Gender difference Essay Example for Free

Gender difference Essay The article I read is â€Å"‘Health is not a man’s domain’: lay accounts of gender difference in life-expectancy in Russia†. The authors, Ilkka Pietila and Marja Rytkonen, examined the meaning of health to Russian lay people, conducting interview with 29 people aged 15-81. They concluded that the role of the individual in healthy responsibility is very weak, with a stronger emphasis on societal and governmental influence. They also found that in relation to gender, gender roles and relations are static with few alternatives despite social changes. This study was prompted by the large gender gap in life-expectancy in Russia. In 2006, the average life expectancy was 59 years for Russian men but 72 years for Russian women. Pietila and Rytkonen wanted to see if this gap was caused by gender perceptions of health and/or each other or by something else. The theoretical basis for this research is a process Frankel and Davison call ‘lay epidemiology’, which states that â€Å"individuals interpret health risks through the routine observation and discussion of cases of illness and death in personal networks and the public arena, as well as from formal and informal evidence arising from other sources, such as television and magazines (p. 071). The researchers discerned â€Å"four types of explanations: essential/naturalist explanations (biological and psychological differences), explanations related to social roles, explanations related to social change and explanations related to health behavior† (p. 1075). They also found that these explanations often centered around one health behavior: heavy drinking. This article is a great because of its discussion the masculinity behind drinking, as well as the cultural aspects yet how the women tended to see drinking as more of a health hazard then the men who participate in it. The phenomenon of the gender gap and the cultural aspects of drinking add unique curveballs to solving the health crisis in Russia today. An article like this one is very important because it illustrates factors that need to be considered when coming up with a public health policy for Russia. For example, this findings of this research would support the argument that prohibition would not work in reducing alcoholism in Russia; alcohol’s cultural significance is too strong for such a policy to have any ‘lay’ support. The article also noted its limitations. The authors only interviewed subjects in St. Petersburg, which is one of the more Westernized cities in Russia and is more likely to have an higher educated and socioeconomic population compared with the majority of Russia. The authors conceded that this population dynamic may have skewed the results. They also admit that their research sample was small (only 29 people interviewed), although they did their best to have a variety of ages and occupations within these people. One excellent point in the researcher’s methodology is the use of native-Russian speakers to conduct the interviews, and having men interview men and women interview women. The use of native speakers would allow for the nuances of language and communication to be picked up. The gender separation also nullifies the possibility that gender biases would have taken place during the interviews.

No Harm Can Come to a Good Man Essay -- Philosophy Religion Essays

No Harm Can Come to a Good Man Whether Socrates is portrayed correctly or not, he certainly was a great man. His contribution to western thought cannot be denied. For even if his teachings were different from what they are known to be at present, his influence on Plato is immense. And so, it is no small matter to describe the tragic passing of such a man as Socrates was and remains for philosophy today. Yet in all the indignation which is expected to arise at the death of Socrates, the panache with which he departs is captured excellently in Plato's â€Å"Apology.† Specifically, at the end of the "Apology," Socrates makes a very important statement that has had great impact on philosophy ever since its original proclamation. The Stoics in particular have taken this to be the cornerstone of their ideology. The statement made is that "you must regard one thing at least as certain—that no harm can come to a good man either in his life or after his death,† (Plato 100). The following examinatio n focuses therefore on a brief explanation of the circumstances which lead to this statement being made by Socrates, as well as a closer look at why he thinks this to be the case. It is assumed that this statement is true, and validation for that assumption is to be sought as well. So, first, why does Socrates make such a bold statement? Verily it is nothing short of his own death sentence. The people who accused and voted against Socrates, have decreed it that he is to die for impiety toward the gods and of corrupting the youth (Plato), in addition, it is known that Socrates has as a companion of sorts a "prophetic voice" to keep his philosophical endeavors regulated. Socrates himself states that this presence has not opposed him at an... ... is safely sustained. Ultimately, the lack of knowledge on the subject of death is no grounds for its presumption to have any negative connotation. Thus Socrates leaves the people and the men of the jury, pronouncing that "it is time for us to go—me to my death, you to your lives. Which of us goes to the better fate, only god knows,† (Plato 100). Works Cited Aurelius, Marcus. "Meditations." Ancient Philosophy. 3rd Ed. Philosophic Classics, vols. 1. Baird, Forrest E., and Walter Kaufman. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2000. Epictetus. "Encheiridion." Ancient Philosophy. 31 Ed. Philosophic Classics, vols. 1. Baird, Forrest E., and Walter Kaufman. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2000. Plato. "Apology." Ancient Philosophy. 3rd Ed. Philosophic Classics, vols. 1. Baird, Forrest E., and Walter Kaufman. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2000. 82-100.

Management Function Essay

All organizations depend on group efforts. Teamwork and group action have become necessary in every day of life, and it will lead to the success in group efforts. The management will be very important to the groups because it can helps to achieve group goals, provides maximum resources to his or her team, minimizes the cost, establishes sound organization, and generates more welfare to his or her team. Management functions, manager’s skills, management control and strategic management process will be analyzed to define how an excellent manager should be. Four Management Functions The four management functions comprise the primary functions to the managers. These four functions which are planning, organizing, leading and controlling can be used in all fields of management, be it at a factory, a super market, a restaurant or even at home. Planning Managers need to perform the planning function to define goals, establish strategies to achieve these goals and develop sub plans to coordinate activities for his or her team members. For example, as a merchandising manager in the supermarket chain business, the manager needs to define what the target customers like Western people, South East Asia people or East Asians the supermarkets want to attract. After define the goals are attract more and more Asian-Canadian families, the manager need to establish strategies like bringing Asian-Canadian families fresh foods and introducing the diversity of Asian food culture at stores that offer exceptional convenience, service, and value to those Asian customers. Then, lots of sub plans like which kind of merchandises should be imported and the merchandises’ price setting strategies will be developed by the manager and pass to different buyers to follow up. Organizing Managers need to arrange job duties to his or her team members to achieve the organization’s goal. The managers will determine what tasks should be done, who will responsible for the task and how the tasks are to be grouped. For example, as the merchandising manager in the supermarket chain business, the manager needs to organize his or her team to different group and each group will in charge of different merchandises by categories like drink, snack, rice oil and noodles. After different teams have been organized, each team’s supervisor will be selected by the merchandising manager. The buyers will report to their supervisors and the supervisors will report to the merchandising manager. Leading Managers need to lead their team members to achieve the organizations’ goals. The leading function will require the managers to provide good communication skills and lead ship skills to resolve the behavior issues. As the merchandising manager in the supermarket chain business, some conflicts will be appeared with different buyers. Buyers will provide some products that buyers want to promote to be the promotion products in each week’s flyer, due to the limited space of the flyer, not all the products will be selected to be the promotion products by merchandising manager. The manager will use the communication skills and lead ship skills to let the buyers know why their products cannot be selected and what they should improve next time. Controlling The last management function is controlling. Managers need to evaluate and monitor employees’ performance and make sure every step is correct to achieve the goals. As the merchandising manager, the merchandises’ sales are the key performance index to evaluate buyers’ performance. Usually, merchandising manager will use category sales to evaluate each team’s performance and total stores sales’ growth percentage to evaluate the whole department’s performance. Skills Required by Managers Technical skills, human skills and conceptual skills are three most important skills required by managers. Though these three skills, managers can know more about the specified filed they are working, have better interpersonal relationship with people and have more ideas when facing the complex situations. Technical skills Managers need have strong technical skills in the specified filed because the managers need to deal with his or her employees when the employees face some difficulties during the working. The managers will give help and lead the employees to solve technical problems to achieve the organizations’ goals. For example, as a merchandising manager in the supermarket chain business, he or she must have strong purchasing skills, budgeting skills, know well with different merchandises that are sold in stores and inventory management skills. Human skills Managers must have ability to work well with different employees. Managers with perfect human skills, they can receive more and more trust from their employees and the employees can make full effort to achieve the organizations’ goals. As the supermarket chain’s merchandising manager, he or she should get well not only with different buyers, but also with store levels’ employees. If the manager can work well with store levels’ employees, the products that they imported can be displayed very well and follow merchandising department’s pricing strategies, as a result, the company’s goal can be achieved easily. Conceptual skills Managers must have ability to analyze and provide solutions when facing difficulties or complex situations. In the business world, top-level management positions usually required to have this skill. For example, as the merchandising manager in the supermarket chain business, when the new store will be opened, the manager will use conceptual skills to analyze what the best location is, what the best merchandises will be on shelf and what the target sales will be generated and so on. Also, if one of categories’ sales was continuing decreasing in the past several weeks, the manager need provide insight and solutions to the category team to help them overcome the difficulties. Two Views of Management Control Omnipotent view of management: The traditional view of managers is that they are directly responsible for organizations’ success and failures. When the organizations’ performance is poor, the managers should provide reasons and solutions; when the organizations’ performance is good, the managers should get the credit even if they only do little things to achieve the goals. Symbolic view of management Managers only have limited effects on organizational outcomes and performances because of the large number of factors like customers, competitors, government policies and economy outside the control of managers. Both omnipotent view of management and symbolic view of management purpose are to achieve organizations’ goals and provide the excellent performance to the organizations. As well, either omnipotent view of management or symbolic view of management, managers needs to make decisions within organizations when something happened. Like the merchandising manager in the supermarket chain business, if stores’ sales are continuing decreasing, whatever the reason is merchandises’ price are not attractive or the outside economy is in downtrend, the manager need provide insights and solutions to improve sales for the company. However, there are big differences between omnipotent view of management and symbolic view of management. The managers will in charge of everything for organizations’ success and failures under omnipotent view of management; but under the symbolic view of management, lots of external factors will affect organizations’ performance, so the managers do not have big effects on organizational outcomes and performances. As the merchandising manager in the supermarket chain business, when stores’ sales are continuing decreasing, the manager will think if customers do not like the merchandises that they imported or the merchandises’ price is too high for the customers under omnipotent view of management, then the manager will provide solutions to improve the sales; however, under the symbolic view of management, the manager will think about if stores’ sales were effected by strong competitions in the market or the downtrend of economy. Strategic Management Process Step1: identify the organization’s current mission, goals and strategies Explain: The mission, goals and strategies of an organization are very important to employees, especially for managers. Managers need to create scope work by step to achieve organizations’ goals, missions and strategies. Example: A supermarket Inc. mission is that attract more and more Asian-Canadian families, bringing Asian-Canadian families fresh foods and introducing the diversity of Asian food culture at stores that offer exceptional convenience, service, and value to those Asian customers. The merchandising manager need bring in more Asian products to the stores to attract customers. Step2: do an internal analysis Explain: An internal analysis about the organization’s resources and capabilities will be done to indentify the organization’s strength and weakness Example: The merchandising manager will do an internal analysis to indentify the company’s strength which is have different kinds of Asian foods cross grocery, produce, seafood and bakery and weakness which is lack of experience about what kind of western foods is suitable for Asian customers. Step3: do an external analysis Explain: An external analysis about the business environment, government policies, and competitions will be done to help managers know opportunities and threats for organizations. Example: The merchandising manager will do an external analysis to know the opportunities and threats for the company. Opportunities are more and more Asian families move to Toronto and lots of labor supply in the market. Threats are the strong competitions exist in Toronto’s Asian supermarkets field. Step4: formulate strategies Explain: After identify organizations’ missions and finished internal and external analysis, managers need formulate strategies to achieve organizations’ mission base on SWOT. Example: The merchandising manager formulates the strategy which is open more new stores to achieve the company’s mission. More and more Asian families move to Toronto and lots of labor supply in the market, new stores will be easy opened and can attract more Asian customers. Meanwhile, strong competitions exist in the market, the company need to increase the number of stores to low the products’ cost. Step5: implement strategies Explain: After managers formulate the strategies, lots of members will be involved to implement the strategies to achieve organizations’ goals. Example: The merchandising manager will request his or her buyers to import more Asian merchandises for new stores, work with the store operation department to decide the layout of stores and work with finance department about new stores’ budget. Step6: evaluate results Explain: After the strategies were implemented, managers need to evaluate the results to see if achieve the organizations’ goals and make any adjustments if necessary. Example: After new store was opened, the managers need to calculate if store’s sales had been achieved the target. If not, the manager will provide solutions to improve store sales immediately.

Article Reviews on Lois Trester Piano Competition

Lois Trester piano competition is an annual event at the University of Arizona. It is a big event at the institution because by its very nature it is interactive. It is a fun filled bonding session where students from various faculties are united with a common purpose: bonding. Though this is not the main reason why these awards were launched in 2010, the competitions were introduced in honor of a beloved piano teacher called Lois Trester who passed away a few years ago. After Lois Trester’s death, the management in conjunction with the student’s fraternity found it prudent to keep Trester’s memories alive by funding this scholarship in memory of her devoted contribution to the local piano community and TMTA. These awards were the talk of the day by the students who could not ponder over what to expect at such hilarious moment. It was so anticipated that it added zest of the occasion as the much awaited competitions proved worth by the quality of the music that was played by the pianists. The event begun on a high note and there is little doubt that any student will decline the idea of inculcating the event in the annual calendar. This year, the Third Annual Lois Trester Piano Competition took place on April 1st in universities’ Crowder hall. The event kicked off at exactly 3.00pm with superb presentations from students majoring in piano. Among most anticipated performers of the day was Kyung Lee who is a South Korean native but his love piano has seen her traverse several continents both as a student and teacher for opera programs. She gave a debut concert in 2004 during the New Great Pianist Series in Seoul. After the debut, she travelled to America in 2006 to undertake her master’s degree at the University of Northern Iowa. Ms Lee has been of help in helping the students prepare for the event under the guidance of Dr. Kristin Dauphinais. She enrolled for the DMA program in piano performance. The second anticipated performer was Chiew Hwa Pooon a Malaysian native completed her masters of music degree in piano performance at Missouri State University. Currently, she is a first year at the Doctor of Musical Arts degree programs and piano performance at the University of Arizona. She has received several awards incl uding the Yamaha Music scholarship and the Malaysian Youth Festival. She is a qualified teacher who enjoys teaching class piano at the university. In addition to the two teachers, a lot was expected from the contributions of Nathanael Gross who begun studying music at a very tender age. He thus participated in many piano competitions where he won several awards including being the best performer in the Prescott Fine Arts Association’s Most Outstanding Performer. In 2010, he made Beethoven presentations to boys and girls at Central Arizona and he is currently undertaking two courses on piano performance and mechanical engineering. Xi Luo who is an active performer in Beijing was also expected to show her expertise in the Lois Trester Piano competitions. She was the winner of the China Instrumental Competition in 1999. She is a student of Professor Tannis Gibson at the University of Arizona where she is pursuing a master’s degree in music. Among the lucrative prizes awarded to the winners included $ 2,000 which is the ultimate first prize for the winner of the Lois Trester piano competitions. The first runner up was awarded $ 1,000 being the prize for Winifred Knight Price, TMTA while the third was awarded a prize of $ 500. The fourth prize was $ 300 and in the Michael Moore Undergraduate Prize, the winner was awarded $ 1,000. The best audience was awarded $ 100. In 2010, Joo Young Oh scooped the first place and was equally awarded with the audience prize. The second place was taken by Bokyung Park and the third place was granted to Dylan Marney. In 2011 the best prize was taken by Elena Miraztchiyska, there was a tie in the award of the second prize between Chia Chun Ko and Ian Houghton. Works cited Lois Trester Piano Competition. University of Arizona, n.d. web. May 1, 2012. http://music.arizona.edu/News-events/event/163