Sterling Financial Study Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Authentic Financial Study - Essay Example Bill Border's administrative experience has gotten looking rough so far. Having just three months past work as a territory supervisor for Sterling was not so much enough experience to the push in a situation without time for alteration, and with his nearest help, Mary Gross-locale chief, being 100 kilometers away. Bill has additionally come into the situation when a discouraged economy was constraining profitability. Bill is centered around worker execution than work fulfillment, however given the conditions of the economy's impact, and not investigating past execution levels, he can't figure an exact view of the workplace. Bill's absence of systems administration time, correspondence, and misguided judgments on representative execution, prompted the terminating of a possibly significant worker, and has prompted other, bigger issues, for example, higher uneasiness, absence of positive inspiring powers, and even less correspondence than previously. The most squeezing issue in Bill's circumstance is the absence of correspondence on his part. At the point when Bill Border showed up to the position, he held an early on meeting and individual surveys to talk about worker objectives and the company's desires. In spite of the fact that the gathering and surveys were smart thoughts as approaches to get to know the staff, Bill's technique fizzled in light of the fact that it was excessively summed up. Bill offered the workers the chance to examine worries with him, yet he never really address and resolve the issues introduced. Harper (2006) expressed, Supervisors frequently accept that absence of representative capacity and inspiration are reaons for declining execution yet different factors legitimately inside the chief's impact may, truth be told, be the genuine reaon for the decay (pag. 68). An absence of information with respect to his subordinates gave Bill a bogus recognition about the main problems, and affected his dynamic abil ities. Beside compelling correspondence, it is significant for supervisors to have an exact impression of the current issues. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary (n.d.) characterized observation as, A limit with respect to understanding (discernment, n. pag.). Bill came up short on this since he didn't consider any outside powers that were influencing laborer efficiency, accepting they were simply not propelled enough. Bill didn't see the master plan of how the economy was hindering business, or any outer issues that were influencing his subordinates. This mutilated discernment drove Bill a choice that would ruin his advancement as a supervisor further when he excused Keith Taylor, a 23-year-old administration student. Keith had been with the Sterling Financial Company for year and a half and was considered by friends to be a popular, wise representative that gave good exhibition. Bill was worried about Keith's expanded non-appearance, yet never considered the outside components influencing Keith's participation. Bill didn't impart these worries legitimately to Keith, yet made a general and unclear reference to the participation issue during a gathering. In spite of the fact that Keith merited a censure for his demonstration of no call/no show, end of his business was pointless. At the point when Bill attached the declaration of Keith's takeoff as far as possible of an office meeting without giving clarification, work pressure soar with representatives. His absence of viably imparting the reasons

The United Nations and Colombia Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

The United Nations and Colombia - Essay Example The Republic of Colombia, which accomplished autonomy from Spain in 1810 and got perceived in 1819, joined the UN on fifth October 1945 (Borda and Castillo 3). It is among the current part states and is situated on South America’s northwestern coast. The nation has Ambassador Maria Emma Mejia as its lasting delegate to the UN. This paper will examine on how Colombia began in the UN, how it has kept up itself throughout the years as a part, its relations with the association, and the past and current activities it has had with it. Quickly portraying the UN, its framework is essentially organized on five key organs which incorporate the General Assembly, the International Court of Justice, the Security Council, the Secretariat and the Economic and Social Council (Fasulo 14). The General Assembly settle non-obligatory suggestions to nations and settles on choices on the affirmation of new part states after the Security Council’s proposal. The Secretariat, led by the UN Secretary General, offers authoritative help to different bodies, while the International Court of Justice chooses and settles debates between nations that recognize its feelings and ward. The Security Council’s key obligation is keeping up worldwide security and harmony, and the Economic and Social Council arranges social and financial issues internationally (Fasulo 15). To turn into a part condition of the UN just as an individual from the UN General Assembly, the organization’s fundamental deliberative get together of which all part states are, Colombia satisfied the commitments specified by the Charter. Some portion of the prerequisites express that in spite of the fact that enrollment is available to all states, such states must be sovereign, harmony adoring and ready to watch all commitments as contained in the Charter. Further, in congruity with the arrangements of Article 4, Chapter 2 of the UN Charter, Colombia was exposed to the General Assembly’s choice after the

The 5 Stages of Recommending a Book to a Friend Who Will Never Read It

The 5 Stages of Recommending a Book to a Friend Who Will Never Read It This is a guest post from Corin Balkovek. As a child, Corin tried to find ways to look busy when she was actually reading a book. She still does that, but as a librarian, she has more luck pulling it off. Though I am as stereotypically bookish as a person can be (she types while wearing one of her pairs of book-themed socks she has received for birthdays, Christmas, and other gift-giving occasions), many of my friends just aren’t readers. Which I accept but don’t totally understand, much like I do with people who like to go on long, extended backpacking trips (so I have to haul everything I’ll need in with me, and then haul my own poop out in a bag? Nothankyouverymuch.) And as a lover of books and stories, I just want to share them with the people who are close to me, which means I’m often recommending books to people who will never, ever, never read the book. And I know that. But, I do it anyway. And much like the tragedies of life, these situations play out in a typical fashion: Denial Even though you’ve never seen them read a book, even though their bookcases at home only hold a small handful of books, most of which are either cookbooks or outdated travel guides from that one summer they vacationed in Bali or whatever, even though you know they haven’t read a book until they were assigned one in school, YOU KNOW they will love this book. It’s just so like them! It talks about all of their favorite things and in such a cool way that you almost want to memorize the better lines and then roll them out into your conversations with your friend so they think that you are both witty and deep, but don’t because you will mess it up and sound stupid and/or insane, or you are dedicated to being your most honest self. And maybe they don’t read because they haven’t found That Book yet, the one that will change their life. AND THIS IS TOTALLY THAT BOOK. I mean, it’s almost your duty to tell them about it: if you met the person who was their soulmate, you would be bound by friendship to tell them about it. WHAT IF THIS BOOK IS THEIR SOULMATE IN PAPER FORM? It’s not being annoying, it’s destiny. Text/email/handwritten note (lolololol, what?) with link to the book sent. Anger …Well, that response was underwhelming. Just a “cool, thx”? Do they think I’m just handing these recommendations out like tiny portions of lunch meat during sample day at Costco? I put real thought into this! I even summarized this one passage and connected it to a conversation we had that one time. THAT’S CALLED SYNTHESIS, DUDE, IT’S A MAJOR PART OF CRITICAL THINKING. That text/email/handwritten note (hahahahaha, yeah right) is practically an English lit essay in miniature form. I bet they didn’t even click on the link. Jerk. Bargaining What if I stop into the bookstore and just make sure that they have a copy, and then let them know it’s there. Their birthday is seven and half months away, I should just buy it and it can be an early gift! Maybe next time we are out and they go to the bathroom, I can sneak into their bag, find their library card, copy down the number, go to the library’s website, log in as them, and request the book be held for them so when they get the email they’ll go down to the library and be all “whaaa?” and then I can be all “SURPRISE!” (That’s not weird, right?) Depression Maaaaaaaan, I’m never going to geek out about this book with someone in real life. *gets on the internet* *finds book/reader-centric websites* *spends most of the afternoon reading reviews and discussion about book, responding to them in my head* Acceptance Ok, FINE. I’ll stop asking if you’ve read it. But you better stop asking if I’m going camping with you guys next month because girl, you know I’m not. Of course, sometimes, THEY ACTUALLY READ THE BOOK. Oh, glorious day! And when this happens, you get a special bonus stage: Smugness They text/email/send handwritten notes (ahahahahaha, c’mon now) as they work their way through the book, telling you their favorite parts, quoting the best lines. And sometimes, sometimes, they drop a “dude, I love this book!” And that when you get to say BITCH I TOLD YOU SO “Oh, I’m so glad you liked it” and order up a pair of book socks for them. After all, their birthday is coming up.

Middle East Essay - 720 Words

In this week’s reading, we cover various topic about the history of the Middle-East, and its complexity as it relates to the contemporary crises in which destabilizing the Greater Middle-East. To be frank, I believe there are two majors issues destabilizing the Middle-East: (1) the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) and (2) a future nuclear-arm Islamic Iran. It worthy of noting that the intricacy of the Middle East did not start with ISIS, arguably so, the Middle-East was always a chaotic place. After the rise of ISIS, this organization managed to expand its operation beyond the Middle. The ISIS group became and still is the most dangerous criminal organization. Among many of their criminal activities, they are in part responsible for†¦show more content†¦Later that month, Baghdadi announced the creation of a caliphate, or Islamic state. By then, ISIS had captured large swaths of Syria and Iraq† (Hanna, CNN). As the ISIS organizations keep on expanding their oper ations in both Iraq and Syria, they become one of the most serious threat to both U.S, the Middle-East, and for the world. With respect to Islamic Iran becoming a future nuclear-armed is a major concern not only for the Middle-East especially for the Unites States and its allies. It is unclear to know exactly of the progress of the Iranian in their nuclear capability ambition. Intelligence suggest that the Iranian governments do not yet possess any nuclear weapon nor a nuclear bomb; nevertheless, imagine for a second of a nuclear-arm Iran, such capability will only do more harm than good. Besides, â€Å"Iran is one of the worlds leading state sponsors of terrorism through its financial and operational support for groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and others† (per ADL.org) It is also fair to point out, a nuclear-arm Iran will likely to result into a rebalance of power---that is leaving Iran as the most powerful country in the region. Additionally, â€Å"a nuclear-armed Iran poses a threat to Americas closest allies in the Middle East. Israel is most at risk as Irans leaders have repeatedly declared that Israel should be wiped from the map (per ADL.org). Conclusively,Show MoreRelated Middle East Essay1502 Words   |  7 Pages The Middle Eastern culture has many different nationalities within their population including Arabians, Iranians, Iraqis, Pakistanians, Egyptians, Saudi Arabians, and many more. The most common religion found in the Middle East is Muslim. However not every Middle Easterner is Muslim, there are also other religions just as in any country such as Christian and Jewish. There are more than seven million Muslims living in America and over 1.5 billion worldwide. Many Middle Eastern Muslims who are conservativeRead More Women in the Middle East Essay2309 Words   |  10 PagesIn the book, Women in the Middle East, a Saudi Arabian proverb states, A girl possesses nothing but a veil and a tomb (Harik and Marston 83). The key words, veil and tomb lend evidence to the fact that many Middle Eastern women lack identity symbolized by the â€Å"veil† and lack the right of ownership except for their veil and the tomb. This statement further enforces the notion that many women in the Middle East are expected to serve and tolerate the oppression of the men in their lives throughoutRead More Women in the Middle East Essay807 Words   |  4 PagesWomen in the Middle East Women’s rights in the Middle East have always been a controversial issue. Although the rights of women have changed over the years, they have never really been equal to the rights of a man. This poses a threat on Iran because women have very limited options when it comes to labor, marriage and other aspects of their culture. I believe that equal treatment for women and men is a fundamental principal of international human rights standards. Yet, in some places like IranRead MoreMiddle East Conflict Essay859 Words   |  4 Pagesarea known as the Middle East since shifts in global power over the years have affected the topography. Now, however, the region can expansively be said to contain â€Å"the area from Libya E to Afghanistan, usually including Egypt, Sudan, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the other countries of the Arabian peninsula† (dictionary.com). This geographical definition can be said to contain both the ‘Near E ast’, ‘Middle East’, and even farther to the East and into AfricaRead MoreThe Middle East: A Brief Overview Essay1116 Words   |  5 PagesErased/deleted old title which did not make sense within body of essay nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;The Middle East is a region in Southwest Asia that includes the countries of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, U.A.E., Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Cyprus, Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan. The aspects that make up all that is geography in the Middle East include physical geography, economic geography, religion, and human history. The Middle East is known for its physical geography, being the largestRead More The Middle East: Conflict in Journalism Essay1619 Words   |  7 PagesThe Middle East: Conflict in Journalism Before beginning my essay, â€Å"The Middle East, Conflict in Journalism†, I would like the reader to read a few terms. These are merely food for thought, do whatever with them you wish. Conflict: A state of disharmony between incompatible or antithetical persons, ideas, or interests; a clash. (The American Heritage) War: A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties. The period ofRead MorePeace in the Middle East Essay1991 Words   |  8 PagesPeace in the Middle East There will never be peace in the Middle East. The idea of peace in a certain region is a silly notion. What region has truly ever known peace? Allow me to rephrase my thesis: There will never be peace in the Middle East as long as western powers intervene into Arab affairs. It is common knowledge that throughout history western powers have colonized, occupied, and exploited indigenous people in the name of national interest, national security, and manifest destiny.Read MorePeace in the Middle East Essays1089 Words   |  5 PagesThe text begins its history with the Middle East around the time of Muhammad and the creation of Islam. From that time forth uprisings, demonstrations and acts of violence were commonplace and have continued to be since that time. To dig a little deeper and go back a little further in Middle East history one will find that this pattern of unrest stems from as far back as proof provides. To see a timeline of significant wars or battles of the Middle East, th e picture is better illustrated on justRead MoreU.S. and The Middle East Essay893 Words   |  4 PagesThe role of the Middle East has been very crucial to the United States, especially after WWII. The U.S. had three strategic goals in the Middle East and consistently followed them throughout various events that unfolded in the region. First, with the emergence of the cold war between the Soviet Union and the U.S., policymakers began to recognize the importance of the Middle East as a strategic area in containing Soviet influence. This also coincides with the U.S. becoming increasingly wary of ArabRead MoreDemocracy in the Middle East Essay1416 Words   |  6 PagesOver the last century, the Middle East has been the location of ethnic rivalry, political and economic instability, religious conflict, territorial dispute and war. Much of this tension in the Middle East comes from the various interpretations of Islam and how the religion should be applied to politics and society. Over the last ten years, the United States and their allies have pushed to promote democracy in the Middle East. However, they too have many obstacles they must overcome. They face problems

Te Role Bribes May Play in Determining the Behavior of a Child Free Essay Example, 1500 words

On analysis, 61.18% of the respondents interviewed who had children, 51.76% believed it was appropriate to bribe children to have good behavior. Majority of children confessed to having been bribed by their parents in return to good behaviour with the figure standing at 78.79% for those who had been bribed as opposed to 21.21% who confessed having not to have been bribed by their parents for good behavior. The most common bribes included chocolates, food, weekend outings and pocket money in the figures of 77.46%, 66.20%, 23.94%, and 9.86% respectively. Most parents believed that the concept of bribery is learned from early age and bribery leads to good behavior from the child. 43.53% of parents believed that bribing children is the most appropriate way of teaching them good conduct while 20% believed that sometimes bribery led to good behavior in children especially when done in moderation. 20% did not believe in bribing children for good behaviour. When asked whether they would sto p bribing their children if they knew that it had a negative on their behaviour, 83.53% admitted they would stop the bribes while a paltry 3.53% said they would not stop the bribes. We will write a custom essay sample on Te Role Bribes May Play in Determining the Behavior of a Child or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/page The findings indicate that given that a bribe often dictates behavior and its consequences, offers of bribes to a child encourages them to ask continuously for the same. Therefore, a child who is frequently offered bribes will form a habit of discrimination against when a bribe is due and would have an effect or when it is not.

The Legality, Morality, and Social Responsibility Free Essays

string(235) " In a society where chaos and disorder prevails, ethics offers an appropriate solution because it provides moral values, principles, norms, and ideals, which humans should adhere to as standard practices of human conduct and behavior\." The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was signed into law on March 23rd, 2010. The Act is a daring attempt by President Barack Obama to reform the healthcare system in the United States. The new healthcare reform act is historical because of its scope and size. We will write a custom essay sample on The Legality, Morality, and Social Responsibility or any similar topic only for you Order Now Opponents to the healthcare act state it is an attempt to increase the size and power of the federal government and it is one of â€Å"the largest tax increase in the history of the world,† despite it being almost equally in size to President Clinton 1993 tax increase (â€Å"‘Obamacare’ isn’t the largest†, 2012). There is an abundance of questions surrounding the new healthcare act ranging from the constitutionality of Act to the ethical and moral ramifications of such wide sweeping legislation. This paper will attempt to answer some of these questions as they pertain to healthcare provider Florida Blue. We will also explore how Florida Blue is transitioning as a company under these new laws and their role as a socially responsible company in the community. On June 28, 2012, the Supreme Court rendered a final decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act. According to (Cavico Mujtaba, 2008) this was possible due President Lincoln’s leadership, implementing the legal system; it was restored to be more liberal, justified, and democratic. The idea is that every law enables the government of the people, by the people, and for the people to make laws that befit the people. The constitution was effectively written to allow for flexibility. The new provisions would allow families and small business owners the ability to make choices that work best for them. The power of the government is divided into three branches judicial, executive, and legislative. In order for a bill to become law, all three branches of government must approve it. That separation of power is what does not allow one branch from becoming more powerful than any of the others. Under the law, the new â€Å"Patient’s Bill of Rights† gives the American people the stability and flexibility they need to make informed choices about their health. (Obama, 2013) The main purpose of President Obama’s bold healthcare reform was to address the affordability and quality of health care as well as to curb the growth of healthcare spending in the United States. Many of the provisions in the Affordable Care Act are aimed at fixing these major issues facing the U. S health care and insurance industries. In the idea of not only helping the people to consider and obtain health insurance. The group agrees that the law is constitutional and should be addressed, in most countries there are laws stating that you much have health insurance and based on your income you get it for free or you pay a very small amount. The United States has waited a long time to enact this law and should be enforce. Despite evidence to the contrary, explained in the joint dissent the Chief Justice named Roberts, along with 4 other Justices Breyer, Ginsberg, Kagan, and Sotomayor upheld Obamacare’s â€Å"penalty imposed upon individuals’ failure to purchase federally-approved health insurance (the Individual Mandate) as within Congress’ taxing power. † A majority of the Court held that the Constitution’s Commerce Clause did not grant Congress the power to institute an individual mandate. A significant portion of the law’s Medicaid provision was partially overturned as an unconstitutional coercive federal spending condition imposed on the states. Instead of entirely striking down this provision, the Secretary of Health and Human Services is prevented from withholding current Medicaid federal spending to those states who decide not to participate in Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. (Teller, 2012). Whether Obamacare was upheld as a proper exercise of Congress’ taxing power or through the commerce power is simply a distinction without a difference. The law as it was before the Supreme Court decision is virtually the same as it was afterward. But, as a matter of legal precedent and technical legislating, such a determination is monumentally important in terms of how future cases of congressional power will be decided, as well as how bills are crafted for consideration. The Chief Justice’s opinion recognized the long-standing history of Congress attaching conditions upon states in exchange for receiving federal funding under Congress’ Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 spending power. 17 The legitimacy of this power â€Å"†¦ rests on whether the State voluntarily and knowingly accepts the terms of the contract,† since the â€Å"Constitution has never been understood to confer upon Congress the ability to require States to govern according to Congress’s instructions. †18 When â€Å"pressure turns into compulsion, the legislation runs contrary to our system of federalism,† (Teller, 2012). Florida Blue, the largest health insurer in the state of Florida, had to reinstate 300,000 policies in order to meet the new Affordable Healthcare Act requirements. Florida Blue is attempting to offset many of these costly new healthcare requirements, which now include things such as maternity/newborn care, mental health services, substance abuse services, and emergency services. These services will now be covered by individual and small market plans. Under this new law anyone the government determines can afford healthcare, and does not purchase it by 2014, may have to pay a fine. This fee will be referred to as an individual responsibility payment, individual mandate or penalty. The Supreme Court of the United States has determined the Affordable Care Act, and its provisions, are constitutional and have upheld the legality of the act. Therefore a discussion regarding its legality would be mute. However, the ethical ramifications of the act are worthy of noting and discussing. Ethics is one of the five branches of philosophy that deals with human character and how humans conduct themselves in society. Humans have the freedom of doing various activities that may benefit them, ethics is essential because it defines their character and conduct. In essence, ethics systematically assesses human activities in an attempt of establishing whether they are right or wrong. In a society where chaos and disorder prevails, ethics offers an appropriate solution because it provides moral values, principles, norms, and ideals, which humans should adhere to as standard practices of human conduct and behavior. You read "The Legality, Morality, and Social Responsibility" in category "Papers" According to (Cavico Mujtaba, 2008), the goal of ethics is to understand the epistemology of human conduct and character so that it can define the best ways in which humans can co-exist and attain the real meaning of life. In this view, ethics enables humans to regulate their conduct and character in order to be more in line with the moral values, norms, ideals, and principles that society cherishes and upholds amidst chaos and confusion. To define and expound ethics, diverse philosophers have come up with theories and models such as utilitarianism, deontology, pragmatic ethics, and postmodern ethics. Hence, this term paper seeks to use utilitarian theory and model in assessing whether it is moral for Florida Blue to implement President Obama’s health care reform act. Utilitarian theory is the dominant ethical theory that philosophers and ethicists apply when analyzing human conduct and character. John Stuart Mill is one of the pioneers and proponents of utilitarian theory. Fundamentally, utilitarian theory belongs to the category of consequential theories that assess morality based on the consequences of an action. According to Mill (2010), rightness or wrongness of an action is dependent on its consequences rather than the nature of the action. On this assertion, utilitarian theory rejects the assessment of morality based on the actions. Hence, utilitarian theory assumes that human actions have no morality in themselves unless assessed using their consequences. Cavico and Mujtaba (2009) argue that an action is morally right if its consequences are good, and it is morally wrong if its consequences are bad. Hence, the consequences of an action are central in determining if an action is right or wrong. The utilitarian theory also assesses the degree of morality or the extent to which an action is right or wrong. According to the utilitarian theory, for an action to be morally right, it must generate greatest happiness or pleasure to most people and cause the least pain and harm (Mill, 2010). In this view, the theory does not only assess the degree of morality basing on the consequences, but also assesses morality basing on the number of people that gain happiness or experience pain. In the examination of utilitarian theory, (Cavico Mujtaba, 2009) state that the consequence of an action should be good and beneficial to most people in the society. In this view, utilitarian theory requires consideration of action’s consequence and the number of people that experience happiness or pain. Thus, an action is morally right if its consequences are good and beneficial to most stakeholders, and it is morally wrong if its consequences are bad and harmful to most stakeholders. The use of the utilitarian model in the assessment of human actions provides a quantitative way of analyzing morality. The utilitarian model apportions numerical values to goodness and badness of an action’s consequences. The goodness of an action has a positive scale of 1 to 5 (1 to 5) while the badness of an action has a negative scale of 1 to 5 (-1 to -5). Zero is an intermediate value on the scale, which shows that actions’ consequence is neither good nor bad to a specific stakeholder. The utilitarian model quantifies the degree of pleasure and pain, which are consequences of an action (Cavico Mujtaba, 2009). Therefore, the term paper utilizes the utilitarian model in establishing if it is moral for Florida Blue to implement the Affordable Health Care plan. 1. The act that the term paper seeks to evaluate using the utilitarian model is whether it is moral for Florida Blue to implement the Affordable Health Care plan. 2. The following are the stakeholders that the implementation of the health care reform affects, both directly and indirectly. a) The government The foreseeable good is that the government will improve general health of the population, and thus enhances the health of the nation. However, the foreseeable bad consequence is that the cost necessary to sustain health care reforms may not be sustainable in the end. b) Health care system The foreseeable good of the health care reforms is that the health care system will offer improved quality of healthcare services (Rosenbaum, 2011). Given that quality of healthcare services depend on many factors, the foreseeable bad is that the quality of care may deteriorate with time. c) Florida Blue The foreseeable good of the health care reform in Florida Blue is that it will increase the number of patients and thus improve its growth. However, Florida Blue may not be able to satisfy the demands of the patients. d) Insurance companies If Florida Blue implements health reforms, the foreseeable good is that it will provide a competitive environment for insurance companies. The foreseeable bad consequence is that the insurance companies will increase insurance premiums. e) Healthcare providers and working environment The foreseeable good of the health reforms is that it will improve competence, remuneration packages, and the working environment of healthcare providers. Since the number of patients will increase in Florida Blue, the foreseeable bad consequence is that healthcare providers will have to perform extra duties to serve all patients. f) Patients The foreseeable good among patients is that they will receive quality services that they have been unable to afford. Nevertheless, the foreseeable bad consequence is that the quality of healthcare services offered to patients may deteriorate with time. g) Citizens and society Since health care reforms legally require citizens to acquire health insurance coverage, the foreseeable good is improved health and lifespan of the people. However, the foreseeable bad consequence is that the cost of health insurance may increase and become unaffordable to many people. Quantification of Good and Bad Consequences Stakeholders Foreseeable Good Foreseeable Bad a) The government +5 -2 b) Health care system +4 -3 c) Florida Blue +3 -3 d) Insurance companies +5 -1 h) Healthcare providers +3 -3 e) Environment +4 -2 f) Patients +5 -2 g) Citizens +3 -3 h) Society +4 -2 i) Total 37 -22 Conclusion The assessment of the act of implementing the affordable health care plan in Florida shows that it has more good than bad. Since the good consequences of implementing Obama’s health care reform outweigh the bad consequences, from the utilitarian perspective, it implies that the act is moral in the case of Florida Blue. The utilitarian analysis shows that Florida Blue should implement health reforms to improve healthcare services that it provides to all stakeholders. Another major ethical work exploring is the Kantian Ethical Principle. Kantian ethics originated from the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. It revolves around his work—Groundwork (or Foundation) of the Metaphysics of Morals (Cavico Mujtaba, 2009). The basis of Kant’s work was reason. Kant deduced that reason is the source for morality. To Kant, morality relied only on human reason. His definition and elaboration on morality excluded conscience, law, and utility. According to Kant, to be moral is to be rational (Cavico Mujtaba, 2009). Morality and rationality must coexist; therefore, morality consists of acting rationally. It must be noted, however, that rationality must be employed to arrive at a moral conclusion. The intellectual use of reason, or â€Å"intellectualism†, is a form of egoism and does not serve a purpose toward morality (Cavico Mujtaba, 2009). In comparison to the utilitarian approach, the Kantian approach does not take into account happiness when deciding morality. Kant deduced that dignity and worth were not fulfilled from a sense of happiness, but rather from the ability to reason. After all, it can be argued that the human ability to reason is the only differentiation from other species. Happiness, or the lack there of, is not an appropriate measure for morality. In summary of Kantian ethics, it is not arriving at a moral conclusion that is the challenge (any rational human can do that), it is possessing the self-control to follow through with what is right, regardless of consequences. The Categorical Imperative is the principle which Kant called the â€Å"supreme ethical principle† (Cavico Mujtaba, 2009). A categorical imperative regards certain actions are absolutely vital, regardless of desires or end result. The rules that surround moral conduct are, according to Kant, absolute. Kant went on to create a â€Å"test† to discern between moral and immoral actions. His categorical imperative must satisfy three conditions, without exception. The three conditions that an action must have to be moral are as follows: 1) the action must have the possibility to be made consistently universal, 2) it must respect rational beings as ends in themselves, and 3) the action must stem from and respect the autonomy of rational beings. Kant concluded that by satisfying the aforementioned conditions, the question of morality would be unaffected by consequences, personal gain, and compulsions. Instead, any rational human being would be able to rationalize the morality of actions by fulfillment of his three tests. In determining the morality of the Affordable Care Act using Kant’s Categorical Imperative, the main point of focus will be the morality to the intended benefactors (United States citizens and legal residents) from the law. The first test forces one to ask oneself: can the Affordable Care Act be applied universally? For argument’s sake, â€Å"universally† implies throughout the United States for this analysis. Furthermore, satisfaction of the first test eliminates any individuals from regarding themselves as â€Å"special. † Rather, nobody is exempt from the moral â€Å"law. † The Affordable Care Act will require U. S. citizens and legal residents to obtain healthcare. Healthcare for all U. S. citizens and legal residents can be consistently universal. Furthermore, with proper planning, the idea behind the Affordable Care Act can be sustained. Currently, the U. S. has many uninsured pockets of people that are unable to get a routine medical exam without a hefty fee. Although there are caveats in the Affordable Care Act, it can be applied overall to the majority of the population. The Kantian tests for determining morality disregard â€Å"privilege. † Instead, by applying universal healthcare, a rational person can deduce that everyone obtaining healthcare is logical and consistent. The first test is satisfied. Kant’s second test is called the â€Å"Kingdom of Ends† test. This test works to further eliminate the possibility of immorality by taking into account the human condition. Kant states that,†each people must be treated by every other person as an end† (Cavico Mujtaba, 2009). Again, we are forced to reexamine whether the Affordable Care Act treats each person with â€Å"dignity and respect and as a valuable and worthwhile entity. † The current state of healthcare denies various groups of people the ability to obtain medical care. Through his second test, Kant holds the intrinsic worth of human beings as an undeniable truth. Thus, by existing as a human, one has an unconditional value. Because a rational human would be able to identify their own intrinsic value, so would they be able to identify that value in others. The Affordable Care Act extends healthcare coverage to individuals that would previously have no viable options. In addition, it minimizes discrimination by encompassing groups of people that have consistently gone without healthcare coverage. By expanding Medicaid to 133% of the federal poverty level, alone, the government is extending its recognition of intrinsic worth to those that have been previously disregarded. The â€Å"Kingdom of Ends† test is centered on human dignity; by extending healthcare coverage, the U. S. government has empowered more individuals to be free to make a choice of what medical services to pursue. Although the implementation of the Affordable Care Act may result in higher costs to the public, the self-interest of individuals is not a basis for determining morality. Rather, the freedom, empowerment, and recognition of intrinsic worth provided by the activation of the Affordable Care Act satisfies the second test. The final test is deemed the â€Å"Agent-Receiver Test†. This third test allows for further dissection of an act. The use of the â€Å"Agent-Receiver Test† in relation to the Affordable Care Act is extremely relevant and allows for a more black-and-white approach by further stripping any vested self-interest. A rational person must be able to accept the action or rule, regardless if they are the agent (giver) or receiver of the action or rule (Cavico Mujtaba, 2009). Would an individual accept the Affordable Care Act whether they were supplying or receiving the benefits? In this case, there are stereotypically many white collar, upper middle-class U. S. citizens that oppose the act because of the implied rise is costs for themselves. However, a rational person would be able to remove their selfish motive by analyzing it from the point of view of the receivers. Say the individual was, instead, an uninsured, 20-something pregnant woman barely living above the federal poverty line, would they still oppose the act? The Affordable Care Act allows healthcare to become more impartial to people using it. The â€Å"Agent-Receiver† test, thus, proves the act moral. Analyzing such a complex act, such as the Affordable Care Act, does present exceptions and caveats as it is currently written. The overall basis behind the creation and implementation of the act aims to value more humans and increase dignity and self-worth. By removing individual motive and self-interest, the Kantian model for determining morality strives to decide morality based on impartial tests. After reviewing and applying the three tests to the Affordable Care Act, we have found it is moral. The theory of ethical emotism is centered on feelings and emotions (Cavico Mujtaba, 2009). David Hume is credited as one of the most important contributors to the idea of the emotist theory. The theory is ethical emotism lies on the other side of ethical theory spectrum from the Kantian model. In the Kantian model, reason is the basis for morality, but in ethical emotism, reason is merely a tool employed to help one judge morality. In ethical emotism, the act itself is not used to decide morality, rather the feelings from the act are what is important. Morality is viewed as a purely emotional response and is, therefore, extremely subjective under this theory. Although ethical emotism is, on the surface, a rather simple measure of morality, it often overlaps with ethical relativism and utilitarianism. The concepts behind ethical emotism can be laid out simply. If one has positive emotions towards an act, the act is deemed moral and good. If one has negative emotions toward an act, that act would be deemed immoral or bad. In terms of the morality surrounding the Affordable Care Act, ethical emotism can present some consequences that will not allow for a sound moral conclusion. First and foremost, this theory relies heavily (entirely) on emotions and emotions may be very subjective. When employing the emotist theory, the Affordable Care Act must be analyzed from the perspective of each group affected and/or involved. Because of the subjectivity of emotions, different groups of people will feel different ways, thus, creating the large possibility of different moral conclusions. As an example, a 24 year old, recent college graduate, in an entry level, minimal salary position may feel positively about the act because they can be under their parents’ insurance for an additional two years. The implementation of Affordable Care Act is moral in this instance because of the positive feelings felt by the receiver. However, five years later, this same individual may be earning a higher income, invested in real estate, and covering their own health insurance with no assistance—their feelings may have changed. The aforementioned individual likely has negative feelings regarding the Affordable Care Act because of higher taxes. In this sense, the implementation of the Affordable Care Act is immoral. The changing of one’s feeling is a big consequence of the ethical emotism theory. Since individuals will deem the Affordable Care Act moral or immoral based on their own individual feelings, reaching a general and standardized consensus is impossible. From the prospective of those becoming eligible for obtaining healthcare, the act is likely moral. Those individuals have not had or have lost the opportunity to make decisions about their health and are feeling extremely positive about the act. On the other hand, individuals who have had no problem covering their healthcare insurance costs could have feelings of disapproval towards the Affordable Care Act. In their case, the act is seen as simply a probable increase in their own taxes. Moral conclusions are subjective under the ethical emotism theory and must be addressed individually. Many different theories can be used to help decipher morality, especially on large-scale issues like the Affordable Care Act. However, each theory must be maximized, while taking into account the consequences that accompany each train of thought. The above theories discussed use various criteria to determine morality. However, ethics and morality become an even greater point of focus when applied to real world scenarios. Ethics and morality must transcend their place as theories of study and come into play in our current world. In the case of Florida Blue, it is certain they will have to embrace the Affordable Care Act if they want to continue as a functioning healthcare provider. As the company will likely continue to grow in size and influence, they will likely take a closer look at their role within American society. It is becoming a common trend among many high stature corporations to integrate a humane tactic into their company’s strategic plans. Companies are beginning to give back to the community, while in return noticing the positive reaction consumers are developing towards their product especially when they see the company’s brand is perceived in a positive and philanthropic light. Now more than ever before, corporations have taken notice of the increased benefits being perceive as a positive, giving company can bring such as an increased rate of profitable. This sincere act of kindness, which no company is legally liable to fulfill, is what we call social responsibility. Social responsibility is the act of an entity to provide a need for the community. When a corporation takes the initiative to create a solution for society, they are deemed as a socially responsible firm. The organization is not necessarily the last resort or the only solution to the problem, however the corporation takes ownership of the need and the responsibility for creating a solution for a particular problem their consumers face. The success factors and formulation of fulfilling the act of a socially responsible entity, quoted by (Cavico Mujtaba, 2008), according to Banks, a few reasons for being a socially responsible firm is by â€Å"1) obtaining a â€Å"social license† to operate from key stakeholders, 2) ensuring â€Å"sustainable competitiveness,† 3) creating new business opportunities, 4) attracting and retaining quality investors and business partners, 5) securing cooperation from local communities, 6) avoiding difficulties due to socially irresponsible behavior, 7) obtaining government support, and 8) building â€Å"political capital. † Florida Blue, formerly known as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida, is a not-for-profit health insurance company that strives on social responsibility. In preparation for the Affordable Care Act, Florida Blue has prepared several different tools for consumers to utilize to educate themselves about the new law that will eventually have an effect on everyone in the U. S. Florida Blue has created a Health Care Reform eBook that can be downloaded on any tablet. This eBook is constantly being updated as changes are continuously being made to the law. Also, to ensure they are doing their due diligence as an educational source for the community, the app is available in English, Spanish and Creole. According to Florida Blue CEO, Pat Geraghty, between the 16, soon to be 18, Retail Centers across the state the company will have organized over 3,000 Health Care Reform seminars by the end of the year. As a socially responsible company, these tools Florida Blue has put tremendous amounts of effort into creating, are not only available to Florida Blue members, but they are available to the general public. Whether you are insured with another company, not insured at all, or insured with Florida Blue, the organization prides on being a tool for Floridians to turn to in reaction to this new law that has many consumers dumfounded. In addition to being accessible by any member of our community, all of these tools are complimentarily available to the consumer market. Florida Blue has been in preparation for Health Care Reform since 2006 when they opened their first Retail Center. With the Affordable Care Act implementing a new focus gearing towards individual plans, and steering away from the well-known and accustomed group plan, Florida Blue has built these Retail Centers to accommodate selling to the individual rather than selling to the employer (â€Å"Health Insurance Companies†, 2013). These Retail Centers offer the face-to-face experience that consumers need and allow health care shoppers and customers to build a relationship with one individual agent that they can rely on and come back to time and time again with any questions and concerns. In addition to face-to-face Retail Centers, there is a FloridaBlueHealthCareReform. com website that anyone can visit, a Health Care Reform hotline facilitated by employees trained to specialize in the Affordable Care Act, and customers can also call into any Retail Center and talk to any sales or service consultant over the phone just as you would meet with them in person. In any recommendation of social responsibility it would be a wise business decision for a company to partake in socially responsible acts. As (Cavico Mujtaba, 2008), state, â€Å"business also gains an improved public image by being socially responsible. An enhanced social image should attract more customers and investors and thus provide positive benefit for the firm. † For a company to engage in community affairs in order to enhance the level of success it would be somewhat foolish not to participate in socially responsible acts in an effort in improve your company’s prosperity, while achieving greater good for consumers. Overall, is it a legal requirement for companies to be socially responsible? No. Is it implied that companies should partake in some type of social responsibility to enhance the well-being of the community in order for them to be considered a moral organization? Yes. It is solely up to the discretion of a corporation and their shareholders whether they determine to provide a socially responsible contribution for their consumers, but more than likely it is in their benefit to give back to the community they operate in and engage in socially responsible acts. To be perceived in a positive manner, generally has a positive return on investment for the company and their shareholders. It is simple to determine that being socially responsible has a positive impact on all parties involved in the act. As mentioned earlier in this paper, the legality of the Affordable Care Act, and its implementation by Florida Blue, has been deemed legal by the Supreme Court. Ethical analysis of the Affordable Care Act and Florida Blue using the Utilitarian and Kantian ethical theories have all proven both the Act, and the implementation of the Act by Florida Blue, to be ethical. It was also shown that using the Ethical Emotism theory for such a complex matter would provide mixed results and no definitive answer would likely ever be reached. Florida Blue continues to develop tools that help explain and guide the average consumer through the new healthcare process. By providing information to all consumers-not just their clients, holding fairs and encouraging face-to-face contact, they are continually shaping the public’s perception of their company and attempting to show the public they are committed to assisting them regardless of whether or not they are members. It would be in Florida Blue’s benefit to continue to show good will and become further engaged in the neighborhoods where they operate. It is our opinion that Florida Blue will continue to grow as they now have access to new groups of people seeking insurance. How to cite The Legality, Morality, and Social Responsibility, Papers

Leadership practices free essay sample

The same situation applies to Technical know-how, I generally understand the technical know-how of my Job and maybe not clear with Just a few policies and procedures because I havent had the chance to deal with them. The interpersonal competence need to be developed further as I have not developed anything in that area in the business sense and some of the skills have been acquired in social groups such as the church. The Social-emotional competence also scored quite high which is really a true reflection as I am a person who is really concerned about emotional and wellbeing of the people where work is involved. The anagerial and entrepreneurial competences had average scores which are actually true, maybe because I am not really in a managerial level at work and I do believe that more need to be developed in this area. The intellectual competence had the lowest percentage score of 40% and I also do believe that I need the chance to develop and show my intellectual skills. We will write a custom essay sample on Leadership practices or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page B. The Managerial competence scored 50% which is Just an average value. According to Daft (2008, p. 15) Management focuses on establishing detailed plans and schedules for achieving specific results. This has similar characteristics to quadrant C of the whole brain model. What is whole brain thinking) shows that a person who has quadrant B (green) dominance has the following characteristics: organised, sequential, planned and detailed. The managerial competence has similar characteristics with the quadrant B and these two score sheets gave similar results. They showed average competence as a manager and the need to improve in this area. The inter-personal competence gives an average percentage which also when compared to the whole brain, the quadrant C (Red) is also has moderate results. The whole brain quadrant A (blue) had the highest results which confirmed the Job competence and technical know-how. I am an engineer by professional and hence so mathematical by nature of my Job. C. The ways of improving leadership effectiveness include From the Managerial competence, the percentage was 50% which implies there is more to be done in the area hence need to improve as a leader by learning to be a leader who should move from stability to change and Crisis Management (Daft 2008, p. 8). The whole competence analysis had varying percentages, Leadership effectiveness can be improved by becoming a learning leader thus a leader who is open to learning and change and encourages the growth and development of thers (Daft 2008, p. 2). Need to improve on intellectual competences by getting the big picture, a leader who is up to date with what is happening in the core area of business.

An alternative in language testing research

An alternative in language testing research Free Online Research Papers Validation in language testing in general and in cloze testing in particular has been mainly based on criterion-related validity in addition to construct and content validity. As the validity of the former validation technique in which tests are considered either valid or invalid based on their correlations with other supposedly valid criterion tests is seriously under question, the present study introduces a new qualitative technique for validation purposes. Researcher research, as it is called here, refers the researcher’s investigation of his/her own internal thought processes at the same time as he/she is taking a test. The idiosyncratic feature of this technique is that while researching others, the inferences of what is happening are only made indirectly and may therefore be wrong, using this technique, the researcher, being involved in the task, himself/herself directly experiences what others can only observe. Such a technique was applied to 11 cloze tests, constructed out of the researcher’s previous writings. The cloze-taking processes as experienced by the researcher reveal that different cloze items make different demands on the test-taker. Further applications of the technique and also implications for cloze validity as a measure of reading comprehension are discussed. ________________ Background Validity which refers to how far an instrument really measures what it is intended to is one of the characteristics of a good test, others being reliability and practicality. Traditionally validity has been discussed and researched in the forms of content validity, construct validity, and criterion-related validity including concurrent and predictive validity. Content validity refers to the degree a test measures a representative sample of the content area it is intended to measure. Construct validity deals with whether a testing instrument really measures the underlying construct the test is supposed to measure. The criterion-validity refers to the degree a test measures what another test measures either at the same time (concurrently) or at a later time (predictively). While the two former validity types have been used to study the validity of a test per se without comparing it to others, in criterion-related validity, one tests validity has been researched based on another measure . This latter kind of validation studies has prevailed language testing research, and as a result, newly constructed tests have been claimed to be either valid or invalid measures of the criterion tests used. In criterion-related validation research, the validity of a test has been established based on the degree of correlation between the new (experimental) test and the old (criterion) test. Namely, if the observed degree of correlation between two tests has been high and significant, the new test has been regarded as valid, and if the correlation has not been high enough, the test being validated 86 has been considered invalid. Based on such a validation procedure, the new test, if concluded as valid, could replace the older test and be used for exactly what that test had been or could be used. Such a validation procedure has been a norm in language testing research and has been practiced by many well-known testing researchers including Taylor (1957), Carroll at al. (1959), Bormuth (1967), Rankin Culhane (1969), Oller Conrad (1971), Oller (1973), Stubbs Tucker (1974), Irvine et al. (1974), Jonz (1976), Alderson (1979a, b), Hinofotis (1980), Shohamy (1983), Hanania Shikhani (1986), Illyin et al. (1987), Hale at al. (1989), Stansfield Hansen (1989), Chapelle Abraham (1990), Fotos (1991), and Greene (2001) to name a few. (For a review of these studies, see Sadeghi, 2002c). Serious doubts have been cast on this kind of validation in which one test has been proposed to substitute the other simply because they are moderately to highly correlated. The concern over the validity of criterion-validation stems from the fact that the statistical technique of correlation, which is the main statistical tool used in this kind of validation, has been devised and intended to show the degree of association between two variables, and that the presence of a high degree of relationship or even a perfect correlation coefficient between two variables is not intended to mean that they are of the same nature or that they are interchangeable. Although no such thing has been claimed in the underlying concept of correlation, the technique has been vastly used for this improper purpose, whereby based on high correlations between two tests, for example, cloze and reading tests, they have been concluded to be measuring the same thing, and thus being interchangeable. The arguments against this research trend in language testing have been put forward by Sadeghi (2002a, b, and c). The application of correlational techniques for validation purpose whereb y one test is suggested to be a valid measure of another, and therefore, to be able to replace that test is, however, possible only if three conditions are met: 1) The tests are of the same nature and character (for example, if both are tests of language proficiency with similar item types); 2) The tests are intended for the same purpose (both intended to measure language proficiency, for example); and 3) The degree of correlation and the variance overlap between two measures is near perfect, and if we need to lose no significant information by substituting one test for another, the correlation should be +1.00. (For further discussion, see Sadeghi, 2002c). As a result of his dissatisfaction with criterion-validation in language-testing and particularly in cloze testing where attempts of content-validation and construct validation have been in vain because it is not at all clear what cloze tests are measuring, the present researcher suggests a new validation technique, called ‘researcher research’, which is hoped to clarify more about what cloze tests are exactly doing and whether claims made on cloze tests as to what they measure are substantiated or not. ‘Researcher research’ refers to the active and conscious engagement of a researcher in the test-taking process and is a kind of research in which the researcher and the subject of the research both refer to the same individual. Instead of indirectly observing the test-taking process in others, the researcher becomes an insider and gains direct access to first-hand data by directly experiencing the problem under investigation. The application of the technique to a few cloze tests are presented below, and suggestions are made as to how the technique may be applied in other testing contexts. 87 Method Subjects. The only subject of this study was the researcher himself. Materials. The research and measurement tools used in this study were 11 cloze tests. The cloze tests, with the deletion rate of every 7th word, were made from the researcher’s previous writings which ranged from three months to one year old. Another person was instructed to make cloze tests form extracts that the researcher had already selected so as not to contain much quoted material. To allow what is called lead-in and lead-out, the first and the last sentences of each passage were left intact. The cloze tests constructed varied in length: while the shortest cloze test contained 34 items, the longest had 53 blanks. A sample of the cloze tests used in the study appears in the appendix. Procedure. After cloze tests were constructed, the researcher sat half of the tests in one session, and the other half in another session and made a note of the time used for each cloze test separately. After completing the blanks, cloze tests were scored using both exact-word scoring and acceptable-word scoring methods by the researcher himself. Although there is contradiction in research findings as to whether allowing acceptable-scoring makes significant differences to the results and mismatching conclusions seem to have been arrived in different studies, using acceptable-scoring, at least for non-native speakers of the language, seems to be fairer even if the differences are not large enough. Based on such a justification, the cloze tests used here were also scored using acceptable-scoring procedure. Findings Quantitative data. The following table represents the observed mean score in both exact- and acceptable-scoring for all of the tests used, and also the mean score that could be obtained if all items in all tests were answered correctly. Table 1: mean observed and expected score on cloze tests in exact- and acceptable-scoring Descriptive characteristic Scoring method Observed mean Expected mean Exact-scoring 34.36 43.18 Acceptable scoring 42.00 43.18 A comparison of the average for exact-scoring (observed mean) with the total possible average (expected mean) indicates that if exact-scoring only was to be allowed, and if cloze was to be regarded as a measure of reading comprehension, the results obtained would mean that the researcher was very far form understanding what he had himself written. As the table above shows, the scores have improved a lot with acceptable scoring. This was very much expected especially because the texts were the researchers own previous written samples, with the content and the written style of which the researcher was well familiar. To give more meaning to the quantitative data in the above table, the following findings should also be taken into account. 88 Acceptable answers that could be counted unacceptable. As the following examples show, some of the answers regarded as acceptable were acceptable taking the contextual clues in the text into account, but if the meaning intended by the original word was to be the criterion for acceptability, most of the items considered ‘acceptable’ here would have been counted as unacceptable and thus distancing the observed acceptable score mean even further form the expected score mean, lead us to the conclusion that even acceptable-score average may not be significantly high. Such a consideration will further reduce the chances of cloze being a proper measure of reading comprehension as far as statistics are concerned. Instances of such cases in which scores have been counted as ‘acceptable’ in the context in this study but could be counted as ‘unacceptable’ if the criterion for acceptability was stating the same information as expressed by the original word are the following: 1) Although the beginning of reading dates back to the invention of writing, and since †¦ [original: 5000; acceptable: many] years ago people have been dealing with reading (Orasanu Penny, 1986: 1), the real nature of reading remained uninvestigated until the mid 19-th century (Vernon, 1984: 48). 2) During this period of research on reading, different people (†¦ [original: psychologists; acceptable: i.e.,], linguists, psycholinguists, educators, second-language researchers, language teachers, etc.) have looked at the same entity from different angels. 3) †¦it is not clear at all what the cloze tests are intended to measure and that they turn out to measure different things based on †¦ [original: correlational; acceptable: different] analyses. 4) In real-life reading, the reader has a purpose and an interest in reading a passage, and because he/she chooses to read one text rather than the other, he/she has an idea of what the text is about and expects to find some †¦ [original: expected; acceptable: specific] information in the text. 5) There is no doubt in the fact that communication whether in spoken or written mode does not occur in a vacuum. The implication for the comprehension of the †¦ [original: communicated; acceptable: written] message is that all elements present in that particular event have their share in affecting the success of communication. 6) K. Brown (1994: 61) points out that different types of lexical sets can be chosen to transfer the meaning †¦[original: of; written: and/] or the perspective on the same event. As the above examples illustrate, an ‘acceptable’ answer may not convey the meaning originally intended and can therefore be regarded as ‘unacceptable’ if the comprehension of the original meaning is of interest. In such cases where the word is counted as acceptable, there seems to be a meaning loss, and something is conveyed either less or more than what was originally intended by the writer. And because it cannot be said that the writer has been unable to understand what he has originally written, it can be concluded that cloze procedure may not be an appropriate technique for this purpose, for measuring the comprehension of a written passage. 89 Acceptable answers that could not have been provided without the researcher’s familiarity with the content of the quoted material. Sometimes the different processes involved in cloze-taking (i.e., stopping and thinking about what the whole thing was about) led to giving acceptable answers and other times despite really engaging with the problem, the researcher was unable to make sense of what was originally meant. This latter case led to giving inappropriate and irrelevant answers, clearly showing the lack of comprehension in that part. Has it not been for the researchers familiarity with the content of his own writing, instances like these where the flow of reading was interrupted would have been even greater. Instances of the blanks which produced real challenge to the present researcher, leading to inappropriate answers or no answer and could therefore be interpreted as miscomprehension or the lack of comprehension are as follows: 1) One group sat the test in the normal way; with the other group however, after each subject gave his/her answer to an item, the correct word was revealed. Brown (1983: 247) called the first cloze-type †¦ [independent-item original word] cloze and the second type †¦ [dependent-item] cloze. In this item, had it not been for the researchers familiarity with what Brown had called such cloze-tests, he would have been unable to fill in the blank correctly. The problem in this case and the following one is more related to the fact that the omitted words are the original writers words being quoted: 2) Discourse-level knowledge has also been called ‘formal’ or †¦ [original: textual; written: content] schema (Singhal, 1998: 2). Similarly, in the following example, had it not been for the researchers familiarity with the original writer’s focus of study, the omitted word could not have been restored correctly: 3) Khaldieh (2001: 427), for example, working on reading comprehension of †¦[Arabic] as a foreign language, found that reading comprehension was a direct result of knowledge of vocabulary. Answers that were unacceptable and produced challenge leading to miscomprehension and/or incomprehension. In the following cases, obviously the researcher understood the text differently. Reflecting on the actual test-taking process, the researcher remembers how challenging it was to understand the relationships between sentences in these cases where miscomprehension was the result. Comprehension was achieved in other similar cases after much effort and challenge while the same texts would have provided no challenge in normal reading: 4) The implication of these lines for testing reading comprehension is that due attention should be given to selecting those kinds of texts for measurement purposes that are culturally unbiased. [original: Otherwise; written: However], our estimates of the reader’s comprehension may be incorrect because they will include results gained for testing the subjects understanding of L2 cultural knowledge rather than L2 linguistic knowledge. 5) That is to say, the content validity of the cloze procedure, whether it is supposed to measure reading ability, language proficiency, etc. is under question, because in neither case is a content area identified a priori from which a representative sample may be selected and †¦[original: whatever; written, the] sample is taken by the cloze procedure is just a random selection of a text or at best influenced by the test-constructors judgements of its suitability for the context he/she is working in. 90 6) Generally, context variable refers to all reader-, writer-, and†¦[original: text-external; written: text?] factors, such as environmental and situational elements, which may affect reading comprehension. The sign ‘?’ after the word written in the blank shows the reader’s doubt on what he has written and indicates that he had difficulty in getting at the intended meaning at that part. Answers considered unacceptable but which do not show the researcher’s inability in comprehension or lack of related grammatical knowledge. There were a few other instances which would be considered incorrect responses in both exact- and acceptable-scoring of cloze tests, meaning that comprehension had not taken place if cloze scores are accepted as evidence of showing comprehension. Reflecting on such cases, the researcher research process allows the researcher to note that such wrong or unacceptable answers are perhaps some type of mistakes, and he is not satisfied that he did not comprehend the part in which he made the mistake. A few such cases are as follows: 1) He also notes other scoring methods like form class scoring where any word coming from the same form class as the original word †¦[original: is; written: are] deleted. 2) Taylor (1956: 48) found a high negative correlation between exact scoring †¦[original: and; written: a] clozentropy scoring (r= -0.87), which was taken to mean that cloze scores are dependable estimates of negative entropy†¦ 3) Validity of a test †¦[original: means; written: refers] the degree to which a test actually measures what it is intended to measure. 4) Different camps have chosen to look at the same thing from different angles and have focused their attention on particular aspects of language. As a result language has been viewed †¦[original: as; written: a] a system by some and as an institution or a social act by others. These examples clearly prove that they are simply mistakes showing the test-taker’s slip of the pen or mind, and they do not show that he did not have relevant knowledge to answer correctly or that because he did not give correct answers, so he was not able to comprehend the relevant parts. Discussion The argument in this paper is that if cloze tests measured reading comprehension as a lot of studies based on correlational research claim, then it is expected that a person who is doing cloze tests based on his/her own writing should be able to complete all blanks with no errors, at least in acceptable scoring. Such an argument is based on the assumption that somebody who writes a text has an ability beyond comprehending what he/she writes because without proper comprehension one cannot produce a coherent piece of text. Based on this argument, it can be concluded that somebody who writes something is able to comprehend it completely because otherwise he/she would not have been to write the text. So it follows that if a cloze test can properly measure reading comprehension, it should not present any challenge to somebody who is doing a cloze based on what he/she has written. The fact that the scores of the cloze-taker in this study did not amount to the total possible score expected in neither exact-scoring nor acceptable-scoring gives us some quantitative evidence that cloze may not be testing 91 reading comprehension properly and that it may be testing something below and beyond mere comprehension. The validity of cloze procedure to measure reading comprehension in such a context is under question not only because the cloze-taker was unable to fill-in all the blanks correctly but also because of the other challenges it produced to the test-taker. Furthermore, not all the blanks which the cloze-taker completed successfully required real comprehension of the passage. Some were either parts of clichà © phrases or idioms; others were function words which required some grammatical knowledge only. Not all blanks, however, were like these. It should also be stressed that the familiarity of the texts to the researcher was a great help and he sometimes remembered a whole sentence before he saw it on the paper (and this is why it was decided to select texts written at least three months earlier so as to lessen the role of memory). Reflecting on test sessions, the researcher remembers that cloze did produce some challenge. First of all, the time for cloze-testing was about one and a half times longer than the time he spent on reading the texts in non-cloze format. In addition to the time-factor, while in the majority of cases in many of which either function words or words frequently used in his writings (such as reading, comprehension, cloze, procedure, measure, test, etc.) were needed to complete the blanks, cloze-taking involved no further challenge, resembling a normal-reading in which the flow of reading was not blocked, in a few other cases, the process of cloze-taking was really very different from that of normal reading. In other words, if the researcher read the original version of the text he had written, he would no doubt have understood every bit without his reading being blocked or the flow disturbed. While taking some cloze-tests, however, the researcher was stopped in some cases and needed to thi nk about what ideas were being talked about and what words should have been inserted into the blanks. Such cases blocked the flow of reading compared to the way the same text would be read with no blanks. Although it is accepted that if somebody is reading a text for the first time, his/her reading may not be so fluent, and he/she may need to stop and think to understand what he/she is reading before he/she can move forward, such a consideration seems unacceptable in this research context because the text was the readers own, which he had already read (and understood) several times. Reflecting on what it was that the researcher was doing when he was taking cloze-tests constructed from his own writing and comparing it with normal reading fallow him to conclude that cloze-tests as used in this study may not be proper testing instruments for measuring ones degree of reading comprehension. The researchers direct involvement in taking cloze-tests allows him to claim that cloze tests may measure some degree of superficial comprehension where the blanks are completed by structural words or frequently used content words. They do not seem to be able to appropriately measure high-level and overall comprehension as shown to the researcher through the researcher research process. The fact that proper comprehension is expected to take place only after reading a text in its complete and undeleted format, and that only after we have provided the reader such a chance, can we then talk about how we are going to assess his/her degree of comprehension of what he/she has read, force the researcher to conclude that cloze tests are unsuitable for assessing reading comprehension. The reason for this conclusion is 92 mainly that cloze tests put a double-task on the shoulder of the reader. Namely, they require the readers to reconstruct an incomplete passage, and reproduce something that has not been presented to them. No doubt this reproduction may be far away from the original text. Based on such a reproduction which needs as much thinking and intelligence as knowledge of language, concluding that the original text has been comprehended or not does not seem to be logical at all simply because the reader has been prevented from access to the total meaning from the very beginning. Requiring the reader to produce something that is partly unknown to him/her and then to comprehend it is a different thing from giving him/her the text in full and then asking him/her to read and understand something which has already been produced. It is not, however, implied here that all the meaning resides in the written text, but that some elements are missing in the negotiation of meaning between the reader and the text in cloze reading. Supporting this argument are the results from this study in which cloze-taking was found as a different process from normal reading and challenging at times. The application of a technique called researcher research here to the cloze tests in this study clarified to the researcher that concluding cloze tests as valid tests of reading comprehension simply based on score correlations with other tests of reading cannot be sustained. A similar finding was arrived based on both qualitative and quantitative data from 213 Iranian EFL students who took different forms of cloze tests as part of the researcher’s PhD project (Sadeghi, 2003). Conclusions and Suggestions The paper began with a short review of the dominant validation techniques used in the field of second/foreign language testing research. Casting doubt on the validity of the most widely used validation technique, i.e., criterion-validation, in which the technique of correlation is used for improper purposes, a new technique was introduced in which the validity of a testing instrument could be directly accounted for by the researcher. The technique called ‘researcher research’ was applied to a few cloze tests constructed out of the researcher’s previous writing samples. The conscious involvement of the researcher in the test-taking process allowed him to understand better what it was that was required for the successful completion of cloze items and how cloze reading could be compared to normal non-cloze reading. The findings indicated that contrary to normal reading in which the flow of reading is less interrupted, cloze-reading blocked the access to meaning in so me cases, producing serious challenge and leading to miscomprehension or the lack of comprehension in a few cases. In the majority of the instances where blanks produced no interruption and challenge, the deleted words were either function words needing a minimum degree of inter-sentential comprehension or content words which the researcher frequently used in his writing and could therefore be regarded as clichà ©d words for him. Based on the evidence produced through ‘researcher-research’, the cloze tests studied were regarded as testing something below and beyond mere reading comprehension. The validation technique presented here is not intended for use with cloze tests only. ‘Researcher research’ can guide the researcher in finding out whether other tests intended to measure reading and listening comprehension or to test knowledge of vocabulary and grammar appropriately serve what they are intended to. The evidence 93 such produced may be combined with other qualitative and quantitative data to support the validity of a test for a particular purpose. References Alderson, J. C. (1979a). The cloze procedure and proficiency in English as a foreign language. TESOL Quarterly, 13 (2), 291-228. Alderson, J. C. (1979b). Scoring procedures for use on cloze tests. In C. A. Yorio, K. Perkins, and J. Schachter (Eds), On TESOL ’79: The learner in focus (pp.193-205). Washington, D.C.: TESOL. Bormuth, J. R. (1967). Comparable cloze and multiple-choice comprehension test scores. Journal of Reading, 10, 291-299. Carroll, J. B., Carton, A. S., Wilds, C. (1959). An investigation of cloze items in the measurement of achievement in foreign languages. Cambridge, MA: Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Laboratory for Research in Instruction. (ERIC ED 021-513) Chapelle, C. A., Abraham, R. G. (1990). Cloze method: What difference does it make? Language Testing, 7 (2), 121-146. Fotos, S. S. (1991). The cloze test as an integrative measure of EFL proficiency: A substitute for essays on college entrance examinations? Language Learning, 41 (2), 313-336. Greene, B. B. (2001). Testing reading comprehension of theoretical discourse with cloze. Journal of Research in Reading, 24 (1), 82-98. Hale, G. A., Stansfield, C. W., Rock, D. A., Hicks, M. M., Butler, F. A., Oller, J. W. (1989). The relation of multiple-choice cloze items to the Test of English as a Foreign Language. Language Testing, 6 (1), 47-76. Hanania, E, Shikhani, M. (1986). Interrelationships among three tests of language proficiency: Standardized ESL, cloze and writing. TESOL Quarterly, 20 (1), 97-110. Hinofotis, F. B. (1980). Cloze an alternative method of ESL placement and proficiency testing. In , J. W. Oller and K. Perkins (Eds), Research in language testing (pp. 121-128). Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Ilyin, D., Spurling, S., Seymour, S. (1987). Do learner variables affect cloze correlations? System, 15 (2),149-160. Irvine, P., Atai, P., Oller, J. W. (1974). Cloze, dictation, and the test of English as a foreign language. Language Learning, 24 (2), 245-252. Jonz, J. (1976). Improving on the basic egg: The M-C cloze. Language Learning, 26 (2), 255-265. Oller, J. W. (1973). Cloze tests of second language proficiency and what they measure. Language Learning, 23 (1), 105-118. Oller, J. W., Conrad, C. A. (1971). The cloze technique and ESL proficiency. Language Learning, 21 (2), 183-195. Rankin, E. F., Culhane, J. W. (1969). Comparable cloze and multiple-choice comprehension scores. Journal of Reading, 13, 193-198. Sadeghi, K. (2003). An investigation of cloze procedure as a measure of EFL reading comprehension with reference to educational context in Iran. Unpublished PhD dissertation. Norwich: University of East Anglia. Sadeghi, K. (2002a). The judgmental validity of cloze as a measure of reading comprehension. Paper presented at the 7th METU International ELT Convention, METU, Ankara, Turkey, 23-25 May. Sadeghi, K. (2002b). The criterion validity of cloze as a measure of EFL reading comprehension. Paper presented at BERA Research Student Symposium, The University of Exeter, Exeter, UK, 11-12 September. 94 Sadeghi, K. (2002c). Is correlation a valid statistical tool in second language research? Paper presented at the 12th European Second Language Association Conference (EUROSLA12), Basel University, Basel, Switzerland, 18-21 September. Shohamy, E. (1983). Interrater and intrarater reliability of the oral interview and concurrent validity with cloze procedure in Hebrew. In J. W. Oller (Ed.), Issues in Language testing research (pp. 229-236). Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Stansfield, C., Hansen, H. (1983). Field dependence-independence as a variable in second language cloze test performance. TESOL Quarterly, 17 (1), 29-38. Stubbs, J. B., Tucker, G. R. (1974). The cloze test as a measure of English proficiency. Modern Language Journal, 58, 239-241. Taylor, W. L. (1957). ‘cloze’ readability scores as indices of individual differences in comprehension and aptitude. Journal of Applied Psychology, 41, 19-26. Karim Sadeghi holds a Ph.D. in TEFL/TESOL (Language Testing) from the University of East Anglia in the UK. He has several years of teaching EFL at various levels. After he finished his Ph.D. in August 2003, he returned to Iran and since then has been teaching and researching in Urmia University. 95 Appendix A: The sample cloze test used in the study There is no doubt in the fact that communication whether in spoken or written mode does not occur in a vacuum. (1)The implication for the comprehension of the (2)communicated message is that all elements present (3)in that particular event have their share (4)in affecting the success of communication, i.e., (5)the comprehension of the intended message. The (6)most obvious of all is the knowledge (7)of the linguistic elements involved such as (8)lexicon and syntax. Although some superficial comprehension (9)may take place in spoken language as (10)a result of contextual clues present, it (11)can be argued that without a certain (12)degree of linguistic competence the achievement of (13)proper comprehension will be out of reach. (14)Knowing the meanings of vocabulary items has (15)been regarded as the most important element (16)of linguistic competence. However, knowing word meaning (17)is no guarantee that comprehension will take (18)place and the knowledge of how words (19)are relate d to one another and how (20)sentences or utterances are related to one (21)another are crucial in shaping the outcome (22)of communication. The second important factor in (23)determining the success of communication is knowledge (24)of the context or situation in which (25)the communicative event is taking place. The (26)same sentence or utterance may have totally (27)different and unrelated and sometimes opposite meanings (28)if spoken or written in different situations. (29)Apart from immediate physical context, a knowledge (30)of the larger socio-cultural context in which (31)the message is being conveyed may also (32)shape the way a reader/listener approaches the (33)massage and will therefore lead to the (34)kind of comprehension and interpretation motivated by (35)that context. No doubt, the lack of knowledge of such contextual conditions may sometimes lead to misunderstanding of the message despite having no problem in decoding the linguistic elements present in the message. Research Papers on An alternative in language testing researchStandardized TestingResearch Process Part OneMoral and Ethical Issues in Hiring New EmployeesInfluences of Socio-Economic Status of Married MalesIncorporating Risk and Uncertainty Factor in CapitalEffects of Television Violence on ChildrenThe Relationship Between Delinquency and Drug UseGenetic EngineeringOpen Architechture a white paperThe Project Managment Office System

How to Get Your Lesson Plans Done More Quickly

How to Get Your Lesson Plans Done More Quickly Every week teachers spend countless hours scouring the internet for the perfect lesson plan or searching for some inspiration that will lead them to create an amazing lesson for their students. Teachers do this because its their road map, it leads them to what their students will be learning and how they will go about teaching them. Lesson plans not only help a teacher run their classroom and help keep the children focused. Without a detailed lesson plan, the substitute teacher would not know what to do with the students. You would think that in order to create an effective lesson plan that is engaging, addresses students learning objectives, incorporates engaging activities and helps to check for student understanding would take days to create. However, educators have been at this for a very long time and have come up a few tips and secrets that help them get their lesson plans done quick. Here are a few teaching strategies to help you get your lesson planning done faster. 1. Start Lesson Planning Backwards Before you even start to plan your lesson think about what your learning objective is. Think about what you want your students to learn and get out of the lesson. Do you want your students to learn how to count by 10s or be able to write an essay using all of their spelling words? Once you figure out what your overall objective is then you can start thinking about what activity you want the students to do. When you start with your end goal of the lesson, it will help make the lesson planning part go much quicker. Here is an example: The objective for my students is to name all of the food groups and be able to give examples for each group. The lesson students will do in order to complete this objective is going to be to sort foods in an activity called sorting groceries. Students will learn about the five food groups first by looking at a food chart then going into small groups and brainstorming what foods go into each food group. Next, they will receive a paper plate and food cards. Their goal is to place the correct food cards on the paper plate with the correct food group. 2. Download Ready-To-Go Lesson Plans Technology has made it very easy and convenient for teachers to be able to go online and print out already made lesson plans. Some sites offer free lesson plans while others you may have to pay a small fee, nonetheless, it is worth every penny. Once you figure out what your learning objective is, then all you have to do is a quick search for a lesson plan that correlates with your end goal. Teacher Pay Teachers is one site that has many already-made lessons (some free, some you have to pay) as well as Discovery Education where all lessons are free. These are just two of the hundreds of sites that offer lesson plans at your convenience. This site  also has plenty of lesson plans on it as well. 3. Collaborate with Your Fellow Teachers One of the best ways to get your lesson planning done quicker is to collaborate with other teachers. There are a few ways that you can do this, one way is for each teacher to plan for a few subjects, then use the others lessons from your fellow teacher for the subjects that you didnt plan for. For example, lets say that you created a lesson plan for social studies and science for the week, and your colleague created plans for language arts and math. You would both give each other your lesson plans so all you really had to do is only plan for two subjects versus four. Another way that you can collaborate with your colleagues is to have the two classes work together for specific subjects. A great example of this comes from a fourth-grade classroom where the teachers in the school would change classrooms for different subjects. This way each teacher only had to plan for one or two subjects versus all of them. Collaboration makes it so much easier on the teacher and not to mention the students love to work with different students from other classrooms as well. Its a win-win situation for everybody. 4. Theres an App for That Have you ever heard of the expression Theres an app for that? Well, there is an app to help you get your lesson plans done quicker. It is called Planboard and One Note and Lesson Planning to name a few. These are just three of the many apps that are on the market to help teachers create, organize and map out their lesson planning from the convenience of their fingertips. Long gone are the days of handwriting or typing out each and every lesson that you plan on doing, nowadays all you have to do is tap your finger on a screen a few times and you will have your lesson plans done. Well, its not that easy but you get the point. Apps have made it easier for teachers to get their plans done faster. 5. Think Outside of the Box Whoever says that you had to do all of the work yourself? Try thinking outside of the box and have your students help you, invite a guest speaker or go on a field trip. Learning doesnt have to be just creating a lesson plan and following it, it can be whatever it is you want it to be. Here are a few more teacher-tested ideas for thinking outside of the box. Digital field trip.Put on a play.Have students create an activity. In order to be effective, lesson planning does not have to be exhausting and so detailed that you plan out each and every scenario. As long as you list your objectives, create an engaging activity, and know how you will assess your students that is enough.

Physica Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Physica - Research Paper Example As the car moves at a speed, the objects inside will also move at the same speed. When the car stops suddenly the objects inside the car will continue to move forward unless it is stopped by some object like seat belt. The physics principle behind this process is inertia. Inertia is explained by Isaac Newton in his first law of physics. Inertia is the idea that moving objects will continue to do so unless an external force is applied to stop it. Inertia is one of the basic principles of physics that has innumerable applications. Principles of inertia are applied in several fields where speed, motion and direction are crucial factors. Knowing the basic idea of inertia helps us understand the way objects move in the universe. Inertia is therefore important in the development of various products. The interesting principle of inertia touches almost every aspects of our daily life. Appliances like refrigerator, air conditioners and heat pumps function on the second law of thermodynamics. Heat energy spontaneously flows from a hot body to a cold body. In order to make heat flow from cold body to hot body work must be done. A process, a cycle is continuously happening in a refrigerator. A liquid refrigerant substance is getting vaporized in the cooling coils. Heat in the surroundings is absorbed by this fluid. The fluid gets vaporized and this cools the fridge. The same principle is applicable in heat pumps and air conditioners. Pressure cooker which is used in our kitchen works on a physics principle. Vaporization principle is the secret behind pressure cooker. Pressure gets formed inside the cooker as the water boils. Boiled water produces steam which makes the temperature rise. The pressure and the high temperature inside the cooker make the food cooked. The high pressure and temperature reduces the cooking time. The pressure of the steam aggravates the gas pressure above the water. Boiling point is easily achieved by increase in pressure. Pressure cooker works on this principle. Devices like radio and telephone convert acoustic energy into electrical energy and electrical energy back to acoustic energy. Wirelessly transmitted electromagnetic waves are received by television and it is converted into light energy and acoustic energy. This is the principle behind the working of television. Toothpaste we use in every life is an example of the application of a physics principle. Applyig pressure on any part of the toothpaste tube makes the paste come out through the outlet. Pascal a Frenchman found out that if pressure is applied to any area of a confined fluid, pressure would get transmitted to all other parts with no loss. The applied pressure would put equal force on all parts of the confined walls. The force also comes perpendicular to the walls. If we put a hole in the toothpaste tube and push at any part of the tube, paste would come out through the hole. The force gets transmitted from one place to another through the liquid, which is the toothpaste. The same principle is used in hydraulic machines. Bicycles we use in daily life works on a physics principle. The prominent force that helps a bicycle to balance is centripetal force. A bicycle has two wheels kept in straight alignment. For a beginner it would be difficult to balance a bicycle. However, certain physics principles makes bicycle ride possible. When a revolving wheel rotates around a central axis in a single direction the wheel is prompted to continue moving in the

The Limitedness of the UN Human Rights Agenda Essay

The Limitedness of the UN Human Rights Agenda - Essay Example For more than sixty years, the UN Commission on Human Rights (CHR) embodied this disappointment. In spite of being the leading UN human rights agency tasked to evaluate human rights actions of its member states and endorsing human rights across the globe, the CHR was reduced into a medium that human rights violators exploited to hinder condemnations of their own actions (Schaefer 2009, p. 139). The poor reputation of CHR intensified over time that previous UN secretary-general Kofi Annan proclaimed, â€Å"We have reached a point at which the Commission’s declining credibility has cast a shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system as a whole, and where piecemeal reforms will not be enough† (Schaefer 2009, p. 132). Thus, in March 2006, the General Assembly made a decision to supplant the CHR with the Human Rights Council (HRC) (DeLaet 2014, p. 138). Unfortunately, during the discussions, numerous core principles and changes that had been suggested to guarantee that the HRC would not replicate the errors of CHR was not able to acquire the needed approval in the General Assembly. In consequence, the HRC has been initially ineffective and weak in upholding and supporting basic human rights—a performance that is not likely to get better by involving the United States in the HRC in 2009 (Goodhart 2013, pp. 68-69). Sadly, even the other UN bodies have been weakened by the limitations that plagued the CHR and keep on overwhelming the HRC—the capacity of countries that do not promote or implement human rights to control or influence the system and susceptibility to political manoeuvring.