The Role of a Strategic Leader in an Organization Essay Example for Free

The Role of a Strategic Leader in an Organization Essay Role of Indian Media in the New Age The following is the speech given by Shri Kapil Sibal, Minister of HRD and C IT, on the topic: Role of Indian Media in the New Ag, presiding as the Chief Guest for the Press Club Awards for Excellence in Journalism , on 5th May, 2012 at The NSCI, Worli, Mumbai. I am privileged to be here with you on a day the media celebrates its exceptional performers. I congratulate all those who have received awards and wish them continued success in their profession. The media has emerged as a pillar of the modern State. nbsp; The foundation of a modern democratic State lies in its ability to secure fundamental rights promised to its people, to deliver Justice and lead its people to economic and social progress. Democracy is defined by freedom of speech and expression. Media is an embodiment of these rights that define democracy. If we look back into history, the emergence of the modern nation-state where the sovereignty vested in its people is closely related to the spread of the printing press. Guttenberg ¤Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬ws Bible (the first printed book) was a precursor to the spread of emocracy and republican thought across the world. Rousseau was mild mannered, but his thoughts disseminated by the newspapers in the coffee houses of Paris resulted in the French Revolution. Liberty, Equality and Fraternity as the slogan for the Revolution owes much to the media of the day. The Indian media has been truly a pillar of the Indian State. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. The Indian media has indeed been vigilant and persuasive in protection of freedoms and awakening thought. If we have preserved our democracy in the midst of periodic lapses into ictatorships in our neighbourhood, the credit should go to our founding fathers who created robust institutions and to the media who kept a vigilant watch at preserving these institutions. However, the nature of media has also been changing over the last two decades. The emergence of the electronic media in India over two decades ago since the first war to be witnessed live by millions in the cosy comforts of their homes, brought the power of imagery to the forefront. The growing dominance of imagery over substance in an era where time is of the essence and competition is ntense, has brought about the need for stoking fires, beaming controversies and heated debates in the media. The divergence of approach between the print and the electronic media has been amply demonstrated in the events of the last year. Today ¤ es media does not provide much space for settling differences, it prefers to dog the protagonists forever reminding them of the past. There is a problem with this approach. We do not sufficiently celebrate our achievements, we do not appreciate the progress that we make. The spread of negative sentiment leads to despondency and inaction. Infact, today ¤Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬ws headline in a prominent newspaper speaks of the fear that stalks the corridors of bureaucracy. Despite the exhortation of the Prime Minister, the civil services today is afraid of action, for any action can be questioned. Faith and trust in all institutions are being eroded. Rampant mistrust, I believe, has slowed governance and if not corrected, can imperil the foundations of democracy. We have much to correct, but it is necessary for room for correction to be available. When there is a dispute in a family, the members retire to a place of seclusion to ettle eir tn ditterences. Today, there is no such place available due to the omnipotence of media. Competition spurs innovation, but unhealthy competition can lead to pandering. The rush for eyeballs in a crush of problems leads to extremes being aired rather than the moderate being heard. In such a situation, the responsibility of the media to the larger society gets diluted.    At the same time, I would for one strongly oppose attempts to impose responsibility through regulatory action. It is for the media to ponder and find solutions for itself. If the media fails to o so, Just as we are witnessing a clamour for Judicial accountability because the judiciary has not succeeded in inculcating responsibility within itself, a similar clamour for media accountability would grow. Another trend that has emerged in the recent years is the growth of the social media riding in the ICT revolution. Social interactions have exploded as never before, aided by the connecting power of the internet. The ability of thoughts to converge and congregate have multiplied manifold.

History Of The International Anti Corruption Movement Politics Essay

History Of The International Anti Corruption Movement Politics Essay Finding itself at the centre of development discourse for the last two decades, corruption has been a star of the international development scene since it was brought to the top of the agenda in the 1990s  [1]  . Following the end of the Cold War, a changing geopolitical climate encouraged the establishment of an international commitment to condemning and criminalising corruption at the multilateral level, a process which culminated in the appearance of a coordinated global anti-corruption movement  [2]  . Consisting of international agreements, domestic laws and initiatives, the reorientation of international organisations and the mobilisation of civil society, this global anti-corruption movement was aimed at tackling corruption via the systematic implementation of tools and strategies to address the issue on the ground. It is clear that corruption is now a focus of international development. Anti-corruptionism is a narrative that places corruption at the centre of development concerns and is tightly bound up with the modern good governance movement and the corresponding global shift towards legal formalisation.  [3]   Practically, the global movements origins have been suggested to lie in the interests of the US Government, multinational companies and multilateral donors. Corporate complaints about corruption as a non-tariff barrier to trade were a key motivation for the application of moral pressure to the international community for it to take action against international corruption. The US led the charge to encourage the appearance of a unified global agenda, a major concern being the fact that American companies were losing billions of dollars in international contracts from their inability to pay bribes by virtue of the operation of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.  [4]   The emergence and operation of the anti-corruption movement poses interesting questions for any student of international law and development. Importantly, if corruption has been recognised as harmful to societies since ancient times, what was it about the 1990s that spurred the international community to formally address it on a multilateral level? Further, how has the movement affected development on a global and local level and what have been its effects? The following section will examine anti-corruptionism by beginning with the genesis of the movement. It will then examine some methods and outcomes of the movements anti-corruption techniques. Whilst anti-corruptionism has brought international attention to an area which was previously somewhat neglected, critics argue that aspects of the movement itself have been counter-productive.  [5]   Owing to anti-corruptionism, corruption has reached a state of quasi-omnipotence in current development scholarship.  [6]  Culminating in the institution of a global anticorruption movement in the 1990s, this focus on corruption and its role in development emerged in stark contrast with attitudes of the international community in the period that immediately preceded it.  [7]   Having been unsuccessful at the UN, the US in 1981 began lobbying at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for that body to implement an alternative to alternative to the failed UN effort, illicit payments agreement.  [8]  However many OECD countries declined to cooperate due to concerns about the interaction of such an agreement with their domestic law.  [9]  With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the post-Cold War era ushered in a period of immense geopolitical change. With that change, the attention of the international community was increasingly focussed on the internationalisation of economics brought about by increasing levels of globalisation  [10]  . The problem of foreign bribery and corruption was suddenly given new priority by previously hesitant OECD countries who were then more receptive to the idea of an international agreement on the issue. In May 1994, the OECD Ministerial Council adopted the Recommendation of the Council on Bribery in International Business Transactions, which asked members to take concrete and meaningful steps to amend their laws, tax systems, accounting and record keeping requirements and public procurement procedures.  [11]   In 1997, all twenty-nine member countries of the OECD and five non-member countries agreed to sign the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions. The OECD Convention in effect obliged signatory countries to conform to a US model prohibiting bribery and money laundering. This model was then extended further in the UN Convention Against Corruption in 2003. The UNCAC included new commitments to transparency in public works procurement and currently represents the broadest, most recent international commitment to tackling global corruption.  [12]   In this new era of international enthusiasm, institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF came to include anti-corruptionism in their assistance conditionalities.78 Corruption was newly packaged as a socio-economic rather than political concern, by these institutions in order for them to depoliticise and therefore legitimately target the problem.79 Following this, there was widespread publication of the effects of corruption by NGOs and civil society, spearheaded by TI. NGOs and civil society worked to transmit the anti-corruption movement to citizens around the world and were aided by a post-communist trend towards free and active media facilitating the diffusion of the key tenants of anti-corruptionism  [13]  . The radical change of geopolitical climate, growth in international trade spurred by globalisation, participation by civil society, and moral push from the US, converged to popularise a fight against corruption. All this culminated in the appearance of the global anti-corruption movement in the 1990s. There are a number of consequences to the emergence of anti-corruptionism as a key explanatory factor for development failure. The first is principally a consequence of the ideology from which anti-corruptionism itself sprung but is also tied up with the attack on the state that anti-corruptionism encourages and supports. At the core of neo-liberalism is the simplistic mantra of private = good, public = bad. By viewing actions of the state as interference in the functioning of the market as rent-seeking activities neo-liberalism ignored the dangers of private monopolies and anti ­competitive behaviour, both of which began to flourish internally. Moreover, as Joseph Stiglitz has persuasively argued, neo-liberalism as encapsulated by the Washington Consensus failed to take into account the extreme inter-relatedness of everything with everything else in society. The second consequence of anti-corruptionism is arguably more serious and is related again to its role within neo-liberal ideology. It is the way in which corruption has become a mono-casual or predominant explanatory factor for development failures. One of the most potent dangers of anti-corruptionism is therefore not that it is wrong to highlight the damaging nature of corruption although much more work needs to be done to provide evidence for the supposition that it is actually harmful but that it is too simple an explanation alone to account for the failures in development policies. If there has been one central lesson of the past sixty years of development disappointments, it is how little we understand of what actually works in enabling people to fight their way out of poverty. The danger therefore of anti-corruptionism is that it diverts attention away from more nuanced accounts of development failures by providing an illusion of certainty in our understanding of development, and in doing so causes actual and on-going harm. The inability or unwillingness to develop a comprehensive understanding of failure contains within it the risk of failing all over again. The prescription to governments that they need to fight corruption does not provide a list of priorities, a means of going about it or any unanticipated (negative) consequences that may arise. This is largely because corruption tells us nothing about specific actions; instead it is what Polzer, following Euben, describes as an othering tool. In place of describing specific actions, such as theft or vote-rigging, corruption is simply a negative evaluative concept that One of the main effects of the term itself is thus to create a dichotomy between the corrupt and the good that mirrors neatly onto neo-liberalisms central characterisation of the state as bad and the market as good; the othering nature of the discourse, moreover, allows the World Bank, as champion of the market, to take on the mantle of good expert in contrast to the corrupt developing state. Focusing on the corruption of bureaucrats and government officials not only conveniently shields free market ideology from any responsibility for the failure to live up to its claims of wealth creation and the BWI from any responsibility for their role. Anti-corruptionism also exculpates any responsibility that the West its institutions and its citizens may have for, for example, Corruption, because of its place within the good governance agenda, is an ahistorical discourse of the present. Moreover, it is one of course that locates development failures squarely within developing countries, and this predominating focus on developing government failures in the face of our own complicity in them has of course an undeniable smack of cultural imperialism to it.  [14]  As such, it is not only deeply unhelpful but also damaging to the goals of development as well as to the necessary relationship between the global North and South an essential part of development if development goals, however defined, are to be achieved.

Mothers That Work Essay examples -- essays research papers

The Effects of Working Mothers on their Children   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  One mother expresses her personal experience and opinion on the effects of her employment on the children â€Å"I am happy to see support for the mom who wants to work outside of the home. By my children seeing me go to work, I am teaching them the values of hard work, commitment, and responsibility. I am also showing them that mothers and fathers share in all responsibilities of raising a family, financial and housework. There is no doubt in either my mind or my child’s that the first priority is each other. Out times together are positive. I have seen too many stay at home moms yelling at their children and worse, the children yelling at their mothers. I do not think this is the message that stay at home moms like to give. Their lives are now more enriched, never been happier, and that they are more fulfilled. Actually, I think a lot of stay at home moms justify their laziness and lack of ambition by saying they are staying at home for the benefit of the children† (abcnews.com 2).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  For many years women have believed that if they returned to work after having children, their children would be harmed by the lack of a mother’s presence. This belief is no longer true. Studies have shown, â€Å"Despite the declining population of young people, the number and proportion of children with working mothers rose steadily during the past decade† (Kamerman 13). In fact, â€Å"1979 was the first time more U.S. children lived in families with a mother in the labor force than in families with a mother who was a full-time homemaker† (Kamerman 13). Mothers no longer have to worry; they are free to choose the career path they want to follow. Mothers can make this decision with confidence because experts believe that a mother who works has a positive effect on her children. Children with mothers in the workforce are taught responsibility, independence, the importance of an education, and also social skills that are acquired from day-care.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  There are still a few experts that argue children are negatively effected by the absence of their mother. They believe that this absence can cause an attachment disorder. Some also report that the lack of their mother can make it harder for a mother and child to form an effective relationship. A recent study suggested ... ...dvantage of group care is the friendships that children develop with their peers during the care. One expert observed that children’s â€Å"contacts with each other often develop a sibling-like quality† (Webb 43). Some children involved in this study even went to one another’s homes to have dinner, to play on weekends, and occasionally, to stay for the night.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The mother who works as a professional has an extremely different influence on her children than one who works in a less intellectually demanding job or one who does not work at all. Children learn from the environment and the people that they are exposed to in life, especially in the early stages. When children are exposed to hard working parents it helps them to appreciate the value of responsibility and independence. The importance of a good education is immeasurable and is also a necessity for a child to grow into a prosperous adult. Another important factor that affects a child is the day care environment that the child is exposed to on a daily basis. A good day care provider can teach a child many skills. A child can also learn from the other children that they spend many hours with in day care.

The War of the Sexes in The Taming Of The Shrew :: The Taming Of The Shrew William Shakespeare

The Taming Of The Shrew: The Battle Continues in the War of the Sexes  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚        The plot of William Shakespeare’s The Taming Of The Shrew is derived from the popular 'war of the sexes' theme in which males and females are pitted against one another for dominance. Although the play has been condemned for the blatant sexist attitude it has toward women, a close examination of the play reveals that it is not a story of how men should 'put women in their place'. The play is, in fact, a comedy about an assertive woman coping with how she is expected to act in society and of how one must obey the unwritten rules of a society to be accepted by it. Although the play ends with her outwardly conforming to the norms of society, this is in action only, not in mind. Although she assumes the role of the obedient wife, inwardly she still retains her assertiveness. The play begins with an induction in which a drunkard, Christopher Sly, is fooled into believing he is a king and has a play performed for him. The play he watches is what constitutes the main body of The Taming Of The Shrew. In it, a wealthy landowner, Baptista Minola, attempts to have his two daughters married. One is very shrewish, Katherine, while the other is the beautiful and gentle Bianca. In order to ensure Katherine is married, Baptista disallows Bianca to be espoused until Katherine is wed, forcing the many suitors to Bianca to find a mate for Katherine in order for them to vie for Bianca's love. Most of the play's humor comes from the way in which characters create false realities by disguising themselves as other people, a device first introduced by having Christopher Sly believe he is someone he is not and then by having the main play performed for him. By putting The Taming Of The Shrew in a 'play within a play' structure, Shakespeare immediately lets the audience know that the play is not real thus making all events in the play false realities. Almost all characters in the play take on identities other than their own at some point of time during the play. Sly as a king, Tranio as Lucentio, Lucentio as Cambio, Hortensio as Litio and the pedant as Vicentio are all examples of this. Another example of this is Katherine as an obedient wife.

The History of the Coffeehouse :: essays research papers

The first coffeehouse the world had ever seen was founded in Constantinople, just becoming Istanbul in 1475. It was such a huge success that right after it opened, two more appeared. So began a fascination with coffee that would last 300 more years. The reason the first coffeehouse did not open in, say, England, was location. Since Turkey was only a quick sail away from the original brewer of coffee, Arabia, traders could get the coffee to the city with minimal effort. The Europeans were completely out of the coffee trading loop until coffee began to make it’s way into the hands of Venetian traders, leading the Italians to be the first Europeans to found coffeehouses. Slowly, coffeehouses came to open in England as well, the first opening in 1652. However, there was still the problem of transporting all that coffee from Turkey or the Middle East, a costly business. This problem was solved when the Turks, defeated in battle, left sacks upon sacks of the flavorful beans behind i n parts of Europe. This created an abundance of coffee houses in Vienna, where there was large amounts of this left-behind coffee. Eventually, the storehouses began to run low on coffee, now very much in demand with the Europeans. You may be wondering, why didn’t they just grow some coffee? First of all, the merchants who sold the beans knew this, and sold the beans in non growing conditions (such as already ground up.) Secondly, people did try to grow coffee- but on European soil, the beans that were usable floundered and died. If they managed to get usable coffee beans at all, (it was illegal to get them) you wouldn’t have nearly enough to support even the smallest coffeehouse for a week. The Dutch trading companies knew all this, but they came up with a new, radical notion- why not get some beans, but grow them not in Europe but in the East Indies! So the Dutch smuggled a small amount of un ground or processed coffee beans out of the Arabian port of Mocha, then shipped them to Ceylon and the East Indies for cultivation. 30 years later, a French naval officer named Gabriel De Clieu sailed for the Caribbean island of Martinique. When he arrived, he happened to be carrying some un cultivated coff ee beans. (We’ll never know how those got there.) He casually sold it to the locals, unwittingly starting one of the world’s largest coffee producers.

Human Trafficking Essay

Human Trafficking is a crime that’s been rapidly rising and becoming a major issue all over the world. Human trafficking is the trade in humans, most commonly for the purpose of sexual slavery, forced labor or for the extraction of organs or tissues, including surrogacy and ova removal. Human trafficking happens in many different forms. These forms of human trafficking mostly affect women and children. There are many forms of human trafficking. One of the many forms of human trafficking is sexual exploitation. Sexual exploitation is the taking advantage of their sexuality and attractiveness of a person to make a personal gain or profit. Sexual exploitation has been going on for many years. Most women and children are trafficked for sexual exploitation. Poverty, gender-based discrimination and a history of sexual and physical violence are all factors that can make women and children vulnerable to traffickers. In most cases women and children are abducted and sold, some are deceived into consenting by the promise of a better life or a better job, and some feel that entrusting themselves to traffickers is the only economically viable option. These individuals held and exploited in slavery-like conditions once they are trapped. Most of these women and children trafficked for sexual exploitation suffer extreme violations of their human rights, including the right to liberty, the right to dignity and security of person, the right not to be held in slavery or involuntary servitude, the right to be free from cruel and inhumane treatment, the right to be free from violence, and the right to health. Human trafficking is a high-profit and low-risk endeavor for the traffickers. Traffickers have many tactics to prevent victims from escaping such as physical restraint in the form of locks and guards, physical or psychological violence, drugging or by instilling a fear of the police. The trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation has a negative impact on the health and wellbeing of victims, which could be long term and ultimately life-threatening. Forced labour is another form of human trafficking. Forced labour is any work or services which people are forced to do against their will under the threat of some form punishment. Forced labour is a global problem. The regional distribution of forced labour is: Asia and Pacific: 11. 7 million (56%), Africa: 3. 7 million (18%), Latin America and the Caribbean: 1. 8 million (9%), The Developed Economies (US, Canada, Australia, European Union, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Japan): 1. 5 million (7%) and the Middle East: 600,000 (3%). With increased possibilities for travelling and telecommunications, and with a growing demand for cheap labour in the developed world on the one hand, and increasingly restrictive visa regulations on the other, possible channels for legal labour migration have diminished. Private recruitment agencies, intermediaries and employers may take advantage of this situation and lure potential migrants into exploitative employment. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that there are at least 20. million people in forced labour worldwide. The figure means that, at any given point in time, around three out of every 1,000 persons worldwide are suffering in forced labour. Adults are more affected than children 74% (15. 4 million) of victims fall in the age group of 18 years and above, whereas children are 26% of the total (or 5. 5 million child victims). The state military is responsible for 10% of forced labour which mostly takes place in Burma, North Korea and China. Organ trade is another form of trafficking that’s has become an issue in other countries. Organ trade is the trade involving inner organs (heart, liver, kidneys, etc. ) of a human for transplantation. Trafficking in organs is a crime that occurs in three broad categories. Firstly, there are cases where traffickers force or deceive the victims into giving up an organ. Secondly, there are cases where victims formally or informally agree to sell an organ and are cheated because they are not paid for the organ or are paid less than the promised price. Thirdly, vulnerable persons are treated for an ailment, which may or may not exist and thereupon organs are removed without the victim’s knowledge. The vulnerable categories of persons include migrants, especially migrant workers, homeless persons, illiterate persons, etc. It is known that trafficking for organ trade could occur with persons of any age. Organs which are commonly traded are kidneys, liver and the like; any organ which can be removed and used, could be the subject of such illegal trade. Trafficking in organ trade is an organized crime, involving a host of offenders. The recruiter who identifies the vulnerable person, the transporter, the staff of the hospital/clinic and other medical centers, the medical professionals, the middlemen and contractors, the buyers, the banks where organs are stored are all involved in the racket. It is a fact that the entire racket is rarely exposed and therefore, the dimensions are yet to be appropriately fathomed. In conclusion, human trafficking is a global issue that has been going on for thousands of years. Governments all around the world should take control of these issues and try to better protect the women and children affected by human trafficking.

Junk Food Essay

Hello, my name is Daniela and I am here today to share my opinion about banning junk food, and hopefully I change your opinion, if you disagree with me. Well, junk food is food that’s very high in fat, sugar, and calories. It hardly has protein, vitamins, or minerals. I know it may be very tasty and good, but it’s not so good for your body. Eating junk food can cause your brain to get addicted to it in a way like drugs do. You’ll constantly think you need it, when you don’t. If you go a couple weeks without junk food and you’re use to eating it, you’ll want it even more, which is bad. Poor eating habits as a kid, become worse when you’re an adult. Eating it for years can cause obesity. Over 31. 8% of children in America are obese or overweight. This all leads to heart problems, diabetes, and other health problems. It can also cause cavities and other dental problems. Junk food also has a lack of oxygen, which is what feeds the brain and the rest of the body. Lack of oxygen causes fatigue and lack of concentration. A lot of studies also show that kid’s grades are sliding down very fast, due to being tired and lack of concentration. They can’t keep all the information they’re learning in their head. Parents should monitor their kid’s diet, but at school they can’t. Therefore the school should help the students in deciding what’s better for their nutrition. Kids do what they see other people do no matter if it’s bad or good. They see us eating a lot of junk food; they’ll eat a lot of junk food. They see us being healthy; they’ll want to become healthy. So why teach them that eating a lot of junk food is healthy? At home, maybe some parents may not care what their kid eats; therefore they should at least have one healthy meal provided by the school. Many students like to go and socialize with their friends during lunch since they can’t really talk or see each other any other times during school. Therefore, they’ll want to just grab a quick snack, like a type of junk food, and just leave to go talk with their friends. They aren’t eating a good meal and are just putting junk in their body. It’s much better if the school bans it and replaces the junk food with a healthy snack so at least the person can be eating something good for them. What if the school makes you take P. E. more than you’re required to since they decided to keep junk food? I know many of you hate it. So I don’t know about you, but I rather be eating healthy, than be trying to lose those calories I got from the junk food. I rather not even be taking P. E. another year just because they decided to keep that junk. Also, students are taught in health classes about healthy eating, and if the schools promotes and sells junk food, then the school contradicts its purpose of teaching this. The money you waste on junk food funds most of the cool and new stuff we get for our school. The school board should be paying for this stuff. They’re basically making money off your poor health choices. I hope you see things my way now and think about supporting the idea of banning junk food in school. Thank you for your listening!