Corporate Ethical Challenges

Corporate Ethical Challenges Role of Corporate Reputation Corporate reputation is normally based on the past actions as well as the likelihood of the future behaviuor of a company. Good corporate reputation enables a company achieve its corporate objectives. It enables a company and its stakeholders predict the future performance of the company.Advertising We will write a custom critical writing sample on Corporate Ethical Challenges specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Corporate reputation is an asset to a company as it helps improve the value of the company in the financial marketplace. This implies that it helps stabilize the company’s stock listings in the stock exchange. It gives a company the ability to charge fair prices for its products and services. It helps achieve customer preferences especially in cases where the products and services offered by the company have similar prices as well as quality to those offered by other companies. Thus it helps bu ild customer loyalty based on its actions towards compliance to ethical values as well as social responsibility and this in turn enables it improve its market share. Suppliers will have trust in the company due to its ability to offer fair trading terms. Social responsibility improves customers’ trust towards the company therefore making them patronize the company’s brands. The company will definitely increase its corporate worth and gain sustained competitive edge over its competitors. Good corporate responsibility stimulates stakeholder support for the company especially during times of controversy. Key stakeholders who include suppliers, the company’s largest customers, current employees as well as opinion leaders within the business community usually provide support crises that could rock the company’s business operations and market shares. Factors considered in assessing corporate reputation Stakeholder groups use different criteria to assess corpora te reputation which include the social responsibility of the firm, its financial performance, product and service quality as well as the workplace environment. Other criteria include measuring the emotional appeal of the firm’s brand as well as the vision and leadership of company. Consumer-specific reputation takes into account the product and service quality as well as the emotional appeal of the firm’s brand. It also considers the vision and leadership of the firm. Investor-specific reputation criteria majors on the financial performance of the organization, its leadership and vision and finally the product and service quality. Employee-specific reputation considers the workplace environment, the company’s vision and leadership as well as social responsibility.Advertising Looking for critical writing on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More It also takes into account the financi al performance of the company, its emotional appeal towards employees as well as product and service quality. Supplier-specific reputation criteria majors on the financial performance of the firm as well as its emotional appeal towards suppliers. Finally, reputation specific to the general public measures the company’s social responsibility as well as emotional appeal of its brand to the general public. The corporate reputation factors are usually not consistent across stakeholders since corporate reputation is normally a situational construct. Thus the factors are relative to decision s the stakeholders are considering. Steps to remedy concerns raised by Coca Cola stakeholders All the stakeholders of a company are very important for its business growth and therefore addressing all the concerns raised by different stakeholders helps maintain trust from the business stakeholders and achieve business growth. Addressing the concerns requires various steps which include: Develop a diversity policy to address discrimination in the workforce and promote equal treatment of the culturally diverse employees. The diversity policy will address equal employment opportunities, remuneration, promotion based on merit among many other equality issues. This would motivate workers and help the company avoid losses attributed to lawsuits. The company will develop an article of association which gives every employee the right to involve in association as long as he or she follows the guidelines provided for in the article and also respects the regulations of the company. In order to avoid inflated earnings which are as a result of channel stuffing and other financial report fraud cases, the company will retain independent external auditors to audit the financial reports of the company before being presented to the public. The company will also ensure that shipping is done specifically to the orders received from wholesalers and retailers. The company will take extra preca utions on the products it sells in the market. It will ensure that all products set for the market are tested in the company’s laboratory to ensure proportionality of the ingredients. All the raw materials have to be tested in the laboratory to ensure that they are fit for human consumption before they are used for making the products. In promoting the health of customers, the company will provide accurate and adequate information about the ingredients used in the preparation of the product on the bottles and in its product advertisement so as to enable customers make right choices. It will also sponsor health education through nutrition agencies. The company will adopt fair trading policies which ensure that suppliers are provided with all the terms of the agreement before signing contracts. The company will agree on terms which benefit both the supplier and the company and adhere to the guidelines of the contract in order to gain supplier trust. Measures will be taken to pr eserve the water catchment areas in all its regions of operation and more support provided to communities with water catchment facilities. Finally, measures will also be put in place to ensure that all the waste from the industrial plants is properly treated before being disposed of. Coca-Cola’s environmental initiatives Some of the company’s environmental initiatives do not seem to be sincere. Coca-Cola has distribution centers and industries worldwide while its bottle plant only recycles plastic bottles used in North America meaning that it does not recycle other bottles in other continents. These initiatives are not long-term and do not aim at achieving environmental sustainability. Providing facilities for water catchment without preserving the main water catchment areas can not achieve sustainable development. This is also evidenced by its initiative to provide $20 million dollars to help protect freshwater resources without making the project long-term consideri ng that it is among the companies which consume large amounts of freshwater worldwide.

It as a Dummy Subject in Grammar

It as a Dummy Subject in Grammar The word it can be a  subject (or dummy subject) in sentences about times, dates, and the weather (such as, Its raining) and in certain idioms (Its OK). Also known as ambient it or empty it. Unlike the ordinary pronoun it, dummy it refers to nothing at all; it simply serves a grammatical function. In other words, dummy it has a grammatical meaning but no lexical meaning. Examples and Observations Here are some examples: It is hot, it is late, and it is time to go.It will be morning soon.Juan WilliamsBut it is a new day. The need for honest conversations across racial as well as ethnic and religious lines has never been greater.William FauknerHe did not know it was midnight and he did not know how far he had come.Its Always Sunny In PhiladelphiaWaitress: Wow, why are you so sweaty?Charlie Kelly: Its really hot in here.Waitress: Its not hot, its freezing.Charlie Kelly: Its freezing, isnt it. They are blazing that AC.Penelope FitzgeraldIts a pity that Kattie couldnt be here tonight.Sean Astin, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the RingIts a shame, really. Lady Galadriel gave me that. Real elvish rope.Bob DylanAnd it aint no use to sit and wonder why, babe,If you dont know by now.Wallace StevensIt was evening all afternoon.It was snowingAnd it was going to snow.The blackbird satIn the cedar-limbs.Christopher J. Halle[S]nowing is just snowing: not even God can snow, and although we can be snowed on, i n, or under, the meaning of the verb snow just doesnt require anything to be snowed (except snow itself, I suppose, but that would be a little redundant). So semantics doesnt explain why we need to express a subject, even a dummy one like it in It is snowing. Verbs That Accompany Ambient It James D. McCawleyAmbient it occurs only in combination with a limited set of verbs and predicate adjectives that express environmental conditions (especially, but not exclusively, the weather):- (8a) It was raining/snowing/thundering/pouring.- (8b) It was hot/cold/pleasant/delightful/unbearable/disgusting/uncomfortable in the attic.- (8c) I like/enjoy/hate it here.- (8d) Its third down and twelve to go.- (8e) Its intermission now.- (8e) Its 4:00.In most instances ambient it is the subject of its clause either in surface structure or in what is arguably the deep structure (as in the case of The lake makes it pleasant here, which allows an analysis in which the deep structure direct object of make is a sentence It is pleasant here whose subject is ambient it). Subject Extraposition Rodney D. HuddlestonClauses with a subordinate clause subject generally have variants with the subordinate clause at the end and dummy it as the subject:- a. That he was acquitted disturbs her.- b. It disturbs her that he was acquitted. Using Dummy It in African-American Vernacular English Fern L. JohnsonThe use of dummy it (Labov, 1972a) corresponds to particular meanings in AAVE. Roughly equivalent to SAE there, it can be found in contexts such as the following: It wasnt nothing to do and Its a new car, which compare to SAE There wasnt nothing to do and Theres a new car. This dummy it exists in Gullah as well and is likely a direct retention from plantation creole. Also Known As: ambient it, introductory it, prop it, empty it, nonreferential it

Argument analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Argument analysis - Essay Example It has been proven that obesity is connected with how easily affordable unhealthy foods are in comparison to fruits, vegetables, and healthier meats. However, there is nothing to suggest that only poor people are the ones buying the foods that are bad for the human body. Most people, regardless of their economic status, enjoy the tastes of many of these fattening snacks, such as chips and candy, and obtaining these has nothing to do with cost. If anything, if a person is rich or poor will only determine how many bags of chips or other unhealthy foods they will buy; a rich person is more liable to buy more since they can afford it. Since poor people can afford less, more of their money would go towards proper foods, like meats, instead of junk foods that cannot make meals. Cullen brings up the point that there are more convenience stores and gas stations than there are grocery stores. Convenience stores and gas stations carry only a small variety of food, â€Å"Chef Boyardee but not baby carrots (Cullen).† In lower-income neighborhoods, these places might be more common than a grocery store, but that does not mean that poor people are unwilling to drive a few extra miles to shop at a grocery store. When most people go shopping for food, regardless of the money they have, they go where they need to so that they may get what they want. If poor people want steaks, they will go and buy steaks; if rich people want hotdogs, they will buy hotdogs. Being rich or poor has nothing to do with the type of food people are willing to eat, and therefore cannot be considered a cause of obesity. Regardless of how much money a person is making, obesity is everywhere, and I find it hard to believe that every one of these obese people is poor. Each person, taking away the factor of money, will have similar eating habits as someone else. Poor people may prefer the cheaper food, but rich people can still afford more, especially of the cheap, unhealthy food. Though Cullen makes many good points, a lot of them seem to be assumptions or opinions. Her argument could be strengthened if she used citable facts and statistics to prove her points. When Is Thin Too Thin? The fashion industry is an important one, designing and displaying the fashion that will one day grace the presence of our outlet malls and fashion boutiques. Fashion models are used to present those clothes in the way that their designers intended them to be worn. As Eric Wilson points out in his article â€Å"When Is Thin Too Thin?,† part of the vision of these designers involves ghastly underweight women as the models to display these fashions. The designers of these fashions, as well as many of the agents that hire the models, claim that there is nothing wrong with the weight or health of these women. This is despite the fact that prospectors at fashion shows have the ability of counting every rib on many of the models. Beauty has blurred the line between healthy and unhealthy, and this perception needs to change. â€Å"Underweight models [and] fashion shows perpetuate an unhealthy image of beauty, encouraging eating disorders among young women (Wilson).† Women are staving themselves for their work and they are being praised for it, receiving positive feedback and proclamations of beauty. Unfortunately, this is not even the worst part. Shockingly enough, many

Business Driven Information Systems Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Business Driven Information Systems - Term Paper Example It is in this regard that the university is mandated to improve is business strategy within the education sector so that it becomes a leader in higher education and academic research within California. The power of the buyer is a business environmental force which must be highly regarded by the University of La Verne. This means that for the university to achieve its mission, it must provide the users of its educational and research services with the highest quality and effective delivery processes. Supplier power is another force within a competitive business environment which the management of the University of La Verne must consider significant for its success. This means that the vendors of its educational and research materials and equipment must be treated with utmost respect and professionalism so that they would remain loyal suppliers to the university. The threat of substitutes is described by Porter as the alternative services or products that would make an organization to fail achieving its competitive advantage and therefore its purpose (Roy, 2009). The substitutes to the educational services and research within California and other parts of the world are limited which means that the university will remain competitive in the higher education sector within California. ... Therefore students, administrators, the management and lecturers of the university must be content with the various IT applications as the most effective approach through which their work activities are improved for increased performance. This measurement can be achieved through surveys or interviews and questionnaires which are aimed at determining the user satisfaction of the IT applications. If the users or members of the university community demonstrate dissatisfaction with the IT applications, them it means that the adoption and implementation of technology within the university is not a success. The effectiveness and success of information and communication technology within the University of La Verne can also be assessed and evaluated in line with its compatibility with the educational pedagogy or approach that is used within the university. Information technology cannot be effective if it does not support the teaching methods and learning strategies of an institution (Alter, 2008). The University of La Verne employs a scientific pedagogy in training and research. This methodology in the university is demonstrated by the fact that the learning processes are aimed at allowing students to have a practical application of the skills and knowledge that they acquire in solving real life problems. In addition, the research within the university is designed to provide solutions to the problems that face various industry operations. This means that the technology and various software applications must support the scientific pedagogy of training for them to be defined as effective. The IT processes within the University of La Verne which needs to be enhanced include online communication through information technology within the institution and with the

Love in the English Medieval Period Essay Example for Free

Love in the English Medieval Period Essay INTRODUCTION The romance of Courtly Love practiced during the Middle Ages was combined with the Code of Chivalry. There were strict rules of courtly love and the members of the courts practiced the art of courtly love across Europe during the Middle Ages. The romance, rules and art of courtly love allowed knights and ladies to show their admiration regardless of their marital state. It was a common occurrence for a married lady to give a token to a knight of her choice to be worn during a medieval tournament. There were rules, which governed courtly love, but sometimes the parties, who started their relationship with such elements of courtly love, would become deeply involved. Examples of relationships, which were stirred by romantic courtly love, chivalry and romance, are described in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Chaucer’s Wife of Bath. Many illicit court romances were fuelled by the practice and art of courtly love. The most fertile field of the romance genre was the Arthurian romance. Closely related to the romance tradition were two idealized standards of behavior: chivalry and courtly love. Many modern people think of chivalry as referring to a mans gallant treatment of  women, and although that sense is derived from the medieval chivalric ideal, chivalry includes more than that. Many modern people think of chivalry as referring to a mans gallant treatment of women, and although that sense is derived from the medieval chivalric ideal, chivalry includes more than that. Broadly speaking, chivalry, derived from the old French term for a soldier mounted on horseback, was a knights code of conduct. There was no single set of chivalric rules, but the existence of popular medieval chivalric handbooks testifies that chivalry was a well-known concept. Knights formed a distinct segment of medieval society, which was often thought of as being composed of three classes: those who pray (the clergy), those who fight (the nobility), and those who work (the peasants). Most knights belonged to the nobility, if only because a knights equipment horses, weapons, armor, required considerable resources to fund. Violence, often bloody and horrific violence, was at the heart of what knights did. As highly skilled and well-armed fighting men, knights could be a force either for creating social chaos or for maintaining public order. Unit 1- Background research on courtly love and chivalry 1.1 Courtly love developed in the twelfth century among the troubadours of southern France, but soon spread into the neighboring countries and eventually colored the literature of most of Western Europe for centuries. It originated in the writings of the poet Ovid Ars Amatoria (‘The Art of Love’). Andrà © the Chaplain (or Andreas Cappellanus), took as his model, Ovid’s ‘Ars Amatoria ‘ (the Art of Loving). Ovid’s work concerns how to seduce a woman, and among its rules are appropriate forms of dress, approach, conversation, and toying with a lady’s affections, all designed to amuse. In the Ars Amatoria, the man is in control, and the woman is simply his prey. But Andrà © turned the Ars Amatoria upside-down. In his â€Å"Liber de arte honeste amandi et reprobatione inhonesti amoris† (â€Å"Book of the Art of Loving Nobly and the Reprobation of Dishonourable Love†), the woman becomes the mistress of the game. It is she who sets the rules and passes judgment on the hopeful suitor. In Ovid’s work the lover sighs with passion for his pursuit, but in le Chapelain’s Liber the passion is pure and entirely for the love of a lady. The rules outlined in Andrà ©Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s work are in many ways far  from the reality of the times. In the medieval world, women rarely had any power to speak of. The nobility were warriors, and the arts of war, leadership and politics occupied their minds. More often than not, a noblemen thought of his wife, (or future wife) as a breeder, a servant, and a source of sexual gratification (his, not hers). Fidelity on her part was absolutely necessary to ensure the validity of the bloodline. Fidelity on his part wasn’t an issue. Under any other circumstances, le Chapelain’s Liber might have remained an interesting literary exercise (as Ovid’s Ars Amatoria was intended to be); or it might have been ignored or laughed out of serious literary circles. But with the historical background at precisely the right stage of development, in the court of Eleanor and under the guidance of Marie, Andrà ©Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s ‘Art of Loving Nobly’ was literature to be lived. Two women who had a particular influence on the development of romance were Eleanor of Aquitaine, queen first of France and then of England, and her daughter Marie, Countess of Champagne (in Eastern France). Eleanor brought to the English court her interest in poetry, music and the arts, all of which were cultivated at the court of Aquitaine where she grew up (her grandfather William was the first known troubadour poet). In the vernacular narratives that were written for and dedicated to Eleanor-early ‘romances’-we find an emphasis on the sort of love relationship that is depicted in troubadour poetry, commonly known as ‘courtly love’ (fin’amors in Provenà §al, the language of troubadour poetry). The ‘courtly love’ relationship is modeled on the feudal relationship between a knight and his liege lord. The knight serves his courtly lady (love service) with the same obedience and loyalty, which he owes to his liege lord. She is in complete control of the love relationship, while he owes her obedience and submission (a literary convention that did not correspond to actual practice!) The knight’s love for the lady inspires him to do great deeds, in order to be worthy of her love or to win her favor. Thus ‘courtly love’ was originally construed as an ennobling force whether or not it was consummated, and even whether or not the lady knew about the knights love or loved him in return. The ‘courtly love’ relationship typically was not between husband and wife, not because the poets and the audience were inherently immoral, but because  it was an idealized sort of relationship that could not exist within the context of ‘real life’ medieval marriages. In the middle ages, marriages amongst the nobility were typically based on practical and dynastic concerns rather than on love. The idea that a marriage could be based on love was a radical notion. But the audience for romance was perfectly aware that these romances were fictions, not models for actual behavior. The adulterous aspect that bothers many 20th-century readers was somewhat beside the point, which was to explore the potential influence of love on human behavior. Social historians such as Eric Kà ¶hler and Georges Duby have hypothesized that courtly love may have served a useful social purpose: providing a model of behavior for a class of unmarried young men that might otherwise have threatened social stability. Knights were typically younger brothers without land of their own (hence unable to support a wife) who became members of the household of the feudal lords whom they served. One reason why the lady in the courtly love relationship is typically older, married and of higher social status than the knight may be because she was modeled on the wife of the feudal lord, who might naturally become the focus of the young, unmarried knights desire. Kà ¶hler and Duby posit that the literary model of the courtly love relationship may have been invented in part to provide these young men with a model for appropriate behavior, teaching them to sublimate their desires and to channel their energy into socially useful behavior (love service rather th an wandering around the countryside, stealing or raping women like the knight in the ‘ Wife of Bath’s tale). Ovid described the symptoms of love as if it were a sickness. The lovesick knight became a conventional figure in medieval romance. Typical symptoms: sighing, turning pale, turning red, fever, inability to sleep, eat or drink. Romances often contained long interior monologues in which the lovers describe their feelings. For the troubadours of 12th C France who introduced it into literature, Courtly love had two basic, essential characteristics: Love is irresistible and it is an ennobling force. No one is exempt from the service of the God of love who rules this world and extramarital sexual love, sinful to Christians, is the sole source of worldly worth and excellence. All the other characteristics of love that appear in the Canterbury Tales, for example, are simply trappings  decorations. These belong to the general body of love literature. Yet these trappings, so ludicrous when exaggerated, have caused courtly love to be confused with romantic love and have brought it into disrep ute. Since love is irresistible, nothing done under its compulsion can be immoral; since humans are worthless unless they acts under this compulsion, the necessity of practicing love in incumbent on each person. Courtly love not only approves and encourages whatever fans and provokes sensual desire, it not only condones fornication, adultery, and sacrilege, but it represents them as necessary sources of what it calls virtue. Love is a union of heart and mind as well as body. Sensuality for its own sake, the enjoyment of fleshly delights of and for themselves, is contrary to courtly love. The wanton and the promiscuous practice such love. Hence, in the courtly love code fidelity is its greatest virtue and infidelity its greatest vice. Yet the Roman Church formally condemned both principles of courtly love. Archbishop Stephen Tempier at Paris condemned the irresistibility of love and love as the sole source of human worth on March 7, 1277. 1.2 What is Chivalry? Chivalry is a system of discipline and social interaction that is derived from the warrior class of medieval times, especially and primarily the class of trained warriors who participated in the Crusades (12th-14th centuries). Chivalry has a discipline because those ancient soldiers trained themselves daily through learning and practicing the arts of attack and self-defense. These arts gave rise to the idea of control of the body, mind, and speech in the Knight. Further, the idea of social interaction developed because the Knight originally followed carefully the orders of his superiors who were interested only in battle with those who were eligible to fight, that is, civilians were not to be engaged in battle. From this idea of engaging only other Knights developed the idea of treating enemies and friends fairly and equally. Men who excelled in battle were honored with Knighthood, an honor first granted by Knights only. Then, later, as the honor of being a Knight grew, both Monarchy and the Church (Eastern Orthodox as well as Roman Catholic) began to participate in the selection and creation of Knights. While the ideals of Knighthood were often violated by the Knight warriors themselves, yet the  ideals survived as Knighthood came to be thought of as an honor to be bestowed upon those who had proven themselves worthy. When the practice of the volunteer army and the need for Knights as warriors faded away, the concept of the honorable and self-disciplined Knight remained, and the rank and status of Knight began to take on aspects of minor Nobility that one could achieve (rather than having to be born into). As an honor and status that men sought, Knighthood became a valuable gift and boon for Kings and Church to grant, either individually as a ‘Knight Bachelor’ or as membership in an Order of Chivalry. Chivalry sets a standard of conduct that transcends era or culture. It maintains a code of conduct that traditionally [upholds] a practical guide to living in a changing world, and it provides discipline within an undisciplined environment. Chivalry embraces a spiritual path of personal development that combines bravery and gentleness with a fierce compassion for the welfare of others. The knights interest and goal in life is to protect those who cannot defend, be it physical, spiritual, or economical and to fulfill a desire for personal excellence. UNIT 2 The chivalrous ideal and courtly love in ’’Sir gawain and the Green Knight’’ and ’’The Wife of Bath ’’ 2.1 A knights behavior toward women, at least in the romance tradition, was governed by another standard known as courtly love. Medieval writers did not necessarily use that term, but it is a convenient modern label for an idea that appears frequently in medieval literature. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the poets term for it is courtesy. Scholars have debated whether courtly love was a social reality or purely a literary fiction, but in either case, it was a pervasive and influential notion. The ties between the romance genre and the courtly love tradition were well established even at this time, for when Cappellanus offered his rules of love, he brackets them with a story involving a knight on the way to the court of King Arthur. The courtly lover was a man (often a knight) who devoted himself to the service of his beloved lady, making himself her servant; if he was a knight; all of his brave deeds were dedicated to his lady. Marriage to others was not a barrier to such love affairs, which were to be kept secret, with clandestine meetings and messages between the lovers relayed by go-betweens.  The lovers usually exchanged gifts or favors, normally a personal item such as a ring, glove, or girdle, all of which appear in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. True lovers became faint or sick with the strength of their love; sleeplessness, lack of appetite, and jealousy were all symptoms of true love. A lover was expected to have fine manners and display perfect gentility. As with chivalry, the tension between courtly love and Christian morality was unavoidable. Much of the courtly love tradition assumed that the lovers would consummate their relationship sexually, regardless of whether they were married. A more Christianized version of courtly love placed the lover in courteous but decidedly chaste service to his beloved. Like chivalry, courtly love may have been more of an ideal than an actual practice, but that did not lessen its cultural importance. At first glance, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight seem to be a relatively simple story about the quest of a knight in Arthurian Camelot. Upon further examination, however, it becomes clear that interwoven within the simple plotline is an intricate relationship between men and women with an emphasis on the values of the time. Throughout this work, we are privy to a variety of literal and figurative dichotomies including those between men and women, court values and church values, girdle and pentacle, the Green Knight and Sir Gawain, Guinevere and Morgan de Fay, and the Virgin Mary and Lady Bertilak. During the medieval period, the court and the church were of utmost importance codes of chivalry in the court were substantial factors in dictating the etiquette and specific behaviors of people as demonstrated through its literature. What seems to have happened in medieval literature is this: the pre-courtly love literature presented a fairly accurate portrait of womens role in society. Then, with the advent of courtly love some authors felt the need to conform the role of women in literature to that which was assigned to them by the philosophy of courtly love. (Malcor). In a sense, the medieval work in question does not seem to draw exclusively from either the pre-courtly or courtly genres in its discussion of the role of women, rather we see a multitude of different women portrayed in clearly contrasting manners. Most notably, Lady Bertalik becomes a major figure of this work, as well as a symbol of knightly virtues, or lack thereof. In the third part of Sir Gawain  and the Green Knight, the story turns to Sir Gawain and Lady Bertalik; on three successive days, Lady Bertalik meets Sir Gawain in his bedchambers and attempts to seduce him. During the first two days, though tempting, Gawain manages to remain a model of both courtly and religious restraint and behavior; meanwhile, Lady Bertalik extends herself as the aforementioned ‘’fairly accurate portrait of womens role in society.’’ While some women of the time succeeded in being entirely pure, it was not uncommon for damsels to try and seduce men as they traveled about the lands. The third morning, however, Gawain succumbs to his own fear of death and accepts the lesser of two gifts offered by Lady Bertalik on promises that the magical girdle will protect him from all harm. ‘’[The girdle] was wrought of green silk, and gold, only braided by the fingers, and that she offered to the knight, and besought him though it were of little worth that he would take it,’’ while in reality, Lady Bertalik is knowingly tricking the unsuspecting knight (Weston, Part III). In addition, Lady Bertaliks gift is a strong symbol of womanhood and parallels both facets of pre-courtly and courtly literature. Like Lady Bertalik, the girdle is similar to the depiction of pre-courtly realism in which women maintained their outward appearance, but also had inner, wild sexual desires that were often unleashed as it is meant to be tied, but then removed to allow for free movement and expression. In slight contrast, the girdle may also illustrate the more courtly and idealistic viewpoint due to its restrictive qualities, which in theory, forces the girdle-clad to appear as a woman. The idea of the girdle enforcing a female faà §ade is lost, however, when Gawain, himself, dons the green article; thereby, excusing the idea that the girdle has any semblance of courtly qualities. For purposes of this argument that Sir Gawain and the Green Knight entertains two separate depictions of society through literature, the realistic and the philosophical it is Guinevere who plays Lady Bertilaks opposite. Though she appears only briefly in this text, her role in courtly society is quite obvious. Seen at the opening feast given by her husband, King Arthur, Guinevere sits regally, but quietly beside her husband. While she expresses some momentary discontent when Arthur first offers himself up to the Green Knight it is almost entirely based upon her role as a  woman and the wife of the king. In this particular piece of Arthurian literature, Guinevere is defined by specific binaries; she is only what the king is not and she behaves the way that Lady Bertalik does not. Given this role, Guinevere exemplifies the pre-courtly disposition of behavior and remains the passive and silent, but perfect queen. As demonstrated through the actions and general social conduct of Lady Bertalik and Guinevere, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight displays a variety of women in several blatantly contrasting roles. While this, does substantiate the suggestion that the behavior of women has been projected differently throughout medieval literature. Like most medieval literature, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight participate in several important literary traditions that its original audience would have instantly recognized. Medieval poets were expected to re-use established source materials in their own works. Modern readers sometimes mistakenly take this as evidence of how lacking in creativity and originality the Middle Ages were. In reality, much of the interest of medieval literature comes from recognizing how one work of literature pulls against those that came before it, makes subtle changes from its sources, and invests old material with new meanings. One can read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as simply a rollicking tale of adventure and magic or, alternatively, as a lesson in moral growth. However, understanding some of the literary and cultural background that Sir Gawain and the Green Knight draws upon can provide modern readers with a fuller view of the poems meaning. 2.2 The Prologue and Tale of the Wife of Bath are among the most popular parts of The Canterbury Tales, and also cause a lot of trouble for critics. There are many various opinions about the character of Alison, ranging from utter individuality of the character to her being only a refined archetype of the old go-between. Many consider the disparity of her Prologue and Tale so problematic that there is need to explain the duality of her personality, and again many others focus on the common features of the Prologue and Tale. Probably the only thing about Wife of Bath’s Tale on which the critics agree is that its narrative voice and choice of topic is distinctly feminine, the  world of her tale is inhabited by women with occasional obedient men. Alison is a feminist of her own making. Although many say that in the end she still submits to the rule of the patriarchal world, they do not take into account the time of her creation. When Alison struggles for respect in her own household, there is absolutely no awareness of feminine desire for equality, and it will still need several centuries before the Precieuses movement starts in France, influencing the whole Europe. Alison lives in a patriarchal world with strict views of women, and her domestic revolution seems outrageous in her times. Yet, in her Prologue, she argues that there is need for a distinctly feminine voice and tradition. Judging by Alison’s Prologue, it seems extremely difficult for a woman to accept her position in the male tradition. In her Prologue, she therefore uses the traditional patriarchal ideas and expression, and yet she bends them to suit her purpose. When she argues for marriage as an equally important alternative to virginity, she quotes St. Paul, the major male authority that prefers virginity. But it is obvious that the educated account of texts she shows the reader is only knowledge acquired from her husbands, as the read er is later to realize. She is incapable of reading the texts for herself; otherwise she would not use Jerome’s interpretation of the encounter of Jesus and the Samaritan woman beside a well. She would use the source text to impeach Jerome’s interpretation. But the Wife of Bath lacks the knowledge that it was not Jesus but the Samaritan woman herself who said she had no husband. Although the mind of the Wife is captured in medieval paradigms about women, she would gladly argue with Jerome just like she argued with her clerk husband, had she the knowledge of the original biblical text. The Wife also draws a decisive line between the biblical texts, which in no way express any obligation concerning the number of marriages, and the Church tradition created by men with no experience of marriage. What St. Paul says is not a rule, it is only advice: â€Å"Advice is no commandment in my view./ He left it in our judgment what to do† (CT, 278). After her biblical lecture where the Wife uses many examples from the Old Testament to show there are no strict rules established about marriage, she moves on to what she promises at the beginning of her Prologue, to experience: If there were no authority on earth Except experience; mine, for what it’s worth, And that’s enough for me, all goes to show That marriage is a misery and a woe; (CT,  276) Yet, as she has also shown, women’s reputation for zealous confessing paradoxically opened up opportunities of empowerment, as a number of female sham mystics, working with their attend- ant priests, created a lucrative theatre of spirituality in which the woman was the center of attention. The Wife of Bath’s Tale itself is another genre-experiment, which enacts the Wife’s speculation: By God! If women had written stories, As clerkes han withinne hire oratories, They wolde han written of men moore wikkednesse Than al the mark of Adam may redresse. (III (D), 693–6) The Tale is the retelling of a fairy mistress tale in which a knight finds that he can save his life only if he can find the answer to the question of what women want most. He goes on a quest in search of the answer and meets a loathsome old hag who tells him that women most want to have control over men. The knight escapes death at the hands of his enemies, but in return must marry the old hag. In bed on their marriage night, she persuades him to face her, whereupon he finds that she has transformed into a beautiful young girl. She asks him whether he would prefer to have her beautiful by day or by night, but tired by now of trick questions, the knight leaves the decision in her hands. Because he has capitulated to her, she promises to stay young and beautiful always, and they live happily ever after. What a synopsis effaces is the way in which this story can be adapted to prompt various responses. In the anonymous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the narrative framework is deployed to allow Gawain, as hero, to demonstrate extreme chivalric behavior and win audience approval. Chaucer’s adaptation is more radical. The hero is a rapist, forced into the bargain set by the ladies of the court to save his life. There is no indication that he is remorseful, nor that the quest is penitential. He comes upon the hag because he spies on some young girls dancing in a wood, and much less emphasis is put on the grotesque appearance of the hag than in other romance versions. The radical change, however, is that he walks into the bargain with the hag without knowing his part in advance. She accompanies him back to the court where the bargain is uttered in public. The quest is, therefore, manipulated so that instead of being morally enhanced, the hero is humiliated. He has no chance to dem onstrate Florent’s stoicism as all his opportunities for displaying bravery and chivalry are pre-empted by powerful and cynical  women. The values of chivalry are transposed ironically into a lecture given by the transformed hag to her husband on their wedding night in bed. The relationship between Prologue and Tale is not so much the simple matter of the Tale being adapted as the wish-fulfillment of the invented narrator; rather the two sit in parallel, drawing attention through their internal juxtapositions of authorities and lived experiences, to the gap between official society and its mores, as enshrined in textual traditions, and the operation of other behaviors and performances. Her struggle is not one for domination in the relationship, as both her Prologue and Tale show. It is a struggle for love. She wants to be treated like a beloved lady in the courtly tradition, and repay her loving husband with respect and obedience. The essentially better view is that â€Å"as a kind of special representative of Chaucer in the matter, she believes in harmony between partners, however it is arrived at† (Stone, 85). Of course, it is difficult to pass judgment on Chaucer’s personal views, as Chaucer was very careful about revealing his opinions, but the choice of the topic, and the portrayal of the shrewish wife as an understandable and rather likeable character might be a certain sign of Chaucer’s own attitude. For all the problems in her first four marriages, Alison does not lose hope yet. In her climactic marriage with Jankin, the only one that ends up as a success, she is looking for love. She already has enough money and a good social standing, she could be very satisfied as a widow, a woman no longer subjected to any man’s whim, and yet she decides to marry again. Alison needs her own money and the independence it gives. The General Prologue suggests that she also needs her own work and the status that goes with success. But she wants love as well and, in her relationship with Jankin, is romantic enough to believe that it will make money irrelevant .When Alison finds out she lost not only her money, which by the right of marriage now belongs to her husband, but also her integrity as her young husband tries to change her into an obedient wife with no life of her own, she starts to fight him. But before the physical struggle is described, Chaucer gives us a mental picture of Alison’s state, a picture of a tormented woman who lacks the words to defend herself, while her husband has all the available verbal weapons. CONCLUSION The poet positions Gawain at the center of the unresolved tensions between chivalry, courtly love, and Christianity. Gawain is famed as the most courteous of knights. In one sense, this creates the expectation that his behavior will be irreproachable; in another, it assumes that he will be the most delightful of lovers for the lady who can snare him. The Lady of Haut desert exploits this tension to the fullest as she attempts to seduce Gawain. But the poet has also made clear that the beloved lady whom Gawain serves first is the Virgin Mary. As a thoroughly Christianized knight, he is forced to walk a fine line in defending himself. He cannot offend a lady, but neither can he give his hostess what she wants, because in doing so, he would be committing a sexual sin, as well as breaking chivalric loyalty and honor by betraying his host. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight cannot, therefore, be called a straightforward romance. It makes use of most of the conventions and ideals of the Arthurian romance, yet also points out its contradictions and failings. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is not an anti-romance, however, nor is it a parody, despite its lightness and good humor. When Chaucer laughs at Sir Thopas, he is mocking a tired genre, but when the Gawain-poet laughs, it is the generous laughter of friendship. The poets conservative and traditional approach to his timeworn material is what allows him to make it so engaging: He understands and thoroughly appreciates the conventions of his genre. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight manages to highlight the weakest points of the chivalric tradition while still appreciating everything that makes chivalry so attractive, especially its uncompromising devotion to the highest ideals, even if those ideals are not necessarily attainable (accomplished). Andreas got the Christian world to accept his concept of love by the device of the double truth. Although Christian teaching and his De Amore are basically irreconcilable, they may exist side by side each in its own sphere. His main purpose was to provide a pseudo-psychological and logical basis for the ideas and ideals of the troubadours. Reasoning and building on the nature of love and of humanity, he showed that love is the greatest good in this world, that it constitutes earthly happiness, and that it is the place of origin of all earthly good. Andreas proposed logically that if humans are viewed solely as rational and natural creatures, subject  only to the laws of nature and reason, then they must enroll in the army of the god of love and seek the pleasures of the flesh so that they may be ennobled and grow in virtue and in worth. Aware of the immoral and heretical implications of his work, Andreas wrote On the Rejection of Love where he condemned Courtly love and implicitly retracted all he had written. A strong possibility exists that Chaucer knew of the so-called double truth. He would have been aware of the dangers involved in writing romances of Courtly Love, the risk of an accusation of upholding immorality and heresy. He possibly set out to meet these dangers: 1. He is not interested in giving Courtly love a logical and philosophical grounding; he simply uses it as a vehicle for his love stories. 2. Andreas suggests he writes from experience. Chaucer states again and again that he is not writing on love from personal knowledge from experience or from his own feelings on the subject. Chaucers status is always as a non-participant in lovea rank outsider. His relationship to love and lovers is to be their clerk, their servant and instrument to gladden them and advance them in their individual cause. He doesnt participate because he is unsuitable. Chaucer did strive for religious orthodoxy when, in the words of the Parsons Tale, he protests that he will stand for correction. If his repudiation is not in fear, it might be a salve to a Christian conscience revolted at the utter incompatibility of Courtly Love with the tenets of Christian morality and faith. SUFFERING Love brings with it love melancholy or suffering. This was studied and in fact written on at length during the Renaissance, but it was known and made part of the fictional lover during Chaucers time. All in all, Chaucer’s attitude to women in The Canterbury Tales can hardly be judged as anti ­feminist. His portrayals of women are splendid and still attractive centuries after. He does not assert the male dominance in all his tales but he realistically employs different narrators to express different attitudes. Some of the tales question the medieval system of authorities, yet none of them is openly subversive. Chaucer’s female narrators cannot be judged by today’s standards of feminism and when they are looked at from the medieval point of view, the undertone of feminism in their behavior and tales emerges. They are concerned with bettering the conditions for women; they challenge the authorities in their tales. And although the women of the male tales are no revolutionaries, they are still humane enough for a modern  reader to enjoy. Chaucer does not portray women’s struggle for self-assertion, he unfolds the complex web of his society. Chaucer’s attitude to women as shown in his works is more complex than that of his contemporaries, and at the same time remains within the borders given by the society. Chaucer is a very careful poet and as such may be found inconvenient by some modern feminists. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Primary sources: Sri Gawain and the Green Knight Wife of Bath Secondary sources: Umbetro, Eco. Cum se face o teza de licenta, Polirom, Bucuresti, 2006 Dutu, Carmen. Eseuri si dizertatii. Metodologia crearii unei lucrari stintifice, Editura Universitara Bucuresti, 2012 G. C. Thornley and Gwyneth Roberts. An Outline of English Literature, Longman, Essex, 2008 Chretien de Troyes. Arthurian romances, Penguin Books Ltd, Englad 1991 Andreas Capellanus, The art of courtly love, Columbia University Press, New York 1960 Bruce J. Douglas. Evolution of Arthurian romance from the beginnings down to the year 1300, Gloucester, Mass Peter Smith 1958 Michel, Pastoureanu. La vie quotidienne en France et en Angleterre au temps des chevaliers de la Table Ronde, Hachette, Paris, 1976 [ 1 ]. Courtly love. Modern term popularized by C. S. Lewis to describe the various kinds of love between man and woman described in the works of *trou- badours and others between the 11c and the 13c. The range of feeling ran from the dutiful respect owed a lord’s wife, to the adulterously sexual. One relationship was excluded, that between husband and wife. The genre first appeared in Provence and then spread through Europe. Appearing at much the same time as Arthurian tales, the two created a potent and memorable mix of *chivalry and romance. The French phrase amour courtois is a 19c coin- age. – Cf. Aubade; Pastourelle [ 2 ]. b. 43 BCE, Roman who wrote a parody on the technical treatises on loving. [ 3 ]. The Ars amatoria (English: The Art of Love) is an instructional book series elegy in three books by Ancient Roman poet Ovid. It was written in 2 AD. It is about teaching basic Gentlemanly male and female relationship skills and techniques. [ 4 ]. Andreas Capellanus was the 12th-century author of a treatise commonly known as De amore (About Love), and often known in English, somewhat misleadingly, as The Art of Courtly Love, though its realistic, somewhat cynical tone suggests that it is in some measure an antidote to courtly love. [ 5 ]. Eleanor of Aquitaine was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Western Europe during the High Middle Ages . As well as being Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right, she was queen consort of France (1137–1152) and of England (1154–1189). She was the patroness of such literary figures as Wace, Benoà ®t de Sainte-Maure, and Bernart de Ventadorn. She belonged to the French House of Poitiers, the Ramnulfids. [ 6 ]. Marie of France, Countess of Champagne (1145 – March 11, 1198) was the elder daughter of Louis VII of France and his first wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. [ 8 ]. French bishop of Paris during the 13th century. He was Chancellor of the Sorbonne from 1263 and bishop of Paris fro m 1268.He is best remembered for promulgating a Condemnation of 219 philosophical and theological propositions (or articles) that addressed ideas and concepts that were being discussed and disputed in the faculty of Arts at the University of Paris. [ 9 ]. Chivalry is as much about the skills and manners of a warrior class as with a literature derived from the deeds of those warriors, but presented in an idealized fashion which returned to define the manners of the warriors. Chivalry was a collocation of qualities made into a coherent ideal: skill and courage, and a craving for glory or fame acquired through knightly skills and its necessary courage. [ 10 ]. Linda Ann Malcor Ph. D is an American scholar of Arthurian legend. She was selected as an Overseas Associate Member of the Late Antiquity Research Group.

A Comparison of the Weavers of Peace in Beowulf and Grendel :: comparison compare contrast essays

The Weavers of Peace in Beowulf and Grendel Queen Wealhtheow and Queen Hygd served as excellent role models for the courts in which they served. They exemplified the mannerisms and etiquette of the noble people. Queen Wealhtheow showed excellent poise from the very beginning of both texts. She was admirable as she passed the mead bowl around Heorot. The offering of the bowl was symbolic, being that the bowl was first given to Hrothgar and then passed to Beowulf, as if she presented him with her trust. Beowulf gave Wealhtheow his guarantee that he would be successful or die in battle. After she presented Hrothgar and Beowulf with the mead bowl she served the Scyldings, and did so as if they were her own people. She was not a Scylding, nor did she desire to be one, but she never made her unhappiness known, as described in Grendel. There is not great detail on Queen Hygd in Grendel, but from what the reader can gather from Beowulf, she is as much of a female role model as Queen Wealhtheow. She was young but very intelligent. In f act King Hygelac felt intimidated by Hygd’s intelligence. In both texts, Beowulf and Grendel, the main purpose of the Queens are to serve the courts as "weavers of peace.† In Grendel, however, Queen Wealththeow is described in much greater detail and serves a further purpose. The reader gains insight to a part Grendel that is not present in Beowulf, his desire for a human. For even though in Beowulf and Grendel, the main purpose of the queens is to serve the courts as â€Å"weavers of peace,† the queens also serve other purposes as role models, preservers of their kingdoms, emotional beings, mother figures and objects of beauty and lust. It was not unusual for women to be offered as tokens of peace within the noble courts. In the novel Grendel, Wealhtheow's brother, King of the Helmings, bestowed her to King Hrothgar to promote peace amongst the Helmings and Scyldings. "She had given, her life for those she loved. So would any simpering, eyelash batting female in her court, given the proper setup, the minimal conditions"(Grendel 102). It is ironic how she promoted peace from her arrival because she was an essential part in keeping peace, as the "weaver of peace" in both texts. Queen Wealhtheow however is not the only woman in the texts that was forsaken to encourage appeasement among feuding courts.

Independent Study in Ornithology Essay

The year is wrapping up and so is my ornithology class†¦ And now we have to evaluate a credit flex that as no scale†¦. dun dun dun. This way of grading was actually a really good idea because I can actually explain what all I did over this semester and try to have it make a bit of sense (instead of just having diagrams and babblings of bird-stuff). I’ll try my best to stay away from the dry regurgitations of facts and such, but still get the point across that I feel my project should merit an A. In all seriousness, I did put in a lot of time and effort into this course—even more so than all of my honors classes so far this year. Just the nature of this credit flex shows I really care about what I’m doing. It doesn’t make sense numbers wise for all the effort; even if I received an A+, it still lowers my GPA. I don’t need any extra science credit either. This project was mainly to demonstrate that I will take the initiative to go above and beyond what is required in order to achieve something spectacular. Okay, maybe many do not care one way or another that I pursued a credit flex and would not consider it a particularly spectacular feat, but at least I can look back proudly at all that I have accomplished over the year. The bulk of my ornithology class was actually following lecture notes from a college professor. Dan Tallman posted almost 120 pages of lecture notes broken into sections. I grouped these sections into manageable topics that all seemed related and proceeded to summarize everything that I was learning in 28 parts. This alone was a painstaking process; it was like reading a textbook and pulling out the facts from each page. If I ran across unfamiliar vocabulary or concepts, I looked them up until I understood them (unlike some students†¦ erm†¦ that just skip the stuff they don’t know and move on just to get the assignment done). Next I started familiarizing myself with the different topographies of birds. I started with the general body of a bird, then worked into the specifics of wings, beaks, legs, feet, toes, and even claws. Okay, so that’s cool. But then I actually applied what I learned to a real life example—my cockatiel—and put what I learned to use. I combined the different diagrams and types and compared them to those of my bird. Drawings can only get you so far; determining what exactly I was looking at was a great way to test what I knew! Most ornithology courses require labs along with study material. As a â€Å"lab† I dissected an owl pellet (which as I was looking through my folder, I do not think I included a copy—whoops! That is why it’s attached along with a new table of contents). As a second lab, I learned to identify species of North American birds through a quiz provided by Cornell. It showed a ten second video clip of a bird and you would have to type in its name (no multiple choice!!). Finally, as the cherry on top, I revised a report on ivory-billed woodpeckers I had done as a freshman. The freshman research project was on John Audubon and any topic that related to him; naturally, I chose a bird. I revisited the essay on this woodpecker species and expanded the research on the bird itself (instead of the man). I did not create this course as a GPA booster or to earn a class credit, but because I honestly felt I could learn something from it. This course is a lot like sports—you get out of it only what you put into it. It would have been easy to print off the lecture notes and say I read them all, etc. Instead, I spent a lot of time an effort planning and carrying out this project because it was important to me, and that is why I feel it deserves an A.

Outsourcing and Rampant Corruption

1. Should Children Be Encouraged to Think for Themselves? Should children be encouraged to think for themselves? This is one of those questions that seems to invite an immediate and emphatic, almost dismissive answer. â€Å"Of course children should be encouraged to think for themselves. We’re not raising robots, after all. What’s wrong with you? How dare you ask such a silly question! † Well, my personal defects aside, the question is far more difficult than it first appears. For one thing, we should all learn to be particularly cautious when our response to a question is too strong.The tone of an answer like the one just given is often an indicator of two rather unpleasant truths. First, the person is far less sure of his answer than he would like to be, but he covers this uncertainty over with emotional emphasis. He is scared that he might be wrong, and he doesn’t want to entertain the possibility of investigating a weak point in his thinking, so he rai ses his voice in psychological self-defense. Second, and closely related, we often become emotional in resisting ideas which expose our own flaws.We seek to deflect even our own eyes from looking at our actual practices by more loudly using our voice to proclaim our â€Å"true† values. See, no parent in America today would likely affirm the idea that children should not be encouraged to think for themselves. But a closer look at the way they treat their children would reveal the clear fact that they do not practice what they yell. Children are told to do things â€Å"because I said so,† â€Å"because I’m the parent,† or even, in a Christian home, â€Å"because God says. Personally, I think all these phrases serve the quite useful purpose of teaching a child about authority, as long as they’re not used exclusively in situations where the parents really have no idea why the thing they’re commanding is correct. Yet, even though we all know tha t children should sometimes be told to think as we do, it’s still not something we’re supposed to say out loud. So we practice wisdom privately and proclaim submission to a foolish social standard. This disconnect explains the indignant voice. â€Å"How dare you make me contemplate my inconsistency! † But this is not the entire story.Many parents, and particularly Christian ones, are scared by the idea of individual thinking. â€Å"God provides the answers in His Book, and who are you to even consider questioning them? † Well, true. But how does memorizing a set of answers cultivate the capacity to form conclusions in new situations which do not come prepackaged with ready solutions? It does not. And if we are supposed to use the brain God gave us for something, that something probably includes the art of thinking effectively for ourselves. For my own part, I think God wired children to remind us of this important developmental feature.They seem almost wi nd-up doll like in their use of the question, â€Å"Why? † And it’s plausible that one purpose of this tendency is to encourage parents to impart not merely a set of answers by rote, but also the ability to comprehend those answers and form new ones as well. But the real challenge for parents who understand both the need for honoring parental and Godly authority in good answers as well as independent thinking is obvious. What do we do when children come to self-formulated ideas which are at odds with what the Bible or we teach them?You might wish for a simple solution for this conundrum. I do not possess it. Nor, I think, does anyone else. I’ve tried their wares, and the proof is not in the intellectual pudding. It is not possible to fully affirm both a process and a result at the same time. Fair competition means you may not win. Free markets will often produce inequality. Electoral politics will often yield officials we do not prefer. And teaching a child to t hink for himself may well produce an adult who does not think like you. So here’s my encouragement.It’s tempting to just propagandize children. Tempting because we fear the real danger they may, if taught to think for themselves and ask questions, come to conclusions we abhor. But God gave them brains, and we must honor the gift as good stewards. So the key here, as with so many things, is to trust the Maker that honoring His gift will work out alright in the end. God gave children their brains. And the real question at the end of each parenting day is whether you are more interested in shaping that child in the Image of the God who made him †¦ or in your own image?Then, we must acknowledge that picking the right answer to that question will require from us more than just loud lip service to the idea that children should be encouraged to think for themselves †¦ most of the time †¦ especially when the scariest thing to imagine is the possibility that they might actually learn the lesson. 2. Essay on Corruption in India Corruption is rampant in India. It is like a cancer that is eating away at the innards of the country. Government employees are some of the most corrupt people in India.Of course not all of them are corrupt but a good percentage of them take bribes from those who approach them to get something done. One reason for this is that government employees in most states are not paid good salaries and wages remain stagnant in public sector companies for years. As the cost of living increases, people find it hard to make ends meet and they resort to corruption to make extra income. If you want to get a driving license or a ration card or a marriage certificate or a birth or death certificate, most probably you may have to grease someone’s palm in the concerned office.There is corruption in every field. Political and electoral institutions are largely responsible for India being perceived as one of the most corrupt countr ies in the world. Corruption among the police force and judiciary has serious consequences for criminals go scot – free endangering society. Corruption in the academic field means that merit is ignored and mediocrity exalted. Politicians embezzle public funds and take kickbacks. Corruption reigns even within the hallowed precincts of religious institutions. It makes a mockery of medical ethics in hospitals.The Satyam scandal blew the lid off the myth that India’s IT sector is immune to such things. In short, nothing is sacrosanct when it comes to this evil practice. If left unchecked, corruption spreads rapidly. It also makes people resigned to it and saps their will to fight it. They become pessimistic and soon they also begin to ignore the law. Corruption causes inefficiencies and diverts resources. The poor are most affected by corruption. Even PDS rations meant for the poor find their way into the open market. India’s rank slipped from 72 to 85 (out of 179 c ountries) in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.TI is the global barometer of corruption. In India, corruption exists in the form of bribes, tax evasion and exchange controls, embezzlement, etc. Corruption has many economic consequences. It causes great loss to the exchequer, creates an unhealthy climate for investment and increases the cost of government-subsidized services. It is not very easy to do business in India. Compared to China and other prosperous Asian nations, the average time taken to secure the clearances for a startup or to invoke bankruptcy is much greater in India.Recently, the Right to Information Act was enacted by the UPA government. A UN development report termed it the most progressive legislation in the developed world. This Act has enabled the public to demand accountability from government institutions regarding processes. But the power of the Act has not been fully utilized because of low awareness. One way to diminish corrupt ion would be to increase pay scales of lower grade government employees. Also, there should be a carrot and stick policy to reward efficient people and punish corrupt ones.Increased transparency and vigilance is the need of the hour. 3. Impact of Corruption on India's Policy The Impact of Corruption on India's Policy and Administrative Service over the last 25 years Assessing the impact of corruption on India's polity and administrative service over the last quarter century has enabled me to gauge the progress made by India's politicians in tackling one of the country's biggest problems. In analyzing the impact of corruption on India's polity over the last 25 years, I highlight corrupt practices by Indian governments during the time-frame in question.I conjecture that the problem of corruption in India's polity is a ubiquitous one, and that corruption has carved out a niche in India's polity. Additionally, I elicit the criminalization of India's politicians by discussing the impact that money has on the functioning of contemporary Indian democracy. I also link corruption in India's polity with increasing levels of corruption in the country's private sector. I use this to conjecture that the usurpation of the country's economic wealth by a privileged minority is part of a corrupt businessman-politician nexus, which is detrimental to Indian society.I gauge the impact of corruption on India's administrative service by incorporating the views of several Indian and international experts. These opinions collate to describe the ineptitude of India's bloated administrative service, providing explanations for the service's inefficiency. My research highlights the impact that corruption has brought to bear â€Å"nepotism among administrative officials, a â€Å"license-permit-quota Raj's system and professional ineptitude† on India's administrative service. Finally, I linked corruption in India's bureaucracy with the country's underachieving economy.While much of the essay is critical of India's politicians, I juxtapose criticisms of India's politicians with corrective measures being undertaken in my conclusion. In doing so, the reader is left to decide whether or not India is any closer to dealing with the issue of corruption within its polity and administrative service, and whether India's aspirations of being an economically developed country can ever be realised. Independent India's Chequered Beginning In a charismatic speech delivered to India's Constituent Assembly on the eve of the country's independence, Jawaharlal Nehru proclaimed ? A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation long suppressed finds utterance† . On 15 August 1947, Indian citizens were, for the first time, given the opportunity to independently chart the course their lives would take. While India made remarkable strides during the formative years of its independence towards achieving societal equity, political turmoil enveloped the country following Indira Gandhi's declaration of a state of emergency in 1975 .In many respects, that event marked a shift in the development of India's democratic institutions. Over the last 25 years, there has been a sharp decline in the public conduct and moral values of India's politicians. Interestingly, the rise in the levels of corruption among India's decision makers has been juxtaposed by the country's rapid economic growth. Over the last 23 years, India's economy has grown at an average rate of six percent per annum, making it one of the world's fastest growing economies .Unfortunately, ubiquitous corruption among members of India's business community has prevented the percolation of India's newfound economic wealth to the common man. Consequently, India's recent economic successes have had a minimal impact on the lives of the millions of Indians living below the poverty line. The evident gap between the ha ves and have-nots in Indian society will be discussed in this essay. The usurping of India's economic wealth by a select few has been further exacerbated by the incompetence and corrupt nature of India's administrative service.For India to have realistic aspirations of becoming an economically developed nation, it is imperative for the country to have a fully functional, transparent civil service. Despite the negative impacts of corruption on India's polity and administrative service, the country has made significant progress towards becoming a fully fledged democracy. With the world's largest electorate, the Indian Republic has successfully conducted 14 general elections , all of which have been found to be free and fair, predicating compliance with international standards.An independent judiciary has ensured that India's democratic constitution has been upheld and that the fundamental rights of Indian citizens have been maintained. An apolitical, independent media has brought corr upt malpractices by Indian government officials and business leaders to the public's attention, ensuring that a certain degree of accountability is maintained. More importantly, the division of power between the civilian government, judiciary and the armed forces has been consistently adhered to throughout independent India's history.While democratic constitutions were drafted in Bangladesh, Burma and Pakistan, they were all nullified by military takeovers. The highest echelons of India's armed forces have ensured that the army's role has been limited to substantiating, and not over-shadowing, the civilian administration's functioning. Additionally, the responsiveness and vitality of India's 600 million-strong electorate cannot be underestimated; the resounding 1977 election defeat of Indira Gandhi's Congress (I) Party and the 2004 election defeat of A. B.Vajpayee's National Democratic Alliance are two such cases in point. On both occasions, the incumbent governments† aspirati ons of securing a further five year mandate from the Indian electorate were dashed. Their deluded impressions were nullified by effective opposition campaigning, who, by promising to address the issues that directly affected the common Indian, scored upset victories. While there are several positive aspects of India's democracy, intrinsic problems remain. Apart from rampant corruption in many aspects of India's public administration, stark economic disparities persist.There are, in many respects, two Indias; one made up of 300 million educated, affluent middle- and upper-class Indians, and another with 800 million economically deprived and socially shunned people, still awaiting their share of India's economic prosperity. Almost 60 years after independence, the perpetuation of such a discernible gap between the rich and poor is indicative of the lack of progression in the lives of many ordinary Indians. Such a clear economic differentiation between Indians is a direct result of the endemic corruption that has firmly taken root in India's polity and administrative service during the last 25 years.The Plague of Corruption Besetting India's Polity Of the 159 countries surveyed, the NGO â€Å"Transparency International† found India to be the world's 88th most corrupt country in its 2005 â€Å"Corruption Perceptions Index† . The survey, relying on work carried out by reputable research institutions, gauges the degree to which corruption is believed to influence a country's polity (i. e. its governmental administration). It is notable that lesser developed countries like Rwanda and Burkina Faso have a higher CPI ranking than India's, despite having considerably lower standards of living and healthcare .The alarmingly high level of corruption in India's polity juxtaposes the fact that India is among the world's most rapidly emerging industrializing nations . Despite being the world's most populous democracy , corruption is a major problem among India's politicians. Over the last quarter century, this problem has been worsened by the increased criminalization of India's polity and the inability of India's political leaders to convert good intentions into effective legislation.This has resulted in a lack of accountability among India's legislative bodies. The ubiquitous problem of corruption among the highest echelons of India's polity was first brought to the public's attention by N. C. Vittal, India's Central Vigilance Commissioner from 1998 to 2002 . By publishing the names of 85 IAS (Indian Administrative Service) officers who were charged with corruption on his commission's website in 2000 , Vittal did more to highlight the issue of corruption in India than any public sector employee before him.His findings only helped highlight the reality that modern-day Indian politics has undergone a paradigm shift from what it was like even 25 years ago. The rapid industrialization of India's economy in the intervening time period predicat es that politicians stand to gain much more from their positions of influence than ever before, effectively heightening the stakes for election to political office. This has made today's Indian parliamentary elections exercises in monetary power, where the winning candidate is ostensibly the wealthiest one.While the Indian Election Commission recommends that a maximum of 150,000 Indian Rupees be spent by candidates contesting for a seat in the Lok Sabha (India's Lower House of Parliament), candidates have been known to spend upwards of 20,000,000 Rupees on election campaigns . This effectively decimates the level playing-field over which elections in a democracy should be contested; the absence of a cap on the amount that can be spent during election campaigns hands wealthier candidates an unfair dvantage over their opponents. Over the last 25 years, this added dimension to the contesting of Indian elections has resulted in the increased criminalization of India's polity. This worry ing trend was directly addressed by India's then-Prime Minister I. K. Gujral on the country's fiftieth Independence Day. He conceded that corruption was ?  °?  ­eating into the vitals of the country† , and he drew people's attention to ?  °The nexus between the corrupt and politics† as ?  °?  ­criminals are entering politics† .By juxtaposing the incumbent Indian cabinet with Rajiv Gandhi's at the time of his December 1984 election victory, the criminalization of India's polity can be elicited. Gandhi, forced into national politics by his mother, Indira, after the death of his brother Sanjay in a 1980 air-crash , donned the mantle of Prime Minister with a cabinet manned by respected statesmen, many of whom were stalwarts of his assassinated mother . Conversely, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh currently presides over a cabinet that counts six convicted criminals with charges of murder, rape, arson and embezzlement against them among its ranks.In 1984, public accountability would have rendered such an occurrence unthinkable. However, the financial clout that these criminals wield has accommodated their inclusion in India's cabinet. This effective criminalisation of the country's highest civilian decision-making body makes a mockery of Indian democracy; instead of being served by astute decision makers, Indian citizens are being governed by its most influential citizens, many of whom have clearly used illicit means to command such influence.The criminalisation of India's polity does not bode well for future generations of Indian citizens. While every Indian Prime Minister in the last 25 years has been cognizant of the threat posed by corruption, no one has passed effective legislation designed to tackle it. When asked to assess the risk posed by corruption to India's polity, Indira Gandhi dismissively countered that ?  °Corruption is a global phenomenon† . Her non-committal remark encapsulates the attention paid by her administrat ion towards thwarting corrupt practices.Her son, Rajiv, inherited a polity ridden with corruption, compounded by an ever-expanding bureaucracy that had become a â€Å"Committed civil service† during his mother's tenure. His desire to rectify India's corrupt polity was clear within a year of his tenure; in December 1985 he addressed the dangerous levels of corruption in India when he remarked ?  °Corruption is not only tolerated but even regarded as the hallmark of leadership. Flagrant contradiction between what we say and what we do has become our way of life. At every stage our private self crushes our social commitment† .Coming to power with an overwhelming majority in parliament , passing legislation designed to address the issue of corruption would not have been difficult for him to do. Unfortunately, his efforts were diverted by other matters of state, like the economy. His sobriquet of being â€Å"Mr. Clean† proved ironic; his reputation was significantly tainted by the A. E. Bofors Scandal . His failure to explain away the allegations of corruption levied against him proved to be the deciding factor in his 1989 election loss to V. P. Singh .During the 1990's, India had six Prime Ministers . Apart from P. V. Narasimha Rao, none served their full terms, and all led coalition governments. Predictably, the over-accommodating nature of their governments effectively disallowed them from tackling the omnipresent threat posed by corruption to India's polity. While Rao Prime Minister from 1991 to 1996 is best remembered for ushering in a series of economic reforms that sparked the liberalisation of India's economy, allegations of corruption enveloped his administration, eventually implicating him.By adopting a passive stance towards tackling corruption, Indian governments have failed to rectify one of the most formidable problems confronting India's democracy. Their lackadaisical attitude has dampened the impact of India's economic growth on the country's living standards. While India's economy has grown at a rapid rate over the last ten years, the fruits of this economic prosperity have not accrued to the common man, and are instead being enjoyed by a privileged minority.An effective measure of ascertaining the extent to which economic prosperity has dissipated through society is to consider a country's gross domestic product per capita . India's G. D. P. per capita is lower than Pakistan's, and almost half that of China's . A significant factor contributing to this anomaly is prevalent corruption among the highest levels of India's business community, which aids and abets corruption among India's politicians. Corruption in India's economy has undermined attempts made to upgrade the country's infrastructure.Long-term economic growth can only be sustained by having a developed infrastructural system in place, capable of maintaining increased trade. Despite the allocation of substantial amounts of money for road devel opment, India's road network continues to be underdeveloped . Moreover, India's ports, vital for the exporting and importing of goods from the country, are inefficient . The same can be said of the country's airports. These infrastructural problems point to a lack of forethought and planning by India's bureaucrats. As will be discussed, the burgeoning size of India's bureaucracy ogether with the ineptitude of the country's bureaucrats has resulted in a laborious decision-making process. Corruption and inefficiency are significant obstacles inhibiting India's attempts to realise its full economic potential. In a 2006 review conducted by the Hong-Kong think-tank ?  °Political and Economic Risk Consultancy†, international businessmen surveyed felt that corruption in India's private sector was a â€Å"major concern† . Moreover, they felt that corruption was â€Å"an average-sized deterrent†, dissuading them from investing in India .This reinforces a warning issued in a 2000 Indian Supreme Court ruling, which stated that, if unchecked, corruption could cause India's â€Å"socio-economic-political system† to disintegrate . To ensure that the rapid advances being made by India's economy are sustained and that national wealth is equally distributed among all sectors of society, it is imperative for corruption in the Indian economy to be effectively dealt with. Measures should be taken to ensure that government funds set aside for public works are not misallocated.By Rajiv Gandhi's own admission, only 15% of all government aid allotted to welfare programs reached the people the money was intended to assist . Two inferences can be drawn from this: a majority of government money is siphoned away by officials, and corruption in India's polity has been perpetuated over a considerable period of time. The corruption in India's polity can only be addressed by passing legislation that reinforces value codes among Indian politicians. Indian lawmaker s can empirically draft legislation, prescribing â€Å"Codes of Conduct† for Ministers and Members of Parliament.By holding them accountable to national legislation, more credibility will be brought towards the Indian government's fight against corruption in the polity. Additionally, seeking assistance from countries that top Global Anti-Corruption Indices can help Indian whistle-blowers incorporate international expertise in resolving the problem they confront. India's Distended Bureaucracy: A White Elephant The inability of independent India's leaders to modify the county's pre-Independence administrative system proved to be significant in the perpetuation of corruption within India's bureaucracy.While colonial India's administrative system was effective in carrying out the functions of the British Raj collecting taxes, maintaining law and order and upholding the status quo it was unable to modify itself into carrying out the task of serving, rather than subjugating indepen dent India's citizenry. While India was still newly independent, officers from the Indian Civil Service (later modified to the Indian Administrative Service) capably led India's bureaucracy, efficiently carrying out the tasks assigned to them by government.Regrettably, the last 25 years have witnessed an ebbing away in the calibre of India's administrative officers. Rampant corruption among Indian bureaucrats and the politicisation of the Civil Service has significantly contributed towards this demur, creating a situation where India's bureaucracy has become a â€Å"White Elephant†, wielding enough clout for politicians to refrain from reforming it. In 1998, the Hong-Kong think-tank ?  °Political and Economic Risk Consultancy† rated India's bureaucracy as being among the most corrupt in Asia .Several factors substantiate this assessment. The rapid rise of India's economy has led to a huge inflow of foreign investment, with an increasing number of foreign firms competi ng for permits to set up businesses in India. This increased competition for limited vacancies widens the scope for corrupt practises to occur. Moreover, the number of people working in the Indian Administrative Service has risen exponentially since independence from 1,440,000 employees to 3,870,000 today . Understandably, this substantial increase in the workforce has led to greater levels of red-tape.To undercut this inefficiency, many individuals and private companies have resorted to bribery. The extortionate nature of India's bureaucrats has been compounded by the politicisation of the I. A. S. While induction into the Service was entirely meritocratic at the time of its inception, corruption now plays a significant role in the selection of candidates. Recently, serious infringements in the morality of I. A. S. officers have been brought to the public's attention with cases of corruption in the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Nagaland and Maharashtra . These isolated incidents reinforce a orrying trend. The politicisation of the service has, among other things, resulted in the delegation of power to individuals who may not be the most adept in handling the responsibility delegated to them. On India's Independence Day, Dr. S. Radhakrishnan warned that ?  °?  ­when power outstrips ability, we will fall on evil days† . In many cases, the power being designated to Indian bureaucrats far out-strips their administrative ability. Like the corruption in India's polity, rampant corruption in India's bureaucracy threatens to undermine the societal workings of the country in years to come.The bloated size of India's bureaucracy is another matter needing urgent attention. With over 3,870,000 employees , it is only natural for nepotism to take root between officials at different rungs of seniority. India's Deputy Prime Minister at the time of independence, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel , specifically cautioned against the politicisation of the civil service. In a letter dated 15 October, 1948, he warned that ?  °The Service must be above party and we should ensure that political considerations, either in its recruitment or in its discipline and control, are reduced to the minimum, if not eliminated altogether† .The idea of gaining promotion in the service through underhand means was perpetuated during the last years of Indira Gandhi's tenure, some 25 years ago . As is mentioned by Madhav Godhbole, Home Secretary during Mrs. Gandhi's Prime Minister-ship, ?  °A new breed of civil servants who were ambitious and wanted to go places fast, quickly came into prominence. â€Å"Be committed (to the ruling political party) or get omitted† was the slogan of the rat race† . While Mrs. Gandhi strenuously denied these allegations , this shift in the mindset of Indian bureacrats marked a significant turning point in the affiliations of Indian civil servants.Instead of serving India's citizenry, ambitious civil servants began servin g the interests of the ruling party to win promotion. The rot within India's bureaucracy can be traced back to Mrs. Gandhi's tenure 25 years ago. In arriving at possible solutions for resolving the rampant corruption among India's bureaucrats, the present situation must be carefully considered. The current salaries being awarded to India's politicians and bureaucrats are a pittance when compared with the salaries being awarded to their counterparts internationally .By awarding salaries to government employees that are far below what is required to survive, Indian legislators are effectively compelling members of the civil service to seek alternative ways of making money. It is therefore only natural for them to forge illicit ties with opportunistic individuals. This is an internecine relationship; the bureacrats† ability to provide good governance is inhibited by their ulterior commitments to individuals, while the polity as a whole is at a loss as it is not being efficiently served by its administrative service.Therefore, any meaningful attempt to thwart corruption in India's bureaucracy must begin by appointing a Pay Commission with the mandate of adjusting the pay scales of India's civil servants in accordance with international standards. In many East Asian countries, the policy of awarding government employees high salaries has led to an increased level of integrity among the countries† administrators . To begin fighting an effective battle against corruption in the bureaucracy, India must follow their lead. India's independence leaders were mindful of the task assigned to them at the time of independence.During his 15 August 1947 address to India's Constituent Assembly, Jawaharlal Nehru reminded his audience that ?  °Freedom and power bring responsibility† . Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, who later became India's President, talked along similar lines when he reminded Indians that ?  °A free India will be judged by the way in which it will se rve the interests of the common man† . During the last 25 years, an increase in corrupt practices by India's politicians, administrative officials and business leaders has created a situation wherein India is no longer fulfilling its full potential.Corruption in India has transcended the simple giving and receiving of bribes; it has become a part of the psyche of many people engaged in governance and business. As was mentioned in an editorial in India's â€Å"Economic Times† newspaper dated 11 March 1998, ?  °This ideology (of corruption)?  ­will have to be reshaped†, ?  °before radical changes can be implemented† . In contemporary India, the interests of the common man are no longer being met, as was alluded to by the aforementioned 2000 ruling of India's Supreme Court.Inter alia, the ruling forewarned that ?  °Corruption in a civilised society is a disease like cancer which, if not detected in time, is sure to render malignant the polity of the cou ntry (India), leading to disastrous consequences† . It is not impossible for India to rid itself off corruption. There have been historical precedents for Indians to draw inspiration from; eighteenth century Great Britain was ?  °notoriously corrupt†, but over a 50-year period metamorphosed into ?  °a regime of extraordinary public probity† .This remarkable turnaround was achieved by undertaking several reforms, including the instating of a meritocratic administrative service and the implementation of legislation guarding against corrupt practices . Though Indian politicians have many potentially effective ideas to combat corruption, they lack the political conviction necessary to covert their proposals into reality. Over the last 25 years, numerous commissions have been set up by Indian governments to assess the threat posed by corruption and to map a way forward. By many accounts, corrective measures are already being taken.Between 2005 and 2006, the think-ta nk ?  °Political and Economic Risk Consultancy† reported that the level of corruption in India had substantially decreased, from a rating of 8. 63 to 6. 76 on a scale of ten . This is the most significant fall in India's corruption rating over the last decade, and if this is anything to go by, steps in the right direction are already being taken. Apart from the aforementioned proposals put forth to combat corruption in India's polity and administrative service, another tool useful in furthering India's battle against corruption is public accountability.During the last two decades, public accountability has steadily eroded, with fewer cases of corruption against government officials being levied in courts. Furthermore, logistical problems have resulted in a massive backlogging of legal cases, causing major delays in bringing cases to court . To better ensure accountability, measures should be taken to rectify this. In the words of P. V. Srivastava, ?  °an adequately paid po litical class which is honest and independent and which is thus capable of providing clean, efficient and pro-people governance to the country (India)† will resolve India's corruption problem.However, it is important to bear in mind that, in spite of losing the incentive to be corrupt, some people continue to engage in dishonest practices. Public liability is the only viable solution for bringing such people to book for their actions. As Kofi Annan once commented; ?  °We have the means and the capacity to deal with our problems, if only we can find the political will† . The political will of Indian politicians has been in short supply over the last 25 years; yet it is the only impediment standing between India overhauling the corruption within its polity and dministrative service. 4. Outsourcing WHAT IS OUTSOURCING? The idea of outsourcing has its roots in the ‘competitive advantage' theory propagated by Adam Smith in his book ‘The Wealth of Nations' which was published in 1776. Over the years, the meaning of the term ‘outsourcing' has undergone a sea change. What started off as the shifting of manufacturing to countries providing cheap labour during the Industrial Revolution, has taken on a new connotation in today's scenario.In a world where IT has become the backbone of businesses worldwide, ‘outsourcing' is the process through which one company hands over part of its work to another company, making it responsible for the design and implementation of the business process under strict guidelines regarding requirements and specifications from the outsourcing company. The key to this definition is the aspect of transfer of control. This definition differentiates outsourcing from business relationships in which the buyer retains control of the process or, in other words, tells the supplier how to do the work.It is the transfer of ownership that defines outsourcing and often makes it such a challenging, painful process. In o utsourcing, the buyer does not instruct the supplier how to perform its task but, instead, focuses on communicating what results it wants to buy; it leaves the process of accomplishing those results to the supplier. There are two principal types of outsourcing: 1. Traditional outsourcing: – In â€Å"traditional† outsourcing, employees of an enterprise cease to perform the same jobs to the enterprise. Rather, tasks are identified that need to be performed, and the employees are normally hired by the service provider.For example, an information technology outsourcing may include a transfer of responsibility for management of data centers and networks (LAN, WAN, and telecommunications). In the field of facilities management, individuals acting as property managers might become employees of a facilities management company. 2. Greenfield outsourcing: – In â€Å"greenfield† outsourcing, the enterprise changes its business processes without any hiring of personn el by the service provider. For example, the enterprise might hire a startup company to provide a new service, such as wireless remote computing, that was not previously managed internally.This brings us to the areas of outsourcing. Outsourcing takes place in the following three main fields: * Business Process Outsourcing: – It aims at providing optimal performance in critical enterprise processes. It provides industry-specific as well as cross-industry solutions, enabling clients to focus on core competencies and move to a higher level of performance. * Application Outsourcing: – This aims at applications development, management and maintenance services that complement strategic goals and produce measurable business value.This could also encompass innovation that enables the clients to achieve high performance. * Infrastructure Outsourcing: – Our professionals collaborate with forward-thinking organizations to create low-cost, high-value solutions for the entir e enterprise. Accenture Infrastructure Outsourcing (IO) enables companies to transform business-critical applications and processes and achieve high performance. WHAT IS BUSINESS PROCESS OUTSOURCING? The BPO handles the outsourced project in a four-fold manner. * It invites companies to outsource to it by advertising its manpower efficiency and its technological advantage. The next step is achieving the desired results. The company generally has a prescribed set of SLAs (Service Level Agreements) that it has to meet. * Then it needs to assure clients that they would be able to deliver the desired results with utmost security, since a loss of data could lead to grave consequences for the parent company. * The final stage is the result stage. You deliver the results that lead to quality output at cheap rates, thus benefiting the parent company. The services offered by a BPO range from voice based processes to non-voice based processes.The non-voice based processes are termed as back o ffices wherein computations and data feeding and processing takes place. WHY OUTSOURCE? Rapidly changing and increasingly complex business forces are bringing fundamental shifts in management and organization. The steady advance of technology, the complexity of business operations and the need for constant growth are conditions that require core competence in too many functional areas. This business climate demands that companies adapt to keep up with the changes. The benefits of outsourcing of course are variable, dependent upon the nature and situation of the organization.However, the following is a list of common reasons why outsourcing is undertaken: * To improve business focus: Outsourcing lets a company focus on broader business issues while having details assumed by an outside experts. * Free management from day-to-day operations oversight * Access to world-class capabilities: By the very nature of their specialization, outsourcing providers bring extensive worldwide resource s to meeting the needs of their customers * Redirection of resources: Every organization has limits on the resources available to it.Outsourcing permits an organization to redirect its resources from non-core activities toward activities that have greater return in serving the customer. * As business practices continue to change and evolve within organizations looking to remain competitive, the nature of outsourcing is undergoing a transformation in both its use and its impact. * Lower costs due to economies of scale * Ability to concentrate on core functions * Greater flexibility and ability to define the requisite service more readily * Specific supplier benefits. For example, better security, continuity, etc. Higher quality service due to focus of the supplier * Improved internal management disciplines resulting from the exercise itself * Less dependency upon internal resources * Control of budget * Faster setup of the function or service * Lower ongoing investment required in in ternal infrastructure * Greater ability to control delivery dates (e. g. : via penalty clauses) * Lack of internal expertise * Increase flexibility to meet changing business conditions * Purchase of industry best practice * Improve risk management * Acquire innovative ideas * Increase commitment and energy in non-core areas Improve credibility and image by associating with superior providers * Generate cash by transferring assets to the provider * Gain market access and business opportunities through the supplier’s network * Turn fixed costs into variable costs ADVENT OF THE BPO INDUSTRY IN INDIA: Since the onset of globalization in India during the early 1990s, successive Indian governments have pursued programs of economic reform committed to liberalization and privatization. Till 1994, the Indian telecom sector was under direct governmental control and the state owned units enjoyed a monopoly in the market.In 1994, the government announced a policy under which the sector w as liberalized and private participation was encouraged. The New Telecom Policy of 1999 brought in further changes with the introduction of IP telephony and ended the state monopoly on international calling facilities. This brought about a drastic reduction and this heralded the golden era for the ITES/BPO industry and ushered in a slew of inbound/outbound call centers and data processing centers. Although the IT industry in India has existed since the early 1980s, it was the early and mid 1990s that saw the emergence of outsourcing.One of the first outsourced services was medical transcription, but outsourcing of business processes like data processing, billing, and customer support began towards the end of the 1990s when MNCs established wholly owned subsidiaries, which catered to the process off-shoring requirements of their parent companies. Some of the earliest players in the Indian market were American Express, GE Capital and British Airways. The ITES or BPO industry is a youn g and nascent sector in India and has been in existence for a little more than five years.Despite its recent arrival on the Indian scene, the industry has grown phenomenally and has now become a very important part of the export-oriented IT software and services environment. It initially began as an activity confined to multinational companies, but today it has developed into a broad based business platform backed by leading Indian IT software and services organizations and other third party service providers. The ITES/BPO market expanded its base with the entry of Indian IT companies and the ITES market of the present day is characterized by the existence of these IT giants who re able to leverage their broad skill-sets and global clientele to offer a wide spectrum of services. The spectrum of services offered by Indian companies has evolved substantially from its humble beginnings. Today, Indian companies are offering a variety of outsourced services ranging from customer care, tr anscription, billing services and database marketing, to Web sales/marketing, accounting, tax processing, transaction document management, telesales/telemarketing, HR hiring and biotech research.DEMAND-SUPPLY ANALYSIS OF THE INDUSTRY W. R. T. INDIA WHY INDIA? Robust communication infrastructure, a large English-speaking workforce, low labor costs, appropriate time-zone difference with the West and the brand equity built by the software services sector are compelling reasons for choosing India as the BPO destination. To top it all a friendly tax structure places the ITES/BPO industry on par with IT services companies.Further outsourcing to India offers significant improvements in quality and productivity for overseas companies on crucial parameters such as number of correct transactions/number of total transactions; total satisfaction factor; number of transactions/hour and average speed of answer. Some of the other key benefits of outsourcing from India are enlisted below: * Access to leading practices: external service providers give companies access to an extensive, highly specialized knowledge base–which providers must improve continuously to stay in business. Clearer strategic focus: allows a manager to focus on core competencies and strategic issues rather than on routine, time-consuming activities * Better resource allocation: can help shift the traditional focus from transactional activities and reporting to the delivery of forward-looking information and value-added business analysis. * Improving service quality and productivity. Fast turnaround times and the ability to offer 24Ãâ€"7 services based on the country's unique geographic location that allows for leveraging time zone differences. Improve performance–maximize the performance of an organization's enterprise client/server computing environment through the use of the latest technology and an outsourcer's performance management tools and expertise * Achieving cost effectiveness as well as cost Reductions * Significant cost savings, up to 80% in certain cases. * While it can be quite difficult to recruit the expected competence in Western countries, it is a completely different scenario in India, where there are lots of available programmers with a good academic background. Abundant, skilled, English-speaking manpower, which is being harnessed even by ITES hubs such as Singapore and Ireland. * Improving telecom and other infrastructure, which is at par with global standards. * Strong quality orientation among players and their focus on measuring and monitoring quality targets. * Proactive and positive policy environment, which encourages ITES/BPO investments and simplifies rules and procedures. DEMAND FOR BPOs – PRICE DETERMINANTS The Law of demand states that â€Å"higher the price, lower the demand† and vice-versa, other things remaining constant.This concept is well illustrated in the BPO industry. Since the employee costs are higher in nation s like the US and the UK, they are looker towards fresher pastures to cut costs. The breakup of a fictitious company’s expenses is given as follows. The overheads amount to around 17. 7%, the facility maintenance is around 5. 7%, the technical and telecommunication is the major expense commanding around 47. 5% while employee costs in terms of salaries and employee benefits brings up the year with 29. 2%. Now by outsourcing to an Indian firm they cut costs to the magnitude of almost 75% on employee costs.The main drawback though is the fact that they tend to lose around 35 – 40% in terms of technical development and telecommunication costs. But technical development is a one-time investment and the rest is more than offset by the savings on employee costs. To make matters better the international bandwidth situation has improved dramatically over the last 3 years with the launch of India's first private undersea cable. Moreover, considerable bandwidth is also available to companies through state owned Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited – VSNL.It has strategic stakes and has negotiated contracts to use parts of several international cables like SEA-ME-WE II, SEA-ME-WE III (40 GBPS capacity), FLAG (10 GBPS capacity) and SAFE (40 GBPS capacity) offering connectivity to most locations around the world. Other private operators in India also have aggressive plans to build undersea cable with considerable bandwidth over the next 2-3 years. Besides, the privatization of NLD operations within India has resulted in the emergence of new players. The privatization of the telecom Industry has resulted in significant drop in telecom rates.Continuing competition in the industry with the recent entry of newer players will see a further drop in telecom prices. As a result, the telecom costs have dropped by 85% in 3 years. This has led to decreased expenditure by the international firms that have outsourced to India. A, B and C are points upon the demand curve (de mand for cheap labour available in India). Each point upon the curve reflects a direct correlation between quantity demanded (Q) and price (P). So, at point A, the quantity demanded will be Q1 and the price will be P1, and so on.The demand relationship curve illustrates the negative relationship between price and quantity demanded. The higher the price the less the quantity demanded (A), and the lower the price, the more quantity will be demanded (C). This graph further highlights the reason as to why companies are looking forward to outsourcing their processes. The reasons underlying law of demand can be explained as follows: * Income effect: Fall in expenditure on employee costs is equal to an increase in the profits earned by the company as it now spends less in getting the same amount of work done. Substitution effect: Further when the total manufacturing costs drop price of commodity falls, the consumer buys more of this commodity as compared to other commodities, which are mor e expensive. NON-PRICE DETERMINANTS OF DEMAND The major non-price determinant in this case is the backlash against outsourcing or off shoring by the general American public. This is further supported by the political scenario and changing government policies and strategies. Despite these two factors being strong detractors for trade, the price payoff seems to continue to lure the big companies to outsource.It is business logic that will drive the growth in the sector. One final but major detractor after the public backlash is the issue of data security, which might be projected as a hindrance to the flow of free trade between the two nations. SUPPLY OF LABOUR TO BPOs – PRICE DETERMINANTS Supply represents how much the market can offer. The quantity supplied refers to the amount of a certain good producers are willing to supply when receiving a certain price. The correlation between price and how much of a good or service is supplied into the market is known as the supply rela tionship. Price therefore, is a reflection of supply and demand.The law of supply demonstrates the quantities that will be sold at a certain price. Opposite to the demand relationship, the supply relationship shows an upward slope. This means that the higher the price, the higher the quantity supplied. Producers supply more at a higher price because selling a higher quantity at a higher price offers greater revenues. A, B and C are points upon the supply curve (the supply here is of skilled labour, which may be cheap by US and UK standards but is profitable by Indian standards). Each point upon the curve reflects a direct correlation between quantity supplied (Q) and price (P).So, at point B, the quantity supplied will be Q2 and the price will be P2, and so on. A major factor affecting the supply curve is cost of production. The cost of production in India, where production would refer to tasks ranging from telemarketing to mere data entry, are low due to the availability of extreme ly cheap but skilled labour compared to the labour in the US. This is profitable for Indian companies as they can earn large profits despite paying god salaries to employees and so these producers undertake these processes on a large-scale.EFFECT OF SUBSTITUTES In the case of outsourcing, substitutes are of two types. The first type comprises of service providers from the same country, while the second type makes up the other countries to which processes can be outsourced. Service providers within the country that are real successful are enlisted below. Each of them specializes in single or a range of processes. * Wipro Spectramind * Daksh eServices * Office Tiger * HCL Technologies * ICICI OneSource * World Network * Exl Service. com * MsourcE * Hinduja TMT * Tracmail * ProgeonThree years since, Office Tiger is the fifth-largest third-party BPO Company in India with revenues over $25million. It has 1000 employees in two facilities. Two more Office Tiger centers will go live by the fourth quarter of2003. Besides office documentation, it now offers services as specialized as business research for the banking industry and analytics to its 20 clients in the US and Europe. Most industry observers believe the Indian BPO industry is headed skywards. A research director (off-shore BPO), Gartner India said, â€Å"India will soon have nearly a dozen $100-million third-party BPO companies.In the next 18-24 months, there will be 8 to 10 third-party operators with revenues in excess of $100 million. This is not too difficult to assess considering the over 70% growth of these players†. The $100-million mark is crucial for two reasons: First, it gives the companies a critical mass to fight multinationals like EDS, Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), Accenture and Exult Inc. Second, it gives the prospective client enough confidence to trust them with larger contracts. Of course, business is still not pouring in, but Indian companies are beginning to graduate from $2- 4 million contracts to tens-of-millions contracts.Early this year, HCL Technologies (HCLT) BPO Services bagged the biggest-ever third-party BPO deal among Indian firms – a five-year contract from British Telecom (BT) worth $160 million. Add to that an existing contract of $15 million from BT’s Belfast unit and HCLT BPO has assured revenue of $175 million over the next five years. That’s $35 million a year from just one client. It has 23 more. Among others who are projected to pull through to the $100-million club by March 2005 are the $30-million Daksh eServices, the $41-million Wipro Spectramind and the $35-million World Network Services (WNS).Daksh has projected a revenue increase of 85-90% by March 2004 on the basis of ramp-up of its current projects from nine clients and Wipro Spectramind, India’s largest BPO Company could be there in the next 12 months based on just organic growth. Others who could hit the $50-million mark are the $20-million MsourcE and the $29-million exl Service. com. Given their current growth rates, even their targets seem well within reach. For instance, exl, which started as a Conseco (US-based insurance company), promoted venture with 95% of the work coming from the arent, now does barely 7% of Conseco work. If all these companies hit $100 million by 2005, they would have outdone their better known cousins-the IT services companies. The other type of substitution is in terms of countries other than India. They are given below with their advantages and disadvantages mentioned alongside. ECONOMIES OF SCALE When there are economies of scale, manufacturing costs per unit decline as a firm produces more of a product. Declining unit costs enable firms to earn excess profits the larger their scale of output.This creates a tendency toward concentration and imperfect competition: normally there are few producers, each one an oligopolist or monopolist, with profits commensurate to their scale of production and th e number of competitors in the market. Economies of scale are important to the political economy of trade because trade enlarges the available market, which affects plant size. For example, trade encourages firms to expand production runs, increase capacity utilization, rationalize production facilities, and pursue mergers and acquisitions.Business Process Outsourcing is generally categorized as being transactional, niche, or comprehensive. Transactions are generally sub-processes such as account payables, account receivables, journal, general ledger, order processing, medical transcription, etc. Niche support moves up to support a complete business process by specialized business services providers such as accounting, human resources, etc. Comprehensive usually thoroughly covers multiple business processes by one of the large Business Services Providers (BSPs). Business Process Outsourcing since its inception has been the turf of large business clients.Small, and many medium sized businesses do not have the staff required to develop, negotiate, and manage the contracts, service level agreements, and other overhead associated with doing business with the large Business Services Providers (BSP). As a result, business process outsourcing has been practically unavailable to small and some medium sized businesses. Major problems faced by small service vendors are: * Reckless Start-ups- a vast majority of the 310 start-ups are headed for a dead-end. Their capacity utilization is less than one of the three shifts.Many of these companies that converted their empty basements and warehouses into BPO units or firms with $10 million-20 million VC funds that ran out of cash without creating anything more than white elephants. They have driven down prices to grab business, but have failed to deliver. They were always clueless about people, processes or technologies- the three key elements of the BPO business. * Poor Infrastructure- the industry has more to worry about than just reckless start-ups. Primary among those is infrastructure. While telecom networks are state of the art, getting a connection still takes up to three months.Unreliable power supply is forcing units to create their own back-ups, which they can barely afford. Roads are bad and airports are in dire need of repairs and upgrades. * High Attrition-another major problem is the high attrition and growth aspirations of the workforce. At least 60,000 of the 171,000 workforce change jobs every year. About 80% of them look for better leaders. Team leaders want to upgrade to supervisors, quality professionals or operations heads. The HR problem threatens to soon become grave. Good agents are becoming hard to find and with tardy infrastructure, big moves to the much talked about smaller towns will take longer.This means costs will rise making it difficult for small VC-funded companies to survive. The big service vendors thus highlighting the economies of scale face neither of these problems. But then as the size of the company keeps growing the diseconomies of scale strike in a big way in the form of increase in demand for employees. The BPO sector is facing a roadblock of sorts, a human one. BPO companies are struggling to hire new employees in sufficient numbers in the metro cities. Consequently they are trawling small towns looking for †employable† graduates.For cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore demand is already outstripping supply of people. The demand for fresh graduates from BPO companies in the National Capital Region (NCR) region is around 20,000 to 25,000. The colleges and the universities within the NCR are unable to supply †employable† graduates to meet this demand. This is because the total number of graduates from all colleges, diploma institute and universities is not necessarily relevant. This has led to a problem wherein despite wanting to expand and accept new processes the companies cannot do so for wan of man power.This leads to recruitment of semiskilled labour and a subsequent drop in quality. DEMAND SUPPLY EQUILIBRIUM The concepts of supply and demand bring us to an important effect that they have on price. When supply and demand are equal (i. e. when the supply function and demand function intersect) the economy is said to be in equilibrium. At this point, the allocation of goods (in this case labour) is at its most efficient because the amount of goods being supplied is exactly the same as the amount of goods being demanded.Thus, everyone (individuals, firms, or countries) is satisfied with the current economic condition. At the given price, suppliers are selling all the goods that they have produced and consumers are getting all the goods that they are demanding. With reference to the BPO industry this could be explained as follows. The demand here would be of skilled labour from international companies wishing to outsource to the service vendors in India. The supply would be of fa cilities and labour to complete the assigned process catering to the SLAs.The equilibrium price would be when the service vendors are sure of making reasonable amount of profits and the international company is assured of having excellent quality work done at lowered rates. Equilibrium occurs at the intersection of the demand and supply curve, which indicates no allocative inefficiency. At this point, the price of the goods will be P* and the quantity will be Q*. These figures are referred to as equilibrium price and quantity. In the real market place equilibrium can only ever be reached in theory, so the prices of goods and services are constantly changing in relation to fluctuations in demand and supply.