ShantanuT01/DACTYL-Pretraining huggingface dataset:
Introduction Meeting the requirements of the federal employment laws should be prioritized in any organization. This paper will discuss employment laws and regulations, relevant to Plastec Company, list the HR metrics which should be given priority and discuss ways of increasing employee retention and reducing turnover. The firm should carry out affirmative action to include minority groups in the workforce. Paul should also update job descriptions because any weakness could increase the severity of damages in a lawsuit. The firm should be able to attract and retain critical talent that supports its competitive strategy. Paul should address factors that cause employee dissatisfaction. Employment laws and regulations Paul should pay attention to Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 to avoid penalties or a complete closure. Section 6 (b) (5) requires that employers should maintain safety and health standards that cannot make a worker incapacitated due to regular exposure to the work environment (U.S. Department of Labor, n.d.a). Paul should also pay attention to laws that ban discrimination because a claim can be brought against the firm. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regulates discrimination laws. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employers from discriminating with regard to available benefits, opportunities and privileges “based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin” (EEOC, n.d. para. 1). The firm is not allowed to collect information on race before recruitment, unless the information is used for affirmative action. Neutral job recruitment policies that leave out the minority groups may be considered as discrimination. Soliciting application from a population that may result in one race or color being recruited may be considered discrimination. Requiring emplo
Buddha’s or Confucius ideas are the religious teachings according to the Siddhartha Gautama that occurred starting from 566 and 486 before Christ. People during that period called Gautama Buddha to define his ideas of awakening people from the traditional beliefs (Simon 98). The ideas of Buddha consisted of much knowledge on the happenings and the wisdom to shape peoples ways of life. According to the Buddha, the middle way was an important aspect if people practiced and emphasized on it. This essay people will be focusing on the ideas that were common between the Buddha and the ancient Greek thinkers, and also their differences. His awakening call had some similarities with the traditional Greeks, and in some cases they differed. One major issue was the life after death, and the two philosophers Plato and Aristotle had some similarities and differences concerning that issue. Plato was known as one of the most honoured philosophers and he was a student of Socrates. During his time, Aristotle was his student in philosophy. Plato used theories that existed before his time and brought them together to develop some ideas concerning his main concern that was the human soul (Sahni 102). Plato wanted to advance the peoples ways of thinking especially the culture of reducing human soul into fire or atoms. Plato was a serious spiritualist who emphasized much on the human soul. As far as the soul and the body were concerned Plato believed that these two were distinct parts that only worked together during the life time of an individual. Plato emphasized on the fact that the soul was the most important part of a human being, and that is why he used to define the soul as “self initiating motion”. The soul being the source of motion, Plato insisted that the body is supposed to rely on the soul for directions and ideas. In other words, Plato said that the soul is what any human being is, and it stays inside a person just waiting for it t
Introduction The Bible, in general, deals mainly with a number of relationships which include the relationships between God and man, man and man, and the others and the Israelites’ relation between other nations and peoples is a major topic of the biblical authors. Therefore, it is very significant to note that one of the main issues that many biblical authors address is the question of Israel’s relationship with other peoples, other nations, non-Israelites. The ultimate aim of the Old Testament has been to.present the Israelites as the chosen people of God and for this the biblical authors have been very cautious to present the nation as distinct from other nations, peoples and non-Israelites. In fact, this intention of the biblical authors is clear from the narrative style of the story of the Israelites. They are presented as a nation chosen through the great fathers like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, leading them from the land of slavery to the Promised Land under the leadership of Moses. Thus, in the biblical text from Genesis, through Exodus and the other books of the Torah, the Nevi’im, the Kethuvim, the intention of the biblical authors in preparing the Israelites a chosen people separate from the other nations and peoples is very evident. The relation of the Israelites with the other nations, peoples, non-Israelites can be comprehended in this background. Main text The history of Israel as a nation, as opposed to the other nations and peoples, starts with the account of selection of the patriarchs like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph and from them the 12 tribes of Israel descend. The author of Genesis, whoever it be, had been particularly focused on presenting their relation with other nations and peoples as distinct and separate. They were presented as formed and developed as a cho
Introduction An audit refers to a planned, organized and documented process that provides a business or an organization with a means to evaluate its performance. It provides the business or the organization with information concerning the quality of its products, customer services and management. This information is important in either improving or supporting its operations in order to get desired outcomes. Business auditing refers to the process of going for business logic and objects. Auditing is carried out for various reasons such as to evaluate the tasks done weekly, monthly or yearly. There are various types of audits which include the operational audit, financial audit and compliance audit (Gardiner & Harrington, 2001). The operational audit analyzes the business activities to assess its performance in order to come up with ideas on how to improve resources. The financial audit analyzes financial records and operations related to finance in order to determine where the records follow the acceptable principles of accounting. The compliance audit aims to analyze whether the established policies are followed in running the business (Simmons, 1995). Main body Auditing aims to increase the value and to improve operations of an organization. It also helps the organization to work on the objective by providing an organized approach to assess and work on managing risks, improving and controlling the process of governance. Auditing presents several impacts in business operations which are observed in terms of effectiveness, responsibilities and in the setting of goals a business. Auditing gives a business a way of evaluating how effective its operations are. This is because the information presented after auditing can be used to compare past and present operations. For profit making organizations, it provides the business with an idea of whether it is making profits or losses. Auditing is also a means of carrying out business operations in a transparent manner since the records of accounts are included. This ensures that no fraudulent practices are carried out (Robertson & Frederick, 2001). Apart from providing accountability, auditing also provides a means to proof the reliability and integrity of operations and financial information carried out in a business. This is because a thorough evaluation is carried out in all departments of the business. It also ensures the effectiveness of business operations by providing information on any risk that may be facing the business in terms of governance, information, and operation information. Alerting the management on the risks that the business may be exposed to gives the business the confidence to pursue goals as the risks are managed or avoided (Shah, 2007). The main area of auditing in many businesses is financial department. However, there are other non-financial aspects that go hand in hand with the evaluation of the financial department. These include the evaluation of performance management, ethics in the organization, governance p
African (Nigeria) Nigeria has more than 250 various ethical groups on its territory, which is why people identify themselves very differently. In addition to recognizing himself as an African, a Nigerian can also say that he belongs to the Hausa, Fulani, Yoruba, Kanuri, Igbo, or another ethical group. (Falola, 2001, p. 5). Considering the variety of ethnicities, Nigerians have a very diverse culture and are proud of it. People, who have never been to this country, have a lot of stereotypes regarding the way people live here. For example, many foreigners believe that Nigerians practice black magic, which even has its own name here – “juju” (Falola, 2001, p. 37). This stereotype can probably be explained by Nigerian movies where black magic rituals are very common. In reality, it is much harder to find a man who has a hand in juju. On the contrary, Nigerian population is deeply religious: the majority of people there are either Muslims or Christians (Falola, 2001, p. 40). In addition, Nigerians are believed to speak their own Nigerian pidgin, which is not true since the official language of the country is English, and many people speak it fluently (Falola, 2001, p. 7). Also, there is a popular belief that Nigerians are uneducated. In fact, even though schools in this country are not the best, parents always insist on their children’s education. The stereotype that all Nigerians look alike is unfounded as well. All Africans look alike no more than all Chinese or Asians do. In general, Nigerians are modest, hard-working people, who are very smart, if educated. They are passionate and enjoy their life, and that is similar to my own cultural group, which is African-American. The majority of African-Americans are very religious too. Apart from this, I do not see many similarities between Nigerian and African-American people. Caribbean (St. Croix) People from the Caribbean in general and St. Croix in particular, usually self-identify themselves as West Indians while individuals of other cultural groups and nationalities can call dark-skinned people from the Caribbean African-Americans and white-skinned people from the Caribbean Canadians, Europeans, or even Asians. As Organista, Marin, and Chun (2010) state, dark-skinned individuals from the Caribbean would rather prefer to be called black than African-Americans since they are not African-Americans, in fact. So, that is the first stereotype people have about those from the Caribbean. Another one is that many people associate the Caribbean with Jamaica. Evidently, that is not right since Jamaica is only one of the Caribbean countries, and it does not even have the largest population. Also, Rihanna and Bob Marley are not the only great people who are from the Caribbean, and Rihanna’s songs hardly represent her home country at all. Additionally, even though many people picture West Indians listening to reggae and smoking marijuana all the time, reggae is only one of art forms the Caribbean has to offer, and marijuana is still illegal everywhere, except Jamaica. In general, people from the Caribbean are open-minded, tend to stick togethe
Economics is the science of making decisions in the presence of scarce resources. Decisions are important because scarcity implies that there is a trade off involved between alternatives: by choosing one, you give up the other. Economic decisions thus involve the allocation of scarce resources, with the driving forces of supply and demand which comprise a market economy (Chrystal & Lipsey, 1999). An article dated November 29, 2006 in the Online Journal talks about the US government’s efforts to generate demand for the products of the psychiatric/pharmaceutical industry. At the time it was expected that the government would soon launch a large scale advertising campaign on television, print media as well as radio, targeting people in the age bracket of 18 and 25. The objective of the campaign as formally stated would be to “encourage, educate and inspire 18-25-year olds to step up and support friends they know are experiencing a mental health problem.” But this writer had doubts whether this was actually the intent of this marketing effort (Warner, 2006). The writer felt quite certainly that through these ads the government wanted to “create customers” for this industry which saw a lot of potential in the above mentioned age bracket for psychiatric drugs and services. The government has started out its attempt to expand its market by first and foremost removing the stigma behind psychiatric illnesses and increase acceptance for chemical-imbalance induced mental problems. It will, through this campaign, inform people about the disastrous consequences of failing to seek professional medical help and the increase in medical illnesses. Hence, encouraging people to seek help, for themselves or for people around them will lead to an increase in the number of potential patients for this industry (Warner, 2006). This according to the writer is a strategy on the government’s part to generate more demand and consequently, more sales for the psychiatric/pharmaceutical industry. This is an economic example of a rightward shift in the demand curve (Warner, 2006). Movement along a demand curve is called a change in quantity demanded. A movement along the demand curve is caused by a change in the price of the good or service. For instance, a fall in the price of the good results in an increase in its quantity demanded. A shift of the demand curve is called an increase or decrease in demand and is caused by changes in other factors such as advertising, income, or price of related goods. A rightward shift of the demand curve is called increase in demand as more of the good is demand at each price while a leftward shift in the demand curve is called a decrease in demand (Baye, 2006). The situation described in the article would cause an increase in demand as it is stimulated by an advertising campaign, not by changes in price. Had the price of these drugs increased or decreased, the movement would have been along the demand curve. The drug industry want to expand its market and the 18-25 year segment represents an untapped market with a lot of potential buyers who can be convinced to seek medical help for their issues.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged” (Austen, Pride and Prejudice 5) that Jane Austen is one of the most influential writers of her age. She raised the genre of nineteenth-century Romantic novels to a new level of art (Daiches 743). Dwelling in the world of words and literature, one closed to the ‘fairer sex’ of her time, she earned for herself not just the fame of a good author but one widely read even to this time of the century. She was born in 1775 in the family of a middle-class English parson, George Austen. Indulged in her literary fancies and acumen by her family, particularly by her father, she began writing at an early age, penning few farces and parodies. These literary adventures if not earning her fame nurtured her writing skill rendering it a matured tone in the later years. The literary career of Jane Austen though not prodigiously long promises profundity in its proclivities. She wrote the novel Pride and Prejudice in bits and pieces in the early 1790s. She published the book in 1813 after Sense and Sensibility , published in 1811 at her own expense, found a ready readership amongst Britons. Emma appeared almost at the terminal point of her career in 1816, as she passed away only a year after that. Simplistic chronological documentation of Jane Austen’s work fails to acquaint the readers with her excellent literary capacity yet it introduces one to the interesting idea that a comparative study of all of these three novels promises to unveil the transformation that her talent to paint ordinary themes extraordinarily and her ingenuity in the portrayal of complex characters underwent. Immersed in her context, the eighteenth-century English gentry world, Jane Austen reflects ideas and morality widely accepted in her closed society. Her works have been categorized into a perceptible genre of partisan novels, one discernible by its anti-Jacobin stint meant as a shield against the “extensions of the sentimental novel” (Fleishman 284). Desire to protect the British society, as she has known it, from the drudgery of revolutionary and radical ideas of individualism and equality she sets the themes of her novels where a clash of these forces are constantly depicted. All her novels thematically relate a clash between good sense and free will, proprieties of upper class and indecency of low-bred romantic sensibilities and rational proportion, and between English conservatism and French radicalism. Every character of her novel is developed and nurtured to support and depict these clashes to the utmost perfection. The characters are conjoined to illustrate, at best to epitomize contrasting qualities. In the web of events, she throws them together dramatizing the text in the context. The
Background/introduction Media culture corresponds to the understanding of the different media and the roles that they play in forming and expressing the identity and meaning of the daily life of common people. Media culture mainly focuses on the power, pleasure and significance that are enjoyed by the media. A study of the modern media cultures helps us to produce the materials of our daily life so that people can build their identities based on them. The materials provided by the study of the media cultures help people to understand what it means to be successful or a failure, male or female and powerful or feeble and construct their ideas about class, race, ethnicity, sexuality and nationality. The resources, symbols and images provided by the study of media culture build up a common culture for some individuals all over the world. Media cultures help to create definite identities of the individuals producing a fresh new structure of global culture for them. In addition, since media cultures are concerned with normal people we need to include researches based on the audiences in its study. Since media cultures aim at a large audience, thus, it should resonate with the existing concerns and themes and it is also extremely contemporary such that it helps to provide hieroglyphics of up to date social life of the people (Zepetnek, 2005). Literature review The term audience research is a very broad one, which in principle signifies a systematic study of an audience for a cause or purpose. However, in terms of practice, it implies the efforts made to analyze and describe the various patterns of media cultures generally for some administrative or commercial purpose. Audience research had become like a routine at the beginning of the 20th century when various new forms of mass media cultures came into the eye of the public. Various types of media, like the radio and film, became more and more entwined with the widespread business of marketing and advertisement. An extensive range of various methods and theories are being used in modern audience research and they can be recognized by the well-known labels, like qualitative vs. quantitative audience research, applied vs. theoretical audience research and the unconventional custom vs. syndicated audience research (Webster, 2006). Applied vs. Theoretical audience research Theoretical audience research has only two levels, namely macro and micro. Macro level audience research views the audiences from the outer side to identify their natural behaviors and characteristics collectively. This perception views the audiences as the public and/or the market and is frequently embedded in the areas of marketing and economics. Working in this stage of analysis enables the various researchers to build new laws and models on the behavior of audiences. On the other hand, micro-level audience research views the audiences from the inner side by adopting the viewpoint of an individual member of the audience. Certain important questions like what motivates selection of a media culture, how is media culture used in daily life, what exactly stimulated and comma
Introduction A dividend policy is one of the best policies that an organization’s board of directors can make. A Company like linear technology that is trying to choose the best dividend, is contemplating making a very important policy that will see a company grow to great heights. There are many factors that affect dividend policy and they include market consideration, legal, contractual, cash flow position, and internal constraints, the firm’s growth prospects, owner considerations. Growth prospects: First the firm evaluates its needed financing in light of its future growth prospects if there is the availability of outside financing and the exact funds needed affects the need for retained earnings to financial growth. This is because the firm’s financial requirements are directly related to the degree of asset expansion to be undertaken. If the firm is in the growth stage, it may need all the funds it can get to finance capital expenditure. High-growth firms typically find themselves constantly in need of funds. Their financial requirements may be characterized as large and immediate. Again if there are other sources of funds for planned expansion then dividend policy will take a different position. This means that firm must evaluate its financial position from both profitability and a risk standpoint in order to develop insight into its ability to raise capital externally. They have determined not only its ability to raise funds but also the cost and quickness with which financing can be obtained. A firm like Linear technology that is growing depends heavily on internal financing through retained earnings in order to take advantage of the profitable projects available to it. It is therefore quite likely to pay out only a very small percentage of its earnings as dividends. The more stable firm that needs capital funds only for planned outlays is better advised to pay out a large proportion of its earnings, especially if it has ready sources of financing, instead of retaining these earnings and investing them in marketable securities until the planned outlay must be mad