Devils Trill :: essays research papers

â€Å"Devils Trill† Before the Spring Festival of 1973 the narrator’s mother brought him his violin; it was a fine German model. The narrator received the violin from his great uncle who bought it from a poor Russian musician for fifty silver dollars. His uncle was on his deathbed when he gave the violin to the narrator, and gave it to him because none of his sons our grandsons played the violin. The narrator aspired to be a musician for much of his young life; he attended a music school, but later abandoned the dream. The narrator is now in a camp for political prisoners, recently one of the prisoners was executed, and many prisoners were scared they were going to be killed. The narrator was made a prisoner of a fellow prisoner named Old Cop, and the narrator could not stand him. Even though he did not like him, the narrator tried to be on good terms with the Old Cop, but he just ignored him. On the eve of the Spring festival the narrator was playing his violin on his bed and a fellow prisoner w as trying to hide cakes his wife had brought him. After a while a crowd of inmates were gathered abound his bunk listening to him play the violin. The Old Cop was annoyed when The Big Boss of the barracks came over to listen to the narrator play so he told the narrator to go outside. As he as going outside to the courtyard he started to recall past spring festivals before he was a prisoner, and how he learned to play the violin. He then entered the bathroom and saw a couple of his friends and started play the violin for them. They were very pleased. Later that night he went to the Big Boss’s barracks, and they talked about the Big Boss’s upcoming release, and how he was arrested. When the narrator returned to his barracks, he witnessed the Old Cop trying to steal the one of the inmate’s cakes and started to fight with him. He eventually won the fight and was rewarded by one of the officers. He was to be one of the waiters at the festival, a job that the Old Cop would have had. The narrator was excited to receive the job because he would be able to hear rumors from the outside world. When they got to the festival they were to help the butcher slay another pig because there were more people coming than expected.

How to measure employees’ performance Essay

Emulation of strategies incorporated amongst organizations is a tell-tale whereby the former company is performing admirably efficient and effective through well formulated resources allocation on its strategy. Of the many decisions a company must face to achieve success is how to measure employees’ performance and how to reward them (Kleiner and Gautreau 2001). For the avant-garde management accounting information system, it cannot live on financial measure alone because management can manipulate such data by cutting cost, investing less and hence forth. The accounting system requires a mix of non-financial and financial data to give a more balanced view of firm’s overall performance (Bushman et al. 1996). Research by Cumby and Conrod, 2001 indicates that non-financial information is highly value-relevant for knowledge-based industries and shown as an effective tool to evaluate an academic organization and demonstrate accountability to government and the public (Dorweiler and Yakhou 2005). Current non-financials could also predict organization’s future financial performance (Smith 2005; Amaratunga et al. 2001). Unlike usual performance measurements system decades ago, more importantly now, is to measure performances relative to organizations’ goals and strategies. Amongst other key issues in the development of performance measurement tools in past decades have been quandaries pertaining customer loyalty. The emerging new generation is more educated with their customer rights thus, more demanding. Declining customer loyalty is due to extensive choices. Hence, corporations have to focus strategy and behavior to not merely selling products/services, but also serving customers (Hope and Fraser 2001). Moreover, there has been a need to increase firms’ pace of innovation. Competitions have proliferated and firms must constantly refresh their strategies and methods; generating new business concepts and processes while coping with the changing nature of technology (Kaplan and Norton 2001). Additionally, prices are falling and costs ought to reduce to remain competitive and profitable. Hence, operation costs are challenged (Inman 2000). Furthermore, talented people are hard to find; even harder to attract. Firms then have to provide a challenging work environment that enables personal development (Hope and Fraser 2001). Large businesses were leading and performing well financially but by early 80s they were displaced as market leaders as competitors vie through quality, innovation, etc (Anthony 1998; cited by Kleiner and Gautreau 2001). Managing intellectual capital or Knowledge Management, is vital to gain competitive advantage at this era. Knowledge management being a long-term strategy, development of BSC helps the company to align its management processes and focuses the entire organization to implement it (Arora, 2002). By ‘implementing’ meaning turning the scorecard into a true management system and sustaining the system (Rohm and Halbach 2006). With BSC, intangible assets are valued (Marr and Adams 2004) while above issues have been addressed also. The scorecard actually balances external measures with the internal measures, financial with non-financial information and short-run with long-run performance drivers (Johnsen 2001; Cobbold and Lawrie 2002a). Strategy of firm in BSC is matched between internal capabilities and external relationships (Kay 1993; cited by Johnsen 2001). Strategy implementation is balancing internal and external demands. Management control and performance measurement are concerned with decision relevance, thus, performance indicators on the BSC are important to managers (Mayston 1985; cited by Johnsen 2001). Learning and growth perspective in BSC can sustain efficient employees while shareholders and customers’ needs are met by realigning values and sustaining good customer relationship in the customer perspective in BSC. Besides, business processes are innovated to keep up with the increasing pace of market uncertainties. BSC helps staff understand more, unlike before, how they could contribute to the strategic success of the organization as well as proven to be a valuable tool in linking vision and strategy to daily actions (CIMA 2001). BSC appears to be very effective and valuable for a divisional manager in a large US company (Mouritsen et al. 2005). The BSC has definitely helped in daily planning activities for different industries. The strength of the scorecard is that it has ascertained the reasons due to its ‘balanced-nature’ (Carmona and Gronlund 2003). In higher learning institutions, the European Foundation for Quality Management was used as performance measurement, do not reflect interests of all stakeholders and not linked to strategic management. Studies show that BSC is adopted instead (Cullen et al. 2003). Hotels also rely on non-financial and financial indicators with increasing confidence in strategic issues (Harris and Mongiello 2001). By using BSC, organizations can also minimize the negative consequences of risk (Scholey 2006) and identify cost reduction opportunities, resulting in overall improvement (Anand et al. 2005). Albeit Cobbold and Lawrie, 2002a claimed BSC to be complete as no additional perspective of believed worth is added, in reality, variations in basic BSC are common; some add a fifth perspective such as stakeholders, economic factors (Rohm nd; Lord and Shanahan 2006). Some express skepticism about the claimed positive results and commented that BSC is just a number crunching-exercise by accountants or just another latest management fad (Angel and Rampersad 2005). Norreklit, 2000 argued that 4 perspectives do not accommodate all intangible assets, changing the BSC framework may put the causal logic of BSC into question (cited by Marr and Adams 2004). She also argued that the BSC is not a strategic control model because of its rigidness and static focus (Lord et al. 2005). BSC has also been criticized because it is bias towards shareholders and fail to address to employees and suppliers (Smith 2005). Hoque, 2003 states that with wide ranges of measures, may lead to information overload. But findings show that BSC is not perceived to be a fad (Lord et al. 2005). There also appears to have no cause and effect dysfunctional organizational behavior as claimed, the only causal is the improved performance in one perspective leads to an increase in another (Lord et al. 2005). BSC is maturing and approached because of its flexibility (Lord and Shanahan 2006; Bible et al. 2006). It has been argued that BSC does consider employee satisfaction through the learning and growth perspective (Hoque 2003). Numbers of performance measures used were satisfactory and information overload was overcome through BSC (Yeniyurt 2003; McWhorter 2003; Arora 2002). However, BSC experiences difficulty in linking performance measures to strategy (Lord et al. 2005). Other issues include it does not tackle human resource and uncertainties issues usually done in PESTEL analysis (Smith 2005). In recent years, the Porter’s model had made its debut to help managers develop and implement long-term strategy (Sims 2001). The model is used to gain competitive advantage over another but does not define for the strategic unit or as a corporation (Sims 2001). It also does not take into account the dynamics of markets which is rapidly changing. Another development adopted by large number of companies is the Economic Value Added [EVA], which includes the cost of capital, hence creating value but was heavily criticized for not being different from traditional methods (Yeniyurt 2003). The Skandia Navigator [SN] was later developed to measure intellectual capital by adding human perspective to the financial, customer, process and learning perspectives (Roslender and Fincham 2001; Shaikh 2004). Although this opened new research fields on intellectual capital, the SN lacks incorporating financial and non-financial measures which is required to provide better performance measurement (Scarbrough and Carter 2001). Works have been done to modifying the traditional budgeting system-Beyond Budgeting Round Table [BBRT] emerged coping faster with changes and uncertainties of product and strategy lifecycles; leading to lower costs and value creation (Hope and Fraser 2001). Management By Objectives [MBO] by Drucker, 1954 is found consistent with BSC-retained emphasis on achieving financial objectives, focusing on marketing and customers and pursuing innovation (Johnsen 2001). MBO is more open-ended but lacks a valid performance measure while BSC is focused (Anand et al. 2005). BSC usage is higher than other management tools like TQM or ABC (Hendricks et al. 2004). BSC initially was a performance measurement tool, after placing strategy into it, BSC evolved to a strategic performance measurement system, illustrating flexibility and maturity (Bible et al. 2006; Cobbold and Lawrie 2002). Failure to focus attention and commit onto scorecard management and communicating them are reasons BSC whither and die albeit how successful the tool has been (Richardson 2004; cited by Hendricks et al.2004). In conclusion, it is important to realize the limitations of BSC. However, successful implementation by managers would bring about many benefits. Â   Amaratunga D, Baldry D and Sarshar M (2001) ‘Process Improvement through Performance Measurement’, Work Study, 50: 5, p. 179-188 Anand M, Sahay B and Saha S (2005) ‘Balanced Scorecard in Indian Companies’, Vikalpa: Journal for Decision Makers, 30: 2, p. 11-25 Angel R and Rampersad H (2005) ‘Do Scorecards Add Up?’, CA Magazine, p. 12-18 Arora R (2002) ‘Implementing KM-A Balance Scorecard Approach’, Journal of Knowledge Management, 6: 3, p. 240-249 Bible L, Kerr S and Zanini M (2006) ‘The Balanced Scorecard: Here and Back’, Management Accounting Quarterly, 7: 4, p.18-23 Bushman R, Indjejikian R and Smith A (1996) ‘CEO Compensation: The Role of Individual Performance Evaluation’, Journal of Accounting and Economics, 21: 2, p. 161-193 Carmona S and Gronlund A (2003) ‘Measures vs. Actions: the Balanced Scorecard in Swedish Law Enforcement’, International Journal of Operations and Production Management, 23: 12, p. 1475-1496 Cobbold I and Lawrie G (2002) ‘The Development of the Balance Scorecard as a Strategic Management Tool’, paper presented at the PMA Conference, 17-19, July, Boston Cobbold I and Lawrie G (2002a) ‘Classification of Balance Scorecards Based on their Intended Use’, paper presented at the PMA Conference, 17-19, July, Boston CIMA (2001) ‘The Balanced Scorecard-An Overview’, CIMA Technical Briefing, Harvard Business School Press, USA Cullen J, Joyce J, Hassal T and Broadbent M (2003) ‘Quality in Higher Education: from Monitoring to Management, Quality Assurance in Education, 11: 1, p. 5-14 Cumby J and Conrod J (2001) ‘Non-financial Performance Measures in the Canadian Biotechnology Industry’, Journal of Intellectual Capital, 2: 3, p. 1469-1930 Dorweiler V and Yakhou M (2005) ‘Scorecard for Academic Administration Performance on the Campus’, Managerial Auditing Journal, 20: 2, p. 138-144 Harris P and Mongiello M (2001) ‘Key Performance Indicators in European Hotel Properties: General Managers’ Choices and Company Profiles’, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 13: 3, p. 120-127 Hendricks K, Menor L and Wiedman C (2004) ‘The Balanced Scorecard: To Adopt or Not to Adopt?’, Ivey Business Journal, 11/12, p. 1-9 Hope J and Fraser R (2001) ‘Figures of Hate’, Financial Management, February Issue, p. 22-25 Hoque Z (2003) ‘Total Quality Management and the Balanced Scorecard Approach: A Critical Analysis of their Potential Relationships and Directions for Research’, Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 14, p. 553-566 Inman M (2000) ‘The Balanced Scorecard’, ACCA Students’ Newsletter, February Issue, p. 37-41 Johnsen A (2001) ‘Balanced Scorecard: Theoretical Perspectives and Public Management Implications’, Managerial Auditing Journal, 16: 6, p. 319-330 Kaplan R and Norton D (2001) ‘Transforming the Balanced Scorecard from Performance Measurement to Strategic Management: Part 1’, Accounting Horizons 15 Kleiner B and Gautreau A (2001) ‘Recent Trends in Performance Measurement Systems-The Balanced Scorecard Approach’, Management Research News, 24: 3/4, p. 153-156 Lord B and Shanahan Y (2006) ‘Management Accounting in the Corporate Sector: Recent Research’, Chartered Accountants Journal, 3, p. 29-31 Lord B, Shanahan Y and Gage M (2005) ‘The Balanced Scorecard: A New Zealand Perspective’, Pacific Accounting Review, 17:1, p. 49-77 Marr B and Adams C (2004) ‘The Balanced Scorecard and Intangible Assets: Similar Ideas, Unaligned Concepts’, Measuring Business Excellence, 8: 3, p. 18-27 McWhorter L (2003) ‘Does the Balanced Scorecard Reduce Information Overload?’, Management Accounting Quarterly, 4: 4, p. 23-27 Mouritsen J, Larsen H and Bukh P (2005) ‘Dealing with the Knowledge Economy: Intellectual Capital versus Balanced Scorecard’, Journal of Intellectual Capital, 6: 1, p. 8-27 Rohm H (nd) ‘A Balancing Act’, Perform Magazine, 2: 2, p. 1-8 Rohm H and Halbach L (2006) ‘A Balancing Act: Sustaining New Directions’, Perform Magazine, 3: 2, p. 1-8 Roslender R and Fincham R (2001) ‘Thinking Critically about Intellectual Capital Accounting’, Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 14: 4, p. 383-398 Scholey C (2006) ‘Risk and the Balanced Scorecard’, CMA Management, 6/7, p. 32-35 Shaikh J (2004) ‘Measuring and Reporting of Intellectual Capital Performance Analysis’, Journal of American Academy of Business Cambridge, 3, p. 439-448 Scarbrough H and Carter C (2001) ‘Towards a Second Generation of KM?-The People Management Challenge’, Education and Training, 43: 4/5, p. 215-224 Sims A (2001) ‘Generating Strategic Options’, CIMA Insider, September Issue, p. 24-26 Smith M (2005) ‘The Balanced Scorecard’, Financial Management, February Issue, p. 27-28 Yeniyurt S (2003) ‘A Literature Review and Integrative Performance Measurement Framework for Multinational Companies’, Marketing Intelligence and Planning, 21: 3, p. 134-142

Essay on How Did the Industrial Revolution Affect Britain

From around 1750 to 1900 Britain went through major changes or transformation in industry, agriculture and transportation that affected everybody’s lives. For some it generally improved their lives, however not all were so lucky. The industrial revolution brought with it many changes good for some and bad for others. Between 1760 and 1880 there was a huge growth in the size of cities and a population shift as people started to move into the more industrialised areas in search of work. This was because of the transformation of agriculture. Landowners had now decided to ‘enclose’ their lands so as they realised they could make a profit from selling food as the population of Britain was increasing. Enclosure improved the ways of farming†¦show more content†¦Unlike upper class they did not necessarily inherit their money but earned it off their own hard work. They could afford their own town house and servants to run the household. Over time these class of pe ople grew more influential and eventually gained the right to vote in 1832. They were below the aristocracy but above the workers. However the industrial revolution was not all good. The working class had no other option but to turn up at the factories for work. The factory system resulted in over-crowding and unhygienic conditions and also the development of slum areas. Many factory owners who needed cheap, unskilled labour, profited greatly by using children and women to run the machines and because they were small and could fit in tunnels as well not only that they were more suited for factory life because they could adopt more quickly and easily than men. By the age of 6, many children were already working twelve hours a day in factories. These children had no free time to do anything plus they earned low wages. Hardly any of the children went to school they had to work in factories to earn money. Quite a lot of the people who worked at factories got sick and died because of the toxic fumes in the factories. While others were severely injured because the machines didnt have safety guards so many children got killed by machinery when they fell asleep and got caught up in the machines. Many of the children who were orphans, hired by the employers wouldShow MoreRelatedNapoleon Bonaparte910 Words   |  4 PagesNapoleon Bonaparte or should I say the Son of the Revolution, I believe was both a preserver and a destroyer of the French Revolution. In fact, In a sense, Napoleon brought the revolution to an end in 1799, but he was also a child of the revolution (Spielvogel 544, 1). Napoleon had helped the French people and the French government in various ways; nevertheless, Napoleon thought that constantly the people owed him. I think that this is how he acted like a child. 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