Tradition: Lost And Kept :: essays research papers

Tradition: Lost and Kept Each culture in the world follows its own customs and traditions. These traditions, however, are sometimes broken to allow a compromise in their society, or are still kept throughout the culture's existence. In the story The Rain Came, an African tribe faces a harsh and desolate time because their tribe is experiencing a severe drought and as a result the livestock is dying from dehydration, the crops are drying out, and the tribe's Chief is called upon to remedy the situation. Following their tribe's tradition on asking the gods for assistance, the Chief discovered the only way to eliminate the drought is by sacrificing his daughter in a traditional ritual. The events that follow will show how the tribe's customs will be kept and lost. Tradition is shown in many parts of the story. The first example of tradition is evident in the scene where the Chief speaks to the ancestors to change the sacrifice; he loves his only daughter dearly and does not wish her to die. Unfortunately, he could not abandon his position as Chief and let the people die from the drought either. In the tribe, it was customary for the Chief to have several wives and children. The Chief married five wives and the fifth one brought him a daughter. Another tradition that was shown in the story was the explanation of how Oganda (the chief's only daughter) received her name. Her name meant "beans" because her skin was smooth, very much like the skins of beans. A last example of tradition is the sacrificing of Oganda. She is scheduled to be sacrificed to a lake monster in order for the tribal villages to receive precipitation and water. In modern days, we would check the local satellite forecast for the area and determine when to conserve water during a drought. However, in this story, tradition must be followed to allow the people to live and thrive, or does it? Revealing the parts of the story where tradition is kept is important in order to compare with the part where tradition is lost and compromised. The Chief keeps tradition when he arranges a meeting with all the family members except Oganda to discuss her sacrifice to better the chances of survival for everyone else. Oganda believes that her family is discussing her marriage and her morale and hopes increase until her family informs her of the situation. To the villagers, it was a great honor to let a woman's daughter to die for her country. To the Chief, it was a great and sad loss for his only daughter would

Employee retention Essay

Employee retention is very important to organizations. If employees can not be retained, the company will have to invest money for training new employees time and time again. The cost of replacing an employee is high not only financially, but in terms of lost productivity, the time taken by the employer to go through the resumes and the cost incurred to conduct interviews. The best away to avoid this costly affair is to focus on the retention of employees as otherwise it will have a castigating effect on the organization as a whole. By taking a look at the past it is possible to avoid the mistake of losing your central operating powers in the future. When an employee leaves the organization, the employer must make it a point to conduct exit interviews to know the reason for him to quit the organization.(pg 161 Dessler) The employer’s real skill lies in identifying the real motive of the employee to quit the organization, because most of the employees reveal the false reasons. At the same time he/she must also equally concentrate on the rest of the employees who have not yet left and indulge in casual conversation to keep their morale high. Turnover can be a positive process when an employer manages to bring new recruits, along with their new ideas and vigor into the organization. Yet, unmanaged employee turnover can easily steal your company’s knowledge base, profits and competitive edge in the market. With today’s high employment levels, organizations that don’t actively manage turnover’s impact, find that the balance of power has shifted from the employer to the employee. Excessive turnover is often a symptom of fundamental problems within the business. It’s critically important to retain them; to do this one must know what motivates an employee to stay at a particular company. â€Å"The top two reasons employees stay with a company are (1) they feel the company cares about them and (2) they feel their work efforts are important to the growth of the company.† (Saxby) Many companys make the mistake of thinking base salary is the only aspect of a retention plan for important employees. Employee morale is more important than money. Family-friendly policies are the blending of family and work, which has increased significantly in the last 20 years. This phenomenon has created a need for growing interest in workplace policies and programs to enable  workers to balance their work and family responsibilities. Corporations seeking to attract new employees and hold onto their existing work force are attempting to be creative with the promise of flexible schedules, flexible benefits, job sharing, onsite day-care facilities, telecommuting, special deals on parental leave, generous family health care packages and numerous additional individualized incentives that respond to the work- and home-life balance. The appearance of family-friendly policies help employees balance their lives between work and their families. That can mean higher productivity, better morale, and fewer turnovers among staff. To humanize the work setting it would be appropriate to set up day-care facilities at working companies. This gives the working parents the security that their child is being taken care of within the same premises. Not only will it benefit the parent, but also the company, for it would make the company more prosperous. Such cases in which parents would stay late the parent could finish their work without any worries. Establishing a day-care center will cause no worries for the parent in finding a babysitter, reduce absentees or tardiness of the employees, and parents would be able to spend time with their children. Another retention method used is flexible work schedules. The impact flexible work schedule’s have had on organizations have been quite positive, benefiting both the employer and the employee. Such benefits include increase in productivity, employee retention, motivation, and a decrease in absenteeism, tardiness, stress, and turnovers. Companies that have successfully adopted this method include Hewlett-Packard, Baxter International, Nabisco, and Dupont, among others. Do flexible work arrangements really improve employee retention? A recent survey, sponsored by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), found that CPAs on flex become more efficient with their time and, because they are grateful for the arrangement, work harder. More than 80 percent of the CPAs surveyed, reported that if their flexible work arrangement had not been approved, they would have left the firm. (PCPS) Flexible benefit plans can be a positive resource for retaining employees. Employers’ that provide flexible benefit plans show the desire to increase  employees’ loyalty to the company. In an increasingly tight labor market and faced with the necessity of operating as efficiently as possible, in order to remain competitive, employers view the flexible benefit plan as a tool to enhance employee morale. Flexible benefit plans are also used to improve employer-employee relationships, reduce overall costs of providing benefits, and reduce the incidence of employee turnover. Compensation issues focus on the diversity of worker needs, pay-for-performance plans, and the regulation of employee benefit plans. Flexibility and adaptability in HRM practices are primary keys in addressing worker needs. Job sharing, staggered scheduling and flextime are some of the outcomes generated by creative approaches to HRM practices. Pay-for-performance plans hold the allure of rewarding productivity while providing monetary motivation. Successful implementation of such practices, however, requires effective performance evaluations. Incentive pay plans can be advantageous to both the employer as well as the employee. The success of an incentive pay plan depends on the organizational climate in which it must operate, employee confidence in it, and its suitability to employee and organizational needs. Importantly, employees must view the incentive plan to be equitable and related to their performance. Performance measures should be quantifiable, easily understood, and bear a demonstrated relationship to organizational performance. The role of Human Resource Management must constantly be refined to add greater value to an organization. HRM has a responsibility to employees to provide for their long-term development and a commitment to continuously afford employees with opportunities for personal and professional advancement. Today, many companies are providing incentives for employees to stay with the firm and allowing them to share in the growth of the company. One major concern employers often have is whether or not the resources committed to employee development will benefit business performance. That concern however, should not discourage corporations from offering assistance to employees. If a business has the time, wherewithal and the know-how to aid and assist its employees, it should, by all means, do so. As the turnover rate continues to rise to its highest levels in nearly a decade, it’s good  to know that finding, hiring and keeping the right people can be accomplished today with more than just subjective observation, opinion and emotion. Dessler, Gary. Human Resource Management. Prentice Hall, 2003. PCPS NEWS RELEASES,http://www.pcps.org/member/releases_may22_02.html,2002 Saxby ,David. What Can Retailers Do About Employee Turnover? http://www.measure-x.com/tips/empturnover.html

The Death Penalty Is Effective Or Not - 851 Words

Death Penalty has been and still is one of the biggest controversies in the United States and internationally. People have been discussing and debating whether or not the death penalty is effective or not. As opposers would argue, the death penalty deters crime and the criminals deserve it; however, the death penalty is a very costly procedure and time consuming as well as ineffective. David Muhlhausen, a Senior Policy Analyst in the center for Data Analysis at the Heritage Foundation, ironically states, â€Å"Federal, state, and local officials need to recognize that the death penalty saves lives.† It does not save lives – it kills. The Innocence Project is an organization that deals with people who have been exonerated and later proved not guilty. These people were convicted, blamed, and was thoroughly carried through te entire judicial process only to be accused guilty when they were not guilty. According to Nick Gillespie, the co-author of The Declaration of Indepen dents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong with America, there are at least 18 innocent individuals that were exonerated. These were just the people that were documented; there could have been many more that was not officially recorded. Imagine all of the wrongfully convicted victims of the Death Penalty. Many innocent lives were lost because of this process that supposedly save lives. If the death penalty was abolished, many lives would be saved. As Muhlhausen pointed out, the death penalty â€Å"detersShow MoreRelatedIs The Death Penalty Effective?971 Words   |  4 PagesIs the Death Penalty Effective? This paper will discuss the history of the death penalty, the cost of the death penalty, and its arguments under the law. For many years the death penalty has been utilized to punish the individuals who have committed crimes to the fullest extent that the law will allow, with a slight disagreement surrounding the death penalty. Some of the concerns would be are the criminals rightfully being held to pay for their actions, rather than taking their lives for the crimeRead MoreThe Death Penalty Is Not Effective911 Words   |  4 Pages The death penalty is wrong because capital punishment is not effective in reducing the amount of crime, it claims the lives of innocent people, it is unfair and biased, and most importantly, it is far more costly than a life in prison. The death penalty is not effective in reducing the amount of crime that occurs in our country. There is no evidence that the death penalty discourages or deters crime. The psychological mindset of a criminal is that they are not capable of thinking of the outcomeRead MoreIs the Death Penalty an Effective Deterrent?1677 Words   |  7 PagesIs the Death Penalty an Effective Deterrent? Annotated Bibliography PS 223 Forensic Psychology I Research Question: Is the Death Penalty an Effective Deterrent? Honeyman, J. C., Ogloff, J. P. (1996). Capital punishment: Arguments for life and death. Canadian Journal Of Behavioural Science/Revue Canadienne Des Sciences Du Comportement, 28(1), 27-35. The main purpose of this article was to investigate the effects of the death penalty and theRead MoreThe Death Penalty Is An Effective Deterrent1359 Words   |  6 PagesOn the other hand, the anti-death penalty arguments claim that the death penalty is oppressive toward lower class and people of color, wasting the limited resources, and it often hurt innocent people. American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stated that the death penalty is not an effective deterrent because it is not applied consistently, as there is only a small fraction of first-degree murders who received death sentence, and even then they do not represent the worst cases of murders. Most of theRead MoreThe Death Penalty : An Effective Reliable Tool904 Words   |  4 Pagesthe death penalty has been a frequent topic of discussion, as our recent technological advancements have evidently led individuals to consider the â€Å"new found† legitimacy of our court systems, as statistics display that our previous racial bias and the apparent morality of the practice itself have a miniscule impact on our conviction rate. Both the advancements and ethics that the death penalty provides become apparent through the utilization of anecdotes and statistics, as the death penalty has prevailedRead MoreThe Death Penalty is NOT an Effective Deterrent Essay2050 Words   |  9 Pages The issue of the death penalty has been of great concern and debate for a number of years now. Prior to 1976, the death penalty was banned in the United States. In 1976, though, the ban was lifted, and many states adopted the death penalty in their constitutions. Currently, there are 38 states that use the death penalty, and only 12 states that do not. The states that have the death penalty use a number of ways to go about executing the defendant. Thirty-two states use lethal injection, 10 useRead MoreThe Death Penalty Is Not An Effective Form Of Punishment Essay1909 Words   |  8 PagesThe death penalty has been used for 2000 years and had only been brought to light to be abolished after the Second World War and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was only until the 1980s where many countries had started to abolish the death penalty. This essay will cover why the death penalty is not an effective form of punishment by looking at deterrence/recidivism, rehabilitation and incarceration as well as human rights. The punishment theories of incapacitation, deterrence and ‘justRead More Death Penalty as an Effective Method of Punishment Essay1676 Words   |  7 PagesDeath Penalty as an Effective Method of Punishment An issue that has continually created tension in todays society is whether the death penalty serves as a justified and valid form of punishment. Whenever the word death penalty comes up, extremists from both sides start yelling out their arguments. One side says deterrence, the other side says theres a potential of executing an innocent man; one says justice, retribution, and punishment; the other side says execution is murder. CrimeRead MoreThe Death Penalty Is Not The Most Effective Form Of Punishment1824 Words   |  8 PagesThe death penalty is not the most effective form of punishment for criminals. The death penalty is hypocritical; it condemns killing by killing people. Many supporters of capital punishment cite retribution as being a justification for the death penalty; however, no matter what the circumstance, murder is never justified. Ghandi once said â€Å"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.† Two wrongs can never make a right. Capital punishment shou ld be abolished because while even though many supportersRead MoreThe Death Penalty is An Effective Weapon Against Crime Essay1309 Words   |  6 Pagespunishment.  Ã‚   Many people believe that it no longer serves out its intended purpose of deterring crime.   Others believe that the death penalty is an inhumane act of violence and that it should be banished from the justice system all together.   The thought of playing God also is another aspect of the situation.   Despite these allegations however, the facts still remain.   The death penalty deters crime, stops repeat offenders, and gives Americans a real sense that justice has been served, and should therefore