Strategic implementation process

Strategic implementation process Implementing Strategies the step that differentiates between success and failure of strategic planning. Abstract To discuss in detail, the strategic implementation process and also to understand the management and operational nuances of a successful implementation. The topic spans across vital tools such as annual objectives, organizational structure, reengineering, performance culture and process improvements. The research paper also brings out the challenges of implementation, which are much complex to solve, and makes it even more difficult to implement the formulated strategies. This research also authenticates the fact that there is a pre-requirement for special set of programs/ initiatives etc to prepare an organization towards change in the terms of peoples acceptance towards the new implementation. (www.csuchico.edu/mgmt/strategy/module/sld044.html) Literature Review The strategy management process does not end when the firm decides what strategy to pursue. There must be a translation of strategic thought into strategic action. This translation is much easier if the managers and the employees of the firm understand the business, feels as part of the company, committed to the organizations strategic intent. Implementing a strategy affects the firm from top to bottom; it also affects all the functional/ divisional areas of business. Even the most technically perfect strategy plan will serve little purpose if it is not implemented. Many organizations tend to spend an inordinate amount of money, time and resources in developing strategic plans; but lets them wither out once change or uncertainty creeps in, failure of implementation is not only a setback but erodes the confidence of the firm and brings it back to worse than the pre-strategic scenarios leading to management failure and organization chaos. Research Aims Objectives Startegy formulation concepts and tools do not differ greatly between small, large or bigger firms, but the implementation varies substantially among different types and sizes of organizations. As the implementation will affect many aspects of the organization like the altering of sales territories, expanding financial budgets, changes in the pricing model, developing new employee benefits, establishing cost-control procedures, changing marketing approaches, building on infrastructures for ehnaced products and services, better management information systems, launching new organization wide development projects and initiatives. This research paper exactly focusses on these aspects and try to elucidate the managerial and operational perspectives in breif details with respect to strategy implementation. Research Methodology An individual project research covering many corporate strategies internet links, strategic business books, executive management journals, the Harvard Business Review magazines and various case studies. Some articles were also used as references in the Strategy Focused Organization written by the Robert Kaplan David Norton duos. Few were read from various SEM websites, through the search engine Google. It is more of a desktop based literature research and translating the understanding into research paper/ article. Discussion Management Perspectives The transition from formulation to implementation requires a shift un responsibility from strategists to divisional/ functional managers. Managers and employees are motivated more on perceived self-interest than organizational interest, hence it is essential for the top management to translate these goals in alignment with their personal/ functional goals, so a message is sent across that achieving these small set of goals leads to achieve the super ordinate organizational goals. These will let the management focus on establishing annual objectives and then breaking them down to functional objectives, devising policies and procedures to act as a general guideline for steering the functionalities, followed by allocating resources (material, money and men), restructuring and regrouping if necessary to align to the need of the organizations strategy, structured communication programs to reduce resistance for change, revising the rewards and the incentives plans, developing a strategic s upport culture, adapting to synergetic operational and production processes and developing an effective HR function. Management changes are necessarily more extensive when strategies to be implemented move a firm in a major new direction. The managers should start involving in strategy implementation process right from the early stages so as to maintain the commitment towards the end results and transfer the confidence to grass root level so that their team members are also motivated to work towards the agreed objectives both functional and organizational. Top-down flow of communication is essential for developing bottom-up support. Every employee should be able to benchmark his/her efforts against best-in-class competitors so that the challenge becomes personal, on the other hand the firm should provide the best training for both managers and employees to ensure that they have to acquire and maintain skills necessary to be world-class performers. Strategic management should not become self-perpetuating bureaucratic mechanism. Rather it must be a reflective learning process that familiarizes managers and employers in the organization with key strategic issues and feasible alternatives for resolving those issues. It must not become ritualistic, stilted, orchestrated or too formal, predictable and rigid. Always remember to keep the strategic management process simple but effective, jargon-free but content rich. Words supported by numbers should be represented as the medium for explaining strategic issues and organizational responses. A key role of strategist is to facilitate continuous organization change and learning that enhances the next perspective production operations (HR, Learning, Culture and Leadership aspects as well). Discussion Production/ Operations (Learning, HR) Perspective The production or operations perspective constitute more than 70% of the firms total routine strategy or operational strategy. These limitations can significantly enhance the risk of non-attainment of the desired objectives as they are back bone of the business development/ market expansion focuses of the organization. Production related decisions on plant size, plant locations, product design, choice of equipments, kind of tooling, size of inventory, inventory control, quality control, cost control, use of standards, job specialization, employee training, equipment and resource utilizations, shipping and packaging and technological innovations can have a dramatic impact on the success or failure of strategy-implementation efforts. Factors that should be studied before locating production facilities include the availability of resources, make or outsource decisions, margin of production costings, the location of major markets, political risks in the area/ region. For high technology companies, production costs may not be as important as production flexibilities because major product changes can happen more frequently. This also results in cross-training of employees in various production platforms leading to: Reduction in substantial investments in training learning activities. Workers skill level gets cross-pollinated and resulting in higher efficiency. It can reduce the thrust of managers responsibility in training/ and make them focus more towards coaching and mentoring. It reduces time gaps and hence gains on productivity levels are easily expected. You have to understand your industry well to develop the connection between process improvements and outputs achieved. Take three divisional examples of cycle-time measurement, a common process measure. For much of our defense business, no premium is earned for early delivery. And the contracts allow for reimbursement of inventory holding costs. Therefore, attempts to reduce inventory or cycle times in this business produce no benefit for which the customer is willing to pay. The only benefits from cycle time or inventory reduction occur when reduction in factory-floor complexity leads to real reductions in product cost. The output performance targets must be real cash savings, not reduced inventory levels or cycle times. In contrast, significant lead-time reductions could be achieved for our packaging machinery business. This improvement led to lower inventory and an option to access an additional 35% of the market. In this case, the cycle-time improvements could be tied to specific targets for increased sales and market share. It wasnt linear, but output seemed to improve each time we improved throughput times. And in one of our agricultural machinery businesses, orders come within a narrow time window each year. The current build cycle is longer than the ordering window, so all units must be built to the sales forecast. This process of building to forecast leads to high inventory-more than twice the levels of our other businesses-and frequent overstocking and obsolescence of equipment. Incremental reductions in lead time do little to change the economics of this operation. But if the build cycle time could be reduced to less than the six-week ordering time window for part or all of the build schedule, then a breakthrough occurs. The division can shift to a build-to-order schedule and eliminate the excess inventory caused by building to forecasts. In this case, the benefit from cycle-time reductions is a step-function that comes only when the cycle time drops below a critical level. So here we have three businesses, three different processes, all of which could have elaborate systems for measuring quality, cost, and time but would feel the impact of improvements in radically different ways. With all the diversity in our business units, senior management really cant have a detailed understanding of the relative impact of time and quality improvements on each unit. All of our senior managers, however, understand output targets, particularly when they are displayed with historical trends and future targets. The concept of learning organization (cultural intervention in strategy) is emphasized here as part of the changing business model to suit the strategic intent. Learning organizations are characterized by total employee involvement in a process of collaboratively conducted, collectively accountable change directed towards shared values or principles. (Watkins and Marsick 1992: 118). The basic rationale for such organizations is that in situations of rapid change only those that are flexible, adaptive and productive will excel. For this to happen, it is argued, organizations need to discover how to tap peoples commitment and capacity to learn at all levels. While all people have the capacity to learn, the structures in which they have to function are often not conducive to reflection and engagement. Furthermore, people may lack the tools and guiding ideas to make sense of the situations they face. Organizations that are continually expanding their capacity to create their future requi re a fundamental shift of mind among their members. When you ask people about what it is like being part of a great team, what is most striking is the meaningfulness of the experience. People talk about being part of something larger than them, of being connected, of being generative. It becomes quite clear that, for many, their experiences as part of truly great teams stands out as singular periods of life lived to the fullest. Some spend the rest of their lives looking for ways to recapture that spirit. For Peter Senge, real learning gets to the heart of what it is to be human. We become able to re-create ourselves. This applies to both individuals and organizations. Thus, for a learning organization it is not enough to survive. Survival learning or what is more often termed adaptive learning is important indeed it is necessary. But for a learning organization, adaptive learning must be joined by generative learning, learning that enhances our capacity to create The learning organizations require a new view of leadership. He sees the traditional view of leaders (as special people who set the direction, make key decisions and energize the troops as deriving from a deeply individualistic and non-systemic worldview. At its centre the traditional view of leadership, is based on assumptions of peoples powerlessness, their lack of personal vision and inability to master the forces of change, deficits which can be remedied only by a few great leaders. Against this traditional view he sets a new view of leadership that centers on subtler and more important tasks. In a learning organization, leaders are designers, stewards and teachers. They are responsible for building organizations were people continually expand their capabilities to understand complexity, clarify vision, and improve shared mental models that is they are responsible for learning. Learning organizations will remain a good idea until people take a stand for building such organizations. Taking this stand is the first leadership act, the start of inspiring (literally to breathe life into) the vision of the learning organization, which is also part of the structural intervention, a part of planned change or Organization Development. Conclusion Successful Strategy formulation does not at all guarantee successful strategy implementation, although they are sequential in nature, but the latter simply means the change actually. It is widely agreed that the real work starts after strategies are formulated. It is sometimes frightening to think a single individual, a system failure, a process hiccup or a disturbing structure would completely sabotage the success of the strategic implementation and achievement of the agreed objectives. So the actual grounds have to prepare in terms of managing human resources and political relationships, creating a strategy supporting conducive climate/ culture, adapting to the right kind of systems, operations and processes. Depending on the size and type of the organization other management issues could be equally important to successful strategic implementation. References Dale McConkey, Planning in a Changing Environment, Business Horizons, September October 1988; 66. S. Ghoshal C.A. Bartlett, Changing the role of management beyond structure to processes, HBR 73, 1(1995); 88 90. www.hbr.org How important is personal goal alignment in Strategic Objectives, article by Thomas Strickland in 1998 (White Papers Category). Richard Brown, Outsider CEO: Inspiring changes with force and grace, USA Today (July 19, 1999): 3B. H. Igor Ansoff, Strategic Management of Technology, Journal of Business Strategy 7, no: 3 (Winter 1987); 38. Jack Duncan, Management (New York Random House, 1983): 381-390. Translating strategies into action, course notes on published by HBS Feb 1990. Robert Waterman Jr. How the better get best?, Business Week (September 14th 1987): 104-105. Implementing Strategies: Management Operations Issue, Fred R. David, South Carolina University, 2006 Prentice Hall Edition, 245 261. T. Deal A. Kennedy, Culture: A new look through the old lenses, Journal of Applied Behavioral Sciences 19, no:4 (1983), 498 504. Peter Senge on Learning Organizations in the American Management Journal, (Senge 1990: 340) Harris Dawn, Constance E. Helfat and Paul J Wolfson the pipeline to the top, the Academy of Management Perspectives 20, No: 4 (2006); 42. James C Wimbush, Spotlight on Human Resources Management, Business Horizon 49, No: 6 (Nov-Dec 2006); 433 Robert Simons, Control in the Age of Empowerment, Harvard Business Review (March-April 1995); 80. Readings from Strategic Management by Charles W.L. Hill Gareth R. Jones, 4th Reprinted 2000 Millennium Edition.

Utah and the Mormon Culture :: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Utah and the Mormon Culture In 1820, Joseph Smith had a vision in Palmyra, New York, of God and his son, Jesus Christ telling him to reorganize the church of Jesus Christ. During the next 10 years, Joseph was visited by other heavenly messengers, translated the Book of Mormon and established the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints. Many years thereafter, the Mormons relocated from Nauvoo, Illinois because of religious persecution (PBS Online). In Illinois, Joseph Smith had succeeded in establishing a religion which brought together its followers both sociologically and economically. Mormon followers were ordered to pay a tithing of 10% on their gross personal wealth. Those followers who were generous to the church were reportedly bestowed with an elevated position within the church which began a â€Å"pyramidal lay clergy – a device that provided a bonding camaraderie and loyalty for all male church members (Denton 13).† When Joseph Smith was murdered by an Illinois mob in June 1844, the Twel ve Apostles scattered. Sidney Rigdon assumed the Presidency, he being Smith's first counselor. The church was divided and in looming danger of dissipation. Brigham, with true Napoleonic foresight, saw his opportunity. Young hurried to Nauvoo, denounced Rigdon as an impostor and his revelations as emanations from the Devil. He cut off both Rigdon and his adherents from the true church, cursed Rigdon, and â€Å"handed him over to the buffetings of Satan for a thousand years." Young was immediately elected President by an overwhelming majority (Waite 14). Facing continued persecution, he then led the Mormons westward out of Illinois to Florence, Nebraska on the Missouri River in 1846. In 1847, Brigham Young led an exploration to the Rocky Mountains. The Mormons had discovered and selected the Great Salt Lake region as their safe haven where they could have the freedom to worship and live as their faith decreed (Katz). Brigham Young believed that Utah was the promise land for the Mormo ns because of its dense populace, the freedom they would have to practice their religion, and the ease in which they took control over the region. Once established in Utah, the Mormons identified themselves with the region claiming the state as their headquarters, even electing their church president as Governor. Brigham Young dreamed of the kingly robe and the jeweled crown in some far-off valley of the Rocky Mountains, where gentiles or their laws could not annoy the saints, or hinder the normal development of Mormonism (Waite 15). Utah and the Mormon Culture :: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Utah and the Mormon Culture In 1820, Joseph Smith had a vision in Palmyra, New York, of God and his son, Jesus Christ telling him to reorganize the church of Jesus Christ. During the next 10 years, Joseph was visited by other heavenly messengers, translated the Book of Mormon and established the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints. Many years thereafter, the Mormons relocated from Nauvoo, Illinois because of religious persecution (PBS Online). In Illinois, Joseph Smith had succeeded in establishing a religion which brought together its followers both sociologically and economically. Mormon followers were ordered to pay a tithing of 10% on their gross personal wealth. Those followers who were generous to the church were reportedly bestowed with an elevated position within the church which began a â€Å"pyramidal lay clergy – a device that provided a bonding camaraderie and loyalty for all male church members (Denton 13).† When Joseph Smith was murdered by an Illinois mob in June 1844, the Twel ve Apostles scattered. Sidney Rigdon assumed the Presidency, he being Smith's first counselor. The church was divided and in looming danger of dissipation. Brigham, with true Napoleonic foresight, saw his opportunity. Young hurried to Nauvoo, denounced Rigdon as an impostor and his revelations as emanations from the Devil. He cut off both Rigdon and his adherents from the true church, cursed Rigdon, and â€Å"handed him over to the buffetings of Satan for a thousand years." Young was immediately elected President by an overwhelming majority (Waite 14). Facing continued persecution, he then led the Mormons westward out of Illinois to Florence, Nebraska on the Missouri River in 1846. In 1847, Brigham Young led an exploration to the Rocky Mountains. The Mormons had discovered and selected the Great Salt Lake region as their safe haven where they could have the freedom to worship and live as their faith decreed (Katz). Brigham Young believed that Utah was the promise land for the Mormo ns because of its dense populace, the freedom they would have to practice their religion, and the ease in which they took control over the region. Once established in Utah, the Mormons identified themselves with the region claiming the state as their headquarters, even electing their church president as Governor. Brigham Young dreamed of the kingly robe and the jeweled crown in some far-off valley of the Rocky Mountains, where gentiles or their laws could not annoy the saints, or hinder the normal development of Mormonism (Waite 15).

High School vs College Essay

Upon attending college for a semester and a half, I have found that I enjoy being a college student more than being a high school student. In the time that i have been in college, I have seen that more freedom is allowed to students in college than in high school. Such choices as the note taking, the environment, or class selection are a few examples of how college is less restrictive than high school. Because of the educational freedom and having more control over my education, I find being a college student more enjoyable than being a high school student. In high school, the classes that students take appear to be easy. They seem easy because when a person is in high school, he/she can just brush effects off. For example, if someone does not pay attention and does not do anything for the entire class period, he/she can copy someone else’s notes and still learn the material because they have that class five days a week. Another reason high school classes give the impression of being easy is because a person can miss school/class, not get penalized, and most of the time the teacher will go over the material the student had missed. â€Å"High school is mandatory and free whereas college is voluntary and expensive. â€Å"(Information for High School Students) On the other hand in college, the classes appear to be hard. A college student cannot just brush a class off. Well, he/she can, but they will suffer from it in the long run. For instance, if someone does happen to attend class but has no intention of paying attention to the lecture, he/she is going to suffer from not being attentive and will wish he/she did pay attention because most of the time professors do not review any of the lectures or material before a test. Like high school, a college student can copy another student’s notes it may be slightly helpful, but not as much as if they had been in class and attentive. College classes are also hard because a person cannot really miss a class. In order to know what is going on and what assignments are going to be due, a student needs to attend every class if possible because he/she does not have the same class five days a week. In college, it is either two or three days a week and that is it. If someone does miss a class, it is very hard to catch up on what he/she missed. In high school, â€Å"teachers provide you with information you missed when you were absent but in college professors expect you to get from classmates any notes from classes you missed. † (The Differences High school vs College) In my opinion, missing one class in college is like missing a whole week in high school because that is how much material is covered in one class. Another topic to be compared and contrasted is note taking and teachers. in high school, the notes are given directly to the students by the teacher; spelled out and everything. Sometimes the teacher will tell the students what to write down in their notes from the textbooks that are given to them. The teacher will usually tell them what to study and wait until everyone is finished writing to continue. Similarily in college sometimes a student does get one of the professors which do tell them what to write down and do write notes on the board for them, but the notes are not as vague as in high school. On the other hand, when a professor lectures, the students have to listen carefully and write downideas that seem to be importnat to them. In college, abbreviations are a key aspect because people are not going to be able to write down the professor’s lecture word for word, so instead they take the main ideas and write them down. Teachers, both in high school and college, differ in his/her own class policies. For example, both in high school and in college, you can have one teacher that is extremely nice and will tell you what to write and study and you can also have a teacher who is not so nice and does not tell you anything and you have to kind of figure it out for yourself. The last topic in which i am going to compare and contrast is the atmosphere/environment. In highschool, a student does not really have much freedom, high school is kind of like a jail. A student has to be in class by a certain time, and if he/she is late, he/she can get in an enormous amount of trouble. For instance, if a high school walks into class five minutes late, and his/her teacher is not very nice, that student is most likely going to receive a referaal and a detention. A student in high school only has roughly two to three minutes between each class. However, in college the environment is not as strict. There is a good amount of freedom at college. There are breaks between classes anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. During these breaks, a person does not have to stay at school. â€Å"Although there is freedom in college, likewise to high school eventhough a college student will not get a referral or detention the student’s professor does seem to get mad if a student is late consistentaly and will take a point or two off his/her participation and effort grade, if he/she happen to have one of those not so nice professor’s. â€Å"(Personal Interview) Overall, there are many similarities and differences between high school and college. I found there to be more differences in my search than similarities. I stated three subject matters but there are many more, such as, the tests, the people, the work, and so on. Being a college student now, if there was an opportunity for me to go back and relive my high school days i would, but this time i would pay much more attention because once someone gets to college it seems to be ten times harder!

Comparative Study on the Origin of Religion Essay

Since the early 1800s, there had been an ample amount of skeptics trying to account for the origin of religion. The basic question on everybody’s mind was where does religion come from? Some believed that people developed religion because they didn’t understand the forces of nature around them. Others believe that religion was created as a way of restrain people. In the 19th century, people were introduced to social science and anthropologists who once studied primitive culture were exposed to several theories on the origin of religion. Edward B Tylor was one of the first who developed a theory on religion. Max Muller was a German professor at Oxford University whose interest included Indian mythology and the study of religion. Another anthropologist was George Frazer who key contributions to religious anthropology was a religious encyclopedia. There are many explanations to the origin of religion, one of the most prominent being Edward B. Tylor’s theory of animism. This theory is considered the foundation of the physical evolution of religion; two other influential religious anthropologists, Max Muller and James Frazer, also based their explanations of the origin of religion on nature. All three religious anthropologists are similar in the sense that they traced the evolution of religion in an attempt to figure out the origin of it but differ in the way they approach the concept of religion. Edward B. Tylor developed the theory of animism to help explain the most rudimentary form of religion. Animism is defined as the belief that attributes souls and spirits to humans, plants, animals and other entities. Animistic religious beliefs are well-known among primitive societies who were â€Å"so low in culture as to have no religious conceptions what so ever† (Tylor). Tylor considered animism as the most primitive phase in the development of religion. He believed that the reflection of dreams and the observation of death caused primitive people to develop the idea of souls and spirits. Tylor thought that primitive people believed that everything in nature had a soul within it. He hypothesized that a belief in animism led to the formation of a more generalized god and, eventually, the creation of monotheism. Animism ultimately led to the evolution of religion in the minds of the people. It led them to take something so simple as nature and use it to explain the natural phenomenon in their environment. A conflicting theory that uses the concept of evolution is that of Max Muller. Another theory of the origin of religion was developed by Max Muller. He believed that people first developed religion from the observation of nature. According to his theory, primitive people became aware of regularity of the seasons, the tides and the phases of the moon. Their response to these forces in nature was to personalize them†(Hopfe and Woodward). They personalized them through linguistics. Muller believed that development of religion was a cause of confusion in language (Goldsmith). There seems to be a divide between Muller and Tylor over the nature of the origin o f religion. Max Muller believed that the answer to the sole origin of religion could be found in the past and a person can trace its origin in the linguistic remnants in the Indo-European languages. Tylor thought that implementing an ethnological approach would be more successful than studying languages for answers of the origin of religion. Evolution of religion is evident in Muller’s theory because â€Å"they personified the forces of nature, created myths to describe their activities, and eventually developed pantheons and religions around them† (Hopfe and Woodward). By developing religions and pantheons from identifying the forces in nature is a clear sign of the evolution of religion in the human mind set. Even though their theories are different, the idea of evolution of religion in the human mind is evident in both Muller and Tylor’s theory. Sir James George Frazer, a fellow religious anthropologist, began developing his own theories on religion. Frazer believed that humans used magic as a way to control nature and the events around them and when that failed, they turned to religion. They used religion to control the events for a while and when religion failed they turned to science. Frazer’s theories were similar to those of Tylor. They both believed that the human mind developed in the same way as that of physical evolution.. Even though Frazer took a similar approach to Tylor in tracing the origin of religion, he modified Tylor’s theory and replaced Tylor’s theory of animism with his idea of magic. A similarity between Frazer and Tylor is that they both believed that religion began from an intentional method of describing and making sense of a strange world. Frazer replaces the idea that religion explains nature by introducing science as a substitute. Frazer’s approach to tracing the origin of religion is similar to that of Tylor and Muller since all three traced the evolution of religion in an attempt to figure out its origin. Both Muller and Frazer’s theory are similar to Tylor’s theory since both trace the origin of religion through the evolution of it but differ in the way they interpret religion. All three of them seemed to miss a vital element of religion which is that no one who practices religion is doing so to explain how the world works. People use religion for several reasons. Some use it to give meaning to their lives while others use it to enforce social order. Maybe all three anthropologists didn’t miss this key component but rather didn’t know about it due to the rapid evolution of religion.

Phone Tapping Essays

Phone Tapping Essays Phone Tapping Paper Phone Tapping Paper A Characteristic of Orwell’s Big Brother? Communication makes the world what it is. Without communication, people would virtually be in total isolation from one another and with events around the world. Telephones play an integral role in providing this much-needed communication. Telephones also permit people the freedom to say what they wish to others on a confidential basis, without any risk of witnesses. This freedom allows releases that many people believe no one can take away. Most people take this freedom for granted and overlook the fact that the government can, under certain restricted conditions, take it away by phone tapping. Phone tapping is the secret monitoring of a conversation by a third party. Where some may argue that phone tapping is necessary, that argument is misleading and incorrect in many aspects. Many argue that phone tapping is an invasion of privacy. Nowhere in the Constitution is the word privacy mentioned, implying that, â€Å"Privacy is a value or ideal in society,† (McCloskey) but not a right. This is one argument in support of phone tapping. While some claim that the Constitution supports this argument, sections of the Constitution actually provide reasons why this argument is incorrect (Browne). Those guidelines imply that Americans have the right to privacy, because there would be no point for laws to protect privacy if privacy was not a right. However, the Bill of Rights does not explicitly say the word privacy but it implies and defends privacy within multiple amendments including the Fourth and the Tenth. The Fourth Amendment clearly states, â€Å"Without probable cause and a search warrant, the government cannot search or seize your house or belongings. † (United States Constitution. ). The right to not to have one’s personal property and belongings searched, is a guideline that defines privacy. The Tenth Amendment states, â€Å"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states, or to the people. † (United States Constitution. ). This means the government has no power or right to invade our privacy or do anything that it not specifically sanctioned in the Constitution (Browne). Therefore, concerning the invasion of privacy by phone tapping, the government has no right under any circumstances to tap any phone for any means without probable cause. Government phone tapping is said to be a key approach to staying one-step ahead of criminals and terrorists (â€Å"Bush Defends. †). The major problem with this argument is the enemy usually is too smart for phone tapping! Most often, terrorists and criminals are able to devise huge schemes to break the law without being caught. It is rather naive to assume that simple phone tapping will put roadblocks in their plans. Criminals and terrorists sometimes know the government’s plans and often they are aware of what the government is trying to do to discover their criminal acts and terroristic plots (Levy). For example, most terrorists and criminals assume their home phones are tapped and therefore they do not use them to plan their attacks or crimes (Finder). If phone calls need to be made, they normally are made off the premises or in public places. Therefore, phone tapping is too elementary to counteract their plans. Getting a court order to phone tap every public phone, for the possibility that a terrorist may use it, is quite trivial because that possibility is hardly probable enough to gain multiple phone tapping warrants (Hollingsworth and Mayes). When a phone is tapped, someone has to listen to every conversation, carefully listening for suspicious details or plans. This takes bodies away from more promising and pressing leads that quite possibly could uncover corrupt and illegal plans. In turn this actually results in phone tapping possibly aiding in criminal acts as opposed to hindering them (Levy). This idea that phone tapping aids in staying ahead of the criminals is too nominal to be considered an argument. It seems that the government is desperate to defend phone tapping so it devised this argument. Furthermore, the results that government sponsored phone-tapping produce are so marginal, it seems that spending time and money on it is futile (Levy). The government taps phones to discover evidence about a certain topic. Data mining is a system that aids in phone tapping: once a phone is tapped, all the conversations are data-mined to show trends which the government analyzes to decipher which phone records to dissect (Levy). The evidence discovered by data-mining and phone tapping only leads to more leads, meaning that intercepting evidence may identify a criminal or a suspect but most often does not lead any to incriminating evidence (Morgan and Padley). This poses a major problem. The government cannot risk picking which lead to pursue or not to pursue, and consequently they have to pursue every lead. This is extremely time consuming and if the lead turns out to be a dead end, all that time and money was wasted (Levy). Government phone tapping has so many drawbacks, is it not worth the trouble when the results barely ever produce incriminating evidence. The only legal way for the government to tap a phone is to obtain judicial authorization through a warrant (Gittlen). This system mandates collaboration between the National Security Agency and the federal courts, and forces the agency to have reasonable, coherent evidence to obtain the warrant as stated in a law developed in 1978 (Ashenfelter). Besides the National Security Agency and the judicial branch, communication companies are also involved in phone tapping. Legally, communication companies must aid in government phone taps when presented with a warrant (Ashenfelter). While communication companies are required by law to assist in warranted phone tapping, some phone companies have been assisting in phone tapping regardless of the presence of a warrant, claiming it is better to help them then to let the government do the tapping themselves (Gittlen). A serious question arises when an issue of national security is involved as to whether the government should be allowed to tap a telephone without first getting judicial authorization. The government’s most simple, but most crucial job is to protect its people and their rights at all costs. Currently, the United States is fighting a war on terrorism which threatens those rights. If the government is fighting to preserve those rights, how can the government rationalize encroaching or even suspending our basic rights for periods of time to guarantee their survival (Stephen)? The government’s own actions are conflicting with our basic rights which is what our country is supposedly fighting to defend (Finder). How can the government fight actions that threaten national security, when they themselves are doing the same things? The freedoms promised by the Constitution need to be present and permitted at all times. Subsequently, phone tapping encroaches on those freedoms making it unconstitutional. The claim that the suspension of our basic rights to ensure their survival is pure fabrication. Government phone tapping is an issue that has numerous aspects to it. As with all arguments, many people quickly judge without looking at the big picture. However, experts on the subject can see that phone tapping is both unnecessary and unconstitutional. Phone conversations are something that are held sacred to the public and are a basic right according to the Constitution. Under no circumstance, even desperation is the government allowed to break its laws. Ashenfelter, David, comp. Bushs Wiretap Program Gets a Weeks Reprieve. Detroit Free Press 28 Sept. 2006, sec. DN. LexisNexis Academic. McClatchy-Tribune News Service. Marywood University, Scranton, PA. 22 Mar. 2007. Browne, Harry. Does the Constitution Contain a Right to Privacy? 9 May 2003. Google Scholar. Marywood University, Scranton, PA. 22 Mar. 2007. Keyword: Phone tapping Privacy. Bush Defends Phone-Tapping Policy. BBC News. 19 Dec. 2005. 27 Mar. 2007 . Finder, Joseph. Tap Dance. The New Republic os 215 (1996): 14+. Wilson Web. Marywood University, Scranton, PA. 22 Mar. 2007. Keyword: government phone tapping. Gittlen, Sandra. How Do the Feds Tap Phone Lines? Network World 13 Feb. 2006. Google Scholar. Marywood University, Scranton, PA. 25 Mar. 2007. Keyword: federal phone tapping. Hollingsworth, Mark, and Tessa Mayes, comps. The Case is Notable for One Thing He Got Caught. The Guardian (London) 19 Mar. 2007, Final ed. : 8. LexisNexis Academic. Marywood University, Scranton, PA. Levy, Stephen. Only the Beginning? Newsweek 22 May 2006: 33. Wilson Web. Marywood University, Scranton, PA. 25 Mar. 2007. Keyword: Phone Tapping National Security. McCloskey, H J. The Political Ideal of Privacy. The Philosophical Quarterly 21 (1971): 303- 314. JSTOR. Marywood University, Scranton, PA. 24 Mar. 2007. Keyword: phone tapping. Morgan, Vivienne, and Ben Padley, comps. Using Phone-Tap Evidence Would Increase Convictions' The Press Association Limited 16 Mar. 2007, sec. PN. LexisNexis Academic. Marywood University, Scranton, PA. 22 Mar. 2007. Keyword: government phone tapping. Stephen, Andrew. A Nation Left Unprotected. New Statesman 5 Nov. 2001: 13-14. Wilson Web. Marywood University. 22 Mar. 2007. Keyword: Federal Phone Tapping. United States Constitution. Legal Information Institute. 2006. Cornell Law School. 25 Mar. 2007.

Traditional and Patient-centered Outcomes with Three Classes of Asthma Article

Traditional and Patient-centered Outcomes with Three Classes of Asthma Medication - Article Example By ‘clinical variables’, the authors mean traditional end-points like symptoms, reliever use, forced expiratory volume in one second percent predicted, morning peak expiratory flow and airway hyperresponsiveness; ‘subjective variables’ mean patient-centred benefits like quality of life, patient global assessments and the feeling of improvement as determined by asthma control questionnaire. There are 2 hypotheses in this study which are: 1) Some traditional measurements (clinical variables) of improvement during asthma treatment may not reflect the estimation of benefit by the patient. 2) Patients may benefit (subjective variables) from a specific class of asthma medication in ways which were not captured by the measurement of lung function. Measures of asthma control are a much-debated topic in the recent times. This is because there are various measures to determine the efficacy of treatment. Most researchers use lung function and clinical improvement as criteria for improvement; even the international guidelines are based on these. However, what the researchers perceive as improvement may not be the same in case of patients. Patients may have their own meaning of improvement and only if they feel that a particular class of medicine is effective will they adhere to treatment. This is the basis of the hypotheses in the article under study. This study included 58 subjects from three sites in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia. Only those with mild to moderate asthma, who had previously used a short-acting ß2-agonist with/without an inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) 500  µg beclomethasone equivalent and in the age group 16 to 75 years, were included in the study. In all subjects, ICS treatment was ceased at an entry to the study. Those with mild to moderate asthma were only considered because, in reality, these patients need only monotherapy and they are symptomatic enough to show a treatment response.  Ã‚  

Regional Politics (Africa, Middle East or East Asia) Essay

Regional Politics (Africa, Middle East or East Asia) - Essay Example In terms of attitude, consolidating democracy entails the majority believing in democratic procedures that they view as adequate to facilitate governance regardless of major economic issues. Further, the majority inclining to pro-democracy forces consolidates democracy in this sense because of minimal support for other systems of governances. Constitutionally, consolidating democracy involves a process whereby both governmental and anti-governmental forces, ascribe to specific laws or institutions established because of a new democratic process (Mottiar, 2002). On the other hand, a school of thought views democratic consolidation as vague, ethnocentric and teleological in terms of not offering a plausible mechanism of assessing the longevity of the democratization process. The proponents considering the process of consolidating democracy as being vague support their arguments by highlighting on the new democracies as a way of determining whether new democracies can maintain democracy in the form. Further, assessing new democracies assist to gain an understanding of the fallacy related to electroralism because a new democracy embraces an election process. Democracies exists that offer electoral democracy, but denies freedom or rights that accompany the principles of establishing democracies (Friedman, 2011). On another note, Mottiar (2002) states that, certain conditions needs to exist prior to acknowledging the consolidation of democracy. This involves conditions that facilitate the establishment of a free civil society where, autonomous groups or movements can articulate their values and develop associations to enhance their interests. Further, there is a need to promote a political society that is autonomous and ideal for political actors to embrace competition by following the legitimate process in pursuit of public power. The core institutions that need to be streamlined in this sense include the political parties, political leadership, electoral rules, int er-party alliances, legislature and elections. In addition, the dominant political actors within a state and including the government should adhere to the rule of law that purposely protects the freedom of individuals. This rule of law entails embracing constitutionalism as a way of promoting good governance from the state administration and the elected government. State bureaucracy also needs to be in place to achieve democratic consolidation since, state bureaucracy ensures that the citizen’s rights are protected and provided with the basic services. An institutionalized economy is also important for democratic consolidation in the sense that, institutionalized economy facilitates the enactment of policies and establishing institutions ideal for sustaining a mixed economy. As argued by Mottiar (2002), democratic consolidation cannot occur in an environment of commanding economies since, market autonomy and diversity in terms of ownership, is critical in establishing an inde pendent civil society. Conversely, democratic consolidation cannot thrive in an environment that embraces completely free market economy. This is because,