American Psycho Review

Psycho is a cult movie based on the much controversial novel by Brett Gaston Ellis. Directed by Mary Harrow, it is a dark comedy and a clever satire of America in the 1 us that artfully connects conformity, materialism, misogyny, narcissism, classicism and superficiality. If you are a movie connoisseur and enjoy well directed stories, you should definitely not miss American Psycho. But this movie Is a bit difficult to assimilate as it is hard on your guts and your mind due to the obvious violence and gore, it is not for everyone, but definitely Is a work of art!The opening reedits are very artsy and one of the finest examples of cinematography Eve ever seen. The cranberry Juice Is very easily mistaken as drops of blood falling which Is a very subtle Imagery evoking sinister abstractions. The attention to detail Is almost Impeccable, from the dressing styles, the music culture, architecture, gadgets, the landscape, Interior decorations & design, to the movie texture. There Is a deep c haracter study of Patrick Bateman, who Is a suave yuppie working at Wall Street. This wealthy 27 year old working as Vice President in Pierce & Pierce becomes a psycho killer by evening.The character is portrayed by the flamboyant welsh actor Christian Bale whose performance was nothing less than chilling and sensational. Bale did a great job to bring out the split personality of Bateman. Bateman has many unusual traits. He is an attention-to-detail freak. During his elaborate morning routine, he even mentions why he doesn't use aftershave with little or no alcohol. Why? â€Å"Because alcohol makes your skin dry and makes you look older†. He is the epitome of narcissism which is why he HAS to look good and have the perfect body. He even video tapes his sexual escapades.His laconic manner of dialogues goes to suggest typical psychopathic behavior. There is a sever diversification and identity crisis depicted in the movie where Bateman desperately tries to stand out. Bateman wa s easily mistaken to be Halberds because they wore the same suits and went to the same salons. Another hilarious moment was when they were comparing their business cards and all of them were Vice presidents of the same firm! You know you are a Patrick Bateman when you are on the verge of murdering the other person if their business card is better than yours.Bateman dines at the nines of restaurants, wears only designer clothes, lives in an uptown Manhattan apartment overlooking the American gardens, goes to the best spas and tanning booths, gets off on cocaine and if these aren't enough to fill his hollowness, he resorts eating cooked brains of random strangers. He Is absolutely devoid of human emotions, those other than lust, greed and disgust. He kills his associate Paul Allen because Paul could get a reservation at some fancy restaurant and he couldn't! There are some disturbing scenes where he commits grisly murders of his friend Elizabeth, homeless person and his dog out of she er boredom.As the story unfolds, his blood thirst becomes more acute and he rampantly kills people In order to get noticed. This is when he starts to lose grip on reality and things become more surreal which suggests that the killings were in his head. There are many junctures in the movie where this is almost evident, for example the ATM machine read â€Å"Feed me a stray cat† and Bateman tried to insert the cat forcefully through the slot. By the end of the to convey? † Also did or did not Bateman kill all those people. But it is not a real story, he killings are clearly metaphorical.It mocks an era where women treated like garbage; people resorted to conformity & materialism and where the well-off folks were ‘busy listening to annoying music, getting high, eating gourmet meals and talking big. It has a subtle philosophical tangent too, it is not that life is pointless and therefore Bateman does evil, but instead that he does evil to prove (to himself) that life is pointless and his actions have no ramifications. Hence a society without a moral compass makes the environment congenial for psychopaths like Bateman to be born.

Obesity Essay Introduction Essay

In the process of evolution, a human body has adapted to accumulate a supply of nutrients in the amount of food for expending it in conditions of forced absence or restriction of provision. This kind of evolutionary advantage allowed us to survive in difficult times. In ancient period, fatness was considered as a sign of well-being, prosperity, fertility, and health. An example is the sculpture of Venus of Willendorf, dated 22nd millennium BC. E. A careful attitude to own weight is a trend of the present time. The lifestyle of a modern person is often far from what doctors and elementary common sense recommend. Constant stress and inability to have a good rest lead to one of the simplest and cheapest ways to relax like absorption of high-calorie food. As a result, a wide-scale disease in megacities becomes obesity, but it can be prevented by conducting regular laboratory diagnostics. Obesity is a widespread illness, characterized by excessive development of adipose tissue. The problem frequently occurs with age, when motor activity decreases, and a number of vital body systems fail. The genesis of fatness is mostly caused by a violation of the balance between energy intake and its expenditure of the body. Excess calories, i.e. not consumed by an organism, are converted to grease, which accumulates in fat stores. We are talking about subcutaneous tissue, epiploon, abdominal wall, internal organs, etc. An increase in fat stores leads to addition in body weight and disruption of many systems. The basis of an appearance of primary obesity is an alimentary factor associated with an enhanced energy value of the diet at low energy costs. The mentioned type develops as an output of the predominance in a menu of carbohydrates and animal grease or disruption of dietary patterns, which often carries a family predisposition. Calories contained in fats contribute more to weight gain than those involved in proteins and carbohydrates. Hypodinamy significantly reduces an ability of muscles to oxidize grease. Secondary fatness accompanies such hereditary syndromes as Babinsky-Frohlich’s disease, Gelino syndrome, Lawrence-Myan-Barde-Biddle syndrome, etc. Symptomatic obesity may also happen against a background of various cerebral lesions. Similar changes in eating behavior occur as a result of the violation of a hypothalamic-pituitary regulation, which is responsible for controlling behavioral responses. Their genesis is also facilitated by a number of factors, such as a low-activity lifestyle, genetically caused disorders of enzyme activity, errors in nature or dietary, some endocrine pathologies, stress, lack of sleep, and the use of psychotropic or hormonal drugs. Obesity’s presence within a certain patient entails the need for a number of laboratory tests necessary for finding out the reasons and an appointment of adequate therapy. Analyzes allow you to assess liver function, parameters of fat and carbohydrate metabolism, a state of the reproductive system, the functioning of the thyroid gland. Thus, every person suffering from fatness could have own motivation for weight loss: cosmetic effect, reducing the risk to health, improving efficiency, a desire to wear smaller clothes or a wish to look good. However, goals and its rates should be real and directed, first of all, to reduce dangers of obesity-related complications. With hereditary predisposition, at the age of 40 years, in conditions of hypodinamy, it needs to limit consumption of carbohydrates, fats, transit to the diet of protein and plant foods. For the prevention of obesity, a person with a normal weight is enough to spend calories and energy as much as he or she gets them during the day.

Changing Culture at Pizza Hut

Changing Culture at Pizza Hut and Yum! Brands, Inc. The concept of corporate culture has captured the imagination of executives for years. For executives struggling to manage organizational change, understanding their organization’s culture has become paramount before undertaking such a change. They realize that significant strategic and structural realignment cannot occur if it is not supported by the organization’s norms and values. Organization cultures are created by leaders and, therefore, one of the most important functions of a leader is the creation, management, and sometimes the destruction of a culture. An organization’s culture re? ects the values, beliefs and attitudes of its members. These values and beliefs foster norms that in? uence employees’ behaviors. Organizational cultures evolve imperceptibly over years. Unlike mission and vision statements, they are never written down, but are the soul of an organization. Cultures are collections of unspoken rules and traditions and operate 24 hours a day. They determine the quality of organizational life. Cultures determine much of what happens within an organization. While managers are aware of their organization’s culture(s), they are often unsure about ow to in? uence it. If cultures are powerful in? uencers of behaviors, they must be created. One way to analyze shared assumptions is by exploring top management’s answers to the following questions: 1. How do people in this organization accomplish their work? 2. Who succeeds in this organization? Who doesn’t? 3. How and when do people interact with one another? Who participates? 4. What kinds of work styles are valued in this organization? 5. What is expected of leaders in this organization? 6. What aspects of performance are discussed most in evaluations? The purpose of this article is to share with you how senior leaders at Pizza Hut in particular and at Yum! Brands, Inc. (Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC) in general answered these questions and were able to create a new culture after the restaurants were spun off from PepsiCo Inc. Culture change does not occur in a vacuum. It is an integral part of the company’s fabric. To change a company’s culture, rewards systems, leader behaviors, and organizational designs must be created Acknowledgments: This research was sponsored by a research grant from the OxyChem Corporation. The primary focus of this article is Pizza Hut and how Pizza Hut both generated and experienced the culture change at Yum! It is based, primarily, on the thoughts, re? ections and opinions of senior managers who experienced and helped communicate the changes discussed in this article. The authors would like to acknowledge the constructive comments made by Steve Arneson, Leon Avery, Chris Koski, Mike Rawlings and Don, and Leslie Ritter. 319 to support the change, as the experience of Pizza Hut demonstrates. THE SPIN-OFF AND PIZZA HUT Started in 1958 by the Carney brothers, Dan and Frank, Pizza Hut played a major role in turning pizza from an Italian specialty into a mass-market, mainstream food. Pizza Hut had developed a reputation for and commitment to product quality that was ‘‘built into the bones’’ of restaurant managers, and with it, great pride in the brand. By the mid 1990s, Pizza Hut had become a powerful brand, with some 8,000 U. S. -based restaurants, 140,000 employees and over $5 billion dollars in system-wide sales. One internal Pizza Hut market researcher estimated that over 90 percent of American pizza eaters had tried a Pizza Hut pizza. One of the key drivers of the success of Pizza Hut was PepsiCo. Along with KFC and Taco Bell, Pizza Hut was and had long been part of the PepsiCo Restaurant Division. PepsiCo had brought its national marketing muscle to the Pizza Hut brand, raising sales and increasing brand visibility. But it had also brought something that had a major impact on Pizza Hut: the PepsiCo management system. Even before Jack Welch made General Electric Co. ’s personnel management system the envy of American industry, PepsiCo had a reputation for producing great general managers. Its personnel planning system, shepherded by a set of organizational psychology Ph. D. consigliore in each of PepsiCo’s operating divisions, produced a stellar cast of professional managers. This system, layered on an existent Pizza Hut founding culture, was far from a natural ? t for the quick-service restaurant industry. PepsiCo was what Kerr and Slocum would call a market culture with a performancebased reward system. PepsiCo’s very fast moving, individually focused, consumerpackaged goods, entrepreneurial culture would prove not a great ? t for the relatively mature, slow-moving, team-oriented, quickservice restaurant business. 20 ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS The integration of these two companies, PepsiCo and Pizza Hut, resembled a failed vinaigrette: a large amount of oil slowly churning in one direction, overlaid by a thin layer of vinegar, a whirlwind of speed moving in the opposite direction. The vinegar represents the high-potential PepsiCo general managers rapidly moving among the many divisions and corporate of? ces of PepsiCo. Smart, ambitious, competitive and results-driven, they were attracted by PepsiCo’s ability to move them up fast and give them a breadth of management experience in different PepsiCo businesses. A rising star might spend two years in ? eld marketing at Pepsi Cola North America, a year and a half in product marketing at Frito-Lay, an additional 18 months as a product brand manager there, two years at Pepsi Cola International, followed by a senior director position in marketing at Taco Bell, etc. The bottom layer, the oil, represented the bulk of Pizza Hut’s operations, staffed by hard working, dedicated, long-tenured restaurant-focused operators who loved the Pizza Hut brand and the restaurant business. They were less likely to be at the top of their class in college and less likely in fact to have graduated from college. Many had started as cooks, or dishwashers or delivery drivers. Slowly, as they had mastered the complexity of running retail operations and built their experience, they would move up the system. A select few even reached the top of operations, where they shared leadership positions with PepsiCo general managers, some of whom had non-operational functional backgrounds (in ? nance, say, or even marketing,) and who were doing their ‘‘ops rotation. ’ This two-tiered system of PepsiCo ‘‘short termers’’ and Pizza Hut restaurant-dedicated ‘‘lifers’’ had a number of built-in tensions and misalignments, including:  Home office glorification: Business was done in the restaurants, but ‘‘the power and the glory,’’ as well as the field programs, all originated in corporate headquar ters, whether Pizza Hut’s in Dallas, Texas, Yum! ’s in Louisville, Kentucky or PepsiCo’s in Purchase, New York. Top management’s line of sight was focused away from the restaurants. Short-term mentality: The ‘‘up or out’’ of the PepsiCo professional management system, a reward system linking short-term results to individual rewards, created pressure to make one’s mark and make it quickly. Anything that took too long to build or was built for long-term impact was a hard sell.  Lack of continuity: The need for quick success and the relatively rapid turnover in headquarters management made for a ‘‘program of the month’’ mentality.  Finance first headset: ‘‘Making plan’’ seemed sacrosanct in PepsiCo’s results-driven organization. This was often perceived by the ‘‘restaurateurs,’’ and even by some franchisees, to be at the cost of commitment to long-term restaurant essentials like product and asset quality.  Passive resistance in the field: The perception of short-term focus combined with a ‘‘program of the month’’ mentality engendered, at its worst, a system of passive resistance in field operations—compliance without commitment. Field operators, especially franchisees, often felt secure in the knowledge that if they just delayed program implementation long enough, Pizza Hut management would turn over and the new group would charge out with the ‘‘next great idea. ’ A performance-based, consumer packaged goods company like PepsiCo was not a natural ? t with the restaurant business. But whether it was bad business ? t, strategic or culture misalignment, or simply lack of tolerance for the restaurants business’ relatively low m argins and slow growth (despite its huge cash ? ow), PepsiCo gave up on Pizza Hut and its restaurants, spinning off its entire restaurant division in 1997, under the name Tricon Global Restaurants, Inc. , now Yum! Brands. ALIGNING BUSINESS/ CULTURE Yum! anagement understood that they had to create a radically different culture than the one at PepsiCo if the new company was to succeed. PepsiCo is primarily a consumer packaged goods company. Direct interaction with consumers takes place through advertising, or is mediated by supermarkets and other retail and wholesale establishments. Marketing was king, and at the time of the spin-off, one of the kings of marketing, Roger Enrico, was the CEO. Tricon Global Restaurants, Inc. was a restaurant company. Hundreds of thousands of low-pay, high turnover front-line mployees interacted with millions of customers a week in some 30,000 restaurants around the world. Quality control was not in the hands of process manufacturing gurus as at Pepsi C ola or Frito-Lay, but in those of part-time, often teenage employees making discrete decisions about quality with every product served. This posed an enormously different challenge for top management at Yum! PepsiCo was a holding company. If general managers made their ? nancial numbers and grew their people, then headquarters people left each general manager alone to run his or her business. Synergies across various lines of business were simply not a high priority on PepsiCo’s strategic agenda. In the restaurant division, this resulted in three strong, independent consumer brands. In effect, the three restaurant brands were really three separate companies, with independent cultures, information technology (IT) systems, operations, ? eld management practices, human resource systems, etc. Yum! , saddled with a large debt by PepsiCo and in the relatively lower margin restaurant business, was in no position to economically justify itself as a holding company overseeing three independent restaurant businesses. It had to look for operating synergies, shared resources, etc. It had to be much more of an operating company. A shift from three independent companies to one company with three independent restaurant brands was required for ? nancial survival. Top management needed to meld three independent company cultures into one shared culture and one set of restaurant-focused values, built on a set of shared functions (e. g. , IT, bene? ts and compensation, legal). Succeeding at Pizza Hut could no longer be about making it to Purchase, New 321 York to work for PepsiCo. It had to be about making the customer experience in Pizza Hut restaurants great. David Novak, newly named vice chairman at Yum! had already started creating a restaurant-focused culture during his stint as president of KFC. Novak was fond of saying that he hated the term ‘‘culture’’ because it reminded him of germs. But his savvy understanding of how to build a restaurantfocused business culture was one of the reasons why he had been selected to run Yum! With little time between his selection and spin-off date, the new restaurant-focused culture was going to have to be jump-started. Launch date: October 7, 1997. CREATING THE CULTURE OF YUM! BRANDS Changing and integrating the culture of three companies with very strong founders, founding traditions and underlying assumptions about what constitutes success would be an enormous challenge, even after the homogenizing effects of PepsiCo culture were factored in. The actions that Yum! took to push its culture toward a desired end-state alignment with its business strategy and business model included: 1. Starting with a set of shared values to de? ne a culture across the three brands; 2. Founding the new company in a way that that embodied its new culture; 3. Using titles to signal intentions and signify new cultural meanings; 4. Creating a coaching management system to maximize restaurant performance; 5. Developing a recognition culture to reinforce cultural behaviors; 6. Realigning reward systems to validate and ‘‘walk the talk’’ on the values; and 7. Measuring the effectiveness and commitment of senior managers to the values. Starting with Shared Values The political philosopher, Hannah Arendt, trying to distinguish what was unique and 322 ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS uccessful about the American Revolution (vs. those of France, and Russia, for example), focused on the concept of founding— both as a source of authority and as a statement of the power and commitment that comes from being a founder. The founding that was America’s Revolution was encoded in two distinct documents: The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution . The former served to articulate those values that were distinct to America and the latter to codify them into workable systems and processes of government. Whether the leaders of Yum! ad read Arendt is unknown, but they intuitively understood the elements that had made the American experiment unique—and they incorporated them into the values statement and the launch of the new company. Rather than start with yet another statement of corporate values, they declared their differences with the ‘‘mother country,’’ that is, PepsiCo, with a set of ‘‘Founding Truths. ’’ The nine distinct statements in this one shared document were Yum! ’s ‘‘Declaration of Independence. ’’ They announced what Yum! would stand for, while at the same time differentiating the new company from its progenitor— he PepsiCo Restaurant Division. For example, one statement reads, ‘‘The RGM (Restaurant Gene ral Manager) is our #1 Leader . . . not senior management. ’’ Another reads, ‘‘Great Operations and Marketing Innovation Drive Sales . . . no ? nger-pointing. ’’ These two statements suggest both the direction Yum! wanted to take and the behaviors it wanted to avoid. Taken together, the nine statements clearly demarcate both the essentials of a genuinely restaurant-focused company and the differences between what employees could expect from Yum! and what the restaurants and their operators had resented in PepsiCo. The statement of shared values, Yum! ’s ‘‘How We Work Together’’ principles, doesn’t differentiate Yum! from its competitors. Values statements rarely can serve this role, and Yum! ’s restaurant-focused, but otherwise standard values certainly can’t: customer focus, belief in people, recognition, coaching and support, accountability, excellence, positive energy, teamwork—who could be against these? Instead, as we’ll demonstrate, they served more to structure processes and systems and stand as a code for measurable behavior. In other words, they served the role of the U. S. Constitution. And, like the Constitution, while the details of the document weren’t easy to remember, their impact was ubiquitous. The Founding The launch of a large, new public, U. S. -based company, whether from spin-off, merger or acquisition, usually follows a rather standard process. You ring the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange, throw a big launch event at corporate headquarters, presumably beamed live to division headquarters and by videotape to international locations, blare the news across the corporation’s internal media and push your best foot forward in the press. In this regard, the launch of Yum! followed the same format: Wall Street, a big event in Louisville, Kentucky, featuring the new Yum! Management team and the restaurant brand presidents, moderated by then ‘‘Good Morning, America’’ co-host Joan Lunden and beamed around the country. But if the launch was going to embody the culture, as enunciated in the ‘‘Founding Truths’’ and the ‘‘How We Work Together Principles,’’ with its principles of putting restaurants and their managers first, it was necessary to turn the usual launch format on its head. Yum! id this in three ways: by making local activities the center of the action instead of the headquarters event; by centering activities on restaurant managers, and by signing up those managers as ‘‘founders. ’’ The local events were focused primarily on enlisting local restaurant general managers in the new company. Activities centered on team-building exercises for the managers designed by Yum! ’s organizational and leadership development team. These were simple, but often powerful group activities. For example, the local event that one of the authors facilitated for some 200 participants in Miami, Florida, epresented the ? rst time that area Pizza Hut, KFC and Taco Bell managers had ever met together in one place. There were managers who ran restaurants of different brands, often adjacent to each other, who had never met! The simple act of sharing personal biographies and store histories created new connections. After two hours of team-building activities, the message that we were now one company, not three, and that we were part of a team together came across loud and clear. The national event reinforced the local event rather than the other way around. The invitation to and attendance primarily by restaurant managers told them they were important. This was reinforced by the national event which stressed the primary role of the RGM and introduced the ‘‘Founding Truths,’’ and it was graphically embodied in the new Yum! stock certi? cate, which featured one real manager from Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC on its front. The most powerful part of each local event was saved for the end. Each locality had been supplied with a large poster featuring the new companies ‘‘Founding Truths. ’’ The poster was put outside the event meeting room, along with a set of magic markers. The managers were invited, on their way out, to sign their names on the poster and to become a ‘‘founder,’’ but only if they agreed with the principles of the new company. They were told that no top managers would be there to watch, and that there would be no penalty for not signing. It was strictly voluntary. They were, in effect, invited to sign the company’s ‘‘Declaration of Independence,’’ and in doing so, make a public commitment to the culture and the company. Over 80 percent of the attending RGMs left their signatures. ‘‘Founder’s Day’’ as it is now called, has become a yearly event celebrating the culture of Yum! Titles Given the symbolic importance of titles, Yum! was smart enough to actively use title changes to signal culture changes. ‘‘Corporate Headquarters’’ was re-named 323 the ‘‘Restaurant Support Center,’’ signifying that the restaurants were the central focus of the company. Presidents of the KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut were, at least initially, re-named ‘‘chief concept officers,’’ signifying that there was now only one company with three concepts, not three companies. The entire above-restaurant management team also had their titles changed from ‘‘managers’’ to ‘‘coaches. ’ Area managers were now ‘‘area coaches,’’ operations directors were ‘‘market coaches’’ and division vice presidents became ‘‘head coaches. ’’ It was one thing to state that coaching was a company value—it wa s quite another to construct an entire management system based on coaching—to embed that value in the way the company worked. That was to be perhaps the biggest culture change of all. Coaching The idea that coaching could be something that all associates in a company could have to improve their performance, right down to the front lines, and that every manager had the capacity to coach may still appear radical, or at least improbable. Pizza Hut itself wasn’t even sure it could be done when it started the process. There were two incentives to create a coaching culture in operations: first, business growth had stalled and the company needed a jump-start and second, the PepsiCo management system was incongruent with the quick-service restaurant business. PepsiCo’s focus on individual, instead of team success, its short-term mentality and the intensely financial results driven culture had its strengths and its shortcomings. It was not a culture that could lead to sustained team performance in a restaurant. For example, under PepsiCo, management had been by exception. As Pizza Hut chief operating officer (COO) Aylwin Lewis put it before a national conference on coaching and mentoring, ‘‘If you’re a good performer, you get left alone; if you’re a poor performer, you get an action plan. ’’ In other words, getting the kind of management attention embodied in effective coaching and training to build 324 ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS managerial competencies was seen as a sign of failure. The short-term focus of PepsiCo’s management system had meant that fixing things quickly was a strength. But short-term fixes became dysfunctional for building longterm capabilities through coaching. Finally, the focus on individual instead of team performance made it difficult to coach. Coaching ultimately has to be about the team and the person to be coached. It can’t be about the personal success story of the coach. Coaching supported the restaurantfocused culture in a number of ways. First, it required physical proximity. It’s best done face-to-face. Coaching can’t be done very effectively from another state. That meant above-restaurant management would have to start spending time in the restaurants. Second, it required interpersonal and operational, as well as ? nancial competence. To coach a restaurant manager, you had to know the business at least as well as they did and know how to share that knowledge, or you’d be wasting their time. Shifting the basis of control to knowledge from command of resources and rewards would force ‘‘general’’ managers to become ‘‘restaurant coaches. ’’ Third, it required partnership. The coach can’t be successful and have the player fail. Market coaches, area coaches and restaurant managers were networking, mirroring the teamwork required in the restaurants. COACHING MAY BE THE RIGHT WAY TO GO—BUT HOW DO YOU GET THERE? The first 90 days: Before anything else had been done, job titles were changed. All operations vice presidents, directors and area managers became ‘‘coaches. ’’ That was the ‘‘changeable moment’’ that signaled to employees that a new mode of operating was inevitable. There was ‘‘boot camp’’ for the entire operations team. The fastest way to ensure that all managers could master and understand the skills of the average employee was to bring them together, make them re-learn the basics of the business of making pizza and then test them o their competence was ‘‘certified. ’’ While this was going on, the organizational development team was developing job maps and outlining roles, responsibilities, outcomes, and behaviors for the role of coach. With title, certi? cation and job map, the coaching culture was launched. A nd barely stayed a? oat. The epiphany on what wasn’t working occurred to Aylwin Lewis during a roundtable with area coaches in Columbus, Ohio. One of the area coaches looked at him and said, ‘‘You’ve changed our titles and you’ve given us training and said, ‘Now, I want you to be in restaurants 80 percent of the time. Okay, now what do you want us to do there? What do we do with all that time? ’’ Without any existing precedents for building a new management system based on coaching, it wasn’t immediately apparent that a model of coaching was needed. Coaching was a skill that had to be taught. People needed a model for how to coach. In PepsiCo, coaching wasn’t rewarded and therefore not practiced. A coaching culture model needed to be developed at Yum! It had to be practical, simple and action-oriented—it had to ? t the fast paced, high-turnover environment of the restaurant business. A teachable threestep process, with an easy to learn acronym, EAR, was developed: taught all market coaches, while the market coaches bypassed all area coaches and personally taught all restaurant managers. This simple method had huge implications for fostering a new culture at Yum!. First, it meant that all the coaches had to learn the coaching model well enough to teach it. Second, they had to demonstrate their commitment to it in order to teach it well, and were held accountable for achieving results. It would not have had the same impact if the training department employees had led the classes. Third, it put the one level down coaches (the direct supervisors of the students) on notice for accountability to their immediate subordinates. Fourth, operators were able to bring real-life examples into the role-plays, increasing the relevance, impact, usefulness and credibility of the coaching material. In addition to training, coaching logs were created in each restaurant to document each coaching session, its lessons and commitments. Audiotapes of coaching sessions were circulated to restaurant managers to provide real-life demonstrations. Creating a coaching culture had begun. Recognition Top managers learned from Southwest Airlines Co. the power of recognition to motivate employees, and to elicit positive discretionary behavior among employees. Southwest Airlines separates reward from recognition, celebrating behaviors that reinforce the culture, creating an elaborate, yet spontaneous process of positive behavioral feedback. Recognition is done by everyone, not just senior managers. This means that all levels of supervisors can recognize behavior, empowering those supervisors, but also ensuring that the recognition is timely, specific and meaningful to the person who receives it. There were three keys to building a successful recognition program at Pizza Hut: 1. Starting at the top; 2. Ensuring it was continuous and ongoing, and got built into communications; and 3. Reinforcing it publicly. 325 Exploring Observe/ask/listen Analyzing Facts? Isolated or pattern? Root cause? Responding Teach new skills and knowledge Provide feedback Offer support and gain commitment Operational leaders (not training personnel) would be responsible for teaching all coaching classes for those two levels down from them. For example, COO Aylwin Lewis bypassed head coaches and personally Starting at the top: David Novak, now chairman of Yum! , formerly president of Pizza Hut (and of KFC) single-handedly brought recognition to Pizza Hut. He said that he had learned the power of recognition during his job as chief operating of? cer at one of the PepsiCo divisions. His deep-seated belief in the power of recognition and his commitment to it made all the difference. Novak’s ? rst foray into recognition as president of a division occurred at KFC, where he created the ‘‘? oppy chicken’’ award. The award itself embodied the distinction between recognition and reward. It was one of those rubbery ? oppy chickens used for pranks or jokes that would be as likely to show up on Halloween as at any other time. In other words, it wasn’t valuable in and of itself—it wasn’t a watch, or a ring, fancy clock, tie tack, brooch, earrings, etc. Three things made it valuable as recognition. First, it was numbered. So it wasn’t just a ? oppy chicken. It was the #45 ? oppy chicken. Second, it was signed and had a personal message written on it. And third, a picture of the recipient and Novak was taken, framed and sent to the recipient. A $100 gift certi? ate was also given, but Novak was clear to point out that this was simply an add-on: ‘‘We know you can’t eat the chicken. ’’ At Pizza Hut, Novak started the ‘‘Big Cheese’’ award—a rubber cheese hat (similar to those worn by fans of the Green Bay Packers football team. ) This was also numbered, and personally inscribed. The recipient had to wear it while being photographed with the president. When Novak became vice chairman of Yum! at the spin-off, his successor as president of Pizza Hut, Mike Rawlings, continued the tradition. During his ? ve-year tenure, Rawlings handed out over 500 ‘‘Big Cheese’’ awards. The frequent tears, positive emotions and heartfelt gratefulness of the recipients were reinforcing for culture and for the giver. One author personally experienced the impact of getting the award in front of 600 employees at an ‘‘All-Team’’ meeting. The power of the award is in the public recognition. The author’s $100 gift certi? cate remains unspent. 326 ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS To create a recognition culture, rather than simply a recognition award, things couldn’t stop and start with Novak. He encouraged his immediate reports to create their own recognition awards, and they soon did. What followed was a slow process of osmosis, reinforced by the positive impact of recognition. For example, the chief operating of? cer created a recognition award and gave it out at all operations meetings. The positive feedback and public recognition that accompanied it built pride and goodwill amongst recipients and reinforced their positive behavior. The obvious and widespread positive feedback gave a reason for head coaches to create their own recognition awards for their meetings, and so on down the line right into the restaurants. Like osmosis, the spread of recognition was uneven and sometimes slow. But within three years, recognition awards were regularly appearing in restaurants, as managers used recognition to motivate front-line employees. And because the spread was spontaneous—never dictated by ‘‘corporate’’—and completely voluntary, there was a sense of ownership for the behavior. Recognition built deep roots. Those roots had the time to grow because once the recognition tradition started, the continuous, ongoing commitment of senior leaders kept it alive, front and center. Every public meeting included recognition awards on the agenda. Over time, the continuity of recognition starting generating a sense of anticipation and ‘‘pull’’ for awards. Within three years, recognition had become so routine and omnipresent that it lost any tinge of self-awareness and simply became ‘‘the way we do things around here. ’’ Rewards The balanced scorecard was the primary mechanism for allocating rewards and handing out bonuses for restaurant managers. Two changes to the reward system helped align it with the ‘‘Founding Truths’’ and ‘‘How We Work Together Principles’’ on which the new culture was based. First, people measurements were added to ? nancial measurements and customer measurements, reinforcing the ‘‘putting people ? rst’’ credo. It might have taken three years before all restaurant managers had been trained as coaches, but the scorecard was ? exible enough to allow for measuring the results of good coaching—such as reduced turnover—within a year. Second, in a move unprecedented in the industry, restaurant managers were given stock options as an outright block grant, and stock options were added to the list of performance incentives. Legally limited initially in the number of stock options it could award, Yum! chose to award its restaurant managers these options before their bosses, the area coaches, were able to get theirs. This powerfully reinforced the founding truth that the ‘‘RGM was #1,’’ and should act like an owner of the business. The symbolic value and the boost to management credibility was at least as important as the value of the options themselves. ?nancial of? cer of Yum! was let go, and his lack of cultural ? was cited as a reason, this sent a powerful signal that the cultural values of the company were important. RESULTS The nature of Pizza Hut’s business makes it very difficult to make causal links between the change in culture and changes in its business. For one thing, the main determinant of Pizza Hut sales is new product launches, somewhat orthogonal to culture as a sales determinant. For another, as a result of the spin-off, Yum! had been burdened with a hug e debt and was in the process of selling off its company-owned restaurants. This undoubtedly mpacted morale, potentially slowing the impact of culture change, and it may have skewed the same-store sales averages of the remaining restaurants, obfuscating the impact of culture. These points notwithstanding, during the ? rst four years of its culture change, Pizza Hut experienced record highs in same-store sales and a record low in restaurant manager turnover. In the ? ve years, from mid-1997 to mid-2002—when Pizza Hut was led by president Mike Rawlings, a time at the heart of the change in culture—same-store sales growth rose 19 percent, overall operating pro? doubled and margins improved to record highs. While these results may not have been caused directly by the change in culture, they were certainly consonant with it. ‘‘Founder’s Survey’’ results show strong belief in company leadership, commitment to and belief in the brand, and stro ng execution of the values at all levels. At the least, the changes in culture provided a strong foundation for and enablement of high performance. The management practices at PepsiCo and Yum! had a signi? cant impact on the cultures created in each organization. In a hologram, any fragment encapsulates the essence of the whole. Interpretations of a single management practice need to be consistent with the interpretation of other 327 Measurement ‘‘What gets measured, gets done,’’ is one of the oldest maxims of business. But when you’re trying to change a culture and using values to do it, what do you measure about the culture? Yum! answered this question in two ways. First, it created the ‘‘Founder’s Survey,’’ an annual company-wide survey that measured the company on its adherence to the ‘‘How We Work Together Principles. ’ All employees, except restaurant managers, were invited to participate, with participation rates in the mid-80 percentages. Results could be broken down by function and by levels, providing a picture on how different parts of the company perceived the company’s commitment to the culture. Managers were then required to come up with action plans for those areas where results were less than satisfactory. Second, Yum! created values-focused, 360-degree performance reviews, which were eventually pushed to the restaurant manager level. Individuals were held accountable for how they lived the values. When the chief management practices. Top managers at Yum! had the capacity to envision and enact a culture that inspired intense loyalty, strong commitment, increased productivity, and even greater pro? tability. To achieve consistency at Yum! and differentiate Yum! from PepsiCo, Yum! ’s top managers developed practices that were consistent with its culture. Cultural anthropologists for decades have studied the behaviors of members of numerous tribes. While each tribe might worship different ‘‘gods,’’ the behaviors of tribe members can be described using four concepts, all starting with the letter ‘‘T’’: Totems are things that are worshipped or prized; taboos are practices used to control or punish deviant behaviors or those not sanctioned by the tribe; traditions are practices that have been passed down through generations to preserve the status quo, and transitions (or rites of passages) are practices that serve to indoctrinate new members into the culture of the tribe. We summarize the differences in these four T’s between PepsiCo and Yum! n Table 1. Corporations have spent considerable amounts of money in response to consultants’ seductive promises of easy cultural change. Some managers have sought to replicate the strong cultures of successful companies, while others have tried to engineer commitment to a culture, in the hopes of increasing loyalty, productivit y, and/or pro? tability. Unfortunately, culture is rooted in the countless details of an organization’s life. How decisions are made, how careers are TABLE 1 Yum! Brands YUM! VERSUS PEPSICO: COMPARISON OF CULTURAL ARCHETYPESa TOTEMS Focus of attention: TABOOS Results without values ‘‘Quick hits’’ TRADITIONS Recognition TRANSITIONS Pizza ‘‘certification’’ and other ‘‘boot camps’’ for making products Becoming a ‘‘founder’’ Restaurants Team players Operations/marketing partnership Focus on people Effective operations Division interdependence Retail mentality Financial results Values without results Individual stars Lack of upward mobility Marketing is king Long-term projects without short-term results Not making a plan Coaching Restaurant General Manager is #1 Values driven Specialization PepsiCo People career Quarterly financial planning results review Move up or out Cross-functional rotations to build general managers Strong brand mentality Making a plan Division independence Wholesale/distribution mentality a This table is not meant to be a de? nitive anthropological statement. Rather, it represents perceptions of the differences between Yum! and PepsiCo corporate cultures. Note as well, that Yum! ‘‘traditions’’ tend to be founding behaviors and values created at its spin-off and continuously reinforced in systems, processes and leadership communications over its existence. 28 ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS managed, how rewards are allocated—each small incident serves to convey some aspect of the organization’s culture. The founders of Yum! did not want to create a culture that perpetuated their own values and sense of immortality and stayed away from quick ? xes. What is the soul of Yum!? First, forget the numbers. Internal competition end s up making people less committed, creative, and caring. In the restaurant business, the lack of these three C’s leads to poor customer service, which ultimately affects store pro? tability. Second, people need appreciation. Big cheeses and other tokens of appreciation for talented high performers are an integral part of maintaining a strong culture. 329 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY For selected works on corporate culture and its impact on organizational performance, see Harrison Trice and Janice Beyer, The Cultures of Work Organizations (Prentice-Hall, 1993); Joanne Martin, Cultures in Organizations (Oxford University Press, 1992); Edgar Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 2nd ed. (Jossey-Bass, 1992); Jackie Freiberg and Kevin Freiberg, NUTS! Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success (New York: Bard, 1966); James Higgins and Craig McAllaster, ‘‘Want Innovation? Then Use Cultural Artifacts that Support It,’’ Organizational Dynamics, 2002, 31, 74–84; Jeff Kerr and John Slocum, ‘‘Managing Corporate Cultures through Reward Systems,’’ Academy of Management Executive, 1987, 1, 99–108; and Jennifer Chatman and Karen Jehn, ‘‘Assessing the Relationship Between Industry Characteristics and Organizational Culture: How Different Can They Be? ’ Academy of Management Journal, 1994, 37, 522–553. Barry Mike is vice-president, internal communications, for the investment management ? rm T. Rowe Price. He previously spent seven years as director, internal communications at Pizza Hut. During his tenure there, he helped communicate his way through three presidents, one spin-off, one major restructuring, a downsizing, and a major culture shift. He has also worked closely during his career with the chairmen of Digital Equipment Corporation and Bell Atlantic. Mike’s educational background includes two master’s degrees as well as completion of his course work for a Ph. D. in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania. In May 2001, he received his M. B. A. with honors from the Executive M. B. A. program at the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University (SMU). John W. Slocum Jr. holds the O. Paul Corley professorship in management at the Cox School of Business, Southern Methodist University. He serves as the co-director for SMU’s Corporate Director’s Institute and is chairperson for the management and organizations department at the Cox School. He is the author of more than 24 books, over 130 articles, and has worked as a consultant in the human resources area for many Fortune 500 companies, including Lockheed Martin, IBM, and Aramark, among others. Currently, he is co-editor of the Journal of World Business, Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies and associate editor of Organizational Dynamics. 330 ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS

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The half-life elimination period is three to four hours (Koenig, 2001). Metoprolol will be excreted through the urine with the percentage of 3% to 10% as an unchanged drug (DailyMed, 2006). According to the explanation of the doctor, metoprolol is metabolized in the liver by the cytochrome P450 2D6. Therefore, metabolization of the drug depends on the genetic polymorph that determines the hepatic hydroxylation rate. Metoprolol is excreted by the kidney as metabolites and is absorbed within seventy-two hours by glomerular filtration. The patient is further informed that while he is taking metoprolol, he is advised not to take in any other medicine. He should follow the correct dosage at the right time, in other words, the patient is not allowed to change the dosage or the time hes supposed to take the medicine. The medicine should not be taken in with an antacid (DailyMed, 2006). The patient will feel fatigue or dizziness. He should inform the doctor any changes like unusual weight gain or muscle fatigue, swellings of any part the extremities, constipation or should he develop a cough. The patient should maintain a blood pressure of less than 140/90mm Hg. He should take his pulse prior to taking metoprolol orally. The patient will be able to keep himself healthy and fit if he continues to follow the doctors prescription. The systolic and diastolic blood pressure (BP) will be lower when the patient follows the intake of metoprolol as prescribed by the doctor (Koenig, 2001). After eight weeks, the patient came to visit Dr. Robert Jones and had his blood pressure is already 120/80 and his glomerular filtration rate value remains at the normal level. The patient is instructed by the doctor to constantly maintain a healthy diet, regularly exercise and take note of his blood pressure everyday (Koenig, 2001). References: Dailymed (2006). METOPROLOL TARTRATE and HYDROCHLOROTHIAZIDE   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   TABLETS, USP50 mg/25 mg, 100 mg/25 mg and 100 mg/50 mgBeta   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Blocker/Diuretic Antihypertensive. Retrieved February 8, 2008, from   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   http://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/fda/fdaDrugXsl.cfm?id=2522type=display Indian Journal of Pharmacology. (2008) Metoprolol Pindolol: A comparative study in   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   essential hypertension. Retrieved February 8, 2008, from http://www.ijp-online.com/article.asp?issn=02537613;year=1990;volume=22;issue=2;spage=85;epage=88;aulast=Gugli;type=0 S.K. Hildemann, H. Fischer, D. Pittrow, V. Bohlscheid (2002). Metoprolol Succinate SR Plus  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Hydrochlorothiazide (Beloc-Zok ® Comp) in Patients With Essential Hypertension in   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   General Practice. Medscape Today. Retrieved February 10, 2008, from   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/444414_1 Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center College of Medicine (2006). Essential   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Hypertension. Retrieved February 10, 2008, from   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   http://www.hmc.psu.edu/healthinfo/e/essentialhypertension.htm National Kidney Function (2008). Glomerular Filtration Rate (GFR). Retrieved from   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   February 10, 2008, http://www.kidney.org/kidneydisease/ckd/knowGFR.cfm Wolfgang Koenig, on behalf of the Multicentre Study Group, Department of Internal   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Medicine II-Cardiology, University of Ulm Medical Center, Ulm, Germany   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   (2001). Efficacy and Tolerability of Metoprolol Tartrate in Patients With Mild-to-   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Moderate Essential Hypertension: A Randomised, Double-Blind, Multicentre   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Trial. Retrieved from February 10, 2008, from   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/406240

Influence of Diaspora on Bosnia and Hercegovina

Influence of Diaspora on Bosnia and Hercegovina In order for us to understand and elaborate on the concept of diaspora, firstly we need to define it. The term diaspora is assigned to groups of people with an ethnic belonging which were forced to leave their original and traditional home country under certain pressures. The people that left their home towns later settled down all around the world in smaller geographic areas. In an attempt to define diaspora, William Safran gives 6 main characteristics of this phenomenon: â€Å"1) they, or their ancestors, have been dispersed from a specific original centre to two or more peripheral, or foreign, regions; 2) they retain a collective memory, vision, or myth about their original homelandits physical location, history, and achievements; 3) they believe that they are notand perhaps cannot be fully accepted by their host society and therefore feel partly alienated and insulated from it; 4) they regard their ancestral homeland as their true, ideal home and as the place to which they or t heir descendants would (or should) eventually return when conditions are appropriate; 5) they believe that they should, collectively be committed to the maintenance or restoration of their original homeland and to its safety and prosperity; and 6) they continue to relate, personally or vicariously, to that homeland in one way or another, and their ethno communal consciousness and solidarity are importantly defined by the existence of such a relationshipThe status of diaspora can also be related with a minority, for example a religious minority. In later years, scholars made differences between the types of diaspora and they vary from causes such as trade or labour migrations, imperialism, politics and economy. In this essay, I will focus only on the political, economic and social ties that Bosnian diaspora has on its country and the contribution that it receives. The number of Bosnians that live outside of the country is estimated to be 38 percent of the whole Bosnian population or in other words, 1.4 million Bosnians. The number one reason of the fled of population is the tragic war that occurred in these areas. Around 800000 people left the country in just two years, from 1993-1994. (Kupiszewski 2009: 437). Even after the Dayton Peace Agreement was signed in 1995, migration of people out of the country continued. There is a great number and maybe even a majority of young diaspora that is very talented and educated. One of the speculations about this trend of outward migration is closely linked to the unstable economy and political growth. Although the socio-economic situation is improving and becoming closer to the European countries, it still faces many problems and one of them is the lack of job opportunities. In 2010 Bosnian and Hercegovina had an unemployment rate of 27, 2% according to the Agency for Statistics. This rate was the large st amongst people who were between the age of 15-24, it was at a rate of 57, 5%. These tragic statistics force young generations out of the country in search for a job and better economic opportunities. The average amount of money that comes into Bosnia from the diaspora in one year is estimated to be around 3.1 billion Convertible Marks. The remittances from diaspora are 6 times larger than foreign direct investments and 3 times larger than the help that the international community gives to Bosnia and Hercegovina. When talking in economic and business terms, there has been a conclusion that people in Bosnia that receive help from diaspora are more likely to open and start a business of their own than the people living in the rural parts of the country receiving no help from anybody on the outside. Therefore, remittances surely have a positive effect on employment in this case. As it is visible, a lot of households depend on diaspora for their survival. One of the strategic document s that have been implemented is the strategy of development of science in Bosnia and Hercegovina 2010-2015. This strategy suggests that a big number of diaspora is willing to engage in the fields of scientific research. Two activities under this strategy were more visible than others where one of them is the creation of laws that allow unbothered transfer of knowledge and technologies and the engagement of foreign scientists in domestic scientific research, as well as engaging Bosnian researchers that live outside of the country. The second activity is related to enabling institutions in BiH that scientists from the Diaspora awarded the status of an associate scientific advisor .There exists another strategy that deals with development in Bosnia and Hercegovina and under its principles there is a suggestion of creating favourable conditions for attracting investments, savings and remittance measures from diaspora. In order for our country to prosper, a great deal of help is needed f rom our diaspora. The option of using diaspora and potential diaspora can be a strong force in economic development and in the creation of new jobs, entrepreneurship opportunities, new technologies, sciences and in the development of the whole society in general. A big role in the creation and implementation of policies in the field of migration play government institutions. They deal with some of the questions that diaspora poses both at the level of entities and Brcko Distrikt. The Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia and Hercegovina has the direct jurisdiction when it comes to diaspora. These ministries deal with the issues of protecting human rights and the rights of the refugees both in their home country and in the host country as well as questions that are closely related to migration. The sector for migration has the key role of appointing and determining the politics and its translation towards diaspora. In this sector there are only 10 people who deal with a wide spectre of questions dealing with how to make cooperation with diaspora organizations possible. They coordinate activities in the field of agriculture, culture, sports, science and educational cooperation. These organizations also give information and possibility of expert help to the diaspora in realizing their abilities in protecting their rights in Bosnia and Hercegovina. Organizations offer and give professional help to many incentives and they are familiar with European policies in the fields of migration and they have a clearer picture of its activities. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has greater power towards the diaspora whose job is also to encourage, develop and coordinate cooperation with diaspora from BiH. Other ministries and government organizations need to work together in realizing strategies for the further development of cooperation between host countries and with the home countries of the diaspora. It is necessary to streng then actions in the fields of common interest. Besides governmental organizations, there are many non-governmental organizations which act together in conducting and creating politics in the spheres of migration. These organizations are more focused on the sustainable return and the protection of refugees as well as illegal migrations, trafficking of people, the questions of asylum, and dealing with the issues of borders. The main focus here is therefore the politics of migration and its development. The cooperation between the Sector for Diaspora works well with non-governmental sectors and international organizations which will in the future result in a larger amount of programs that will contribute to the promotion and development of migration politics. Under the Ministry of Human Right an analysis has been done to identify positive and negative factors that affect the possibilities of BH diaspora in participating in the development of their country. There are many factors that a re involved here, both external and internal factors. Some of the strengths are highly professional, motivated staff, a well-defined internal structure of sectors, good knowledge about European and world politics in the spheres of migration and development, and professional guiding of the sectors as well as a clear vision of functioning. The possibilities here are to create heterogeneity of diaspora with the levels of qualification which make possible the creation of a wide spectre of incentives. There is also the possibility of the return of qualified people, and the interest of diaspora to help in the development of their home country is existent. Another factor that contributes to the development is a good cooperation between international organizations in BiH that deal with migration. The weakness of Bosnian diaspora in helping its country are a small number of staff in the sector, the absence of strategical documentation that would define the priority fields of action towards d iaspora, stressing its potential of development. The threats that are present are the divisions of diaspora according to national and ethnic belonging. Also, there is not enough awareness of the potential that diaspora can bring to their home lands in terms of development. A lot of Bosnian population started feeling this sentiment towards their home lands and wish to return. Within them resides a nostalgic feeling. It is a fact that it is more difficult to live with other foreign nationalities and to be part of a culture that you do not belong to, therefore, people that left Bosnia and Hercegovina wish to return to their home cities and be surrounded by friends and family, be a part of their own culture and speak their own language. The only obstacle here is the under-development of BiH and people are aware of that. They do not want to return to a land where they have opportunities to prosper and grow. In order for this to change, internal changes need to be made first starting from the political issues facing this country and then moving on to its economy. Finally to conclude, we can surely say that Bosnian diaspora plays a big role in helping Bosnia and Hercegovina growth, both economically and politically. Diaspora opens a new window of opportunity for businesses to grow and for research sectors to prosper with highly educated intellectuals and individuals. The remittances from diaspora cannot be compared with other investments coming from certain organizations and institutions. Because many households depend on this help from outside, relations between host countries and home lands need to be fostered. References: Anon, (2014).(Blog)Available at: http://amardeepnotes.blogspot.com/2010/06/william-safran-on-diasporas.html (Accessed 15 May. 2014) Cigler, B. (2013) Dijaspora-posve neiskoristena sansa. (online) Al Jazeera Balkans. Available at: http://balkans.aljazeera.net/vijesti/dijaspora-posve-neiskoristena-sansa (Accessed 15 May. 2014) Mhrr.gov.ba.(2014).(online)Available at: http://www.mhrr.gov.ba/iseljenistvo/istrazivanja/default.aspx?id=1810langTag=bs-BA (Accessed 15 May. 2014) Perco, A. (2014) Pomoc dijaspore kao razvojna sansa BiH(online) Novovrijeme.ba Available at: http://novovrijeme.ba/pomoc-dijaspore-kao-razvojna-sansa-bih/ (Accessed 15 May. 2014) Valenta, M and Ramet, S. (2011). The Bosnian Diaspora. 1st ed. Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate

Chinas Cultural Revolution: Reforms in the Education System

Chinas Cultural Revolution: Reforms in the Education System The period of the Cultural Revolution in China (1966-1969) witnessed a massive effort by the Maoist leadership to engineer the socialist transformation of Chinese society, one of the area most radically affected by the Cultural Revolution was the Chinese educational system. The Great Leap Forward has brought about much economic instability and lack of agricultural production, leading to the great famine. The goals and policies imposed by the government during the Cultural Revolution greatly decentralized the educational system and shifted focus from an industrial intensive production to an agricultural production. Although many rural schools continued to function throughout this period, formal education virtually ceased in the urban areas. In this paper, we will first take a look at the three main objectives in the educational reforms. With this general background description of the program, we hope to explain some of the goals that the Communist partied hoped to achieve. The second section of this paper will discuss the means that China employed to carry out the three main objectives, analyzing the decentralized manner in the implementation process and the structural impact it had on the educational system. Finally, we will evaluate the repercussion and critiques these reforms had on students and the society as a whole. Educational Reforms The Cultural Revolution had three basic objectives in reforming the educational system. In terms of the content of education, the first objective was to intensify ideological education so as to raise the political consciousness of the students. The second objective was to integrate theory and practice in the educational process in order to make education more responsive to the immediate production needs of the country. In terms of the scope of the educational system, the third objective was to popularize education, especially in the rural areas of China.[1] Prior to the Cultural Revolution, it seems that there was a tendency in Chinese education to emphasize technological and professional training often at the expense of the socialist revolution as envisioned by Chairman Mao. In 1956, with the exception of the third year of senior middle school in which a section of the constitution class was held each week, it was reported that political classes were entirely cancelled. This trend was further reinforced after the Great Leap Forward when educational policy emphasized more study and less work and politics. This general educational policy seems to have led to the consolidation of an elite technocracy drawn largely from the educated bourgeois elements of the past. Thus, the most important goal of educational reform in the Cultural Revolution was to mobilize the students and raise to a higher level their awareness of class contradictions still existing in Chinese society. As Mao made clear, all work in school is for changing the thinking of the student.[2] This educational objective was part of the massive effort of the Cultural Revolution as a whole to revitalize the commitment of the country to the socialist transformation of society. The economic objectives of the educational reforms of the Cultural Revolution should be seen within the context of the overall strategy for economic development. The emphasis on integrating theory with practice, or education with production, was not new in itself. The Ministry of Education stated explicitly in 1950 that the purpose of institutions of higher learning in the Peoples Republic of China is to train high level specialists for national reconstruction in accordance with the principles of the Cultural and Educational policy included in the Common Program of the Peoples Political Consultative Conference of China, and using a method which combines theory and practice. These specialists will have advanced standards of culture, will master modern science and technology, and will have total dedication to serving the people.[3] However, the way in which theory was linked to practice was quite different from that which Mao had in mind for the Cultural Revolution. And the problem her e was not simply one of implementation but of basically different concepts of economic development. From 1949 to 1958, Chinas strategy for economic development essentially followed that of the Soviet model, which stressed the growth of heavy industry at the expense of light industry and agriculture. As bottlenecks began to form, China began searching for alternative developmental strategies. Thus, the Great Leap Forward was an attempt to mobilize the masses on a large and intensive scale to break the bottlenecks in the economy. While this strategy as a whole failed, it marked the point at which China changed from its previous strategy to one placing relatively more emphasis on rural development. This change in developmental strategy brought a basic change in the definition of what practice constituted in the educational process. In one case, it meant working in the industrial sector primarily in a technological capacity, while in the other, it meant working in the fields to increase rural production. Thus, in the former case, linking theory and practice meant training more highly s killed specialists to advance the technology for Chinas heavy industry, while in the latter, it meant training less-highly skilled generalists in less time to meet the local production needs of the rural sector. Thus, the economic objectives of the educational reforms were oriented primarily to the development of agriculture and light industry. Up until 1966, educational opportunities, particularly at the higher levels, remained unduly concentrated in the big cities. The rural areas, despite some improvements since 1949, did not benefit from educational expansion to nearly the same degree as the urban areas.[4] In fact, according to a Russian source, after initial success at popularization of educational opportunities between 1950 and 1958, the number of students at all levels of education decreased markedly from 1960 to 1965. It was also said that Liu Shaoqi admitted that in the 1965-66 school year approximately 30% of the children in China were not covered by a system of primary education.[5] This bleak picture was partially confirmed by the Peoples Daily report that in 1965, 30 million school-aged children were not in school, most of them being rural children.[6] Thus, one of the major objectives of the educational reforms was to correct this situation by increasing the number of schools in the rural areas and initiating a large scale recruitment of peasants and workers into the existing educational system. Means of the Reforms The implementation of educational reforms was carried out via a decentralized process, as most schools were placed under local management. In fact, it was reported in 1973 that each school had its own Revolution in Education Committee responsible not only for implementing reforms but also for part of the planning process within its own institution.[7] So it would seem that local experimentation within the general framework of the new educational policies was encouraged. Experimentation was seen as necessary primarily because of the emphasis on adopting flexible methods to meet the diverse needs of different schools and regions. We will identify below the major guidelines regarding the implementation of the educational reforms, as well as describe some of the different ways the reforms were implemented. In order to elevate the political consciousness of the students, the curriculum was heavily stocked with political education courses. The major texts used were drawn from the works of Mao. Aside from increasing the number of political course, other courses also drew upon Maos thoughts to explain various approaches to the analysis of whatever phenomenon was involved.[8] This reliance on Maos thoughts was essentially the concept of putting politics in command of knowledge. At the same time, revolutionary mass criticism and class struggles were actively promoted to bring into sharp relief the various contradictions in society from a more personal perspective. The principal means of linking theory and practice in the educational process were to make production labor a major part of the students curriculum and to direct research to meet local needs. These methods were based on the concept of practical training, although their implementation in China seems to have gone far beyond that prac ticed by other countries. In the rural areas, students would spend much of their time working in the fields and learning from the peasants. The training of the students included clearing marginal lands, planting and harvesting, working on the construction of water conservation projects and irrigation systems and so on. [9]Research in turn was directed towards increasing the crop yield and the mechanization of the local production units. What the specific tasks would be depended on the particular needs of a given locality. As for the urban sector, secondary and higher learning institutions were reported to have set up local factories within the schools not only to train students in practical work, but also to engage in significant production work. In other cases, factories and schools established ties with one another so as to direct the research of the latter to the needs of the former, making possible the immediate application of new findings. At the same time, veteran workers were often brought to the schoo ls to teach in certain areas and students worked at the factories for practical training. Some factories even established schools of their own, although this method seems to have more or less faded out. In brief, the educational reforms designed to attain the economic objectives basically gave the students more practical training and actual work in production than did the previous educational system. It was said that prior to the Cultural Revolution, peasants and workers had much difficulty attending schools because of such obstacles as high entrance examination standards (primarily for colleges and universities), high costs and expenses, inaccessibility since most schools were located in the cities, conflict of class schedules with local production time tables, and the lack of direct and immediate relevance of the courses offered to local production needs. As a result, educational opportunities were still not extended to many in the country living in the rural areas. During the Cultural Revolution, many of the reforms were implemented specifically to erase such barriers to education. Some of the broad guidelines for popularizing education were: 1) lowering educational standards, thus making possible the large scale recruitment of peasants and workers into the existing educational system, and especially to higher learning institutions; 2) lowering educational fees and expenses; 3) shortening the number of years for a basic education, usually from a 6-3-3 to a 5-2-2 system, while higher education was usually reduced from four or five years to two or three years (this allowed more to enter the educational system since less time would be taken off needed production work and the school population would be reduced for a given amount of students going through); 4) promoting popularly-sponsored schools-this expansion occurred mainly in the rural areas and was limited basically to the primary school level; 5) adapting curriculum and schedules to local req uirements; and 6) simplifying teaching materials.[10] Within these reform guidelines, however, schools at all levels could experiment with different ways of implementing the reforms. For example, Peking University with its more carefully selected students continued to have higher standards of education than many other colleges and universities. However, an attempt was made to lessen the gap.[11] Or with regard to popularly sponsored schools, there arose mobile schools, spare-time schools, half-work, half-study schools and so on. Furthermore, the specific curriculum of each school, except perhaps for the political education courses, varied according to the needs of the particular region. Thus, the popularization of education was carried out under a flexible and decentralized educational system. Repercussion of the Reforms While the drastic educational reform measures have given peasants opportunities to attain basic education in rural areas, as well as agricultural production and political gains, it naturally came with lasting negative impacts that promoted many post-modernists critiques. In the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, values like collaboration, diligence, modesty, and respect for elders and teachers were discarded as a result of the purge of the old Chinese cultures and traditions. Many have failed to retain the virtues during the revolution. Second, due to political struggle and line drawn between working classes and intellectuals, as well as political and violent nature of the social revolution, substantial innocent teachers and professionals were subjected to personal attacks and humiliation, some even executed. Third, specific strategies of the reformed curriculum and examination system proved to be misguided and wasted the schooling of many young people. The disconnection between a cademic achievement and students future career, the emphasis on political correctness over academic achievement, and the neglecting of theory learning and over-emphasis on hands-on experiences were all examples of poor decisions. Fourth, the Cultural Revolution both liberated students and dominated them. It liberated students and people because it opened their eyes to the inequality existing in education and society; However, it imposed political control and dominated them because it did not allow real democratic, independent and critical thinking ability.[12] As Freire (1970) put it, If teachers help students from oppressed communities to read the word but do not also teach them to read the world, students might become literate in a technical sense but will remain passive objects of history rather than active subjects.[13] Conclusion The Cultural Revolution opened peoples eyes but imposed the governments intentions on the people and dictated their thinking. Thus, people were forced to follow the governments ideology. In accordance with the three objectives set forth by the Communist Party, strategies were carried out in a decentralized manner that placed significant amount of decision making on local management. To raise political awareness, much of the curriculum were inspired by Maos thinking. His principles such as practice training were also preached to the students, which compliments well with the second objective; to integrate theory and practice while increasing agricultural production. At the time, schools and factories were tightly assimilated, as much of the students from urban areas were organized to work in rural areas, in order to experience the real China and raise consciousness on the large class segregation that existed. Lastly, with adjustments to the curriculum schedules, time commitment, academ ic and financial requirements, the barriers to entry were significantly reduced for many rural youths. Basic education was finally attainable by peasants and popularized in the rural area. However, this caused a reduction of higher education and development of specialized skilled workers in the urban area, in accordance with the focus on agricultural production rather than industrial production. The extremist nature of the reforms achieved by China was unlike what other countries could have accomplish. While political agendas and production goals were met, it came at a great cost to students that lasted through the generation. Connections to their ancestors culture and virtues were cut in favor of Maos thinking and the way of the new China. This led to activities that post-modernists could consider contradictive to the development of humanity, which was evident in the case of innocent individuals who retained the old culture or decided against Maos thinking were humiliated or executed. Students freedom of critical thinking was taken away, replaced by political correctness and over-emphasis on hand-on experiences, ultimately hindering their theoretical knowledge and future career development. Bibliography Seybolt, Peter. Editors Introduction, 1971 Huey, Alison B. The Revolutionary Committee of Peking Middle School #31, 1970 Gardner and Idema, Chinas Educational Revolution, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1973 Klepikoy, V. Z. The Fate of Public Education in China, Sovetskaia Pedagoka #8, 1968, translated by J.ÂÂ   Barry Eliot, CE 1 Peoples Daily, Chinas Educational Revolution, 1965 McCormick, Robert. Revolution in Education Committees, The China Quarterly #57, 1974 Wuyuan Rev. Comm. et al., A New Type of School That Combines. Theory with Practice, 1968 Yu-lin Special Region Rev. Comm. and Kuei-ping Rev. Comm, Train Workers to Have Socialist Consciousness and Culture, 1970, Wan, Guofang. The Educational Reforms in the Cultural Revolution in China: A Postmodern Critique, 1998. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED427419 Lankshear, C. and Mclaren, P.L. Critical Literacy, New York: State University of New York Press, 1993 Shor, I. Empowering Education, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992. [1] Peter Seybolt, Editors Introduction, 1971, p. 4. [2] Alison B. Huey, The Revolutionary Committee of Peking Middle School #31, 1970, p. 206. [3] Seybolt, p. 4. [4] Gardner and Idema, Chinas Educational Revolution, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1973, p. 257 [5] V. Z. Klepikoy, The Fate of Public Education in China, Sovetskaia Pedagoka #8, 1968, trans, J. Barry Eliot, CE 1, p. 42. [6] Peoples Daily, Chinas Educational Revolution, 1965, p. 258. [7] Robert McCormick, Revolution in Education Committees, The China Quarterly #57,1974, p. 133. [8] Wuyuan Rev. Comm. et al., A New Type of School That Combines. Theory with Practice, 1968, p. 24-31 [9] Yu-lin Special Region Rev. Comm. and Kuei-ping Rev. Comm, Train Workers to Have Socialist Consciousness and Culture, 1970, p. 40-45 [10] Gardner and Idema, p. 279-280. [11] Ibid., p. 286. [12] Wan, Guofang. The Educational Reforms in the Cultural Revolution in China: A Postmodern Critique, 1998. [13] Lankshear, C. and Mclaren, P.L., Critical Literacy, New York: State University of New York Press., 1993