part of the 20th century people started talking about ‘project management’. Earlier endeavors were seen as acts of worship, engineering or nation building. And the people controlling the endeavors saw themselves as members of groups focused on specific callings such as generals, priests and architects. There is an important distinction to be drawn here between projects: ‘a temporary Endeavour undertaken to create a unique product, service or result’ and the profession of project management; or at least ‘modern project management’. For a discipline to be considered a profession a number of attributes are generally considered necessary; these are: †¢ Practitioners are required to meet formal educational and entry requirements, †¢ autonomy over the terms and conditions of practice, a code of ethics, †¢ a commitment to service ideals, †¢ a monopoly over a discrete body of knowledge and related skills. Within this context, project management is best considered an ‘emerging profession’ that has developed during the last 30 to 40 years. Over this period project management associations around the world have developed a generally consistent view of the processes involved in ‘project management’, encoded these views into ‘Bodies of Knowledge’ (BoKs), described competent behaviors and are now certifying knowledgeable and/or competent ‘Project Managers’. Certainly, if ‘modern project management’ does not qualify as a fully fledged profession at this point in time, it will evolve into one fairly quickly. The Evolution of Project Management Tools The central theme running through the various project management concepts is that project management is an integrative process that has at its core, the balancing of the ‘iron triangle’ of time, cost and output. All three facets must be present for a management process to be considered project management. The evolution of cost and scope control into relatively precise processes occurred during the 14th and 18th Centuries respectively. Time management lacked effective measurement and control until the emergence of ‘critical path’ scheduling in the 1960s. The branch of management that gave rise to the development of the Critical Path Method of scheduling was Operational Research (OR). OR is an interdisciplinary science which uses methods such as mathematical modeling and statistics to assist decision making in complex real-world situations. It is distinguished by its ability to look at and improve an entire system, rather than concentrating on specific processes which was the focus of Taylor’s ‘scientific management’. The growth of OR was facilitated by the increasing availability and power of computers which were needed to carry out the large numbers of calculations typically required to analyze a system. [pic] Figure 1. The Iron Triangle The first ‘project’ to add science to the process of time control was undertaken by Kelley and Walker to develop the Critical Path Method (CPM) for E. I. du Pont de Numours. In 1956/57 Kelly and Walker started developing the algorithms that became CPM. The program they developed was trialled on plant shutdowns in 1957 And the first paper on critical path scheduling was published in 1959. The critical meeting to approve this project was held on the 7th May 1957 in Newark, Delaware, where DuPont and Remington Rand jointly committed US$226,400 to fund the project. The foundations of modern project management were laid in 1957; but it took another 12 years before Dr Martin Barnes first described the ‘iron triangle’ of time, cost and output in a course he developed for his UK clients in 1969 called ‘Time and Money in Contract Control’. PM AND INNOVATION: THE FUTURE Defining PM for Future The biggest challenge facing project management is answering the question ‘what is a project? ’ Until this question can be answered unambiguously the foundation of project management cannot be defined. Current definitions such as the PMBOK’s ‘a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result’ can apply to the baking of a cake as easily as the construction of a multi story building. They are both temporary endeavors to create a unique outcome but in all probability the baking of a cake is not a project. The traditional view of projects embedded in the various BoKs is derived from both the management theories underpinning ‘modern project management’ and the industrial base of early project management practitioners (construction / defense / engineering). The BoKs tend to treat projects as naturally occurring entities that need to be managed. This is an easy enough assumption when focusing on a building or a battle ship. There is a physical presence that occupies a defined space that needs creating in a defined timeframe to a defined scope. This view assumes project exists and project management is about transforming the raw materials of the project into a finished and useful form. Consequently it is the presence of the project itself that defines ‘project management’. The PMBOKs version is ‘The application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements’. However, if we cannot precisely define a ‘project’, there is no basis for project management and consequently no foundation for a useable theory of project management. Researchers and academics are starting to reverse the idea that a project is necessary for project management to exist and suggest it is the application of ‘project management’ to an endeavour that creates a project. Some of the ideas being discussed include: †¢ Projects as ‘Temporary Knowledge Organizations (TKOs)’. This school of thought focuses on the idea that the primary instrument of project management is the project team and the recognition that predictability is not a reality of project management. Some key ideas include: o The concept of the project team as a ‘complex adaptive system (or organism)’, living on the ‘edge of chaos’; responding and adapting to its surroundings (ie the project’s stakeholders) offers one new set of insights. o The idea of ‘Nonlinearity’ suggests that you can do the same thing several times over and get completely different results. Small differences may lead to big changes whilst big variations may have minimal effect. This idea questions the validity of ‘detailed programming’ attempting to predict the path of a project (the ‘butterfly effect’, constrained by ‘strange attractors’). The concept of ‘Complex Responsive Processes of Relating’ (CRPR) puts emphasis on the interaction among people and the essentially responsive and participative nature of the human processes of organizing and relating. According to the modern trend in these field, consequence of accepting these theories is to shift the focus of ‘project management’ from the object of the project to the people involved in the project (ie, its stakeholders), and to recognize that it is people who create the project, work on the project and close the project with all innovation. Consequently the purpose of most if not all project ‘control documents’ such as schedules and cost plans shift from being an attempt to ‘control the future’ this is impossible; to a process for communicating with and influencing stakeholders to encourage and guide their involvement in the project. Notwithstanding the advantages of project management, it would be unreasonable to expect all innovation to be carried out through projects. In fact, many ideas are generated by employees in a company on a regular basis, not only within project teams. Thus, there is certainly a room for functional, on-going organization of innovation process. Even more so, in certain situations project management can be detrimental to innovation. Aggeri and Segrestin (2007) show that the recent project development methods in automotive industry can induce negative effects on collective learning processes and these effects have managerial implications for innovative developments. Argument for Managing Innovation in Projects The origins of project management in the manufacturing and construction ndustries determine an engineering perspective, viewing a project as a task-focused entity, proceeding in a linear or similar way from the point of initiation to implementation. This view prevailed until comparatively recently. This view is seemingly in stark contrast with the nature of innovation. It is increasingly being acknowledged that the innovation is a complex non-linear process. The earliest view on innovation process as a pipeline model (whereby a given input is transformed to a specific output) has been largely abandoned. Presently, however, project management is increasingly recognised as a key generic skill for business management (Fangel, 1993), rather than a planning-oriented technique or an application of engineering sciences and optimization theory, in which project management has its roots (Soderlund, 2004). The â€Å"management by projects† has emerged as general mode of organizing for all forms of enterprise (Turner 2003). This new conceptualization of project management enables to embrace the non-linear nature of innovation. Even a creative and non-linear nature of innovation is often characterized as an organizational or management process, rather than spontaneous improvisation. Davila et al. (2006) state, Innovation, like many business functions, is a management process that requires specific tools, rules, and discipline. Hence, a project, with its defined objective, scope, budget and limitations, can be an appropriate setting of innovation. The other closely linked element in the new world of project management with innovation is embracing uncertainty. Writing on paper cannot control the future! Schedules do not control time; cost plans do not control costs. Plans outline a possible future and provided a basis for recognizing when things ‘are not going to plan’. For innovation project management to succeed, both project and senior management are going to need to embrace uncertainty and learn skills to manage it rather than expecting predictability and inevitably being disappointed by the variability of ‘reality’ as it unfolds. Challenges of Empirical Studies Scarcity and unreliability, or even lack of data poses a big challenge in research in both innovation and project management. A macro-level research n PM is obstructed by the lack of data on the number of projects, carried out by firms and public institutions, and their characteristics. Problems stem from the definition of a project and the non-disclosure policy of most companies. In such circumstances, PM research has tended to rely on case-studies or on small-scale tailor-made surveys. There i s a widely acknowledged lack of large-scale empirical research in PM (Kloppenborg and Opfer, 2002; Soderlund, 2004). It is claimed that the Independent Project Analysis (IPA) is the market leader in quantitative analysis of project management systems, i. . in project evaluation and project system benchmarking (IPA, 2007). All IPA analyses and research are based on proprietary databases. As of mid-2009, IPA’s databases contain more than 11,000 projects of all sizes ($20,000 to $25 billion) executed across the world. Each year, approximately 1,000 projects are added with representation from the many different industries served by IPA. Each project in our databases is characterized by over 2,000 project attributes, including technology, project scope, project type, project costs, year of authorization, and geographical location (IPA 2009). All information contained in the IPA databases is carefully protected and kept as confidential proprietary data (IPA, 2009). Due to the issues of confidentiality, access for academic researchers is restricted. In the innovation field, academic community has been increasingly using several sources of data, such as granted patents, tailor-made surveys, as well as other data provided by national statistical offices. European research on innovation uses several instruments to obtain data on innovation indicators and to assess national innovation performance. The two main instruments are the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) and the European Innovation Scorecard (EIS). As of 2009, five successful CIS surveys have been carried out: CIS1 (1992), CIS2 (1996), CIS3 (2001), CIS4 (2004) and CIS 2006. Each new round was characterized by an improved questionnaire, in line with the evolution of understanding of the phenomenon of innovation. The more recent surveys embraced understanding of innovation in a broader sense, and for example, paid more attention to service innovations. Further, it is expected that the future surveys will also include management techniques, organizational change, environmental benefits, and design and marketing issues. We argue that, taken into consideration the growing relevance of innovation projects, a clearer and explicit wording should be used in CIS questionnaire for determining whether innovation is organized and carried out in projects or functionally. CONCLUSIONS Innovation studies and project management as distinctive disciplines have been developing in a relative isolation from each other. The analysis in innovation studies domain has rarely explored the mechanisms and patterns of innovation in projects in contrast to traditional (functional or hierarchical) organization. However, since innovation management in companies is increasingly organized in projects, it is of utmost importance to directly address the interplay between innovation management and project management. In this paper, based on the relevant literature and insights from practice, we conceptually examined the relationships between these two research areas aiming at bridging the gap between them. It is widely acknowledged within the discipline of innovation studies that there is a high percentage of failure of innovation initiatives, in other words, failure is inevitable when managing innovation. The key skill set of the competent project manager will be identifying and managing stakeholder expectations using tools such as the Stakeholder circle to help identify the project’s key stakeholders. Innovation is perceived as a luxury, not as a necessity. Therefore, it is of high priority to manage innovation effectively and efficiently with constrained budgets.

Study On Exxon Mobil Corporation Management Essay

Study On Exxon Mobil Corporation Management Essay Exxon Mobil Corporation is a multinational oil and gas company that is based in America. Its a descendant at of the Rockefellers standard oil company and it was formed in 1999 from the merger of the Exxon and Mobil companies. Its headquartered in Irving, Texas. The company is one of the worlds largest publicly traded companies and has been ranked the number one or number two for the last five years. By the end of the year 2007 the companys reserves stood at 72 million oil equivalent barrels while its production rates were expected to last for more than 14 years. The company has 37 oil refineries in more than 21 countries constituting a combined daily refinery of approximately 66.3 million barrels. Exxon Mobil is recognized as the worlds largest refineries and this title has been associated with the former standard oil since the in corporation in the 1870s. In addition to that the company is largest of the six recognized oil super majors. Exxon Mobil owns hundreds of other similar subsidiaries including the imperial oil limited in Canada and the sea river maritime which is a petroleum shipping company. Functionally the company is organized into several global operating categories including the upstream, down stream, chemical Exxon Mobil global services company, XTO and finally the imperial oil Core Business Exxon Mobil petroleum industry continue to operate as a major brand name of the Exxon Mobil and most of its products features the Mobils symbol of winged red rose, the Pegasus companys brand name since it got affiliated with the Magnolia petroleum company in 1930s. The company Mobil brands include the Mobil service station and fuel (diesel, gasoline, kerosene, heating oil, marine and aviation divisions. The Mobils brand covers a wider range of lubricants which include industrial, commercial aviation as well as marine. Another brand of the company is the Mobil 1 which is a brand Exxon Mobil which was introduced in 1974 and is includes, oil filters, multi-grade motor oils, transmission fluid, synthetic grease and finally the gear lubricants. In addition to that Mobil delvac is a brand consisting of range of heavy duty lubricants that include drive train lubricants, engine oils and greases. Some of the Exxon Mobil businesses that generate most of its revenue are the upstream division basically dealing with oil exploration, oil extraction, shipping as well as wholesale of its operations and headquartered in Houston Texas. The business operation dominates the companys cash flow and accounts for a whooping seventy percent of the total revenue. The upstream business division includes the Exxon Mobil exploration company, Development Company, Production Company, gas and power, marketing company, research marketing and finally the upstream ventures. Exxon Mobil has been successful for decades after the merger and this is attributed to its strategic plane to immensely reduce its costs which worked quite well making it one of the worlds leaders in business enterprises. Thee company has realised a continued growth and success in its operations partly because of its two century experiences in the industry and party to increased efficiency in all of its operations in more than 200 countries globally. Success of Exxon Mobil has been witnessed from the year 2007 which the company recorded an income of 40.62 billion dollars or revenue and this increase is mainly attributed to the escalating oil prices while at same time decreased actual oil equivalent by 1% mainly due to expropriation. In the year 2008 Exxon Mobil; recoded profits of $45.22 billion therefore becoming one of the profitable company of the year and fortune magazine ranks it the second of the 500 companies. Its profits in the year 2008 increased by 11.4 percent over the previous year 2007 making able to pull $443 billion in revenues. As of the year 2010 Exxon Mobil the company had already occupied five slots of the possible ten slots on the largest corporate annual earning. In addition to that it claimed eight slots of ten slots for the largest corporate quarterly earnings of all time. Corporate responsibility When it comes to issues regarding corporate responsibility Exxon Mobil oil industry has been a main contributor as it regards to environmental causes. For instance in the year 2007 the company donated more than $6.6 million to be utilized in social groups as well as the environmental management and conservation. The company has in the recent past come under heavily critism especial regarding its contribution to global warming and its has been often attacked by environmental lobby groups like the Greenpeace and other institutional investor who disagree with the companys attention on the issues of global warming. The company has been ranked by the political research institute as the sixth among other cooperation who emit air pollutants in United States and such tanking was based on quantity as well as the toxicity of such emission. In the year 2005 Exxon Mobil was found to have committed less than one percent of its profits in project targeted towards research for alternative sources o f energy a value which is less as compared to other leading oil companies in the world (Larson Wiggins, 1959). Crisis management Many companies have in one way or the other faced crises beyond their control but few fall under the corporate irresponsibility and Exxon Mobil has not in the recent past been spared either. In 1989 one of the companys Exxon Valdez oil tankers ran aground and spilled oil on the Prince William Sound and in short time it had spilled significant amounts of oil and is cause was blamed on intoxicated crew staff members. In reaction to that the company was blamed for being slow in curbing the crises and accused of refusing to communicate openly and effectively. In addition to that the showed no effective strategic measure in case of worst scenarios like the oil spill. The disaster led to massive oils spill resulting to greater environmental consequences. Mechanisms of the company in handling of the disaster were a failure mainly because of disastrous communications, poorer leadership after the events and ineffective systems in place to deal with such crises. Such dater led to damaged reput ation and slipped from the largest oil company in the world to the third position (Exxon Corporation, 1982). In addition to that the company has also face several other crises including the Exxons Brooklyn oil spill and the increasing environmental concerns of the Sakhalin-I oil and gas project located in Russian far east which is operated by one the Exxon Mobil subsidiary, Exxon Neftegas Limited. Threats to environment includes the endearment of the critical populations of the already endangered western Gray whale which the scientist have blamed the company for failing to corporate with the scientific panel which certainly play critical role in impeding the cause of western whale conservation (Larson Popple, 1971). Exxon Mobil has also been accused for funding sceptic organizations of the anthropogenic global warming as well as organization critical of the Kyoto protocol which are very sceptical of the scientific opinion regarding the cause of global warming by burning of fuels. The company however has in the recent years reputed his former opinion regarding the effects of global warming and stated appreciation to the seriousness of the issues. The companys commitment was evident when it withdrew from funding of sceptic groups in the year 2007 as revealed by the Greenpeace. In addition to that Exxon Mobil CEO Tillerson in February 3rd 2007 also acknowledged the warming of the earth and the increasing levels of carbon dioxide. Contrary to the companys initial adamant response to research on alliterative fuels the year 2010 saw a ray of light on the issue when the company unveiled plans to invest funds amounting to $600 million in the next ten years in the production of bio fuels from algae and one year on reports from the company indicate that the project is successfully underway (McIntyre, 1998). Strategy Exxon Mobil industry has been focusing its strategic plans to reach the merging markets attributed to increasing energy demand in the world for instance in Indian and china. In addition to that the company has also been focusing in penetrating into the increased energy demands in developing economies like the ones in south eats Asia as well as south east Asian regions like Malaysia, Korea, Indonesia and Vietnam (Gibb, Knowlton, 1956). Core strengths Exxon Mobil has several core strengths which has enabled it reaming a successful leader in the oils and gas industry for quite consistently. One of its strengths is its established name which is attributed to its long existence in the industry for mote than a decade hence giving its customers a since of security when they are dealing with the organization. The fact that the company has diversified in to many countries globally coupled with strong brands under its main umbrella group in the oil industry is one of its core strength sin successful operation of its business activities. In addition to the company has a global presence which has enabled it to have a large customer base and larger market as compared to other companies in the oil and gas industry. Final core strength that Exxon Mobil company posses in the industry is its ability to extend to newer emerging markets like India and china as a result of exponentially increasing demand for energy thus the company has greatly prof ited from the higher rates as compared to other companies. Company innovativeness Exxon Mobil Company ha sin the recent past been very innovative especially on the side of allocating funds on research and development projects aimed at coming up with more effective as well as efficient ways of managing the energy resources as well as reducing the negative effects of its operations to the environment. The company has also been very innovative on formulation and implantation of its strategic plans especially those geared towards adoption of new technology as well as improving its corporate citizenship through appropriate crisis management as well as communication management strategies which have served to alleviate past negative public image (Hidy Muriel, 1955). Vision, Mission, Goals Exxon Mobil Corporation is very committed to becoming the worlds premier petroleum and petrochemical company hence its continuous objectives of achieving superior and operating results while at same time being able to adhere to the high ethical standards. The stated principles are used by the company to guide its relationships with its shareholders, customers, communities and employees (Bender Tammy, 1999) The company is focusing on delivering reliable supply of high quality lubricants and to provide technical application expertise to its customers around the globe. In addition to that the company ahs always been dedicated to delivering of outstanding products and services to its customers and it has been able to achieve that through excellent practices and procedure that have helped in protection of the companys quality and world class brands across all the lines of its businesses. Employee motivation Exxon Mobil motivates its LS representatives by engaging them in numerous industry activities that are related to product performance standards and testing thus motivating them to strive from an industry level playing field with products integrity principles that are always consistent with the companys standards. Another way in which the company has been able to motivate its employees is by hiring competent and experience employees especially those who help further the company commitment to technology leadership in the industry. Employees include vast array of technical degree holders in science, engineering as well as in mathematics. Finally the company motivate its employees by conducting training and development to maximize on their opportunities while at same time maintaining a safe work environment which is enriched with diversity characterized by open communication, fair treatment and trust. Employer desirability: Given an opportunity I will be more than willing to work in the Exxon Mobil Corporation because their work staffs is well experienced and skilled personnel who are highly motivated in what they do thus reduced level of tress at work place. In addition to that the company has employee motivating activities like training that enable each an employee to advance in his career while becoming satisfied at work place.

Iago in Shakespeares Othello Essay -- Othello essays

Iago in Othello  Ã‚      In William Shakespeare’s tragic drama Othello we see a morally depraved character, perhaps a very mentally sick individual, named Iago. His personality and development during the play is the subject of this essay. In Shakespeare’s Four Giants Blanche Coles comments on the mental illness that appears to afflict the despicable Iago: When such old time critics as H. N. Hudson, who wrote nearly a hundred years ago, saw that Iago was not acting from revenge, one is more than surprised to find modern critics, who have had the advantage of the progress that has been made in the study of abnormal psychology, accepting Iago for anything but what he is, and what Shakespeare intended him to be – a psychopathic personality. (79) Evidence of his psychopathic personality is seen early in the play. He manipulates the wealthy Roderigo into awakening the senator Brabantio (â€Å"Rouse him: make after him, poison his delight†); and then he utters very offensive smutty lines about a black ram and white ewe, which indicate the way his sick mind operates. He seems to be motivated by love of money which he has been receiving from Roderigo for some time (â€Å"thou, Iago, who hast had my purse / As if the strings were thine†). Iago himself says that he is motivated by revenge on the Moor (â€Å"I follow him to serve my turn upon him†) because of the promotion of Michael Cassio to the lieutenancy. But regardless of the question of motivation, it is a fact that Iago hasn’t a single true friend in the play; in his disordered personality he can only manipulate or use people; he is incapable of loving them. His manipulation of his general repeats time and again from the first meeting: Nay, but he prated, And spoke such scurvy... ...eps due on   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   To the Propontic and the Hellespont,   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace,   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love,   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Till that a capable and wide revenge   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Swallow them up. (3.3) Iago is so in control of the general’s contorted mind that he specifies how the Moor should kill Desdemona: â€Å"Strangle her in her bed, even the bed she hath contaminated.† And the general dutifully responds, â€Å"Excellent good!† The enthusiastic answer causes one to suspect that the ancient’s psychopathology has taken possession of the Moor. WORKS CITED Shakespeare, William. Othello. In The Electric Shakespeare. Princeton University. 1996. http://www.eiu.edu/~multilit/studyabroad/othello/othello_all.html No line nos. Coles, Blanche. Shakespeare’s Four Giants. Rindge, New Hampshire: Richard Smith Publisher, 1957.

Battle of the Moms Essay -- Sociology, Motherhood, Working Mothers

â€Å"Motherhood has become a flash point for envy, resentment, and guilt because everyone struggles and envies what the other has† (nymag.com). There seems to always be a battle between working mothers and stay at home mothers, and the debate has always been controversial. Although there are many factors that differentiate children raised by a stay at home mother and a working mother, there is no right way on how to raise a child. The differences between both moms have both positive and negative characteristics but neither one can be said to be the correct way on raising a child. A â€Å"right way† does not exist. WHY WORKING MOTHERS WORK? â€Å"In the United States today, more than half of mothers with young children work, compared to 30% in the 1970’s† (American Academy of Pediatrics). Working mothers tend to work because they have been working since before they became a mom. They are so accustomed to their job that they decide to remain working after having a child. Others find that their families require two incomes or in some cases their income may be the sole source. Some research seems to persuade that the working mother is having detrimental effects on the child, however new research is showing no such result. INTRODUCTION TO BENEFITS OF A WORKING MOTHER While working mothers may be exhibiting excess stress on their decision to work outside the home any ill emotional and academic effects on their children seem to be nonexistent. In some situations it seems that children who pertain to working mothers actually benefit compared to those of non working mothers. Positive results that were found through studies show that mothers who work helped the family with economic conditions, consequently being able to avoid poverty and being ab... ...oms may choose to not work because of family roles they believe in. Many come from families who believe that the women should be a homemaker. According to society, mothers who stay at home for their children do not have a role that is truly essential (Fisanick 201). CONCLUSION Although according to studies, the status of a working mother or a stay at home mother does not determine a child’s academic ability, it seems as though parenting is an obsession. Both sides feel as though they are being judged by society and that they need to please the standards society is expecting from a mother. â€Å"We need someone to say: Do the best you can. There are no rules† in order for everyone to feel better about their own parenting style. â€Å"None of these parenting patterns is encoded in our DNA. â€Å"Mothering and Fathering are different all over the world† (newspaper article).

Alarm Fatigue and its Effects on Quality Patient Care Essay example --

Hospitalized patients are often hooked up to monitoring devices such as heart monitors, which monitor the electric activity of the heart, or connected to a physiological monitor so their vital signs are constantly being measured. These monitors are intended to continuously assess the patients’ status, and alarm if the patients’ status drops below what is considered normal. The increased use of monitoring devices has created a new phenomenon known as alarm fatigue. According to the ECRI institute (2011), â€Å"alarm fatigue occurs when the sheer number of alarms overwhelms staff and they become desensitized to the alarms resulting in delayed alarm response and missed alarms-often resulting in patient harm or even death.† Alarm fatigue has become a major problem within the nursing community and has already had a negative impact on patient safety. Due to the adverse effects alarm fatigue is having on quality patient care, there has been a call to action to find s olutions that may deter alarm fatigue. Evidence-based practices involving quality improvement initiatives have been put into effect. The problem has also gained national attention from such institutions as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and The Joint Commission (TJC). Relevance to the Profession of Nursing According to the Registered Nurse (RN) Scope of Practice Position Statement, â€Å"the RN is responsible for providing safe, compassionate, and comprehensive nursing care to patients and their families with complex healthcare needs† (Texas Board of Nursing, 2011). Nurses often care for five to six patients at one time; therefore, in order to provide the best quality care, patients are often connected to monitoring devices such as, physiological monitors, venti... ...ientSafetyOrganization/Documents/PSO_Monthly_ Brief/ECRI%20Institute%20PSO%20Monthly%20Brief%20v1.pdf Graham, C. K., Cvach, M. (2010). Monitor alarm fatigue: Standardizing use of physiological monitors and decreasing nuisance alarms. American Journal of Critical Care, 19, 28-34. doi: 10.4037/ajcc201651 The American Nurses Association. (2010). Code of Ethics for Nurses with Interpretive statements. Retrieved from http://www.nursingworld.org/ MainMenuCategories/EthicsStandards/CodeofEthicsforNurses/Code-of- ethics.pdf The Texas Board of Nursing. (2011). The Registered Nurse Scope of Practice. Retrieved April 2, 2012 from http://www.bon.texas.gov/practice/pdfs/ Position15-27.pdf Wallis, L. (2010). Alarm Fatigue Linked to Patients Death. American Journal of Nursing, 110 (7), 16. doi: 10.1097/01.NAJ.0000383917.98063.bd

Race And Ethnic Relations In Global Perspective Essay

When I did my research on Hmong people in unit six I found their history and culture to be very interesting, that is why I choose the conflict of the Hmong people and the Vietnam War to do this project on. Before getting into the exact conflict and the harm that the war caused many Hmong people I am going to write about the Hmong culture. http://www. historyguy. com/hmong_rebellion_in_laos. html#. UYxyE6JnG8g The Hmong are ethnically different from the Vietnamese, Cambodians and Lowland Lao. They lived in the mountains between Laos and Vietnam. They were considered less â€Å"civilized† than the other ethnic groups mentioned. They were considered to be Semi-Nomadic because they practiced the slash-and-burn as their way of getting food. Before the French came and made Indochina a Colony the Hmong were persecuted for their way of life, after that they were left alone and not bothered by the other groups. During the Indochina War (1946-1954) the Hmong people supported the French because they protected them. When the French pulled out they left the Hmong people to survive on their own, little did they know that this would not be the last time this would happen to them. In the early 1960’s JFK sent in the Special Forces (Green Berets) to South Vietnam. They landed right by the Hmong villages. Right after they landed, the American soldiers started to recruit the young men in the villages to help them fight the North Vietnamese. They agreed to do this not because they had love for the South Vietnamese, but because they thought that the United States would be a good replacement for protection since the French had left them with no protection. The United States also recruited young Hmong men who lived in Laos to form a â€Å"Secret Army†. The Hmong people were dedicated to help the United States in the war and would do whatever it took to have the United States protection from the communist North Vietnamese. Little did they know but that protection wouldn’t be there for long and they would be left to face the enemy on their own. Before the United States recruited the men of Hmong, they were a neutral party in Vietnam. In 1973 the United States soldiers were ordered to pull out of the Vietnam War and left the Hmong with no protection. When the communist won the war in 1975 they ordered the Hmong people, women and children include, to come down from the mountains. They wanted to be able to monitor what the Hmong’s were doing. I guess they probably did this to make sure that they were no longer a threat to them. Most of the Hmong people refused to come down from the hills. When the Hmong refused to come down the communist started dropping Soviet supplied toxic agents on the villages from the air, this was called â€Å"Yellow Rain†. The yellow rain wiped out whole villages including men, women and children. In 1975 the Hmong people fled to refugee camps in Thailand to escape the horror and torture that they would have to suffer from the Lao Communist Government. In late 1975 they began arriving to the United States from the refugee camps. In the early 1990’s the refugee camps were forced to close and the people who had not fled to the United States were forced to go to non-un camps. Many of them tried to become Thai citizens but that entailed getting large sums of money from relatives. Most of those refugees could not obtain citizenship because their relatives did not even have enough money to take care of their direct families. In 2006 the Thai government made the remaining Hmong people relocate to a more isolated area in Thailand, many of them are deprived access to join their families in the United States. They are basically left to fend for themselves and fear for their lives every day. If they would never have been asked to join the United States in the fight in Vietnam, they would still be living like they always did before. They were not an enemy to anyone until they trusted the United States and later that trust was broken. The Hmong people who now live in the United States have what we would call a better life. In my opinion if we would have never disturbed them and their lives during the war they would have never known a different way of life. They would probably be happy just the way they were, with no enemies to mess with them and have never have lost most of their people in the war. It is our fault that they ever had this conflict.