Adelphia Scandal and Worldcom Scandal Essay Example for Free

Adelphia Scandal and Worldcom Scandal Essay Basic Questions 1. Rigas Entities were entities that shared a common cash management system with Adelphia and Adelphia subsidiaries, which Adelphia controlled and operated. Since the scandal broke, it is commonly referred as off-the-book entities. 2. EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) is essentially net income with interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization added back to it, and can be used to analyze and compare profitability between companies and industries because it eliminates the effects of financing and accounting decisions.-from Investopedia 3. Self-dealing basically refers to when directors of a company improperly uses company finances or resource for personal gain. This can include directors taking company loans that the directors do not intend to repay, using company money for extraordinary personal use, or using company property for personal gain. See more: Is the Importance of being earnest a satirical play essay Advanced Questions 1. Both Adelphia scandal and WorldCom scandal were not prevented by company’s external auditor, though Deloitte and Touche and Arthur Andersen both rated their client as high risk. As for the differences, Adelphia did not have an independent internal auditor. However, WorldCom had an independent internal auditor and blows the whistle. 2. I will say Deloitte and Touche is most responsible for not detecting and stopping. As an external auditor, they should pay attention to organizations financial records and examine on any mistakes or fraud. At least, Deloitte and Touche should have stopped Timothy Rigas from serving as CFO and Director of Adelphia’s Accounting Committee. After all, it was obviously against the rules. 3. Timothy Rigas received a reasonable prison sentence as we can see from the WorldCom case; Bernard Ebbers was sentenced to 25 years. As for John Rigas, a former CEO who was guilty of more than 15 counts of fraud. Rationally speaking, it seems to be a fair judgment. However, it sounds too rough to keep an old man who has been suffered from cancer in jail.

Media Theory Understanding Media Media Essay

Media Theory Understanding Media Media Essay Media theory is analyzing the media in different views. An understanding of media theory explains the various ways in which our way of communication determines how feelings are developed and also are limited, whom we can reach and whom we cannot, who and what we are and what we think and dont think about. This explains everything that we can do, think and experience practically in the world (see ref 1) To put it in a broader sense, we can say that an explanation or understanding of a set of concepts and ideas that are coherent is a theory.(the world in its broadest sense, e.g. the individual human being, man-made artifacts , group of human beings, nature etc.). A way in which one generally proceeds while attempting to understand or explain the world is a method. A process where a given theory (understanding) and a given method (procedure) are confronted and united is an analysis therefore that leads to an outcome of the analysis. The concept of method, theory and analysis can be broadly depicted as shown below. (See ref 2) We can say that in the analysis of the world, one observes it with a particular gaze (the approach in which the eye scans the world around and continues towards it) and few look through certain optics, or a particular pair of glasses (the grinding and form of spectacle lenses) that give a particular view of the world, which is what one sees. (see ref 2) The vital concepts of media theory are: Media Language Media language is all about having an understanding of the involved processes in the building of the media texts and the way techniques used in the building affects the way the texts are read. The technical codes of the any certain forms of media are to be discussed (like the font or size of the masthead on a newspapers first page, or the using of a music that is spooky in a certain scene or horror film) and the way they are used produce the required meaning. But the description of these would become much easier with some knowledge of Semiotic theory, as this would help us to describe the way communication takes place. According to this theory, every particular piece of text, if its a book, a film, a picture or an individual word-they are all made up of unique signs. These unique signs have both denotative or literal meaning- a signifier and a signified meaning or a connotative. The shape the sign takes is the signifier, and the idea it represents is the signified. Having knowledge about semiotic theory is very useful especially while studying advertising. The advertisers generally plan to give supplementary meanings to the products which would help in selling of the product, upon the actual literal meaning. Genre This Genre concept accounts for conventions and codes that texts generally share and also their features that are generic. By identifying some major elements that occur in the text and also in other texts of the same genre, the genre of the text is classified. The elements vary from font to music to costume to plot points (depends on the medium) and these are known as paradigms (generally, method of doing something).The paradigms are identified by the audience and these accordingly bring about an expectations set to the text reading. For example, in a police thriller the accused is brought to the justice at the end. These paradigms can be made into groups depending on if they relate to theme (the ideas and issues it deals with), structure (how the text is put and the shape the text takes) and iconography ( i e., the major symbols and signs that we hear/see). Narrative Narrative refers to the text shape or structure itself, its story telling way and how it is formed or shaped. This comes from the common word narrator which means a storyteller. In a similar way, narrative indicates a written story or a story that is told. When mass media is concerned the media text is the story and complete team of people involved in building and shaping it properly for the audience. Thus narrative is a way of structuring and organizing Representation According to the definition, every media text is a reality re-presentation. In other words, these are all intentionally composed, lit, written, framed, cropped, captioned, branded, targeted and censored by the producers. These are completely artificial composition of the real world we see around. All that we see, listen and read in the media is build. Its important to keep in mind while studying the media-any form of media, ranging from a video at home to a magazine that is glossy, everything is representation of some persons idea of existence, coded as a series of symbols and signs which is readable by the audience. Though, it is vital to make a note that the absence of media would make our perception towards reality much limited. And these duplicate or artificial texts are required to communicate our worlds view as an audience. To put it more clearly, for a sense of reality media is required. Hence the representation is a fluid and also a process that is two-way; the producers plac e the text somewhere in connection to reality and this text is determined on its connection to reality by the audiences. Audience: A minimum of two parties are required for a communication to take place, that is, one who send the message and the one who receives it. The receiver of the text is the audience as they interpret the conveyed message. Either analyzing or constructing a text, the text destination has to be considered, i.e., the audience and the response of the audience (or other) to the text. (See ref 3). This document is about to discuss about a commercial T.V advertisement and analyzing it in the semiotics view of perspective. Semiology/Semiotics Semiotics depicts a variety of studies in literature, art, anthropology and mass media instead of a separate academic discipline. Semiotics is vital as it helps us in not taking reality for something which has a existence that is purely objective and is not dependent on human interpretation. It explains how reality is a signs system. Learning the subject semiotics would result in more awareness and making us realize reality is a construction, also of the roles played by others and ourselves to construct it. It brings about awareness that computers, visual or audio media, books or in the world doesnt contain the meaning for information. The transmission of meaning is not directly done; a complex exchange of conventions or codes happens and these are created by us. But we arent always aware of these. Its both innately interesting and knowledgeably endowing being aware of such kind of codes and conventions. From semiotics, we realize that we are in a world that is full of signs and ther e is no other way of understanding things, but through organized codes and signs. The study of semiotics gives us an awareness that these codes and signs are generally transparent but our task is disguised in reading them. As the visual signs in the world are increasing day by day, we have to understand that though some signs appear to be very realistic, they are not realistic. We might perform the semiotic function that is- denaturalizing of signs which is valuable; this might be performed by making the codes more obvious and clear by which the interpretation of signs is done. The ideological functions are served when the realities are defined. The realities that are suppressed and those that are privileged can be revealed by contesting and deconstructing the sign realities. The maintenance and construction of reality is the study of signs. It is like leaving the control of the world that we live in that is full of meaning to others if such studies are declined. (See ref 4) Social Semiotics/Multimodal Semiotics/Multimedia Semiotics: Ranging from movies, music, mass media images, printed texts, voice, digital multimedia and web content in the computer- we include various kinds of media that is physical in our everyday usage of signs and languages for meaning making and communication. These several means of communicating a meaning (often referred as modalities of communication) sometimes overlay and interpret or pass on the meaning from other contemporary media in our culture. We can simultaneously watch the news on the television that interprets an event, listen to music, we can read the multimedia web pages, also watch a genre like sit-com which is a mass-media genre that would require lot of knowledge of codes, write emails, write or talk about a movie. That is we are continuously making meaning, sending and receiving in several types of media, regularly communicating and deducing meaning from one medium to other. This learning points to something which is referred as semiosphere; an existence of our concurrent and inherited semiotic system; the whole world of possible and available meanings in the cultural system. The social semiotics proceeds to semiosis- a meaning making process; necessarily the system of meaning-the inter-relations between signs are taken into consideration as the resources for deployment of meaning making. Some semiotic practices are specifically scrutinized for the building of several types of messages and meanings in several situations and cultural contexts that are of meaningful activity by social semiotics. (See ref 5). Let us consider the advertisements that were released on air by the virgin group of company on the virgin mobiles to study the concept of Semiotics. The virgin company deals with two different types of business one is the mobile network and second one is the media such as broadband and TV channel network. This network provider entered into the market with a lot of value added services such as message offers, low rate international calling, To make the public know about these services the virgin group has made a several advertisements and released on air. The above two images are the logos of the Virgin group Ltd. From the above logos or the symbols we can identify whether the business is mobiles or the broadband. In the above two businesses virgin mobile was introduced in 1999 and virgin media was introduced into the market in 2007. If you observe the font style and the color of the word virgin in both the logos, are same because of the brand image. Even the color used in the virgin mobile logo couldnt be kept away from the virgin media logo ANALYSIS Advertisements are now a days very much important in the real world to make the people aware of any news; these advertisements may be in the form of newspaper ads, TV commercials, radio transmission, internet and leaflets. These advertisements are now become very commercial. Companies who want to release any new product have to make people know about it and this is done by advertising the product in different means. These make profits to the companies and thats why, even the advertisements are very expensive the companies make advertise their products spending lot of money. On the other side the companies are making controversial advertisements to make the product highlight for the better sales. There were many controversial ads released in air by many companies, where these ads are not accepted by the society which are either banned or released by removing the uncensored bits from the ad. But, from past 2 Decades the Indian advertising industry has released many censored advertisements which are unfit for the public acceptance (See ref 6). As advertisement consists of fully semiotic codes and its meanings, analyzing the advertisements in semiotic view of perspective is very easy. Coming to the analyzing part the media I have chosen is a TV commercial advertisement from virgin mobile network. Virgin mobile network is one of the largest cellular network providers in India which is a joint group between the Tata cellular service and virgin group. This network provider has launched in India recently in 2008 provides both postpaid and prepaid sim cards. The above two companies together provides 50 per cent of share in the market (see ref7). During the Indian premier league (IPL) matches, these advertisements were banned due to some comments made in these advert. Some of them are class and some of them are violent. These advertisements are made by the virgin mobile to advert the service that is provided by the network which is the cheapest STD calls provided by the virgin mobiles. To show that they are providing the `cheapest STD rates they have chosen eight people from different states of India where each of them calls to each other for every single minute which s hows the STD calls are cheaper. To make this concept mix up with the IPL (INDIAN PREMIERE LEAGUE) they have chosen eight people as there are eight teams in IPL where each member is a fan of their state team. These eight members rings up each other for every single minute and abuses themselves about the teams which shows that the STD calls are very cheaper. When we observe the name of the provider Virgin Mobiles the meaning of the word Virgin is pure and by this we can analyze that the company has chosen the name to say that the network is very good. There were total 63 ads released during the IPL as there were eight fans for the eight teams in IPL and each one of them criticizes the other seven teams. The following are the images from the ads which were banned during IPL by the virgin mobile. On the first look of these images we can notice that two people are talking to each other in a phone, but when you observe the last image when the sign or the symbol STD @20p/min is displayed than the viewers comes to a conclusion that the people are speaking from different parts of India at a very cheap rate and also can conclude that the network provider is providing the STD calls at very low cost. As we know semiotics is the study of signs where everything that taken as sign. According to the Daniel Chandler semiotics is not only the study of signs but anything that stands for something. The above image is from one of the advert released by virgin mobile during IPL, in the above image the left side fan belongs to the Bangalore team and the right side fan belongs to the Punjab team, this we can know by seeing the titles below the both fans. By considering the Daniel Chandler statement on semiotics and by viewing the above image in his view of perspective we can say that the right side fan belongs to Punjab even though if there is no caption because of the physical appearance of him, as all the people who lives in Punjab wears the turban on their head. In India people never used to say or think about the word virgin as it gives us the primary idea about sex, but when this network entered into market with the name virgin than people mainly youngsters slowly started speaking the word. This network created massive profits and became one of the top network providers in India in a very less period of time as they concentrated mainly on youth rather than old people. To attract the youngsters the virgin group of ltd has released the advertisements on virgin mobiles which is based mainly on love and some of the advertisements are based on the friendship. (See ref8) Then slowly trend has entered into the society that the word virgin was printed on t-shirts which shows that youth was so attracted towards the virgin network. After attracting the youth this network was slowly called as the Dhosth ka network which means friends network as it was very useful for a group of friends who wants to keep in touch for a very long time because it provides the lowest calling rate. This virgin network mainly concentrated on youth rather than the aged people by providing services such as message offers and free calls to a number. The advertisements which were released by the company other than the ads released during IPL were very much attracted by the youth as they was fully involved with the ideas of a student. The color combination used in the logo of virgin media i.e. red and white gives the feel of romantic and cool which attracted the youngsters a lot. The caption that is used for this network is Think hatke which means think different. Now a days caption plays a major role in every single media in this world. Caption is defined as the short name or title which describes the meaning and the ideas of a business or any other media. These captions are now a days became very popular that each and every company who wants to introduce any new product into the market they advert it by different media transmissions with a good caption. INTERNET SOURCE OF THE BANNED ADVERTISEMENT:

Psychological contract breach effects and violation on employees

Psychological contract breach effects and violation on employees Abstract The goal of this study is to examine the influence of personality on the relationship between psychological contract breach and violation and its respective impact on employees work-related outcomes such as turnover intentions and counterproductive work behaviors. In this paper, personality was assessed on the basis of the Five-Factor model of personality (Goldberg, 1990) that is comprised of the following dimensions: Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Emotional Stability and Openness to Experience. Introduction In difficult times when companies must adapt to different changes in the global economic climate work behaviors are of great interest to organizations. In trying to retain the best employees, managers are interested in reducing turnover and preventing counterproductive behaviors. In order to understand employee responses and reactions to the work environment, contracts become vital as they create a behavioral guideline for both the employee and the organization. The psychological contract is a major element of any employee organization relationship, and consists of an employees beliefs concerning the terms and conditions of a reciprocal exchange agreement between that focal person and another party (Rousseau, 1989, p.123). Employees often feel that their organization has not fulfilled at least some of the promises it has made; and when they do their psychological contract is said to have been breached (Robinson and Rousseau, 1994). Numerous studies have analyzed the consequences of psychological contract breach on employees work-outcomes and generally conclude that there is a positive relationship between psychological contract breach and job dissatisfaction and turnover intentions (Zhao, Wayne, Glibkowski, Bravo, 2007; Bal, de Lange, Jansen and Van der Velde, 2008). Psychological contract violation has been defined as feelings of betrayal and deeper psychological distress à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ [whereby]à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ the victim experiences anger, resentment, a sense of injustice and wrongful harm (Rousseau, 1989, p129). While psychological contract breach may not always lead to undesirable work-related attitudes, it is expected that employees who experience intensely negative feelings might take different measures against the organization they work for (Suazo et al., 2005). This is why in this paper we focus on the role of psychological contract violation as the mediator between psychological contract breach and employees work-related outcomes. But do all people have the same reactions to contract breach or could it be that there are individual differences in personality that lead some employees to react more strongly to psychological contract breach than others? Many authors have investigated the relationship between personality traits and job related outcomes (Judge, Heller and Mount, 2000; Tallman and Bruning, 2008), but there is little research on the relationship between personality and psychological contract breach and violation. Raja, Johns and Ntalianis (2004) is one of the few articles that report on the impact of personality on psychological contracts. These authors found that people high in neuroticism and low in conscientiousness are the ones that are more likely to perceive psychological contract breach. Moreover, the paper revealed that some personality traits moderated the relationship between psychological contract breach and violation. People high in neuroticism tended to perceive a stronger relationship between breach and violation than people high in locus of control. The main focus of this paper is to gain a better understanding of the psychological contract breach and violation relationship by analyzing whether this relationship is moderated by the Five-Factor model of personality (Goldberg, 1990).The study tries to fill in a gap in the existent psychological contract literature by examining the extent to which personality can explain changes in employees attitudes. Compared to other studies in the field, this study focuses on all five personality traits of the Five-Factor model of personality (Goldberg, 1990). This study is structured as follows: the next section describes the current state of the art with respect to psychological contract breach and violation; section three includes the research method and data collection; results will be discussed in section four and the main findings and implications for study and practice along with limitations and suggestions for future research in section five. Literature review and hypotheses The psychological contract As explained in the introduction, the term psychological contract is used to explain the relationship between an employee and an employer and the promises they have made to one another. Many researchers have explained the psychological contract in terms of social exchange theory. This theory (Blau, 1964; Robinson and Morrison, 1995) suggests that individuals enter relationships which consist not only of economic exchanges but also of more diffuse social obligations. These obligations change over time, but research has shown that individuals feel most comfortable when they are in a balanced exchange environment (Gouldner, 1960; Wayne, Shore and Liden, 1997), an environment where they feel that there is a fair equilibrium between what they offer the organization and what they receive in return. When the organization fails to fulfill its promises, employees might feel that there is inequality in the employment relationship (Lester, Turnley, Bloodgood and Bolino, 2003) and might as a result be inclined to take actions to rebalance their work situation, by for example reducing their contribution to the organization (Rousseau, 1995). Psychological contract breach and violation The psychological contract is a subjective perception, so the employee and the organization can possess radically different views of what are the obligations or promises that they have made to one another (Robinson and Rousseau, 1994). This is why often employees feel that their psychological contract has been breached and that the organization has failed in keeping its promises (Robinson and Rousseau, 1994). Although both the employee and the employer can feel that the contract has been breached by the other party, in this paper, as in many investigations on the psychological contract (cf. Zhao et al., 2007) the focus is on the perspective of the employee. In the early phases of research into the psychological contract there was not a very clear distinction between psychological contract breach and psychological contract violation and researchers used these terms interchangeably (Suazo, Turnley, Mai, 2005). In 1997, Robinson and Morrison made a clear distinction between the two. These authors defined psychological contract breach as a cognitive perception, while psychological contract violation was defined as the emotional or affective reaction that can sometimes arise from the perception of a breach of the psychological contract (Morrison and Robinson, 1997). Research has shown that not all breaches lead to emotional reactions on the part of employees (Morrison and Robinson, 1997; Turnley and Feldman, 1999a) because these emotional reactions can be influenced by different individual differences such as personality (Raja et al., 2004) or fairness perceptions (Morrison and Robbinson, 2000), but in those cases where emotional reaction do es occur the employee may have feelings of anger, injustice, resentment and distrust toward the organization that has not honored its promises (Raja, Johns and Ntalianis, 2004). Several studies have linked psychological contract breach to violation. Zhao, Wayne, Glibkowski, Bravo (2007) have summarized these studies and report a meta-analytic correlation of 0.52 (p In line with research findings and with social exchange theory, it is proposed here that psychological contract breach is positively related to psychological contract violation. Hypothesis 1: Psychological contract breach is positively related to psychological contract violation. Psychological contract breach and employees responses Previous studies have linked psychological contract breach to negative work outcomes (Robinson and Rousseau, 1994; Robinson and Morrison, 1995). When psychological contract breach occurs, employees start reducing their contribution to the organization as they feel that the organization has failed them (Robinson, 1996). Turnover intentions and counterproductive behaviors are employee possibilities of reducing their efforts and contributions towards the organization they work for. Zhao et al. (2007, p.651) define turnover intentions as the subjective probability that an individual will leave his or her organization within a certain period of time. The meta-analytic study shows that there is a positive correlation between psychological contract breach and turnover intentions (r=.42, p Hypothesis 2a: Psychological contract breach will be positively related to turnover intentions. Counterproductive behavior can be seen as destructive reactions toward an organization (Kickul, Neuman, Parker, Finkl, 2002). When employees feel that there psychological contract has been breached their level of commitment and trust in their organization decreases (Ball, Trevino, Sims, 1994) and they might react destructively toward the organization (Kickul et al., 2002). This reaction may be characterized by a set of different deliberate acts that harm the organization or even the organizations stakeholders such as clients, owners or supervisors (Spector and Fox, 2005). Counterproductive behavior is a very broad construct which contains behaviors ranging from theft or sabotage to violence against others (Gruys and Sackett, 2003). Each one of these actions create great problems to the organization and are also economic threats as organizations need to spend money to protect themselves against such actions (Bennett and Robinson, 2000). The employees counterproductive actions may even escalate until the level where they interfere with co-workers jobs or where they give a disrespectful treatment to their supervisors (KicKul et al., 2002). Bordia et al. (2008) found that the psychological contract breach was positively related to both minor offenses (ÃŽÂ ²=0.44,pË‚.001) and major offenses (ÃŽÂ ²=0.49, pË‚.001) of the employees at the work place. Following on their results, we propose that psychological contract breach will be positively related to the employees counterproductive behavior. Hypothesis 2b: Psychological contract breach will be positively related to counterproductive behavior. Psychological contract violation Prior to 1977, the terms psychological contract breach and psychological contract violation were used as synonyms, so much of the existent literature focused on the relationship between psychological contract breach and employees responses. Only after the paper of Robinson and Morrison (1997) the two became the separate concepts as we know them now. In this part of the paper we introduce psychological contract violation as a mediator of the relationship between psychological contract breach and employees reactions. As not all contract breaches results in feelings of violation and not all employees respond negatively to their psychological contract being breached (Morrison and Robinson, 1997; Rousseau 1995, Turnley et al., 2003) we believe that it would be interesting to test whether psychological contract violation could have a mediating effect on the psychological breach employees reactions relationship. One paper that focuses on the mediating role of psychological contract violation is the meta-analysis of Zhao et al. (2007). The authors use affective events theory to explain the relationship between psychological contract breach, affect (violation and mistrust), job attitudes and individual effectiveness. Following this theory, a negative event at the workplace causes negative emotional reactions, which in turn are taught to cause negative work attitudes (Bal et al., 2008). In their study, the authors find psychological contract breach to be a negative event leading to emotional reactions and job attitudes. The authors found that psychological contract violation fully mediated the relationship between psychological contract breach and job satisfaction, organizational commitment and intentions to quit. While psychological contract breach may not always lead to undesirable work-related attitudes, it is expected that employees who experience intensely negative feelings (psychological contract violation) will take some measures (such as leaving the organization or working less) against their organization (Suazo et al., 2005). Based on the affective events theory we expect that psychological contract violation will mediate the relationship between psychological contract breach and employee responses toward the organization they work for. Hypothesis 3a: Psychological contract violation will mediate the relationship between psychological contract breach and employees turnover intention. Hypothesis 3b: Psychological contract violation will mediate the relationship between psychological contract breach and employees counterproductive behavior. 2.5 The moderating role of personality Robinson and Morisson (2000) showed that attributions and fairness perceptions moderate the relationship between psychological contract breach and violation. The authors explain that when employees felt that they were treated unfair there was a stronger relationship between the breach of the psychological contract and an emotional reaction to it, so lower levels of fairness were predicting violation. Other papers suggested that organizational influences and also employees personal dispositions may be predictors of psychological contracts (Rousseau, 1995; 2001). But only little research has been conducted on the relationship between personality and psychological contract breach (Raja et al., 2004; Tallman and Bruning, 2008) even though there are a lot of papers that emphasize the importance of personality on work attitudes such as job performance or job satisfaction (Barrick and Mount, 19921; Judge and Bono, 2001). The focus of this study is to analyze whether personality might moderate the relationship between psychological contract breach and violation. We consider that personality could significantly influence this relationship because personality can explain how people differ in their social interactions, reaction to perceived injustice and attachment of importance to various extrinsic and intrinsic outcomes (Raja et al., 2004, p354). Zhao et al. (2007) also state that future research should focus on personality as a moderator when studying psychological contract breach and outcomes. The personality dimensions used in the paper are derived from the Five-Factor model of personality (Goldberg, 1990) and consists of 5 personality types: Extraversion, Neuroticism (Emotional Stability), Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience. We chose this model of personality because it has been used in a variety of studies (Barrick and Mount, 1991; Judge, Heller and Mount 2002, Raja et al. , 2004) and have been related to numerous work attitudes and behaviors (Costa and McCrae, 1992). Raja et al. (2004) article is one of the very few studies that established a connection between personality and psychological contract breach. These authors studied only the effect of Neuroticism, Extraversion and Conscientiousness, because they were unable to establish a reliable level of measurement for the Agreeableness dimension and considered Openness to Experience to be a too controversial structure. Still, in a more recent study of Tallman and Bruning (2008) the authors were able to measure all of these personality dimensions with the help of the NEO Five-Factor Inventory questionnaire, so we decided to also focus on all five personality aspects and their relation to the psychological contract breach and violation. The authors (Raja et al., 2004) found that employees personalities are related to their contract choice, as people high in neuroticism will tend to choose transactional contracts, while people high in conscientiousness or extraversion prefer relational ones. Transactional contracts are characterized by short-term economically focused attitudes and relational ones by a set of long-term attitudes that include features like loyalty or security (Raja et al., 2004). The authors also found that people who were more sensitive to equity issues (equity sensitivity dimension) were more likely to feel negative emotional reaction when there psychological contract was breached, than people who were more internal (external locus of control dimension). Tallman and Bruning (2008) extended the study of Raja et al. (2004) and the research on the relationship between psychological contracts and personality, by studying the link between employees personality and their beliefs regarding the employees obligations and organizational behavior. The authors linked personality to nine employee psychological contract obligation dimensions: commitment to the organization, commitment to the job, stewardship behaviors, showing initiative, serving the needs of the organization, support in the job, growth, support as a person and existence and their results showed that employees personality explained the variance for 4 out of 9 dimensions. Even more, they found that each of the Five-Model Personality dimensions was related to at least one of the dimensions, indicating that using all the 5 personality types was important for the study. As research has showed personality is an important factor in employees beliefs regarding their psychological contract; this is why we believe that personality might moderate the relationship between psychological contract breach and violation, influencing the extent to which employees perceive there psychological contract being violated and not only breach. The next part of this chapter will be divided according to the Five-Factor Model: Extraversion (1), Neuroticism (Emotional Stability) (2), Conscientiousness (3), Agreeableness (4) and Openness to Experience (5). Extraversion (1) Extroverts are highly sociable, talkative, energetic, ambitious and assertive (Costa, McCrae, 1992). The assertiveness of extroverts is associated with a desire for increased status and salary (Cattell, 1981). Extraversion is associated with high job performance, job satisfaction and team performance (Judge and Ilies, 2002; Judge and Bono, 2000; Kickul and Wiesner, 1997). Previous studies have shown that there is a positive relationship between extraversion on the one hand and job satisfaction (Judge et al., 2002) and organizational commitment (Erdheim et al., 2006) on the other. Even though extroverts are seeking for monetary rewards they tend to form long-term relationships, because in these ones they can develop themselves and have better opportunities to gain a better status and a better income (Tallman and Bruning, 2008). Tallman and Bruning (2008) found that there was a positive correlation between the extroversion personality dimensions and the perceived obligation extrovert people felt organization towards them in fulfilling their growth needs (ÃŽÂ ² = .25, p Extroverts are high performers and they are committed to their organization (Tallman and Bruning, 2008), in addition they are assertive, so they will tend to stand up for their rights. Breaching the psychological contract of extroverted people will probably lead to stronger negative emotional feelings toward the organization they work for than when comparing to introverted people. This is why it is proposed here that extroverts will be more likely to react emotionally to their psychological contract being breached than non-extroverts. Hypothesis 4b: Extraversion moderates the relationship between psychological contract breach and psychological contract violation, so that the relationship between psychological contract breach and psychological contract violation is stronger for extroverts than for introverts. Neuroticism (2) People high in neuroticism are anxious and lack trust in people, and it is said that they are more prone to perceive failures in life (Judge, Higgins, Thoresen, Barick, 1999). They have a greater tendency to pay attention to the negative side of a situation than other people who have a more balanced view of things (Ho, Weingart, Rousseau, 2003). They are usually poor team performers and they fear change (Kichuk and Wiesner, 1997). Previous research has shown a negative relationship between neuroticism and job satisfaction (Judge et al., 2002). Other authors have linked neuroticism to a preference for transactional psychological contracts (Raja et al., 2004) because these contracts do not require much initiative or confidence (Raja et al., 2004). Tallman and Bruning (2008) showed that neuroticism is positively related to the organizations obligations to provide support for the employees and to stewardship behavior. Because people high in neuroticism are more worried and anxious we believe that their reaction to a psychological contract breach would be stronger than that of people emotionally stable. This is why we propose that people high in neuroticism will have stronger emotional reaction and will tend to perceive their psychological contract as being violated. Hypothesis 4a: Neuroticism moderates the relationship between psychological contract breach and psychological contract violation, so that this relationship is stronger for people high in neuroticism than for those low in neuroticism. Conscientiousness (3) Conscientiousness is related to an individuals degree of self-control, need for achievement, order and also persistence (Costa, McRae Dye, 1991). Conscientious people tend to be more concerned with tasks accomplishment than with the task rewards (Stewart, 1996) and are interested in forming long-term employment exchange relationships (Zhao and Chen, 2008). Research has shown that there is a positive relationship between conscientiousness and work-related outcomes such as job satisfaction (Judge et al., 2002) or commitment (Erdheim, 2006). Orvis et al. (2008) tested the hypothesis that conscientiousness moderates the relationship between psychological contract breach and work outcomes. In their study, the authors showed that lower levels of conscientiousness led to a higher level of perceived psychological contract breach and lower levels of job satisfaction, organization loyalty and higher levels of intentions to quit. Raja et al. (2004) also found that there is a strong relation between conscientiousness and psychological contract breach: people with higher levels of conscientiousness perceived lower levels of psychological contract breach. Thus, it is expected here that it is unlikely that conscientious people will feel that their psychological contract has been violated upon perceiving a breach of their psychological contracts. Hypothesis 4c: Conscientiousness moderates the relationship between psychological contract breach and violation, so that the relationship between psychological contract breach and psychological contract violation is stronger for people low in conscientiousness than for those high in conscientiousness. Agreeableness (4) The agreeableness personality dimension refers to a persons preferences for interpersonal interactions that can range from compassion to antagonism (Costa McCrae, 1992). One of the few papers that investigated the relationship between agreeableness and psychological contract breach and work-related outcomes is the paper by Tallman and Bruning (2008). In their research, the authors show that there is a positive correlation between the agreeableness personality dimension and that perceived obligation agreeable people feel their organization has in supporting its employees (ÃŽÂ ²=.20, p Agreeable people value their interpersonal relationships and are characterized as being very interested in maintaining positive relations with the people that surround them (Ho, Weingart, Rousseau, 2003). The fact that agreeable people are more prone to maintaining long-term and pleasant relationship with others might have an effect on their perception of their psychological contract being breached. Because the psychological contract is an agreement made between two parties and involves an interpersonal element, agreeable people might be more tolerant and forgiving so it might make agreeable people feel fewer negative emotional reactions to breach than other personality types. Hypothesis 4b: Agreeableness moderates the relationship between psychological contract breach and violation, so that this relationship is stronger for people low in agreeableness than for those high in agreeableness. Openness to Experience (5) Openness to Experience represents open-minded individuals, who are imaginative, inventive, creative, curious and unconventional (Costa and McCrae, 1992). Open people have a high need for autonomy and tend to be creative and adaptive to change (Costa and Mcrae, 1992). Furthermore, open employees are less likely to feel that they must serve the organization or their managers and will look for organizations that will allow them enough freedom to try new ideas and approaches in their activities (Tallman and Bruning, 2008). Because open employees will look for interesting and challenging jobs, we would consider that they will also seek an organization that supports their decisions and that allows them to grow and satisfy their needs (Tallman and Bruning, 2008). This is why we expect that they might feel strong negative emotions when their freedom is limited or when they dont feel their organizations support. Hypothesis 4e: Openness to experience moderates the relationship between psychological contract breach and violation, so that this relationship is stronger for people high in openness than for those low in openness. Research model In the previous sections four sets of hypothesis were established. As shown in the figure, the principal relation in the paper is the one between psychological contract breach, violation and employees responses (turnover intentions, counterproductive behavior), while personality traits are hypothesized to moderate the relationship between breach and violation. Figure 1. Research model 3. Method 3.1 Sample The study was conducted in the Netherlands and used 3 data sources: full-time or part-time employees in the Netherlands, their supervisors and one of their friends. The questions related to psychological contract breach, psychological contract violation and turnover intentions were answered by the respondent, the questions regarding counterproductive behavior were answered by the respondents supervisor and personality was assessed by obtaining ratings from the respondents friend. We consider that the employee is the best source of information when considering psychological contract breach or violation as he is the only person who knows exactly what were his expectations and beliefs regarding his psychological contract. For the turnover intentions we use the employee as a respondent for similar reasons: he is the only one who can tell about his thoughts on leaving the company he works for. In what concerns the measurement of counterproductive behavior we expect that employees will be more reluctant to state the situations were they were acting accordingly, so we consider that their direct supervisor will give more objective responses. Supervisors ratings were previously used to assess counterproductive behaviors in Bordia et al. (2008) or anticitizenship behaviors in Kickul et al. (2001). We also ask one of the respondents friends to fill in the personality survey because employees might distort their personality scores (Rosse, Stecher, Miller and Levin, 1998) and answer the questions the way they think that they should be answered (Mahar, Cologne and Duck, 1995). The respondents were approached through a press release and invitation which were available to them through different websites like: à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ The total number of questionnaires spread among the employees was à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ from these, only a number à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ participants responded. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦. In the beginning the employees were sent an email with the link for completing the survey and after 1 week they also received a reminder. The supervisors and friends were approached through the employee, who received a separate link to forward to its supervisor and friend so that they could participate at the survey. X% of employees were male, X% were female, Y% completed their university education, Y% their secondary education programThe average age of respondents was from à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ to à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦, X% of them were working X hours a week, Y% of them were working Y hours a weekà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ X% of employees reported an organizational tenure of X%, Y% of employees reported an organizational tenure of Y yearsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ Y% of the supervisors were male and Y% were female, Y% completed their university education, Y% their secondary education program The age of ranged from supervisors was from à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ to à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦, X% of them were working X hours a week, Y% of them were working Y hours a weekà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ The average organizational tenure of supervisors was T%. The frequency of contact between the supervisor and employee was for X% daily, for Y% weeklyà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ Z% of the friends were male, Z% were female. Their age range was from X to Y years, X completed their university education, Y% their secondary education program. 3.2 Measurement of variables Control variables The results of this study were controlled for the effects of: gender, age and organizational tenure. Gender was controlled for because employees might be evaluated differently according to gender (Turnley, Bolino, Lester and Bloodgood, 2003). Age was controlled for because age could affect work behavior or could also influence the kind of job people choose and finally, organizational tenure was necessary as a control variable because the length of employment might be related to the number of psychological contracts breaches an employee might experience (Turnley at al., 2003). Psychological contract breach The scale of Robinson and Morrison (2000) was used to assess psychological contract breach (Cronbachs ÃŽÂ ± = .92). The scale consisted of five items that assessed the employees perception of psychological contract breach. An example item is: I feel that my employer has come through in fulfilling the promises made to me when I was hired. Thr

The Transcontinental Railroad Essay -- Transportation, Railroad Compa

The Transcontinental railroad could be defined as the most monumental change in America in the 19th century. The railroad played a significant role in westward expansion and on the growth and development of the American economy (Gillon p.653). However, the construction of the transcontinental railroad may not have occurred if not for the generous support of the federal government. The federal government provided land grants and financial subsidies to railroad companies to ensure the construction. The transcontinental railroad contributed to the formation of industry and the market economy in America and forever altered the American lifestyle. The Pacific Railroad bill of 1862 launched the transcontinental railroad construction project. The Pacific Railroad bill granted 6,400 acres of public lands and government loans ranging from $16,000 to $48,000 per mile of track completed to the Union Pacific Railroad and Central Pacific Railroad companies. (Pacific Railroad Bill) Following the Pacific Railroad bill a series of federal and state acts between 1862 and 1871 granted more than 130 million acres of public land and supplied additional monetary loans of approximately $150 million dollars to the expansion of the railroads. (Gillon p.652) There is no refuting that the railroad companies transformed business operations and encouraged industrial expansion. The raw materials required for construction of the transcontinental railroad directly resulted in the expansion of the steel, lumber and stone industries. (Gillon p.652) The railroad stimulated growth in manufacturing and agriculture providing an efficient manner to ship raw materials and products throughout the country. Which in turn, increased consumerism and introduced t... ...ich developed new corporations. (Gillon p.652) Many in the railroad industry and these newly developed corporations were accused of price fixing, providing illegal kick- backs and challenging government regulations. (Gillon p.652-657) Thus, one could argue that the railroad industry and the titans it produced had a monopolistic approach to business that actually challenged the free market system. In the end, the transcontinental railroad changed the American landscape both physically and culturally. It formed the foundation for the industrial economy, it produced new business practices and management style of large workforces. It helped established government regulations, taxation and support of public transportation. Above all it drastically changed the American lifestyle, changed where people lived, how they shopped, how they ate, and how they worked.

Professional Writing Essay example -- Exploratory Essays Research Pape

Professional Writing To answer the question of what professional writing is, there are many available avenues. Almost every career field imaginable can involve some sort of â€Å"professional writing† or vital usage of rhetoric. There is no strict definition of professional writing. Communications can take this form in marketing and advertising, social science, engineering, business management, education, political science, natural science and life science among many others. I will examine, more closely, the latter of the group, life science, particularly in the human medical world, an area where professional writing refers to following strict sets of guidelines and appeasing to pressures applied for several different source; not merely a means of communicating. What do medical writers do? Even after narrowing down professional writing to its different career fields, it can still be a little more specific than the term â€Å"professional writing† itself. The medical field is a great example; writers can play crucial roles in pharmaceutical companies, communication resources, contract resource organizations, or perhaps as freelance medical writers (EMWA). I will look more specifically at pharmaceutical companies, where incredible skill and efficiency is required as writers submit documents regarding clinical studies, and in preparing documents to submit to regulatory authorities regarding new products. Firstly, writers in pharmaceutical agencies can carry a larger burden than in other medical industries due to the fact that, not only does their work possess the ability to do both great social benefit and social harm, but on average, every new drug introduced swallows over $200 million in the United States, and seven to ten years ... ...d adaptability to the rigorous demands of many parties involved in the process. Works cited: European Medical Writers Association (EMWA). â€Å"Medical Writing†. Obtained from http://www.emwa.org/Mum/Career.pdf. Accessed 1/24/04. Bonk, Robert J. â€Å"Writing Technical Documents for the Global Pharmaceutical Industry†. Techinical Communication Quarterly. Summer 1998: Pp. 319-327. Hall, Katherine. â€Å"Simply Symposia†. The Write Stuff – EMWA Journal. Obtained from http://www.emwa.org/Articles/Symposia.html. Accessed 1/23/04. Pike, Eva. â€Å"What the Regulatory Authorities want to see†. The Write Stuff – EMWA Journal. Obtained from http://www.emwa.org/Articles/WhatRegulatory.html. Accessed 1/23/04. Jacobs, Adam. â€Å"The Contractor-Client Relationship†. The Write Stuff – EMWA Journal. Obtained from http://www.emwa.org/Articles/Contractor-client.html. Accessed 1/23/04.

Andy Warhol- Pop Culture

Pop Culture Spring 2010 Prof. Howell Andy Warhol â€Å"Pop Art is an art movement in the U. S. in the 1950’s and reached its peak of activity in the 1960’s, chose as its subject matter the anonymous, everyday, standardized, and banal iconography in American life, as comic strips, billboards, commercial products, and celebrity images and dealt with them typically in such form as outsize commercially smooth paintings, mechanically reproduced silk-screens, large-scale facsimiles, and soft sculptures†(Dictionary). While looking up the definition of Pop Art, Dictionary. om tells you â€Å"see also Andy Warhol. † Andy Warhol defined Pop Art. Warhol was a twentieth- century American artist who took simple consumer objects and took them to the level of art. Warhol is best known for his â€Å"precise, enlarged image of Campbell’s tomato soup†(Dictionary). In the book called Andy Warhol: prince of pop written by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan, they st ated, â€Å"The work created by Andy Warhol elevated everyday images to art, ensuring Warhol a fame that has far outlasted the 15 minutes he predicted for everyone else. He not only produced iconic art that blended high and popular culture; he also made controversial films, starring his entourage of the beautiful and outrageous; he launched Interview, a slick magazine that continues to sell today; and he reveled in leading the vanguard of New York’s hipster lifestyle. Warhol’s rise, from poverty to wealth, from obscurity to status as a Pop icon, is an absorbing tale-one in which the American dream of fame and fortune is played out in all of its success and its excess. No artist of the late 20th century took the pulse of his time- and ours-better than Andy Warhol. † Pop Art influenced popular culture and mass media during the twentieth-century and well into the beginning of the twenty-first-century and no other artists has defined it as well as Warhol. Andy Warhol was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1928. â€Å"He was a physically and p psychologically fragile from boyhood and insecure about his freakish appearance and his homosexuality. He was emotionally hapless and sexually timid, terrified of Practically everything†( Puente). In 1945, Warhol went to Carnegie Institute of Technology where he majored in pictorial design. After college, he moved to New York City and landed a job as a commercial artist, where he worked as an illustrator for several magazines, such as Bazaar, Vogue, and the New Yorker. He also did window displays for retail stores. Throughout the 1950’s Warhol won several commendations from the Art Directors club and the American Institute of Graphic Arts and in 1952, he had his first individual show at the Hugo Gallery, showing drawings based on the writings of Truman Capote (Andy). Warhol couldn’t figure out how to break through, so he â€Å"pestered his friends and art-world contacts for ideas. For fifty dollars a gallery owner suggested the can’s of Campbell’s soup†(Puente), which is now one of his signature styles. In the 1960’s Warhol created several paintings that remain icons of the twentieth century, such has Campbell’s Soup Cans, Disasters, and Marilyn’s. Warhol also made several 16mm films, which are underground classics. In 1968, Valerie Solanis, walked into Warhol’s studio and shot him, the attack was almost fatal. Warhol focused on his paintings during the 1970’s. The artist began the 1980’s with the publication of POPism: The Warhol ‘60s and with exhibitions of portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century and the Retrospectives and Reversal series†(Andy). After routine gall bladder surgery, Warhol died on February 22nd, 1987. Warhol is one of the most influential artist s of the twentieth century. David Horowitz states in his book, The Peoples Voice: a populist Cultural History of Modern America, that â€Å"Just as some elements of the counterculture expressed hostility to the market, pop art practitioners sought to incorporate the materials of ordinary life into painting and printmaking†(Horowitz). Realism and naturalism were new movements in America during the twentieth century, but modernism and its boost of art to a new level of self-reliance created a new art that summarized the mindset of people and not the physical description of them. Americans moved from rural areas to urban areas that embodied their social position and this was shown in modernist’s artwork. Warhol took modernism and its assumptions and altered them to his perspective. Warhol made people think what exactly is art? what is an artist? And he changed how art should be displayed. Warhol challenged the modernist perspective and became one of the most recognized artists from the century because of it. Horowitz also explained, â€Å"using commonly available media like vinyl, Plexiglas, and neon, Warhol elevated consumer objects to the level of art. The legendary figure built a cottage industry around widely disseminated silkscreen replicas of soup and soda cans and images of Marilyn Monroe, winning praise as an egalitarian commemorator of everyday life and a rebel against the elitist art establishment. † Andy Warhol has been dead for twenty-three years but his artwork is still popular everywhere. In Maria Puente’s article, â€Å"Andy Warhol is popping up all over the place† she talks about how Warhol’s pop art collections as productive as ever; â€Å"His face stares at shoppers from Gap store windows. His artwork speeds down slopes on snowboards and embellishes Levi’s jeans, Royal Elastics shoes and Diane von Furstenberg’s upcoming swimsuits. Pop culture fans sport Warhol jewelry and watches. Spritz Warhol perfumes on pulse points and hang Warhol handbags from their shoulders. Enthusiasts can even furnish their homes with Warhol- from rugs to dinner plates to bed linens. † I think that Andy Warhol changed how art was viewed in the twentieth century and his artwork has been so popular it is still an ideal most people recognize. In the twentieth century people went saw his artwork in museums and in magazines, now his artwork is on clothing items, posters, dinner plates, cards, pins, and everything you can think of. I mean on of his original self-portraits was for sale in November for over one million dollars. If one of his many self-portraits can sell for over one million dollars means his artwork had a huge impact on the culture. Andy Warhol was a leading figure in the Pop Art movement. â€Å"Campbell’s Soup Can, a later, enlarged, and isolated version of the tomato soup can, conveys the erroneous impression that Warhol was out solely to apotheosize the idiom of popular culture† (Honnef). America’s social effects were equally important to Warhol. â€Å"What made American fabulous, he once explained, was that it established a tradition in which the richest consumers basically bought the same products as the poorest. You could watch television and drink a Coca Cola and you knew the president drank Coke, Liz Taylor drank Coke, and there you were drinking Coke. A Coke was a Coke, concluded Warhol, and no amount of money could buy you a better one†(Honnef). That insight explains why Warhol set out to achieve something similar in his work of art. He used standardized production to infuse art with the â€Å"magic of the perpetually same†(Honnef). Andy Warhol enriched the world by providing us with and idol from the world of art. Warhol was an artist of his time. He was a pop artist who saw contemporary art and the art world move to a new era. Warhol was â€Å"in fact a producer of a software for a form of art which paralleled the social system†( Honnef). Warhol reacted to the challenges of his time and gave a new dimension to the world of art. His art had its subversive features, for it uncovered the hidden mechanisms of the modern industrial, the society, and it exposed connections that were normally only visible through depth. Works Cited â€Å"Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts†. March 2009. Web. 3 March 2010. . â€Å"Dictionary. com. † January 2010. Web. 24 March 2010. . Greenberg, Jan and Jordan, Sandra. Andy Warhol: Prince of Pop. New York: Delacorte Press, 2004 Honnef, Klaus. WARHOL. Taschen: 2007. Horowitz, David. The Peoples Voice: A Populist Cultural History of Modern America. Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY: Sloan Publishing, 2008. Puente, Maria. â€Å"Andy Warhol’s genius, eccentricities just ‘Po p’. † USA Today. 11 December 2009. Final ed. Puente, Maria. â€Å"Andy Warhol is popping up all over the place. † USA Today. 1 April 2008. Final ed.

Therapeutic Music

People are now playing therapeutic music for patients in hospitals, hospices and other clinical settings to improve their healing. Music seems to be therapeutic to the human mind. Music can also provoke memories. It can trigger things in our minds that we all have experienced as humans. Music's power extends to the point where we don't even have to hear a song, we just have to think of it. When this happens, memories of a particular event or time in our lives that possess or resemble some type of association can come flooding back (Science of People; Danielle M. Baker). Through these scientific discoveries, we see yet another aspect of the power of music in the human mind. This power can be seen in the composition Forever Music by Mark Hayes and Susan Boersma. Historically and scientifically, it is evident that music has a power that is both unique and universal. The language of Forever Music is written for the intended purpose of global unification through the power of music. The idea of producing a common ground amongst all people who can hear. The message; music represents life, peace, time, love, and the happy assembly of all people in the world regardless of ones individual background. Each lyrical element in this piece is intended to allow all people of every culture to share a song. A song that carries meaning applicable to everyone who can hear. Mark and Susan seem to have envisioned, as demonstrated by the text's language and rhetoric, a peaceful and unified world that has the deepest appreciation for life and music. The audience for this text is timeless. â€Å"†¦ where present, past, and future meet upon a narrow bridge of time.† This work is written for all people of all ages. It is designed to inform the world that each individual life is a song meant to be sung. The study of this piece, Forever Music, can be broken down into many different segments. We will take time to dissect each phrase in the song with the hope of being able to fully understand the depths of its symbolism and how what it communicates relates to people of every age and from every culture around the world. We will contextualize the songs language though it's lyrics, and we will also try to gain a better musical understanding for the way that this piece was composed. We can just as easily dissect the musical element of Forever Music as the lyrical element. These two categories, individually, are imbedded with such meaning, emotion, and symbolism. These are things that we get to discover! There are many years of professional experience between this works creators, and because of this, their experiences enhance their ability, and this songs ability, to reach a timeless audience from every culture.