Alienation in Samuel Becketts Waiting for Godot Essay -- Waiting for

Alienation in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot    The alienation of humanity from truth, purpose, God, and each other is the theme of Samuel Beckett's play, "Waiting for Godot." The play's cyclical and sparse presentation conveys a feeling of the hopelessness that is an effect of a godless, and therefore, purposeless world. Lack of communication, the cause of man's alienation, is displayed well through absurdist diction, imagery, structure, and point of view. The intent of the play is to evoke a feeling of incompleteness and depression. The conversation between Vladimir and Estragon, the protagonists of "Waiting for Godot," seems to be void of meaning. The play begins with "nothing to be done" and ends with an unfulfilled "Yes, let's go." Suicide was often mentioned and reasoned through in passing, as though their deaths mattered neither to them nor anyone else. Their deaths were barely even recognized by them as a change. They argued about shoes and carrots when Estragon, the representative of materialistic human nature, was concerned about it. They argued about the thief's presence in only one of the gospels and spiritual matters when Vladimir initiated conversation. A minor goal discussed by Vladimir and Estragon was to "pass the time," though they often forgot what day it was, not to mention whom they'd met, where they'd been, and why it ever mattered. Vladimir and Estragon engaged in dialogue with passing travelers Pozzo and Lucky. Lucky's speech was a faultless example of the play's meaning. The outward appear ance of Lucky's words was that he was a fool who once held power over a great vocabulary, but could only toss words together in a confounding miscellany at that time. Just as a deep feeling about the absence... ...keep waiting because Godot promised to come tomorrow. But tomorrow never came. In both Lucky's speech and the play, the characters, reader, and thesis are left unsatisfied. There is no conclusion to Lucky's speech. He simply babbled on until his listeners removed his thinking cap. The play leaves Vladimir and Estragon still waiting. Knowing no god, Beckett sees life as futile and mocks both life and death in his play. Beckett can arouse emotions from his audience by not arranging his play in an emotional way. Absurdist theater is far from the melodramatic tragedies of stereotypical plays. "Waiting for Godot" is antisocial, devoid of superficial meaning, and empty to its core simply because of its blank, forgetful, and meaningless aspects. Yet beneath this clever camouflage is a depth of depression, sprung from a fountain of godless life and non-communication.

heros without faces Essay -- essays research papers

FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS Throughout school, many students come in contact with the picture of the six marines raising the American flag in the battle of Iwo Jima. The students also know this picture as a statue that was made to honor all of those that were lost in this tragic battle. James Bradley wanted to change how people looked at this picture or statue. He wanted to give each marine a name to go along with the hand or face that is seen in the picture. James, when writing the book, makes each chapter the next stage in each of the six men lives. James Bradley begins the book by giving the reader the background of each of men. The men, oddly enough, represent how America was before World War II started. There is the farmer, Franklin Sousley, the rancher, Harlon Block, the mill worker, Rene Gagnon, the Native American, Ira Hayes, the immigrant, Mike Strank, and the serious small towner, Jack Bradley, which when placed together form a cross-section of America. After outlining all the marines’ history, James Bradley, then goes into why America is in the war in the pacific with Japan. He also goes into father detail as to why the six men joined the marines. Along with the six marines, James explains what characteristics in this war make it different, such as amphibious warfare. This is the method where Marine Corps troops go ashore onto Pacific islands from ships to assault the enemy (Webster Dictionary). Another important fact that he brings up, is why the battle of Iwo J...

Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett There are many ways to describe Warren Buffett such as genius, best investor of all time, down to earth, and full of wisdom. Buffett is the second richest man on the planet and still seems to come off as an average person. He is a native of Omaha, Nebraska and attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for his undergraduate degree. Buffett attended Columbia of the Ivy League for his graduate degree. He has been very generous with his wealth, which is estimated to be worth $40 billion. When Warren Buffett was 25 years old, he began a limited partnership with his close family and friends. His original capital was estimated just over $100,000, over the next decade he added partners who brought money with them for him to invest. He did not have a year in which his company did not make money that decade and in return was paid 25% of the profits. Once his partnership dissolved, he began distributing shares of Berkshire Hathaway. Long story short, Buffett has taken Berkshire Hathaway from $7 per hare to $103,000 today and owns over 65 companies. The most recent company Buffett purchased was Burlington Northern for $34 billion, which is the biggest acquisition of his life. By purchasing Burlington Northern, Buffett is betting on the United States economy making a comeback. Moving materials by railroad is much more cost effective than by trucks. Buffett is a man who has many followers and he has given hope to people by making this gamble on America. Warren Buffett plans to give away 85% of his fortune to charities and foundations, most of it going to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. He is a truly generous man and cares deeply about the people of America. Buffett will go down in history forever because of his brilliant investing but will be remembered by many around the country for what he gave back to it. References 1. CNN Money. 25 June 2006. Web. 15 Nov. 2009. . 2. About. com. 2009. Web. 25 Nov. 2009. . 3. Los Angeles Times. 4 Nov. 2009. Web. 15 Nov. 2009. .

Indian Business Environment Essay

Abstract One of the major objectives of Indian banking sector reforms was to encourage operational self-sufficiency, flexibility and competition in the system and to increase the banking standards in India to the international best practices. The second phase of reforms began in 1997 with aim to reorganization measures, human capital development, technological up-gradation, structural development which helped them for achieving universal benchmarks in terms of prudential norms and pre-eminent practices. This paper seeks to determine the impact of various market and regulatory initiatives on efficiency improvements of Indian banks. Efficiency of firm is measured in terms of its relative performance that is, efficiency of a firm relative to the efficiencies of firms in a sample. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has used to identify banks that are on the output frontier given the various inputs at their disposal. The present study is confined only to the Constant-Return-to-Scale (CRS) assumption of decision making units (DMUs). Variable returns to scale (VRS) assumption for estimating the efficiency was not attempted. It was found from the results that national banks, new private banks and foreign banks have showed high efficiency over a period time than remaining banks. II. Reforms and Banking system In the post liberalization-era, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has initiated quite a few measures to ensure safety and consistency of the banking system in the country and at the same point in time to support banks to play an effective role in accelerating the economic growth process. One of the major objectives of Indian banking sector reforms was to encourage operational self-sufficiency, flexibility and competition in the system and to increase the banking standards in India to the international best practices 4. Although the Indian banks have contributed much in the Indian economy, certain weaknesses, i.e. turn down in efficiency and erosion in profitability had developed in the system, observance in view these conditions, the Committee on Financial System(CFS) was lay down. Reserve Bank of India has implemented banking sector reforms in two phases. The first reform focused on introduction of several prudential norms, major changes in the policy framework, and formation of competiti ve atmosphere. The second phase of reforms began in 1997 with aim to reorganization measures, human capital development, technological up-gradation, structural development which helped them for achieving universal benchmarks in terms of prudential norms and pre-eminent practices. The Financial sector reforms were undertaken in 1992 based on the recommendations of the CFS. Later, The Narsimham Committee has provided the proposal for reforming the financial sector. The committee also argued that ‘economic reforms in the real sector of economy will, however, fail to realize their full potential without a parallel reform of the financial sector. It focused on several issues like, releasing of more funds to banks, deregulation in interest rates, capital adequacy, income recognition, disclosures and transparency norms etc. However, financial sector reforms focused on improving the competitive efficiency of the banking system. The financial reform process has commenced since 1991 which was made the banking sector healthy, sound, well- capitalized and become competitive. The competitive pressures to improve efficiency in the banking sector has resulted in a switch from traditional paper based banking to electronic banking, use information technology and shift of emphasis from brick and mortar banking to use of ATMs. INDIAN BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT IN BANKING INDUSTRY Indian banking industry, the backbone of the country’s economy, has always played a key role in prevention the economic catastrophe from reaching terrible volume in the country. It has achieved enormous appreciation for its strength, particularly in the wake of the worldwide economic disasters, which pressed its worldwide counterparts to the edge of fall down. If we compare the business of top three banks in total assets and in terms of return on assets, the Indian banking system is among the healthier performers in the world. This sector is tremendously competitive and recorded as growing in the right trend (Ram Mohan, 2008). Indian banking industry has increased its total assets more than five times between March 2000 aThe overall development has been lucrative with enhancement in banking industry efficiency and productivity. It should be underlined here is financial turmoil which hit the western economies in 2008 and the distress effect widened to the majority of the other countries but Indian banking system survived with the distress and showed the stable performance. Indian banks have remained flexible even throughout the height of the sub-prime catastrophe and the subsequent financial turmoil. The Indian banking industry is measured as a flourishing and the secure in the banking world. The country’s economy growth rate by over 9 percent since last several years and that has made it regarded as the next economic power in the worldnd March 2010, The Indian banking industry is measured as a flourishing and the secure in the banking world. The country’s economy growth rate by over 9 percent since last several years and that has made it regarded as the next economic power in the world. Our banking industry is a mixture of public, private and foreign ownerships. The major dominance of commercial banks can be easily found in Indian banking, although the co-operative and regional rural banks have little business segmentIn the post liberalization-era, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has initiated quite a few measures to ensure safety and consis tency of the banking system in the country and at the same point in time to support banks to play an effective role in accelerating the economic growth process. One of the major objectives of Indian banking sector reforms was to encourage operational self-sufficiency, flexibility and competition in the system and to increase the banking standards in India to the international best practices. Although the Indian banks have contributed much in the Indian economy, certain weaknesses, i.e. turn down in efficiency and erosion in profitability had developed in the system, observance in view these conditions, the Committee on Financial System. Reserve Bank of India has implemented banking sector reforms in two phases. The first reform focused on introduction of several prudential norms, major changes in the policy framework, and formation of competitive atmosphere. The second phase of reforms began in 1997 with aim to reorganization measures, human capital development, technological up-gradation, structural development which helped them for achieving universal benchmarks in terms of prudential norms and pre-eminent practices. The Financial sector reforms were undertaken in 1992 based on the recommendations of the CFS. Later, The Narsimham Committee has provided the proposal for reforming the financial sector. The committee also argued that ‘economic reforms in the real sector of economy will, however, fail to realize their full potential without a parallel reform of the financial sector. It focused on several issues like, releasing of more funds to banks, deregulation in interest rates, capital adequacy, income recognition, disclosures and transparency norms etc. However, financial sector reforms focused on improving the competitive efficiency of the banking system. The financial reform process has commenced since 1991 which was made the banking sector healthy, sound, well- capitalized and become competitive. (CFS) was lay down. Liberalisation of India’s banking sector †¢ Liberalisation of India’s banking sector begun since 1992, following the Narasimhan Committee’s Report (December 1991) †¢ Important recommendations of the Committee were – [i] reduction of statutory pre-emptions (SLR and CRR) [ii] deregulation of the interest rates [iii] opening up the sector to foreign and domestic private banks [iv] adoption of prudential regulations relating to capital adequacy, asset classiï ¬ cation and provisioning standards Service firms such as ITC Hotels and ANZ Grindlays Bank found direct marketing very effective in retailing customers and weathering competition. †¢ The Indian banking system is growing in a robust manner. †¢ The Indian banking system complies with international standards of prudential regulation. †¢ The Indian banking system is opening up for entry of foreign banks. †¢ Despite the growth, Indian banking system is not entirely inclusive. †¢ There is good opportunities for the banking industry – domestic and foreign – for expansion to ï ¬ ll the gap. A decade after the Narasimham report was published and in the light of new challenges from the norms laid down by the WTO and Basel II, it is imperative to have a close look at the performance of banks in the last decade or so to assess the success of the reform process. INDIA inherited a very weak banking system following Independence. However, the nationalisation programme (1969) helped this sector achieve remarkable success in many respects. The stability among depositors, penetration into rural India and the consequent reduction in poverty and diversification out of agriculture were some of its laudable achievements. Given the predominantly bank based nature of financial system, the banking industry gained the reputation of one of the most protected in the country. However, in the 1990s a chain of events such as introduction of modern technologies, competition from new players in the liberalised market place, and enhanced emphasis on governance to protect shareholder interest changed the way banks conducted business. The Indian banking sector with its diversity of ownerships — State Bank of India and its associates, nationalised banks, private domestic banks and foreign banks also faced a similar set of challenges. Although the public sector banks acquired a dominant presence thanks to the regulatory environment, several of them performed poorly in the late 1980s. To preserve the soundness of the financial system, especially the banking segment, the Government set up the Narasimham Committee. The Committee (in 1991) made far-reaching recommendations that formed the basis of banking reforms. Some of the comprehensive reform measures suggested included: Stricter income recognition and asset classification, higher capital adequacy ratio, phased deregulation of interest rate, lowering statutory liquidity ratio (SLR) and cash reserve ratio (CRR), entry deregulation, and branch-de-licensing. These measures mainly aim to improve the efficiency/profitability of banking industry. A decade and half after the Narasimham report was published and in the light of the World Trade Organisation and Basel II norms, it is imperative to have a close look at the performance of banks in the last decade or so to assess the success of the reform process. Performance indicators Commonly-used measures to assess the performance of the banking industry are: Return on Asset (ROA), Operating Profit Ratio (OPR), Net Interest Margin (NIM), Operating Cost Ratio (OCR) and Staff Expenditure Ratio (SER). The first two are generally considered profitability measures, while the others, the efficiency indices. These five measures have been considered in this analysis for two sub-periods: Pre-liberalisation (1992-1995) and post-liberalisation (2000-2003). The total number of banks considered for two sub-periods were 64 (eight State Banks, 19 nationalised banks, 19 private banks and 18 foreign banks) and 87 (8, 19, 28 and 32 respectively). Overall performance improvement A comparison of performance indices during the study period reveals that the reform measures helped to improve the overall performance of industry. This is reflected in the improvement of all performance indicators barring the net interest margin (see Table). Interestingly, the ROA, treated as a proxy for risk-adjusted return, increased from (-) 0.28 per cent in the pre-liberalisation period to 0.79 per cent (against more than 1 per cent in other merging markets such as Singapore, Malaysia and Korea) post-liberalisation, indicating a significant rise in the ability of banks to convert their assets into net earnings. Another interesting aspect is that despite a marginal fall in the net interest margin from 2.84 to 2.73 (which might be due to policy change), the banking industry has managed to improve its OPR by increasing its non-interest fee-based income and reducing its operating costs/staff expenses. The evidence indicates that after the reform initiation period, the banks have increasingly been providing off balance sheet items such as derivatives, which generate major part of non-interest income. The proportion of operating costs/staff expenses has declined mainly due to computerisation and the voluntary retirement scheme. The property rights theorists believe that the private banks are more efficient than their counterparts in the public sector. This view is corroborated by the public choice theorists who argue that the specific X inefficiency factors are more prevalent in the public sector, irrespective of market conditions. Further, many cross-country findings report an increased government ownership as a deterrent to the development of the banking system. The Indian banking scenario seems to be consistent with the above, as the privately owned (foreign as well as domestic) banks seem to be superior to their public counter parts with respect to all performance indicators except the NIM. Despite a fall in their OPR and NIM between 1992-95 and 2000-03, the private banks successfully managed to reduce their operating expenditures, particularly the staff expenditures, thereby successfully maintaining their status. Among private banks, the foreign banks seem to be superior in terms of three out of five the criteria used. Within the public domain, the State Banks tend to be superior with respect to ROA, OCR and SER, while the nationalised banks seem to show better performance in terms of OPR and NIM. Thus, although there is a significant improvement in the overall performance of banks as one moves from the post-reform period to the late-reform period, one finds certain anomalies such as a fall in the NIM (except in the case of the nationalised banks), a fall in the ROA of private domestic banks, a reduction in the OPR of private domestic and foreign banks and a rise in the OCR/SER of foreign banks. Convergence or divergence Apart from the overall improvement across the board, another important criterion to evaluate the success story is to check whether the competitive force has led to any convergence in the performance of different ownership groups in the post-liberalisation period. Exposure to the competitive forces is often argued as a panacea to shake poorly performing banks out of their slumber. Although the public banks compared poorly with private banks during the initial period, they made a significant improvement in the later period by responding well to the new challenges of competition and consolidation, mostly following a gradual and cautious approach. The pay off is well reflected in the increase in their ROA, OPR and NIM. Some possible reasons for the better performance of public banks could be they still undertake most of the government borrowing programmes, thereby generating significant fee based income; the market discipline imposed by the listing of most public sector banks has also probably contributed to this improved performance; and ï‚ · the reform measures have changed their business strategies particularly greater diversification of non-fund based business and emergence of treasury and foreign exchange business. The study reveals that the OPR across four ownership groups tend to converge. The NIM tend to converge across private and public sectors while the OCR continues to remain significantly different across ownership groups. The above analyses indicate that the banking sector performs reasonably well with respect to the goals set by the Narasimham Committee, particularly in the context of the poorly performing banks and showing some encouraging signs to meet the Basel II norms by 2006. However, one should not go over board in reading these numbers to evaluate the success of the Indian banking sector, particularly from the perspective of a developing economy such as ours. Policy-makers should be extra cautious in giving free a reign to the banking sector in pursuing â€Å"profit and risk† based strategies. Recent trends in non-synergy based consolidation, growing disinclination to lend money towards productive purposes and to the unprofitable sectors such as agriculture, self-help groups, infrastructure and to small and medium sized enterprises, its growing engagement in non-productive treasury operations and conspicuous consumer lending will seriously impair the role of banks as public instruments of development. Therefore, maintaining a balance between these two objectives will remain a challenge to the banking sector for some time to come. Bibliography- * www.thehindubusinessline.com * iimahd.ernet.in/assets/snippets/ *

Child in the Preoperational Stage Essay

A study was carried out by two third year psychology students to investigate Piaget’s stage theory. A 4 years old female child was tested in task of comprehension of more and less, followed standard and modified versions of conservation and class inclusion tasks. Results indicated that child exhibited difficulties in both modified conservation and class inclusion tasks despite the removal of some confounds in standard tasks. This infers that children of pre-operational stage do lack the ability to conserve and categorize objects, as predicted by Piaget. Further research need to address children’s numerical abilities, as well as attending to perceptive seductions. This research needs to compare children who are able and unable to attend to number logics, as well as modifying the class inclusion task so that perceptive seduction cannot take place. Child in the preoperational stageMany researchers have been interested in various confounds which are present in Jean Piaget’s stage theories. His studies have postulated that children in the pre-operational stage lack the ability to perform conservation and class inclusion tasks (White, Hayes, Livsey, 2005). The methodologies of the study however, have been criticized by many researchers. Flaws and alternatives found in the standard Piagetian tasks include conversational confusions, perceptual seduction, and linguistic misunderstandings (Light, 1986, Siegel, 1978, 2003, Meadows, 1988). These issues have been addressed with modifications to the standard tasks. Majority of the research have found modified tasks to be better predictors of child’s abilities in conservation and class inclusion tasks. (Light, 1986, Siegel, 1978, 2003, Meadows, 1988). According to Piaget’s stage theory, children in the pre-operational stage are non-conservers (White et al, 2005). Their tendency of centration causes them to focus on only one aspect of the problem at a time (White et al, 2005). This implies that they are unable to comprehend that quantitative properties of certain objects remain unchanged despite changes in its appearance (White et al, 2005). For example, pre-operational children typically judge water of the same volume to be more, after the transformation in standard liquid conservation tasks (Siegal, 2003). A problem in this procedure however, lies within the confusion caused by children’s conversational experience (Siegal,  2003). This theory proposes that rather than actually responding to the logic behind the transformations of the liquid, children misinterprets the repetition of the same question as a cue to switch their answer in order to please the adult experimenter (Siegel, 2003). To address conversational confusion, liquid conservation tasks had been modified by the means of incidental transformation (Light, 1986). The intention of this modification is to contextualize the intentions of adults in repeating the same question. Light (1986) administered the standard Piagetian conservation procedure up to the point when both beakers of the same size and volume. However, during the transformation, the experimenter â€Å"incidentally† noticed that one of the beakers was chipped, and found a taller and thinner beaker as the replacement container for the original content. The result found that only 5 percent of children correctly responded to the conservation task in the standard condition, while 70 percent correctly responded to the incidental condition (Light, 1986). An alternative to Piaget’s theory of conservation is that non-conservers may actually be perceptually seduced (Siegel, 2003). This theory postulates that children pay more attention to the post-transformation state and disregards the pre-transformation state(Siegel, 2003). They fail the question about conservation because all of their attention are diverted into the new state and they perceive it as different from the old state (Siegel, 2003). Research had shown that children who do not witness the process of transformation are much more likely to conserve than children who sees the transformation taking place (Siegel, 2003). Another difficulty that Piaget found in pre-operational children is their ability to attend to class inclusion tasks (Siegel, 2003). In a study, pre-operational children were presented with a set of 6 cars and 4 trucks. When asked the question â€Å"are there more trucks or vehicles†, children will typically answer cars (White et al, 2005). Explanation for this result as proposed by Piaget is that children are unable to conceptualize cars as a more inclusive category of the hierarchy (White et al, 2005). Limitations however, were found in this theory in terms of children’s linguistic misunderstandings. A study by Sigel (1978) compared the performance of 4 year old children who were asked whether they would like to eat candy with those asked if there were more candy in the array. Results found that significantly more children passed the eat-candy task (50%) as opposed to 26% in the more-candy task. This implicates that pre-operational children performs better on tasks of class inclusion when linguistic cues were made salient with age-appropriate cues as opposed using comprehension of relational terminology such as â€Å"more† and â€Å"less† (Sigel, 1978). A modified class inclusion task was designed in the current experiment to address the linguistic issues associated with child’s performance. Previous studies have found that children experience confusion when similar words are used in each level of the hierarchy (e.g. black cows, cows) (White et al, 2003). They are however, more familiar with the relationships where each member makes up part of a whole (White et al, 2003). Hence, when children were taught, or are familiar with the superordinate class such as â€Å"family†, they are more likely to have certainty about its relation with the subordinates (e.g. three baby horses, two parent horses) (Meadows, 1998). The present study is aimed to investigate whether children in their pre-operational stage experience difficulties in conservation and class-inclusion tasks as predicted by Piaget. From the research examined, it was anticipated that the child’s performance on modified tasks will be better than the standard tasks. It was hypothesized that the child will perform poorly in standard conservation and class inclusion tasks. It was also hypothesized that the child’s performance in the standard tasks were influenced by factors other than those intended in the standard Piagetian procedure. MethodParticipantThe subject is a four year and old female who is living at home with both of her parents in Petersham. She currently attends the local pre-school. The test was conducted inside the child’s house with two experimenters. One of the experimenter, who is her aunty, was responsible for interviewing the child, while the other transcribes the events. MaterialsFor comprehension of more or less, a total of 11 blocks were used. 5 blue and 5 yellow blocks were used in the standard number conservation task. 2 bottles of the same size and a thinner and taller bottle were used in the standard liquid conservation task. A picture with 4 black horses and 2 white horses was used in the standard class inclusion task. In the modified liquid conservation task, 2 toy horses were used as characters for picnic. 2 bottles of the same size, with one missing the label was used in the pre-transformation stage. A taller, thinner bottle was used in the post-transformation stage. In the modified class inclusion task, 2 larger â€Å"parent† toy horses and 3 smaller â€Å"baby† toy horses were placed next to one another. ProcedureThe experiment was carried out in the order test of comprehension of more and less; standard number conservation; standard liquid conservation; standard class inclusion; modified liquid conservation; and modified class inclusion. In the comprehension of more and less task, the experimenter takes out 8 blocks, but separates them so there were 4 each side. There is also another basked with 3 spare blocks in it. The child is then asked to make one pile more than the other, followed by the prompt to make the now larger pile less than the other pile. In the standard number conservation task, the blue and yellow blocks were placed in 2 lines equidistant of each other. On post-transformation, spaces between the yellow blocks were enlarged by the experimenter. Please refer to the appendix for details on rest of the tasks. ResultsOutcome of the study shows that the child is able to comprehend when something is more, but was unable transform the pile that had more objects to be less than the smaller pile. Results have also shown that the child was able to correctly answer the pre-transformation questions of standard number and liquid conservation, as well as modified liquid tasks, but failed in post-transformation and justifications of these tasks. Finally, the results have shown that the child was unable to correctly answer any of the class inclusion tasks, even after concept of family was eventually introduced to her by the experimenter in the modified class inclusion task. For the full results, please refer to the results summary in Appendix A. Discussion Contrary to the anticipations, the child did not perform better in any of the modified tasks as compared to standard tasks. The results provide support for the hypothesis that child will perform poorly in standard conservation and class inclusion tasks. The child performed consistently poorly across all three standard Piagetian tasks. As a result, the child’s performance in the tests clearly places her in Piaget’s preoperational stage of development. The results are consistent with all critics in the current field, who found children of preoperational stage to perform poorly across standard tasks (Light, 1986, Siegel, 1978, 2003, Meadows, 1988). Hence, the validity of the criticisms relies on the child’s performance on modified tasks. A notable aspect of the results indicates that child’s performance in the standard tasks may be hindered by her ability to correctly comprehend the concept of more and less. The results did not support the hypothesis that child’s performance in the standard tasks were influenced by factors other than those intended in the standard Piagetian procedure. No support of conversational confusion was found in the present experiment whereby despite the removal of such confounds. The incidental transformation in the modified liquid conservation task did not produce better results compared to the standard tasks. This result did not support Light’s (1986) experiment where children in modified tasks performed significantly better than those doing the standard tasks. The reasons behind this result may be that the child does not have a correct grasp of the concept of more and less. Alternatively, the child, who is in  her preoperational stage, may genuinely lack the ability to conserve, as proposed by Piaget (White et al, 2005). A limitation behind this result may be attributed to the theory that the child may be perceptually seduced (Siegel, 2003). In essence, despite the transformation being â€Å"incidental†, the child still witnessed it taking place. Hence, child’s attention was diverted to the post-transformation state of the water â€Å"got bigger† in the taller, thinner bottle. Future research may incorporate the â€Å"incidental† transformation task that prevents the child from witnessing the process of transformation taking place. No evidence for linguistic misunderstanding was found in the current experiment. The child performed equally poorly in both standard and modified class inclusion tasks despite the removal of such confound. The result shows that even after introducing the concept of the family to the child with evidence of learning, she was still unable to comprehend that the â€Å"family† was a superordinate of class with subordinates of parent and baby horses. This finding does not support Meadow’s (1988) theory in that grasp of the relationship between superordinate and subordinates helps children perform better in class inclusion tasks. The child’s problem in all class inclusion tasks may be attributed to Piaget’s theory of centration whereby children in the preoperational stage are only able to attend to one aspect of the problem at a time (White et al, 2005). In this case, the child may be centrated on the old concept that there are more baby horses and disregard the new concept that the baby horses were a part of the â€Å"family†. Alternatively, the child’s performance may be hindered by their inability to comprehend more and less. A further limitation of the study was that results of the experiment were strongly hindered by the fact that the child was unable to comprehend when something is less. This confound creates ambiguity to the question whether child in the preoperational stage genuinely lack the ability in conservation and class inclusion tasks, or if the outcomes were attributed to their lack of logics with numbers. Future research could overcome this problem by comparing the results of preoperational children who are able, and unable to  correctly attend to the concept of more and less. An alternative way to overcome this problem is to employ age-specific linguistic cues in class inclusion tasks as opposed to using concepts of â€Å"more† and â€Å"less† (Siegel. 1978). Overall, the results of the study suggest that children in the preoperational stage do indeed lack the ability to correctly perform conservation and class inclusion tasks despite the removal of some confounds. However, the results were not clear cut to whether they were caused by child’s ability to comprehend to more and less or if they were perceptually seduced. Future research could compare children who are able and unable to attend to number logics, as well as modifying the class inclusion task to remove the confound of perceptive seduction. References Light, P. C.(1986). Context, conservation and conversation. In M. Richards. & P. Light (Eds.) Children of social worlds : Development in a social context. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press. Meadows S (1988) Piaget’s contribution to understanding cognitive development. In K Richardson & S. Sheldon (Eds.) Cognitive Development to Adolescence. Hove: Lawrence Erlbaum. Siegel, L., McCabe A., Brand J, & Mathews J (1978) Evidence for understanding of class inclusion in preschool children: Linguistic factors and training effects. Child Development, 49, 688-693. Siegal, M. (2003). Cognitive development. In A. Slater & G. Bremner (Eds.) An introduction to developmental psychology. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Chapter 8White. F, Hayes. B, Livesey. D (2005). Evaluating Piaget’s claims: Preoperational period. Developmental Psychology: From infancy to adulthood .Pearson Prentice Hall. Chapter 5

Answer Question Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Answer Question - Essay Example The FCFE approach pertains to the common stockholders. Unlike the FCFF, which incorporates the EBITDA, the ownership perspective holds that neither does EBITDA account for different capital frameworks nor does it account for cash flow from bondholders. Common stockholders argue that EBITDA fails to allow for adjustments from reinvesting cash flows to improve the value of the company in the long-term. Many financial analysts utilize historical data to establish the ex ante risk premium. Such an approach to predict future performance of stocks and bonds raises some validity concerns within the commercial markets. Besides being difficult to establish the data series and time period to use, some analysts argue that historical data is ambiguous and is not a legitimate method to forecast future returns. In addition, historical data sets are viewed as being independent to each other and are equally distributed over the time period. However, returns on investments are negatively correlated to each other. Statistical Stationarity: The previous financial performance may not indicate the future financial performance in a financial market. For example, in the U.S., changes in the stock market in the 20th century indicate a stationery return series. a. When the Return on Capital (ROC) reduces, the Return on Equity (ROE) significantly reduces, ceteris paribus. Shareholder equity forms part of investment capital. If the capital invested fails to realize the forecasted capital gains, the net income attributable to share holder equity significantly reduces. b. A decrease in leverage increases the return on equity. Reduced long-term debt stimulates capital investments based on shareholders’ equity; that is, low long-term debt induces investments based on shareholders’ equity. Capital investments based on shareholders’ equity would increase the return

Managing Organisation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Managing Organisation - Essay Example With this, they have generated difficulties to great performance for one and more reasons (Cox 2001, pg4). First, they have minimised the effectiveness of communication and thus increasing the disagreement among workers. This is due to the difference of the races of the people, in the workplace. They also go through low level of social desirability and display lower levels of commitment to the group, including increasing the cost of the organisation due to the discrimination that do exists in the workplaces. Other challenges include things like opposition to change as some of the group of individual may not wish to accept the idea that the workplace strategies have to be changed. These can also being in difficulty in the implementation of diversity at the place of work policies. These challenges can as well be an advantage to the organisation in such a away that the improve on the way the organisation solve their problems, they also increase the level of the originality and innovation of the workers within the organisation as they come across different people with different ideas thus influencing one another (Cox 2001,pg5). Other than that, the situations also increase the excellence of employees through better employment and maintenance of the worker. There is also variety of viewpoint as well as there will be increased effective execution of their tasks in the organisation. Question Two To establish good and workable principles and rules at any workplaces, one has to come up with the rules that imitate the essential information of a good management. With this, each of the branch managers in the organisation has to define the rules at the station by their own name according to the business requirement in the section of the organisation. This is the most practical way to implement the rules by the managers at the workplaces as the rule will be practical to every section at the organisation depending on their type of the work or responsibility that they are expected to undertake to facilitate the growth of the organisation as a whole. Question Three For any organisation to be able to deliver quality products to the customers, they have to adopt a culture that they can be using to ensure that they meet the requirement of their client (Waller 1998). The organisation have to design and execute organisation arrangement that is optimized, this is usually done by dividing the quality organisation into two self-determining bodies and highlighted empowerment and responsibility in their sections. These involve the quality system and the quality engineering, from which the management assess the quality of the product fully before releasing it out to the customers. For this to be more effective in an organisation, they have to ensure that the entire product to be delivered to the customer it is inspected by the system to certify that the product is of good quality as expected. REFERENCE Cox (2001): Challenge of Managing Diversity. Retrieved from http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/41/07879558/0787955841.pdf on 15th December pp 2-10 eller D.J (1998): Unfasten Culture for