Kant's Moral Philosophy Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Kant's Moral Philosophy - Term Paper Example Argument or view Kant’s Deontology posits that the best way to act morally to act from duty with the consideration of the highest good, that is, a good without condition which is intrinsically good by itself (Kant, 1780). He formulated his deontological ethics in a categorical imperative of doing good for the sake of good regardless of its consequence (Kant, 1785). Explication of argument To effectively argue that Kantian Deontology is the correct moral theory, it would be necessary to explain the formulation that executes Kant’s deontology which is categorical imperative. According to Kant, imperatives imply what they meant which are command such as â€Å"wake up early†. Often they are hypothetical imperative because they only serve a specific objective or purpose such as â€Å"wake up early so you will not be later for work. This imperative or command becomes categorical when it is applied universally and that the actions and decisions of individuals are to be judged solely by their motivations and that the consequences do not matter morally (as in the case of hypothetical imperative) neither the intended consequences nor the actual consequences matter morally; only the principle or rule we follow if we do the action matters morally. In simpler terms, this meant doing what is good regardless of consequence and that by doing is an end by itself. Thus, actions themselves become an end and this action should be a rational result in the exercise of freewill Consistent to this, Kant’s categorical imperative states that every person has the duty to use and exercise his goodness/humanity as a means to an end. The application of Kant’s categorical imperative is best illustrated in slave ownership. A slave owner may assert his right to own a property which in this case is a slave. While ownership by itself is not immoral, slave ownership becomes unethical or immoral according to Kant’s categorical imperative because it depriv es a person of his free rational action and that persons can never be a mere means to an end (Johnson, 2012). One distinct characteristic of Kant’s categorical imperative is that it is universal and inflexible that it applies to everyone without exception. For Kant, neither good nor bad luck affects in assessing the moral act of a person. His idea of â€Å"goodwill† did not become good because it serves an end or objective but because it intends to do â€Å"good† regardless of the consequence. Objection The best objection to Kant’s deontological ethics as formulated by categorical imperative is Thomas Nagel’s argument about moral luck. Unlike Kant, Thomas Nagel makes an exception through his assertion of moral luck that there are a broad range of externalities that affects moral judgment. Moral luck occurs when â€Å"an agent can be correctly treated as an object of moral judgment despite the fact that a significant aspect of what she is assessed for depends on factors beyond her control† (Nelkin, 2013). It meant that we should only be assessed morally only to the extent that the factors attendant to the circumstances of our actions that we can control as stated in his â€Å"control principle†. This argument also hold sway because it consider the realities and externalities of which an action must be carried out and therefore, an act is best judged by considering its environment.

Public opinion on health care reform in the United States Research Paper

Public opinion on health care reform in the United States - Research Paper Example There have been many efforts to impose some kind of health care reform in the United States, and the aim of this essay is to examine the public opinion of the most recent effort by current President, Barack Obama, to change the way the system works in the US. The hypothesis is that most people asked, using a short survey written on the Qualtrics system, would have a favorable opinion of the current reforms suggested, particularly in regards to the reform of the private health insurance market and aiding those with long-term chronic conditions in qualifying for affordable health insurance policies. This topic is particularly important because healthcare is something that is required by every individual at some point in their lives, and thus this issue affects everyone in the United States. It is also particularly timely because of the current economic recession (Blendon and Benson, â€Å"Public Opinion, the Deep Recession†, 2010), meaning that health insurance premiums are out of reach for more people than ever. This is part of the reason why we have hypothesized that the public opinion will be generally positive concerning this issue. Existing research on the topic has suggested that people are of generally mixed views about the reforms. We can see from evidence provided by Zis, Jacobs and Shapiro (1996) that showed public opinion on healthcare before the reforms were suggested that is particularly difficult to find a common ground between politicians and the public on this issue. More recent research suggests that public opinion on the specifics of the healthcare system as proposed by and passed by Obama are mixed (Blendon and Benson, â€Å"Public Opinion at the Time†, 2010). This is also shown in evidence from Gelman, Lee and Ghitza (2010). This article goes on to state that the majority of reform opposition comes from those within a higher income bracket and those over 65. This has led to the formation of the third hypothesis being tested by th is questionnaire. This research proposes that it will in fact be those over the age of 40 that will be more opposed to the healthcare reforms, although the age responses will be grouped to allow us to see if this statement will back up Gelman, Lee and Ghitza (2010). The first hypothesis will be testing the current thought in research that people have mixed views on the topic of healthcare reform. Existing research has also shown that people are in agreement with some of the pieces of the healthcare reform, and it is as a whole that it causes controversy (Brodie et al., 2010). This research covered the topic from a more historical perspective and additionally used information from those leaving the polling stations. This meant that people were more likely to be volatile in the opinions they expressed. The theory put forward by this research is that people are generally happy with certain aspects of the reform, and the questionnaire will question the opinion of people on the specific topic of extending Medicaid coverage to test this theory. Finally, there has been a lot of research on whether the healthcare reforms benefit certain ethnic groups and as such they show a more positive response to the laws, for example the work by Tesler and Sears (2010). This has been widely debated and as such is not a gap in the research and will not be included in the hypotheses. The three testable hypotheses are, then: 1. Individuals questioned will generally express positive views (as indicated by the

The Fifth Discipline Essay Example for Free

The Fifth Discipline Essay Introduction The organizations that will truly excel in the future will be those that discover how to tap people’s commitment and develop the capacity to learn at all levels in an organization. Deep down, people are learners. No one has to teach an infant to learn. In fact, no one has to teach infants anything. They are intrinsically inquisitive, masterful learners. Learning organizations are possible because at heart we all love to learn. Through learning we re-create ourselves and are able to do something we were never able to do earlier. Through learning we reperceive the world and our relationship to it. Through learning we extend our capacity to create, to be part of the generative process of life. There is within each of us a deep hunger for this type of learning. This seminal book by Peter M Senge explains how learning organizations can be built. The building blocks Systems Thinking Business and other human endeavours are systems of interrelated actions, whose full impact may be seen only after years. Since we are part of these systems, it’s hard to see the whole pattern of change. Instead, we tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the systems, and wonder why our deepest problems never seem to get solved. Systems thinking is a conceptual framework, to make the full patterns clearer and to help us see how to change them effectively. Personal Mastery Mastery means a special level of proficiency. People with a high level of personal mastery are able to consistently realize the results that matter most deeply to them in effect. They approach their life as an artist would approach a work of art, by becoming committed to their own lifelong learning. The discipline of personal mastery, starts with clarifying the things that really matter to us, of living our lives in line with our highest aspirations. Mental Models Mental models are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures of images that influence how we take action. Very often, we are not consciously aware of our mental models or the effects that they have on our behavior. Many insights into new markets or outmoded organizational practices fail to get put into practice because they conflict with powerful, tacit mental models. Institutional learning is the process whereby people change their shared mental models of the company, their markets, and their competitors. Building Shared Vision If any one idea about leadership has inspired organizations for thousands of years, it’s the capacity to hold a shared picture of the future we seek to create. When there is a genuine vision, people excel and learn, not because they are told to, but because they want to. But many leaders have personal visions that never get translated into shared visions that galvanize an organization. All too often, a company’s vision revolves around the charisma of a leader, or around a crisis that galvanizes everyone temporarily. But, people must pursue a lofty goal, not only in times of crisis but at all times. What is needed is a discipline for translating individual vision into shared vision – not a â€Å"cook book† but a set of principles and guiding practices. Team Learning The discipline of team learning starts with â€Å"dialogue,† the capacity of team members to suspend assumptions and enter into a genuine â€Å"thinking together.† Dialogue also involves learning how to recognize the patterns of interaction in teams that undermine learning. The patterns of defensiveness are often deeply engrained in how a team operates. If unrecognized, they undermine learning. If recognized, they can actually accelerate learning. Assessing the organization’s learning disability Most organizations learn poorly. The way they are designed and managed, the way people’s jobs are defined, and most importantly, the way people have been taught to think and interact, create fundamental learning disabilities. When people in organizations focus only on their position, they have little sense of responsibility for the results they produce. Moreover, when results are disappointing, we tend to find someone or something outside ourselves to blame when things go wrong. All too often, â€Å"proactiveness† is reactiveness in disguise. True proactiveness comes from seeing how we contribute to our own problems. Actions in organizations are dominated by concern with events: last month’s sales, the new budget cuts, the last quarter’s earnings, who just got promoted or fired, the new product our competitors just announced, the delay in launching a new product, and so on. Our fixation on events is actually part of our evolutionary programming. The irony is that today the primary threats to our survival, both of our organizations and of our societies, come not from sudden events but from slow, gradual processes. The arms race, environmental decay, the erosion of our society’s public education system, increasingly obsolete physical capital, and decline in design or product quality are all slow, gradual processes. Learning to see slow, gradual processes requires slowing down our frenetic pace and paying attention to the subtle as well as the dramatic. We learn best from experience but we never directly experience the consequences of many of our most important decisions. The most critical decisions made in organizations have systemwide consequences that stretch over years or decades. Systems thinking Systems thinking is the fifth discipline. It is the conceptual cornerstone that underlies all the five learning disciplines. The easy or familiar solution is not only ineffective; sometimes it is addictive and dangerous. The long-term, insidious consequence of applying non-systemic solutions is the increased need for more and more of the solution. There is a fundamental mismatch between the nature of reality in complex systems and our predominant ways of thinking about that reality. The first step in correcting that mismatch is to let go of the notion that cause and effect are close in time and space. Tackling a difficult problem is also a matter of seeing where the high leverage lies, a change which – with a minimum of  effort would lead to lasting, significant improvement. This point is quite similar to what Malcolm Gladwell makes in his book, â€Å"The Tipping Point†. Without systems thinking, there is neither the incentive nor the means to integrate the learning disciplines that have come into practice. Systems thinking is the cornerstone of how learning organizations think about their world. Sophisticated tools of forecasting and business analysis, as well as elegant strategic plans, usually fail to produce dramatic breakthroughs in managing a business. They are all designed to handle the sort of complexity in which there are many variables. Senge calls it detail complexity. But there is another type of complexity, where cause and effect are subtle, and where the effects over time of interventions are not obvious. This, Senge calls dynamic complexity. Conventional forecasting, planning, and analysis are not equipped to deal with dynamic complexity. When the same action has dramatically different effects in the short run and in the long run, there is dynamic complexity. When an action has one set of consequences locally and a very different set of consequences in another part of the system, there is dynamic complexity. When obvious interventions produce non-obvious consequences, there is dynamic complexity. The real leverage in most management situations lies in understanding dynamic complexity, not detail complexity. Unfortunately, most â€Å"systems analyses† focus on detail complexity, not dynamic complexity. Systems thinking is useful for describing a vast array of interrelationships and patterns of change. Ultimately, it helps us see the deeper patterns lying behind the events and the details. In mastering systems thinking, we give up the assumption that there must be an individual, or individual agent, responsible. Everyone shares responsibility for problems generated by a system. That does not necessarily imply that everyone involved can exert equal leverage in changing the system. But it discourages the search for scapegoats. In reinforcing processes, a small change builds on itself. A small action snowballs, with more and more and still more of the same, resembling compounding interest. But there’s nothing inherently bad about reinforcing loops. There are also â€Å"virtuous cycles† – processes that reinforce in  desired directions. If we are in a balancing system, we are in a system that is seeking stability. If the system’s goal is one we like, we will be happy. If it is not, we will find all our efforts to change matters frustrated until we can either change the goal or weaken its influence. Nature loves a balance – but many times, human decision makers act contrary to these balances, and pay the price. In general, balancing loops are more difficult to see than reinforcing loops because it often looks like nothing is happening. Leaders who attempt organizational change often find themselves unwittingly caught in balancing processes. To the leaders, it looks as though their efforts are clashing with the sudden resistance that seems to come from nowhere. In fact, the resistance is a response by the system, trying to maintain an implicit system goal. Until this goal is recognized, the change effort is doomed to failure. Systems seem to have minds of their own. This is specially evident in delays between actions and their consequences. Delays can make us badly overshoot the mark, or they can have a positive effect if we recognize them and work with them. That’s one of the lessons of balancing loops with delays. Aggressive action often produces exactly the opposite of what is intended. It produces instability and oscillation, instead of moving us more quickly toward our goal. Symptomatic intervention A reinforcing (amplifying) process is set in motion to produce a desired result. It creates a spiral of success but also creates inadvertent secondary effects (manifested in a balancing process) which eventually slow down the success. Instead of trying to push growth, we must remove the factors limiting growth. An underlying problem generates symptoms that demand attention. But such a problem is difficult for people to address, either because it is obscure or costly to confront. So people â€Å"shift the burden† of their problem to other solutions – well-intentioned, easy fixes which seem extremely efficient. Solutions that address only the symptoms of a problem, not fundamental causes, tend to have short term benefits at best. In the long term, the problem resurfaces and there is increased pressure for symptomatic response. Meanwhile, the capability for fundamental solutions  can atrophy. Symptomatic intervention; the â€Å"quick fix,† solves the problem symptom quickly, but only temporarily. In case of a more fundamental response to the problem, it takes longer to become evident. However, the fundamental solution works far more effectively. It may be the only enduring way to deal with the problem. The shifting burden structure explains a wide range of behaviors where well-intended â€Å"solutions† actually make matters worse over the long term. Opting for â€Å"symptomatic solutions† is enticing. Apparent improvement is achieved. Pressures, either external or internal, to â€Å"do something† about a vexing problem are relieved. But easing a problem symptom also reduces any perceived need to find a more fundamental solution. Over time, people rely more and more on the symptomatic solution. Without anyone making a conscious decision, people have â€Å"shifted the burden† to increasing reliance on symptomatic solutions. A special case of shifting the burden, which recurs with alarming frequency, is â€Å"eroding goals.† Whenever there is a gap between our goals and our current situation there are two sets of pressures: to improve the situation and to lower our goals. Dealing effectively with the situation requires a combination of strengthening the fundamental response and weakening the symptomatic response. Strengthening fundamental responses almost always requires a long-term orientation and a sense of shared vision. Weakening the symptomatic response requires willingness to face the truth about palliatives and â€Å"looking good† solutions. Leverage The bottom line of systems thinking is leverage. We must see where small actions and changes in structures can lead to significant, enduring improvements. The best results come not from largescale efforts but from small well-focused actions. Nonsystematic ways of thinking consistently lead us to focus on low-leverage changes, on symptoms where the stress is greatest. So we repair or ameliorate the symptoms. But such efforts only make matters worse in the long run. Systems thinking means organizing complexity into a coherent story that illuminates the cause of problems and how they can be remedied in enduring ways. The increasing complexity of today’s world leads many managers to assume that they lack the information they need to act effectively. The fundamental â€Å"information problem† faced by managers is not too little information but too much information. What we  most need are ways to know what is important and what is not  important, what variables to focus on and which to pay less attention to. This will generate leverage. Personal Mastery Organizations learn only if individual employees who learn. Individual learning is a necessary, through not sufficient condition for organizational learning. We must make personal mastery a part of our lives. This involves continually clarifying what is important to us. We often spend too much time coping with problems along our path that we only have a vague idea of what’s really important to us. We also need to see current reality more clearly. We’ve all known people entangled in counterproductive relationships, who remain stuck because they keep pretending everything is all right. In moving toward a desired destination, it is vital to know where we are now. The juxtaposition of vision and a clear picture of current reality generates â€Å"creative tension†. The essence of personal mastery is learning how to generate and sustain creative tension in our lives. The gap between vision and current reality is a source of creative energy. If there is no gap, there wo uld be no need for any action to move toward the vision. But when there is a gap between the goals and the current reality, negative emotion may also arise. We may lower our goals when we are unwilling to live with emotional tension. On the other hand, when we understand creative tension and allow it to operate by not lowering our vision, vision becomes an active force. Truly creative people use the gap between vision and current reality to generate energy for change. Mastery of creative tension leads to a fundamental shift in our whole posture toward reality. Current reality becomes our ally not an enemy. An accurate, insightful view of current reality is as important as a clear vision. If the first choice in pursuing personal mastery is to be true to our own vision, the second fundamental choice in support of personal mastery is commitment to the truth. What limits our ability to create what we really want is belief in our powerlessness and unworthiness. People cope with these problems in different ways. Letting our vision erode is one such strategy. The second is to try to  manipulate ourselves into greater effort toward what we want by creating artificial conflict, such as through avoiding what we do not want. Some people psyche themselves up to overpower all forms of resistance to achieving their goals. Willpower is so common among highly successful people that many see its characteristics as synonymous with success: a maniacal focus on goals, willingness to â€Å"pay the price,† ability to defeat any opposition and surmount any obstacle. Being committed to the truth is far more powerful than any technique. It means a relentless willingness to root out the ways we limit or deceive ourselves from seeing what is, and to continually challenge our theories or why things are the way they are. It means continually broadening our awareness. Focusing on the desired intrinsic result is a skill. For most of us, it is not easy at first, and takes time and patience to develop. As soon as we think of some important personal goal, almost immediately we think of all the reasons why it will be hard to achieve – the challenges we will face and the obstacles we will have to overcome. While this is very helpful for thinking through alternative strategies for achieving our goals, it is also a sign of lack of discipline when thoughts about â€Å"the process† of achieving our vision continually crowd out our focus on the outcomes we  seek. We must work at learning how to separate what we truly want, from what we think we need to do in order to achieve it. A useful starting exercise for learning how to focus more clearly on desired results is to take any particular goal or aspect of our vision. If we ask ourselves the question. â€Å"If I actually had this, what would it get me?†, the answer to that question reveals â€Å"deeper† desires lying behind the goal. In fact, the goal is actually an interim step to reach a more important result. Ultimately, what matters most in developing the subconscious rapport characteristic of masters is the genuine caring for a desired outcome, the deep feeling that it is the â€Å"right† goal. The subconscious seems especially receptive to goals in line with our deeper aspirations and values. People with high levels of personal mastery do not set out to integrate reason and intuition. Rather, they achieve it naturally – as a by-product of their commitment to use all the resources at their disposal. They cannot afford to choose between reason  and intuition, or head and heart. The discipline of seeing interrelationships gradually undermines older attitudes of blame and guilt. We begin to see that all of us are trapped in structures embedded both in our ways of thinking and in the interpersonal and social milieus in which we live. Our knee-jerk tendency to find fault with one another gradually fades, leaving a much deeper appreciation of the forces under which we all operate. Mental Models New insights fail to get put into practice because they conflict with deeply held internal images of how the world works. That is why the discipline of managing mental models – surfacing, testing, and improving our internal pictures of how the world works holds the key to building learning organizations. The problems with mental models arise not because they are right or wrong but because we often act without being aware of them. The healthy corporations are ones which can systematize ways to bring people together to develop the best possible mental models for facing any situation at hand. Learning skills fall into two broad classes: skills of reflection and skills of inquiry. Skills of reflection concern slowing down our own thinking processes so that we can become more aware of how we form our mental models and the ways they influence our actions. Inquiry skills are concerned with how we operate in face-to-face interactions with others, especially in dealing with complex issues. People who become lifelong learners practice â€Å"reflection in action,† the ability to reflect on one’s thinking while acting. Our mind tends to move at lightning speed. We immediately â€Å"leap† to generalizations so quickly that we never think of testing them. Our rational minds are extraordinarily facile at â€Å"abstracting† from concrete particulars – substituting simple concepts for many details and then reasoning in terms of these concepts. But our very strengths in abstract conceptual reasoning also limit our learning, when we are unaware of our leaps from particulars to general concepts. Leaps of abstraction occur when we move from direct observations (concrete â€Å"data†) to generalization without testing. Leaps of abstraction impede learning because they become axiomatic. What was once an assumption becomes treated as a fact. To spot leaps of abstraction, we need to keep asking what we believe about the way the world works – the nature of business, people in general, and specific individuals. We need to ask â€Å"What is the ‘data’ on which this generalization is based?† We need to ask, â€Å"Am I willing to consider that this generalization may be inaccurate or misleading? This is a powerful technique for beginning to â€Å"see† how our mental models operate in particular situations. It reveals ways that we manipulate situations to avoid dealing with how we actually think and feel, and thereby prevent a counterproductive situation from improving. Most managers are trained to be advocates. In fact, in many companies, what it means to be a competent manager is to figure out what needs to be done, and enlist whatever support is needed to get it done. Individuals became successful in part because of their abilities to debate forcefully and influence others. Inquiry skills, meanwhile, go unrecognized and unrewarded. But as managers rise to senior positions, they confront more complex and diverse issues. Suddenly, they need to tap insights from other people. They need to learn. Now the manager’s advocacy skills become counterproductive. What is needed is blending advocacy and inquiry to promote collaborative learning. When operating in pure advocacy, the goal is to win the argument. When inquiry and advocacy are combined, the goal is no longer â€Å"to win the argument† but to find the best argument. When we operate in pure advocacy, we tend to use data selectively, presenting only the data that confirm our position. When we explain the reasoning behind our position, we expose only enough of our reasoning to â€Å"make our case,† avoiding areas where we feel our case might be weak. By contrast, when both advocacy and inquiry are high, we are open to disconfirming data as well as confirming data – because we are genuinely interested in finding flaws in our view. Likewise, we expose our reasoning and look for flaws in it, and we try to understand others†™ reasoning. Learning eventually results in changes in action, not just taking in new information and forming new â€Å"ideas.† That is why recognizing the gap between our espoused theories (what we say) and our â€Å"theories-in-use† (the theories that lay behind our actions) is vital. Otherwise, we may believe we’ve â€Å"learned† something just because we’ve got the new language or concepts to use, even though our behavior is completely unchanged. Systems thinking is equally important to working with mental models effectively. Most of our  mental models are systematically flawed. They miss critical feedback relationships, misjudge time delays, and often focus on variables that are visible or salient, not necessarily high leverage. Understanding these flaws can help to see where prevailing mental models will be weakest and where more than just â€Å"surfing† the mental models will be required for effective decisions. Ultimately, the payoff from integrating systems thinking and mental models will be not only improving our mental models but altering our ways of thinking. T his will result in shifting from mental models dominated by events to mental models that recognize longer-term patterns of change and the underlying structures producing those patterns. Shared vision Shared vision is vital for the learning organization because it provides the focus and energy for learning. While adaptive learning is possible without vision, generative learning, occurs only when people are striving to accomplish something that matters deeply to them. In fact, the whole idea of generative learning will seem abstract and meaningless until people become excited about some vision they truly want to accomplish.  Vision creates the spark, the excitement that lifts an organization out of the mundane. Shared vision fosters risk taking and experimentation. People know what needs to be done. Even if they don’t know how to do it, they keep experimenting till they succeed. But even when they experiment, there is no ambiguity at all. It’s perfectly clear why they are doing it. Organizations intent on building shared visions continually encourage members to develop their personal visions. They want people to have their own vision, not to â€Å"sign up† for someone else’s. That leads to compliance, not commitment. On the other hand, people with a strong sense of personal direction can join together to move toward what they truly want. Personal mastery is the bedrock for developing a shared vision. This means not only personal vision, but commitment to the truth and creative tension – the hallmarks of personal mastery. The origin of the vision is much less important than the process whereby it comes to be shared. It is not truly a â€Å"shared vision† until it  connects with the personal visions of people throughout the organization. In many organizations, most people are in states of formal or genuine compliance with the organization’s goals and ground rules. They go along with â€Å"the program,† sincerely trying to contribute. On the other hand, people in non-compliance or grudging compliance usually stand out. They are opposed to the goals or ground rules and let their opposition be known, either through inaction or through grudging obedience. An organization made up of genuinely compliant people will be very productive and cost effective. Yet, there is a world of difference between compliance and commitment. The committed person brings an energy, passion, and excitement that cannot be generated if he is only compliant. The committed person does not play by the â€Å"rules of the game.† He is responsible for the game. If the rules of the game stand in the way of achieving the vision, he will find ways to change the rules. A group of people truly committed to a common vision is an awesome force. They can accomplish the seemingly impossible. Building shared vision is actually only one piece of a larger activity: developing the â€Å"governing ideas† for the enterprise, its vision, purpose or mission, and core values. These governing ideas answer three critical questions: â€Å"What?† â€Å"Why?† and â€Å"How?† †¢ †¢ †¢ Vision is the â€Å"What?† – the picture of the future we seek to create. Purpose (or â€Å"mission†) is the â€Å"Why?† the organization’s answer to the question, â€Å"Why do we exist?† Core values answer the question â€Å"How do we want to act? A company’s values describe how the company wants life to be on a day-to-day basis, while pursuing the vision. There are two fundamental sources of energy that can motivate organizations: fear and aspiration. Fear can produce extraordinary changes for short periods, but aspiration is a continuing source of learning and growth. Vision spreads because of a reinforcing process of increasing clarity, enthusiasm, communication and commitment. As people talk, the vision grows clearer, enthusiasm for its benefit builds and the vision starts to spread in a reinforcing spiral of communication and excitement. Enthusiasm can also be reinforced by early successes in pursuing the vision. If the reinforcing process operates unfettered, it leads to continuing growth  in clarity and shared commitment toward the vision, among increasing numbers of people. But any of a variety of limiting factors can come into play to slow down this virtuous cycle. The visioning process can wither if, as more people get involved, the diversity of views dissipates focus and generates unmanageable conflicts. People see different ideal futures. Must those who do not agree immediately with the emerging shared vision change their views? Do they conclude that the vision is â€Å"set in stone† and no longer influenceable? Do they feel that their own visions even matter? If the answer to any of these questions is â€Å"yes,† the enrolling process can grind to a halt with a wave of increasing polarization. This is a classic â€Å"limits to growth† structure, where the reinforcing process of growing enthusiasm for the vision interacts with a â€Å"balancing process† that limits the spread of the vision, due to increasing diversity and polarization. In limits to growth structures, leverage usually lies in understanding the â€Å"limiting factor,† the implicit goal or norm that drives the balancing feedback process. In this case, that limiting factor is the ability (or inability) to inquire into diverse visions in such a way that deeper, common visions emerge. The visioning process is a special type of inquiry process. It is an inquiry into the future we truly seek to create. If it becomes a pure advocacy process, it will result in compliance, at best, not commitment. Approaching visioning as an inquiry process does not mean that we have to give up our views. On the contrary, visions need strong advocates. But advocates who can also inquire into others’ visions open the possibility for the vision to evolve, to become â€Å"larger† than our individual visions. Visions can die because people become discouraged by the apparent difficulty in converting them into reality. As clarity about the nature of the vision increases, so does the awareness of the gap between the vision and current reality. People become disheartened, uncertain, or even cynical, leading to a decline in enthusiasm. In this structure, the limiting factor is the capacity of people in the organization to â€Å"hold† creative tension, the central principle of personal mastery. This is why personal mastery is the â€Å"bedrock† for developing shared vision – organizations that do not encourage personal mastery find it very difficult to foster sustained commitment to a lofty vision. Emerging visions can also die because people get overwhelmed by the demands of current reality and lose their focus on the vision. The  limiting factor becomes the time and energy to focus on a vision. In this case, the leverage must lie in either in finding ways to focus less time and effort on fighting crises and managing current reality, or to break off those pursing the new vision from those responsible for handling â€Å"current reality.† A vision can die if people forget their connection to one another. This is one of the reasons that approaching visioning as a joint inquiry is so important. The spirit of connection is fragile. It is undermined whenever we lose our respect for one another and for each other’s views. We then split into insiders and outsiders – those who are â€Å"true believers† in the vision and those who are not.

Examining Deforestation Of The Amazon Rainforest Environmental Sciences Essay

Examining Deforestation Of The Amazon Rainforest Environmental Sciences Essay The amazon Rainforest is one of the richest areas on Earth biodiversity wise and possesses many endemics species of fauna and flora. The Amazon also plays an human population has grown, and demands in soybeans, cattle and wood as increased over time, the Amazon rainforest has been selected for deforestation. Recent concerns have arisen over the last decades emphasizing the problems deforestation causes especially biologically. This problem has been further underlined as concerns over global climate change have arisen. The Amazon forest is the greatest tropical forest in size as it covers an area over seven million square kilometres and is found in ten countries of South America. Motives of deforestation, rates, history Most of the Amazon Basin ( >70%) is found in Brazil ; therefore most of our study will focus on the Brazilian Amazon. Starting in the late 1950s, for the purpose of developing the western and northern parts of Brazil many new roads were constructed which constituted a direct access to the Amazon tropical forest. The construction of these routes along with other incentives ( such as cattle ranching , hydro electric project, timber extraction) was aimed at expanding development and integrating the whole territory into the countrys economy. The program was successful as people moved along these large highways; for example 2 million people moved along the Belem-Brasilia in the first 20 years of its construction. The settlement along the major highways and within the Amazon forest was highly unorganized which led to long term unnoticed deforestation. Overtime the rates of deforestation have increased from the 1970s to the 2003-2004 and since then have decreased. The peak in 2002-2004 was the highest rate of forest clearing for a three year period: 52 670 km ² were cleared. The 2008-2009 area cleared totalizes for 7008 km ². The literature seems to agree on the motives for deforestation although the importance of small farmers in the process is debated . ( K.R Birby , P. Fearnside). The motives for deforestation are multiple: contrarily to common belief, the biggest reason behind clearing in cattle ranching secondly, is small farmer exploitation then, logging, and recently soybean and palm oil plantations have led to deforestation. The reason behind this hierarchy and cattle ranching as being the number one reason behind forest clearing is due to multiple state incentives. These incentives made cattle ranching one of the few profitable product to rise in the Amazon. Under the Brazilian law, clearing the land in order to install pasture is characterised as effective. (K.R Kirby). Cattle ranching is one of the most popular use of land in the Amazon as it is not a labour intensive job , by products can be used ( such as milk) , and it is produces offspring. Compared to crops, the main advantage of cattle ra nching is that cattle ranching are independent of weather conditions. Small farmers also play an important role in the clearing of the land as they apply slash and burn method in order to create fertile land to grow their crops on. As farmers need for more land, they continuously increase their property. K.R Kirby has calculated that on average a small farmer clears 1 ha of forest per year. Furthermore, tropical soils are not fertile and fail at the long term production of crops, thus after 2-3 years the land is unusable and new land has to be slashed and burned. Today as agricultural financing has been more readily available in the Amazon compared to other regions in Brazil, soybeans farmers are pushing to the North. As the price for soybean has increased, it has become one of the most profitable crops to plant in the Amazon. A large part of the soybean production is used for export (as foreign currency) therefore greatly encouraged by the state which even plans on building new roads and infrastructure in order to expand the production. Although not broadly mentioned in the literature, it is important to also underline the logging activities undergoing in the Amazon. JA Foley et al mention that the logging has recently been recognized as one major source of land change in the Amazon. Although selective logging is comparatively not as ecologically destructive as cattle grazing or pasture, it has been shown that logging destroyed the same amount of forest as the area cleared for other activities. Indeed, selective logging leaves behind a fraction of the natural forest and allows some natural regeneration; not completely destroying the ecosystem. Biodiversity effects: The clearing of thousands of km ² of land is not at any cost. The Amazon is one the worlds richest zone in terms of biodiversity and number of endemic species. Being one of the largest forests in the world the tropical Amazon forest constitutes an important carbon sink for the integrity of the planet. Scientists have become aware of the importance of conserving the forest because of the numerous ecosystem services it provides. It is difficult to understand and quantify the ecosystem services provided by an ecosystem. As Fearnside explains, it is complicated to put a value on an ecosystem service. An obvious way of calculating the value of the ecosystem is using the profit of the good produced in the given area. This method does not take into account the future damage that could occur due to the abuse of the ecosystem. Indeed we taking the example of forest clearing , we can use the value of the good which will be produced on the area cleared but on a large scale that value does not take into account the habitat destruction of species. Often times we put a price on ecosystem services in order to emphasize the urgency of taking conservation actions, putting fines on illegal land used. Based on the literature there are many ecosystem services provided by the Amazon rainforest. Namely the most important ecosystem services are carbon sequestering, water flow of the Amazon River, air circulation patterns, the spread of water borne disease , fires , invasion by exotic species and most importantly , and biodiversity loss. The clearing of Amazon might influence the hydrological regime of the area because the forest regulates the quantity of water flowing into the river as well as the nutrient content. The quantity of water increases greatly overall because there is no interception by plants leading to much more surface runoff and less percolation in the soil. Indeed it has been observed in the Tocantins river basin, the changes during the 30 years period (1960-1990) in land cover have led to an approximate 25% increase in the river discharge during the same period although there were no changes in the precipitation regime. Over the long term, scientists are worried that the evaporation budget will change so much as to change global patterns of air circulation. Vector-borne diseases increase due to the loss of vegetation and due to an increase in the number of mosquitoes (which are common vectors of diseases). Forested areas allow for more control of the disease though population control of infected animals, their hosts and intermediate disease vector. In South America, the most important disease transmitted by mosquitoes is malaria. A study in Peru has shown that Anopheles darling mosquito species are more susceptible to biting as the land cover decreases. The study found that when the area is deforestated by more than 20%, mosquitoes have a tendency to bit more than in forested areas. The reason for this increase is due to the preference of mosquitoes to breed in areas with shrubs or grasslands. ( A.M. Vittor) One of the most striking effects on deforestation is the loss of biodiversity. No papers truly estimated the loss of biodiversity due to deforestation. But based on the literature we can estimate the number of species potentially targeted by deforestation. The Brazilian Amazon is classified as one of the five megadiversity countries by the WWF (World Wild Fund) (P.Fearnside). Brazil has over 50  000 angiosperm plant species, over 400 species of mammals, over 1500 species of birds, over 500 species of amphibians, over 400 species of butterfly and over 70 species of reptiles. Deforestation can lead to changes in biodiversitys ecological niches, habitat fragmentation, or even invasion of exotic species. A major concern has arisen amongst ecologists due to the threat of deforestation on biodiversity hotspots. Indeed it has been observed in some cases that biodiversity hotpsots overlap the deforestation hotpsots. These latter are areas where deforestation occurs suddenly, locally and greatly pushed by demographic factors. The danger for the ecosystems when these two hotspots overlap is the extensive loss of habitat for the fauna and flora. Indeed, deforestation hotspots lead to much habitat fragmentation as many harvesters carry on their activity without much knowledge on the ecosystem and the implications of deforesting (Etter et al 2006). Moreover, it has been proven that a threshold exists for a species to survive. Species need enough area in order to reproduce and forage without it a population cannot sustain and is determined to extinguish. Much of the deforestation trends are not managed and very spontaneous, leading to patches of deforested land and often times the minimum thre shold is surpassed threatening the survival of many generations. As underlined in Etter et al., no significant studies have been consolidated in order to better understand the overlapping of deforestation and biodiversity hotspots; suggesting more data to be collected. Indeed without data there cannot be any consensus on the conversation policies to protect the Amazons ecosystem. Another paper also suggests the idea that better inventories should be complied in order to understand the forests composition and to better manage the area based on the species autoecology. Furthermore the paper underlines the importance of thorough and precise data entries with identical quantification measurements. These factors are all very important in the inventory process in order to build credible dataset on which policy makers can rely upon (Biscaia de Lacerda 2010). Deforestation in the context of Global Climate Change A major concern of the 21st century is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the consequences on the worlds biomes. The role of the Amazon forest in the global carbon cycle is storage of organic carbon in the soil or in plants. The process through which plants take in CO2 is photosynthesis storing it afterwards in the biomass under the form of leaves, branches, roots, flowers and other structural tree components. The destruction of the Amazon makes it an emitter of carbon rather than a sink. Indeed because of land cover changes, carbon is no longer stored. Per se, carbon is not emitted from the forest rather carbon is not taken up by the trees anymore resulting in a net surplus of CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Furthermore the necessary machinery used for deforestation as well as the by-products of wood and the processing of trees in factories also contribute to increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Some studies have tried to understand the changes which would occur if CO2 levels increased and deforestated areas kept increasing. The outcome results in many effects linked to changes in surface albedo, leaf area index, and surface roughness and texture (Compounding). In the study, the CO2 levels were doubled, increasing the CO2 concentration to 660 ppm. The IPCCs projection on CO2 levels project that 660 ppm will be reached by the end of the century under the least severe scenario: A1B which predicts: A future world of very rapid economic growth, low population growth and rapid introduction of new and more efficient technology. Major underlying themes are economic and cultural convergence and capacity building, with a substantial reduction in regional differences in per capita income. In this world, people pursue personal wealth rather than environmental quality. ( IPCC http://www.ipcc-data.org/ddc_co2.html). The sole effect of doubling CO2 concentration in the atmosphere results in a 2.6 T °C increase in temperature, increase in precipitation by 9.0 mm per month , and increase in -the net longwave radiation at the landsurface by 4.5 W m ­- ² subsequently increasing the surface evapotranspiration. There is not a great difference for all the factors when studying the present deforestation climate with the future warmed climate combined with deforestation, directly pointing to the fact that deforestation is the main source of deregulation in the climate (Figure 2). Indeed most changes due to increased CO2 levels are felt in the mid-high latitudes. Figure 2( Zhang et al.)

The English Reformation Essays -- History England Roman Catholic Essay

The English Reformation During the reign of King Richard II "England was experiencing her first serious outbreak of heresy for nearly a millennium." This widespread heresy, known as Lollardy, held the reformation of the Catholic Church as its main motivation, and was based upon the ideas of John Wyclif, an Oxford scholar. "All kinds of men, not only in London but in widely-separated regions of the country, seized the opportunity to voice criticisms both constructive and destructive of the present state of the Church." While commoners protested and pressed for reform, going so far as to present their manifesto, the "Twelve Conclusions," to Parliament, members of the royal household were protecting John Wyclif and his ideas, John of Gaunt, son of King Edward III, and Joan of Kent, the widowed Princess of Wales, "by whose influence he was protected from ultimate disgrace (such as excommunication)," were Wyclif's supporters and protectors. Like Wyclif's Lollard heresy, the English Protestant Reformation, over one hundred years later, would draw support from both the common people and the royal establishment. Among the many causes of the Reformation, one stands out as the most important because it alone brought about a specifically English reformation. The religious drive of the common people to create a more open system of worship was a grassroots movement of reform, similar to the reformations taking place across Europe. The political ambitions of those at the highest levels of government to consolidate power in the person of the monarch, however, is what made a reformation of the Church in England into a specifically English Reformation. John Wyclif and the people who followed him reflected how royal authority could be b... ... act for the dissolution of monasteries, 1539" Given-Wilson, Chris. "Late Medieval England, 1215-1485." In The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval England, edited by Nigel Saul. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII vol. II, sec. i, pg. 259, no. 967. London, 1920. Quoted in John A. F. Thomson, The Early Tudor Church and Society, 1485-1529, (London: Longman Group UK Limited, 1993), pg. 37. Russell, Conrad. "The Reformation and the Creation of the Church of England, 1500- 1640." In The Oxford Illustrated History of Tudor & Stuart Britain, edited by John Morrill. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Sheils, W. J. The English Reformation. Harlow: Longman Group UK Limited, 1989. Thomson, John A. F. The Early Tudor Church and Society, 1485-1529. London: Longman Group UK Limited, 1993.

Jasper Daniel Aka Jack Daniel :: essays research papers

Jasper Newton Daniel was born in 1848 as the tenth child of thirteen. At the age of 12 Jack Daniel started a career that would last him a lifetime. He was hired out to work for a man by the name of Dan Call, a preacher at a Lutheran church. At Mr. Call’s distillery he learned the trait of making whiskey. Three years later he and Mr. Call were full partners in the whiskey making business. Mr. Call was a dedicated Lutheran. Just after the civil war his family and church told him to make a decision between the church and his business of making whiskey. Mr. Call decided to go with the church. So Jack bought out his share of the business. Jack had found a perfect cave spring and bought 500 acres around it. Jack then moved his distillery to this location and over 130 years later the distillery stands here today. In the rolling hills of southern middle Tennessee lies the city of Lynchburg where Jack was born and lived all of his life. This is the county seat of Moore County, which is Tennessee’s smallest county. This town, like most other small towns in middle Tennessee has a square for the hub of the town. One of the major structures here is the Courthouse. Back in 1885 people of Lynchburg built this structure with bricks made in the town. Now, my favorite item of historic relevance in Moore County is the Jack Daniel Distillery. This is at the same site Jack decided on in 1866. This is a National Historic site that has had its license since 1866. The quality Tennessee Whiskey goes through the same processes that it did when founded by Mr. Jack Daniel. To this day they are sticking by Mr. Jack’s motto: "Each day we make it, we will make it the best we can." To help Mr. Daniel hold down the fort in Lynchburg he introduced the business to his nephew Lem Motlow. Mr. Motlow and Mr. Daniel kept the whiskey business going in high gear until the death of Mr. Daniel in 1911.He died from blood poisoning after he had kicked his safe when it didn’t open correctly six years ago. Lem Motlow then became the second head distiller. He kept the process the old fashioned way as his mentor had showed him in previous years. He was also a very respected businessman in Lynchburg.

BR Richardson Timber Corporation

People want different things from work, usually when we get what we want we are motivated and our morale helps us to improve the quality of our work and lives. For most people money is the motivation but often it is necessary to tie in monetary rewards with non-monetary rewards so that employees remain motivated. A combination of these will almost always lead to commitment to an organization, innovative ideas and generally high quality of work. Human resource policies should be such that they empower the most important of all the resources that a company has which is its people.This will translate to large profits for the company and great satisfaction among the employees. Safety and health issues are a major issue in the BR Timber Company. Most employees in the company are dissatisfied with their jobs, working hours and working conditions. Morale is down and as a result productivity is decreased with increased job turnover as high as 70 percent in some departments of the company. Ro n, the team leader in gluing reports that new members rarely last a year at the gluing department. This is due to the work they are introduced to upon starting work.The grueling tasks involved usually result in back injuries. Often there is no orientation to the job and the new workers learn on the job about the rights technique of hanging beams. Ron reports that most men have bad backs, broken fingers and toes, and hernias. An interview with Marty reveals that a death had occurred at the gluing department. Even with this the death the men were expected to act as if nothing had happened and continue working. The mean also showed great concern for a man who had sustained a concussion after hitting a center nail in the overcrowded gluing area.During a tour of the plant it was noted that safety was very much compromised placing the worker’s health at risk. For instance, some workers did not have helmets, others did not have safety glasses, and band-saw safety devices were absent . Dirk a scheduler with a masters in forestry also reported that the employees did not under go any physicals. Though the men had medical insurance this was not enough to pick up their morale in relation to the safety of their working conditions. The stacks of beams are stacked too high such that they fall frequently.This in fact is how a death occurred at the plant. Some of the machines given to the workers are also not in good working order for example Rolf cited a machine that has four wheels and five feet of clearance. The machine has neither brakes nor shut-off making it inefficient and ineffective to work with. The building and ventilation standards of the plant as reported by Ro are below average leading to serious weight loss among the men during the summer. Physical well being and a healthy mind are necessary if a workforce is to be healthy.A healthy workforce is a motivated one and usually when one is in good physical health the mind is at ease and the worker can concentra te on his work. This is only possible if the worker knows that his working environment is safe and poses no danger to his health. This is absent at BR Timber Company. To begin with, BR Timber Company needs to set up an employee service that ensures that the employees undergo a physical and that they are up to the hard work expected of them. This will help in identification of any employees who may be risking their health by doing the grueling tasks at the plant.It is necessary to work with the quality control manager to develop guidelines that are task-specific for the different jobs and working environments in the place. Most men get accidents because they do not get the concept of a task clearly. The frequent movement of men from one job to another makes it difficult for them to be trained. To deal with the mistakes made the men need to be at one work station long enough to learn what exactly is needed in the beams and thus increase safety with less mistakes being made.OSHA (Occup ational Safety and Health Administration) recommended that ergonomic policies be made voluntary rather than mandatory. This aims at reducing work-related injuries and is better when it is voluntary rather than mandatory because then the company is free to follow these guidelines without feeling coerced. The benefits especially for BR Timber Company ion having employees’ health maintained is that employees will need less time off because injuries (Ju, 2007). For BR Timber a safe environment would be provided by first ensuring that employees have the necessary safety gear.This includes ensuring that helmets and safety glasses are available to all employees in all shifts. In addition the company should improve the condition in its glue area which has many damps causing the place to be crowded and creating difficulty in walking around. The absence of safety devices for band saws should also be looked into so that the band saws are fitted with guarding. Ensuring that warning signs are placed at strategic points in the plant to improve safety by providing employees and visitors of potential danger should also be done.The storage area for the beams is a dangerous area with one death already having occurred due to the stacks of beams being too high and thus falling. A solution to this problem would be to make the stacks lower and look for adequate space like suggested by Dirk that a bigger yard could be created by knocking out the field and organizing the stacks so that their disarray could cease posing a danger to the employees. Maintenance of equipment and machines is also another issue that contributes to poor working and safety conditions.By regularly repairing the work-out machines or repairing them altogether the company stands to gain more in the long run since efficiency will be increased and productivity together with safety will also be enhanced. No employee is comfortable using a machine that has no brakes, so a simple intervention like ensuring all the machines have breaks would make the employees feel safer. The job of ensuring safety does not only lie with management but also with the employees. If and when quality safety gear is provided the management should make sure that the employees use them appropriately.By allowing ongoing inspection teams to ensure that the company and its employees are taking the necessary safety precautions a higher level of accountability is encouraged and the company is more likely to adhere to a safe workplace and with the employees adhering to the safety guidelines. The solutions to the safety problems at BR Timber Company would best be addressed by incorporating the assistance of a safety consultancy agency. OSHA has many resources that would be useful for the company.In addition they offer computer software and technical information assistance that is easy to follow and that has specifications of OSHA standards meaning that the company cannot go wrong on safety if they seek services of such an agency. Another strategy that BR Timber Company needs to employ for the sake of the health of its workers is to put up a counseling unit for the workers. Many of the employees seem to be very concerned and disturbed about injuries sustained by a worker (Bob) who was hit by a centre rail and also by the death of a colleague at the beam stacking area.Though most of the men wanted to go home that day, they were not allowed showing some degree of insensitivity to the men’s state of mind following the loss of a colleague. The employees would have benefited a lot from having supportive services then. Education concerning injury prevention should be regularly provided for the employees. These would be especially helpful in preventing back injuries and knowing how to manage hernias which are both common problems in the BR Timber Company. Compensation and benefits is another pressing issue in the company.It is mainly related to overtime. The amount of work the employees put in is s ignificantly disproportionate to their pay. The workers felt that they were paid 60 cents per hour lower than the union and added that when the union got a 65 cents-per-hour raise, the employees at BR Timber Company got a 45 cent-per-hour raise. This being among the lowest paid employees in the timber business means that they are not motivated much. The only other benefit that seems available to these employees is the medical insurance cover.Most of the employees seem unhappy with their salaries even with overtime included. When a softball team was setup by one of the employees financing for it was inadequate since it required about $700 and the staff were only given $250. Due to the compulsory nature of overtime most employees do not even have the time to play the game. For most, they go home eat sleep and wake up again to go to work with very little time spent with their families. One of the things the company is doing right is providing medical cover for the employees.Other solut ions to poor motivation due to poor salaries in benefits include pay increments. This would be better handled by a compensation analyst to ensure that the employees’ salaries are matched with those of other union employees. This does not have to happen to immediately it could be a plan over time in which the employees get gradual increases in payment following a survey of their salary scales. (Mathis and Jackson, 2006) An employee benefits manager may be necessary to provide better management of the employees benefits especially the health insurance and pension plans.In the case of the BR Timber Company the nature of the industry the company is in calls for the company to have an accident and dismemberment insurance plan. The manager when appointed will be able to keep abreast of all legal issues affecting the employee benefits. This will streamline the process of claiming benefits and increase the trust the employees have in the company leading to greater motivation (Mathis and Jackson, 2006) In assessing how much it needs to pay the employees to keep them motivated and still earn a profit the company ought to go through a budge process.This will provide a means for determining how much has been spent on the payroll. The positions of various employees ought to be such that their positions fit into the overall percentage of the payroll. When jobs are clearly defined determining their going rate becomes easier. Using job descriptions for entry other job will provide a means of comparison with the market place. The jobs can also be marched to others by comparison of the core functions (Krotz, 2007). To ensure that the turnover rate for employees is not high due to employee dissatisfaction with the pay it is necessary to track the competition.BR Timber pays lower than other union companies making those companies a viable alternative for the employees. Supervisors and others with positions of authority need to have a salary range especially for those whom i t will be employing new. Other perks of the job can also be considered benefits and are important because work is not only about money. Overtime being such demoralizing aspect of work at BR Timber Company, the management ought to consider flextime. Most of the employees complain that they do not have enough time to spend with their families.