french revoluion Essay Example

french revoluion Essay The French Revolution last from 1789 to 1799.This war had many causes that began the revolution.Its causes ranged from the American Revolution, the economic crisis in France, social injustices to the immediate causes like the fall of Bastille, the Convening of he Estate-General, and the Great Fear.As a result of this revolution there many effects , immediate and long term.The immediate effects were the declaration of rights of man, abolishing of olds reign, execution of king and queen, the reign of terror, and war and forming of the citizen-army.The long term effects were the rise of Napoleon, spread of revolutionary ideas, growth of nationalism, and the The contributing factors to the French Revolution was the economic crisis in France. The French government had undergone economic crises, resulting from the long wars waged during the reign of Louis XIV, the losses incurred in the French and Indian War, and increased indebtedness arising from loans to the American colonies du ring the American Revolution. The American Revolution showed that they got economical and political freedom from Britain. This liberalism sparked many revolutions in Europe ,but in France the ideas of the Enlightenment and liberalism were put to their fullest test.The French people wanted rights and would later get these.Another reason was that the old regime was ineffective and it abused its power. The immediate causes of the French Revolution were that the Estate-General had to convene.Increasing political pressure and being faced with the total collapse of its finances, the Old Regime began to unravel. Almost immediately tempers arose regarding voting procedures in the upcoming Estates-General. In its last meeting, voting had been organized by estate, with each of the three estates meeting separately and each having one vote. In this way the privileged classes had combined to outvote

The concepts of what is bad and what is evil Essays

The concepts of what is bad and what is evil Essays The concepts of what is bad and what is evil Essay The concepts of what is bad and what is evil Essay In todays society, there is a tendency to associate the concepts of what is bad and what is evil. Only in cases of acute malevolence are we inclined to delineate evil as the more severe condemnation. The only certainty in popular morality is an opposition between the forces of good and evil. In The Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, Kant discusses his definitions of good and morality. He touches on what he considers to be bad, and he makes a slight discrepancy between bad and evil. In his article, A Kantian Theory of Evil, Ernesto Garcia elaborates on Kants work by asserting the theory that evil is distinctly different from ordinary immoral acts. Garcia begins his article by discussing our general inclination to regard evil acts as things that more deeply offend than simple misconduct, such as rape, murder, or brutal torture. However, he argues that this view simply reduces the difference between evil and immoral acts to a mere quantitative analysis. In other words, we commonly view these types of actions as simply being really bad. Garcia argues that there is indeed a difference between just bad and genuinely evil, something deeper than what Kant originally discussed. Kant discriminates between bad and evil by defining bad as a means to take [an action] as somehow harmful or disagreeable to ones general well-being. He then defines evil as a means to take some action as morally wrong, resulting not from natural contingency, but rather, from a direct act of the agents will. In this way, self-love overtakes the concept of morality, and makes a person almost inhuman. Garcia disagrees. He says that this definition puts evil under the general heading of immoral actions, so if we use Kant as our guide, evil has no unique properties distinct from immorality. Garcia stands behind the theory that evil has a definition that fuses aspects of Kants definition of both moral and immoral actions. It then becomes a mutant that goes directly and purposely against the human will, which Garcia says is a concept that Kant himself never explored. In earlier works, Kant says that we all act using certain principles of action. Fundamentally, it is the principle we choose to utilize that determines the actions status, not the end result. He claims that humanity is the ultimate goal. It provides a guideline for our actions, requiring us to renounce certain actions while simultaneously acting in agreement with it. However, in Fundamentals, Kant introduces a new idea into his theory one in which he identifies two distinct things that must happen with moral action: humanity is the mandatory end that must not be defied, and our own personal happiness must coincide with virtue. This description of morality differs greatly from Kants description of immorality. Here he makes the distinction between acts that are heteronymous and those that are immoral. He says that there are only two guidelines for our actions as humans: self-love and the universal principle of morality, which he characterizes as the maxim of your will [always holding] at the same time as a principle in the giving of universal law. He clarifies immoral acts as not only something a person does out of context with universal law, but also something he or she creates and defends as universal for personal means to an end. In this way, he suggests that self-love provides a strength superior to moral law itself. Here is where Garcia intervenes. He says that in immoral actions, our actions have a specific end that only uses another person indirectly to reach, and that this end is purely a personal goal. Garcia proposes that in evil actions, one purposely seeks to directly infringe upon the humanity of another human being. Kant, however, never imagined such was possible. Garcia says that here is where the hybridization of Kantian definitions of morality and immorality occurs. Formally, they are comparable to immoral actions, but materially they are similar to moral ones. Evil action includes a formal objective in addition to humanity, although the purpose undermines humanity itself. Also, similar to Kants definition of immoral acts, self-love wins over the principle of morality. Garcia writes that evil can be seen as a kind of perverse mimicry of moral action, where humanity is indeed treated as an end in itself, but now for immoral acts of the will. Here, Garcia gives an example of this notion of evil: apathy towards destructing another human beings humanity. For instance, Adolf Eichmann sent thousands of Jewish men, women, and children to their deaths. He then attempted to justify it by claiming that he was just following orders. Although he followed both his orders and the judicial law by telling the police, it unnerves us as humans to see such blatant disregard for humanity. Eichmann destroyed lives and never looked back. A second example is realized in describing the evil of racism. It isnt so much the taunting or the slurs, but our feelings that one race truly is superior to the other. At this point, the value of humanity is not ignored. The challenger just chooses to deny that the members of the alternative race are, in fact, human. However, in this case, we cannot claim that we are just following orders, so in essence this type of evil involves a good amount of self-deception as well. This theory of the definition of evil holds true historically as well as modernly. Whether a matter of self-love or the disregard for Gods will, it deprives us of our being, our selves. And not only that, but it makes human life a means for our own agenda. By doing this, we have created an entirely new level of immorality, something much deeper and much more inhuman. Innately, we all have the desire to be happy and to do well. However, sometimes our love of self takes over and convinces us that using others to get what we want or what we need is acceptable. We are then morally corrupted, and that natural incentive has begun to dehumanize us. Therein lies the distinction between immorality, and pure evil.

Politics and Justice in the US Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Politics and Justice in the US - Research Paper Example The United States of America has long faced the challenge of electing leaders who in a free and democratic manner. The US has one of the highest numbers of elected people in office with over 500,000 people being elected into different electoral roles. As a result, a lot of elections are conducted almost every now and then in the United States. The process of electioneering and its effect relation to democracy is that it does not assist in opening up democratic space in the United States. This is because the American democratic system is dogged by challenges such as parochialism, incumbency and fragmentation of decisions. The sheer number of electoral positions in the United States means that its citizens are constantly involved in elections which are not healthy for democracy (Dye, 2011). Moreover, the elected officials in the United States stay long in office and thus this provides a challenge brought about by incumbency. Incumbency does little in reforming the ideas and policies pr actised in the United States of America (Herbst, 2011). Incumbency does not reflect the wishes and the changing dynamics of the US population. Incumbency helps in stifling democracy in many areas of the United States of America and this is witnessed by Senators or Governors who occupy their offices for long periods of time. Democracy requires the proper functioning of organs of the government and this requires good decision making. ... Democracy requires the proper functioning of organs of the government and this requires good decision making. The Senate is one of the important organs of government since it is involved in making laws. However, due to constant wrangling and taking of different positions by law makers. We have a situation whereby ideals and policies are sacrificed since every party or group in the house of Senate take different positions (Dye, 2011). This is because Incumbency might in some situations lead to lack of party identity and formation of caucuses that differ from their own party. The high rate of incumbency has dealt a great deal of damage to democracy since people find to difficult to identify with their representatives. As a result, these elected leaders will take advantage of this situation to serve self interests. The fragmentation of decisions is detrimental to the process of law making (Reynolds, 2007). Since Senate house committees run the house and the process of law making. These committees take on issues on a local basis which is outside their mandate. As a result, the Senate has been reduced to a body that serves the interests of few individuals. For example, some senators might have been influenced by certain lobby groups to pass or rejects some bills beneficial to certain individuals or companies (Sinha, 2007). However, this is not the greatest hurdle facing American democracy since the biggest problem facing Americans is representation. Leaders elected in America have participated in democratic election albeit with difficult challenges. These challenges have undermined democracy since they are fundamental in the creation of equal opportunities for everybody as democracy

Research paper on radiation Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

On radiation - Research Paper Example Unstable atoms produce the ionizing radiation. Unstable atoms are the atoms with either excess mass or excess energy or both unlike the stable atoms. The unstable nuclei of the atoms provide them with the radioactive properties. These atoms release excess mass or energy in an attempt to gain stability. It is this excess mass or energy that is called as radiation. High voltage devices like the x-ray machines are used to produce radiation. Measurement of radiation is complicated and involves use of different kinds of units. The amount of the emitted radiation is conventionally measured in the curie (Ci). The SI unit for the measurement of radiation is the Becquerel (Bq). â€Å"These units express the number of disintegrations (or breakdowns in the nucleus of an element) per second as the element tries to reach a stable or nonradioactive state. One Bq is equal to one disintegration per second and one Ci is equal to 37 billion Bq† (Crosta). To measure the amount of radiation absorbed by the tissues in the human body, the SI unit gray (Gy) or the conventional unit Roentgen absorbed dose (rad) is used. Radiation finds multiple uses in the field of medicine. Ways in which radiation is employed in the medical imaging include but are not limited to projectional radiography, fluoroscopy, computed tomography, ultrasound, bone densitometry, medical resonance imaging, positron emission tomography, and dual energy X-ray absorptiometry. Depending upon the way radiation is generated for the clinical purposes, radiation therapies can be classified into grenz-ray therapy, contact therapy, superficial therapy, deep therapy or orthovoltage therapy, supervoltage therapy, and megavoltage therapy (Khan 35-37). â€Å"Medical uses of radiation, particularly diagnostic X rays, result in the largest average annual effective dose from man-made sources† (Turner 12). Ionizing radiation is used in radiotherapy for the treatment of

Philosophy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 5

Philosophy - Essay Example But in reality what is a person, it is one subject on which many theologians, philosopher and psychiatrist pondered over a long period of time. Since we are discussing about an intangible identity, one cannot establish the truth, even when one is definite about its true nature. We could say that person is an identity, with certain capabilities and abilities to perform sanely at a given situation or circumstances. Some people are reluctant to accept a mentally defective human being as a person due to their deficiencies in intellectual power. According to (Dennett,14)â€Å"For instance, infant human beings, mentally defective human beings, and human beings declared insane by licensed psychiatrists are denied personhood, or at any rate crucial elements of personhood† Now just because a human being have a defective mental system, he should not be losing his right to be called as a person. So are we a person just because we possess a well defined intellectual workability. It really seems absurd, for a human being with a soul and mind to be disregarded just because he cannot work rationally and logically .Then it would make also sense to call these mentally defective and immature people as animal. As we know animals does not have rational thinking, and same is the case with infants and mentally ill people. So why is it that we do not address these mentally immature and insane people as animals? Here we can explain that being a person is more about the genetic structure we possess. Otherwise the mentally ill person or animals are not guided by intellect a d they act abnormal in our view. We can understand here that the genetic make up or the body structure and his surviving pattern make him a person. People say that we are designated as a person because we have certain capabilities and abilities which we use in support with our intellect and logic. Being rational means, we act according to our reasoning or as per the guidance of our intelligence .A being can be a person and still cannot be rational, just because he is weak in his brain or working ability. But a rational being cannot exist as a non person, because to be rational he very much has to be a person. It is seen that a mentally insane person is not given the same accountability and responsibility as a normal person .He is not considered as a whole personality ,as he lacks the ability to sort out things with his intellect .So it could be understood that intelligence and rational behavior offers a human being a personhood. Another aspect to being a person is the awareness and consciousness which a person experience in his personhood. The awareness or the consciousness is what is lacking in mentally ill or infants which make them less of a person. The consciousness is the center to the self and a personality and a human being which is not connected to his consciousness can be regarded less of a person. Most of the people nowadays know that we have evolved from the species called hom osapiens. A person is a being with logic, morality and ethical behavior which is obviously lacking in a homosapiens .As per(Rosenberg, 11)â€Å" To regard some being as a person, in shorter, is to grant to that being the sort of respect and treatment due persons, to acknowledge it as having to certain ethical or having standard â€Å".We as persons are more evolved than homosapien species. For example, if we see a human raised in a forest from his childhood, we might hesitate call him a person but might address him as

Innovation And Managing Innovation

Innovation And Managing Innovation There are different types of innovation. Joseph Tidd and John Bessant describe in their books four broad categories of innovation. (Tidd Bessant, 2009) Following these categories are referred as the 4Ps of innovation: à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ product innovation changes in the things (products/services) which an organization offers à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ process innovation changes in the ways in which they are created and delivered à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ position innovation changes in the context in which the products/services are introduced à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ paradigm innovation changes in the underlying mental models which frame what the organization does For example, the new version of a car, a new bank account offer and a new home personnel computer are all examples of a product innovation. In comparison to a product innovation a change in the production process and machines used to manufacture the car or the home computer these examples are process innovations. Similar the example of the new bank account offer if this came up by changing procedures and sequencing in the bank office. Characteristic for services is the merge of a process and product innovation. For example a new weekend trip package could be combination of both types of innovations. The third type is the position innovation. In this context an innovation changes the perception of the customer through repositioning of the established product or process. For example, to use shower gel also to wash and clean clothes is a good example of a position innovation. Sometimes innovation opportunities emerge when people start to think outside the box. A very good example of a paradigm innovation is Henry Ford. He fundamentally changed the way of transportation people. He archived this neither by inventing the motor car (Invention of the motor car was 1999) nor because he changed the way of manufacture and produce an automobile (also the inventor of the conveyer production). His idea was to change the underlying model for the automobile production in this time. He changed the perspective of producing automobiles from handmade specialist product to a few wealthy customers to a mass product with a price a normal household could afford. The ensuing shift from craft to mass production was nothing short of a revolution in the way cars (and later countless other products and services) were created and delivered. This example shows that a paradigm innovation also requires intensive product and process innovation for example, in component design, in mach inery building, in the layout of the factory and in the social system around which work was organized. (Edelhoff, 2009) Not only Henry Ford changed an industry. In the last decades the shift to low-cost airlines and the increasing numbers of goods sold in the internet are recent examples of paradigm innovation changes in mental models. From Incremental to Radical Innovation Every Innovation is new, but the question is how new. So we can divide innovations between incremental and radical. (doing the same, better à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦..) For example, a new version of a car model is incremental while coming up with a completely new electric driven concept car which is made out of new light weight carbon fibre is radical. Similarly, further development of the accuracy and speed of a saw mill is not the same as replacing it with a computer-controlled laser cutting process. This example shows there are degrees of new innovation, running from minor, incremental improvements to radical changes which changes the way things are done and we use them. These changes are often present to a particular industry, but sometimes they are so radical and extensive that they are able to change the core of society. The major steps in todays communication and information technology have affected almost every person on this planet and will continue to gain importance. Figure : Dimension of innovation from incremental to radical from component- to system level Mapping Innovation Space In the figure below each of the 4Ps of innovation can take place along an axis. Hence the blue circle indicates the potential innovation space within a business can operate, the innovation is able to run from incremental to radical change. Whether the innovation utilizes all the space is a question of the innovation strategy. The way day-to-day change is approached within an organization differs from the approach how to handle a radical step change in products or processes. Here it is essential to keep in mind that the perceived stage of novelty is the important part and that this novelty is in the perspective of the observer. For example, in a giant, technologically advanced organization like Volkswagen or Siemens the tracking of goods from suppliers by RFID and GPS is used and implemented in day to day business while such an expensive process might be totally new and innovative for a small car dealership or food processor. (Kern, 2006) Figure : Innovation space Sustaining or Disruptive Quite a lot of innovations involve a discontinuous shift but very few bring something completely new which changes a market conditions dramatically. Most of them usually are incremental. In recent time lean thinking came up in the production and service sector, which underlines the huge possibilities of continue improvements within a firm. (Kohlstedde, 2007) However this continues improvement idea is hampered through the new approach of the platform concept or robust design. This idea bases on the development of a future general design which will dominate the market as well as used by the competitor. A good example for such a robust design is the Walkman originally developed by Sony. This first design of a portable cassette and radio player system dominated the market for the whole product lifetime of cassettes. Also car makers tend to change their development process from each single model to a platform strategy. (Wallentowitz, Freialdenhove, Olschewski, 2009) The Volkswagen AG int roduced platforms which are used for different brands of the company group. This not only saves costs but also helps them to dominate the market with faster model updates and exchanges. The platform and robust design strategy of firms is a powerful way of recover the high initial investments such as Research and Development as well as market analysis. The Challenge of Discontinues improvement The common innovation process happens in a set frame, following certain rules and ways of thinking. This game played by competitors is to innovate by doing what has been done before like product- or process innovations or even position- and paradigm innovations, but doing it better. In this competition of playing the same game some firms manage to do better than others and can gain a competitive advantage through these innovations, but the set of the game is accepted and do not change. Very rare something happens that breaks up this framework and changes how the game is played. This will not happen every day but when this arises the rules and boundaries of a market change rapidly. This will result in upcoming new opportunities and challenge the existing players in their way of working, thinking and doing business. A discontinues improvement occurs out of a technological and conditions stable market, where is a long period of continuous improvements and variations around a basic product or service. The strategy, before the discontinues improvement was, doing what we do, but better. When such an innovation happens one or more of the basic conditions like technology, markets, social, regulatory etc. change rapidly. Now the time of doing different begins and the rules of the game change so the opportunity space for new innovations appears. Such a rapid technology change is happening right now with the development of LEDs in the light market. From the invention of the originally light bulb in the late nineteenth century by Edison and Swan the light market gets more and more restricted by the government. Furthermore the development of the LED light was a major step for the whole market and will influence our daily life in the future. With this upcoming technology new enterprises emerge in the market as well as the inventor Shuji Nakamura with the company Nichia Corporation. This discontinues improvement faces the market dominating companies very hard. Either they adapt to the new light technology or they will lose market share very rapidly. In the process the underlying rules of the game change and a new opportunity space for innovation opens up. Do different conditions of this kind occur, for example, when radical change takes place along the technological frontier or when completely new markets emerge. An emerging example of this could be the replacement of the incandescent light bulb originally developed in the late nineteenth century by Edison and Swan (amongst others). This may be replaced by the solid state white light emitting diode technology patented by Nichia Chemical. This technology is 85% more energy efficient, has 16 times the life of a conventional bulb, is brighter, is more flexible in application and is likely to be subject to the scale economies associated with electronic component production. In their pioneering work on this theme Abernathy and Utterback developed a model describing the pattern in terms of three distinct phases. Initially, under discontinuous conditions, there is what they term a fluid phase during which there is high uncertainty along two dimensions: à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ The target what will the new configuration be and who will want it? à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ The technical how will we harness new technological knowledge to create and deliver this? No one knows what the right configuration of technological means and market needs will be and so there is extensive experimentation (accompanied by many failures) and fast learning by a range of players including many new entrepreneurial businesses. Gradually these experiments begin to converge around what they call a dominant design something which begins to set up the rules of the game. This represents a convergence around the most popular (importantly not necessarily the most technologically sophisticated or elegant) solution to the emerging configuration. At this point a bandwagon begins to roll and innovation options become increasingly channeled around a core set of possibilities what Dosi calls a technological trajectory.38 It becomes increasingly difficult to explore outside this space because entrepreneurial interest and the resources which that brings increasingly focus on possibilities within the dominant design corridor. This can apply to products or processes; in both cases the key characteristics become stabilized and experimentation moves to getting the bugs out and refining the dominant design. For example, the nineteenth-century chemical industry moved from making soda ash (an essential ingredient in making soap, glass and a host of other products) from the earliest days where it was produced by burning vegetable matter through to a sophisticated chemical reaction which was carried out on a batch process (the Leblanc process) which was one of the drivers of the Industrial Revolution. This process dominated for nearly a century but was in turn replaced by a new generation of continuous processes which used electrolytic techniques and which originated in Belgium where they were developed by the Solvay brothers. Moving to the Leblanc process or the Solvay process did not happen overnight; it took decades of work to refine and improve each process, and to fully understand the chemistry and engineering required to get consistent high quality and output. The same pattern can be seen in products. For example, the original design for a camera is something which goes back to the early nineteenth century and as a visit to any science museum will show involved all sorts of ingenious solutions. The dominant design gradually emerged with an architecture which we would recognize shutter and lens arrangement, focusing principles, back plate for film or plates, etc. But this design was then modified still further for example, with different lenses, motorized drives, flash technology and, in the case of George Eastmans work, to creating a simple and relatively idiot-proof model camera (the Box Brownie) which opened up photography to a mass market. More recent development has seen a similar fluid phase around digital imaging devices. The period in which the dominant design emerges and emphasis shifts to imitation and development around it is termed the transitional phase in the Abernathy and Utterback model. Activities move from radical concept development to more focused efforts geared around product differentiation and to delivering it reliably, cheaply, with higher quality, extended functionality, etc. As the concept matures still further so incremental innovation becomes more significant and emphasis shifts to factors like cost which means efforts within the industries which grow up around these product areas tend to focus increasingly on rationalization, on scale economies and on process innovation to drive out cost and improve productivity. Product innovation is increasingly about differentiation through customization to meet the particular needs of specific users. Abernathy and Utterback term this the specific phase.* Finally the stage is set for change the scope for innovation becomes smaller and smaller whilst outside for example, in the laboratories and imaginations of research scientists new possibilities are emerging. Eventually a new technology emerges which has the potential to challenge all the by now well-established rules and the game is disrupted. In the camera case, for example, this is happening with the advent of digital photography which is having an impact on cameras and the overall service package around how we get, keep and share our photographs. In our chemical case this is happening with biotechnology and the emergence of the possibility of no longer needing giant chemical plants but instead moving to small-scale operations using live organisms genetically engineered to produce what we need. Table 1.2 sets out the main elements of this model. Although originally developed for manufactured products the model also works for services for example the early days of Internet banking were characterized by a typically fluid phase with many options and models being offered. This gradually moved to a transitional phase, build- ing a dominant design consensus on the package of services offered, the levels and nature of security and privacy support, the interactivity of website, etc. The field has now become mature with much of the competition shifting to marginal issues like relative interest rates. The pattern can be seen in many studies and its implications for innovation management are important. In particular it helps us understand why established organizations often find it hard to deal with discontinuous change. Organizations build capabilities around a particular trajectory and those who may be strong in the later (specific) phase of an established trajectory often find it hard to move into the new one. (The example of the firms which successfully exploited the transistor in the early 1950s is a good case in point many were new ventures, sometimes started by enthusiasts in their garage, yet they rose to challenge major players in the electronics industry like Raytheon.39) This is partly a consequence of sunk costs and commitments to existing technologies and markets and partly because of psychological and institutional barriers. 40 They may respond but in slow fashion and they may make the mistake of giving responsibility for the new development to those whose current activities would be threatened by a shift.41 Importantly, the fluid or ferment phase is characterized by co-existence of old and new technologies and by rapid improvements of both.41,42 (It is here that the so-called TABLE sailing ship effect can often be observed, in which a mature technology accelerates in its rate of improvement as a response to a competing new alternative as was the case with the development of sailing ships in competition with newly emerging steamship technology.43,44 Whilst some research suggests existing incumbents do badly, we need to be careful here. Not all existing players do badly many of them are able to build on the new trajectory and deploy/leverage their accumulated knowledge, networks, skills and financial assets to enhance their competence through building on the new opportunity. 42à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚   Equally whilst it is true that new entrants often small entrepreneurial firms play a strong role in this early phase we should not forget that we see only the successful players. We need to remember that there is a strong ecological pressure on new entrants which means only the fittest or luckiest survive. It is more helpful to suggest that there is something about the ways in which innovation is managed under these conditions which poses problems. Good practice of the steady-state kind described above is helpful in the mature phase but can actively militate against the entry and success in the fluid phase of a new technology.46 How do enterprises pick up signals about changes if they take place in areas where they dont normally do research? How do they understand the needs of a market which doesnt exist yet but which will shape the eventual package which becomes the dominant design? If they talk to their existing customers the likelihood is that those customers will tend to ask for more of the same, so which new users should they talk to and how do they find them? The challenge seems to be to develop ways of managing innovation not only under steady-state but also under the highly uncertain, rapidly evolving and changing conditions which result from a dislocation or discontinuity. The kinds of organizational behaviour needed here will include things like agility, flexibility, the ability to learn fast, the lack of preconceptions about the ways in which things might evolve, etc. and these are often associated with new small firms. There are ways in which large and established players can also exhibit this kind of behaviour but it does often conflict with their normal ways of thinking and working. Extensive studies have shown the power of shifting technological boundaries in creating and transforming industry structures for example, in the case of the typewriter, the computer and the automobile. Such transformations happen relatively often no industry is immune (see Box 1.3 for an example). Worryingly the source of the technology which destabilizes an industry often comes from outside that industry. So even those large incumbent firms which take time and resources to carry out research to try and stay abreast of developments in their field may find that they are wrong-footed by the entry of something which has been developed in a different field. The massive changes in insurance and financial services which have characterized the shift to online and telephone provision were largely developed by IT professionals often working outside the original industry.6 In extreme cases we find what is often termed the not invented here NIH effect, where a firm finds out about a technology but decides against following it up because it does not fit with their perception of the industry or the likely rate and direction of its technological development. Famous examples of this include Kodaks rejection of the Polaroid process or Western Unions dismissal of Bells telephone invention. In a famous memo dated 1876 the board commented, this telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.

Sex and Sexuality in Dracula Essay -- European Literature Bram Stoker

Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, published in 1897, explores various sexual erotic possibilities in the vampire's embrace, as discussed by Leonard Wolf. The novel confronts Victorian fears of homosexuality; that were current at the time due to the trial of playwright Oscar Wilde. The vampire's embrace could also be interpreted as an illustration of Victorian fears of the changing role of women. Therefore it is important to consider: the historical context of the novel; the Victorian notion of the `New Woman' specifically the character of Lucy Westenra; the inversion of gender roles; notions of sexuality; and the emasculation of men, by lessening their power over women; in the novel Dracula. In doing this I will be able to explore the effects of the vampire's embrace in depth, and achieve a wider understanding of the variety of erotic undercurrents Stoker incorporated into the novel. Stoker was born in Ireland in 1847, and later he graduated from Trinity College in 1867, and joined the civil service. While working, as a freelance journalist and drama critic enabled him to meet Henry Irving and entered London's literary circles, which included figures such as Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde. In the course of Irving's tours he also had the chance to travel around the world. Stoker later married Florence Balcome, who had previously had a romantic affair with Oscar Wilde. In my opinnion Stoker could not fail to be infuleced by these people while he was writing Dracula. In Dracula, Stoker relied greatly upon the conventions of Gothic fiction. Traditionally gothic elements such as dark and sublime settings, and the innocent threatened by the ineffable evil obviously feature in Dracula. Stoker modernises his novel by bringing the set... ...toker, B. (1994) Dracula, Penguin Classics, London. Weissman, J. (1988) Dracula as a Victorian Novel in Dracula: The Vampire and the Critics, UMI Press. Wolf, L. (1993) The essential Dracula, Byron Preiss. Wolf, L. (1972) A Dream of Dracula: In Search of the Living Dead, Popular Library, New York. (1997) Oscar Wilde [internet] can be found at http://www.neuroticpoets.com/wilde/ [accessed 10-11-2005] (2000) Clash of Cultures: The New Woman [internet] can be found at http://history.osu.edu/Projects/Clash/NewWoman/newwomen-page1.htm [accessed on 10-11-2005] (1997) Thor [internet] can be found at http://www.pantheon.org/articles/t/thor.html [accessed on 10-11-2005]