Banglalink Hr Preview

Orientation to the Report ————————————————- Chapter 1 Introductory Part 1. 1  Ã‚  Ã‚   Origin of the Study The report on HR Management & Development of Banglalink is to be conducted for Ms. Tasnima Aziza, Course Instructor, Human Resource Management, Institute of Business Administration, Jahangirnagar University. Ms. Tasnima orally authorized us to conduct the study of various functions of HR in an existing corporate company to develop our understanding of Human Resource Management as for the partial fulfillment of BBA program. 1. 2  Ã‚  Ã‚   Studying Objectives 1. 2. 1 Broad objective Understanding the features of HRM in real business situation, going beyond the academic theories to develop our career and education in the professional organization. 1. 2. 2 Specific objective Learning and developing the ideas of business practices observing the various integrated proces ses of Human Resource Management under the company â€Å"Banglalink†. Identifying the business nature of the HR functions is the core of our study. 1. 3 Scope of the Study The report cannot say anything about the internal technical matter of the HR Programs (Database of compensation, reward, performance appraisal) of Banglalink. The report also does not cover elaborately HR planning because every company has its own secret workforce planning recipe. 1. 4 Limitations 1. 4. 1 Lack of HR evaluation experience As we are in our very preparatory part of the HRM course, it is difficult for us to make the assessment more complete. 1. 4. 2 Restricted area of information There were some restrictions to have access to the information confidential by concern authority. 1. 5 Methodology 1. 5. 1 Primary sources * Structured interviews were conducted to people involved in HR Management Team of Banglalink. Further, an unstructured interview was conducted to 1. 5. 2 Secondary sources * Annual report * Various publications * Website 1. 6 Report Preview The report is organized n the following structure- * Prefatory Parts * Report Proper * Appended Part 1. 6. 1 Prefatory Parts It consists of title fly, title page, letter of transmittal, table of contents and executive summary. 1. 6. 2 Report Proper This is the main body of thee report consisting of three parts with introduction and conclusion. Part 1- overview of banglalink consisting of 4 chapters Part 2- staffing includes 3 chapters Part 3- maintenance of performance with career management 1. 6. 3 Appended Part It consists of references and a questionnaire. PART ONE An Overview of ————————————————- Chapter 2 Outline of the Organization 2. 1 Company Profile Banglalink – making a difference When Banglalink entered the Bangladesh telecom industry in February 2005, the scenario changed overnight with mobile telephony becoming an extremely useful and affordable communication tool for people across all segments. Within one year of operation, Banglalink became the fastest growing mobile operator of the country with a growth rate of 257%. This milestone was achieved with innovative and attractive products and services targeting the different market segments; aggressive improvement of network quality and dedicated customer care; and effective communication that emotionally connected customers with Banglalink. Banglalink is today the 2nd largest mobile operator in the country and has recently celebrated with 1. 5 crore customers. Headquarters BangladeshIndustry TelecommunicationsType Privately HeldStatus Operating| Location FM Center (Tiger House), Level-1, House: SW (H) 04, Gulshan Avenue Gulshan Model Town, Dhaka, 1212 Care Points Over 700 customer care points including 7 customer sales and care Phone 880 9 885 770 Fax 880 8 827 265 Website www. banglalinkgsm. com 2. 2 History of the Company Sheba Telecom (Pvt. ) Ltd. as granted license in 1989 to operate in the rural areas of 199 upazilas. Later it obtained GSM license in 1996 to extend its business to cellular mobile, radio telephone services. It launched operation in the last quarter of 1997 as a Bangladesh-Malaysia joint venture. In July, 2004, it was reported that Egypt based Orascom Telecom is set to purchase the Malaysian stakes in Sheba Telecom through a hush-hush deal, as Sheba had failed to tap the business potentials in Bangladesh mainly due to a chronic feud between its Malaysian and Bangladeshi partners. An agreement was reached with Orascom wo rth US$25 million was finalized in secret. The pact has been kept secret for legal reasons, considering financial fallout and because of the feud. The main reason for the undercover dealing was the joint venture agreement between the Bangladeshi and the Malaysian partners, which dictates that if any party sells its Sheba shares, the other party will enjoy the first right to buy that. Integrated Services Ltd. (ISL), the Bangladeshi partner, was being ‘officially’ shown as purchasing the shares held by Technology Resources Industries (TRI) of Malaysia for $15 million. ISL then paid another $10 million to Standard Chartered Bank to settle Sheba's liabilities. In September, 2004, Orascom Telecom Holdings purchased 100% of the shares of Sheba Telecom (Pvt. ) Limited (â€Å"Sheba†). It was acquired for US$60 million. Sheba had a base of 59,000 users, of whom 49,000 were regular when it was sold. Afterward it was re-branded and launched its services under the â€Å"Banglalink† brand on February 10, 2005. Banglalink’s license is a nationwide 15-year GSM license and will expire in November, 2011. In March, 2008, Sheba Telecom (Pvt. ) Limited changed its name as Orascom Telecom Bangladesh Limited, matching its parent company name. 2. 3 Banglalink – At a Glance 2. 3. 1 Vision of the Company Banglalink understands people’s needs best and will create and deliver appropriate communication services to improve its people’s life and make it easier. † 2. 3. 2 Mission of the Company Banglalink’s success is based on a simple mission: â€Å"Bringing mobile telephony to the masses by reducing total cos t of buying and using mobile phones† Banglalink changed the mobile phone status from luxury to a necessity and brought mobile telephone to the general people of Bangladesh and made a place in their hearts. 2. 3. 2 Values of the Origination The mobile phone has become the symbol for the positive change in Bangladesh. This positive change that is quite correctly attributed to Banglalink, has become the corporate positioning of Banglalink and is translated in their slogan â€Å"making a difference† or â€Å"din bodol†. â€Å"making a difference† is not only in the telecom industry, but also through its products and services, to the lives of its customers. This corporate stance of â€Å"making a difference† has been reflected in everything Banglalink does. 2. 4 Employee Overview 2. 4. 1 Employee Portfolio Company Size| 5,000 employees; 2,000 are direct employees and the rest are indirect | Common Job Titles| Manager| 11%| Executive| 10%| Engineer| 8%| Zonal Sales Manager| 6%| Senior Engineer| 5%| | | | Median Age| 28 years| Gender| Male| 89% | Female| 11%| | 2. 4. 2 Management Team managing director & chief executive officer|  »Ã‚  ahmed abou doma| chief financial officer|  »Ã‚  mohamed hassan osman| chief technical officer|  »Ã‚  ahmed fady| chief commercial officer|  »Ã‚  asher yaqub khan| sales director|  »Ã‚  arif mehmood malik| customer care director|  »Ã‚  muhammad arshad| human resources & administration director|  »Ã‚  tarek beram| head of pmo & supply chain|  »Ã‚  abdus saboor| egulatory & legal affairs director|  »Ã‚  zakiul islam| information technology director|  »Ã‚  nizar el-assad| company secretary|  »Ã‚  m nurul alam| 2. 5 Organization Structure Structure provided by Banglalink itself. It is here by noted that, HR director holds two functional dept. under his direct supervision. ——————————â€⠀Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€- Chapter 3 Human Resources & Administration 3. 1 HR Mission â€Å"the real tigers behind the stripes! † â€Å"We, at Banglalink, believe that our teamwork is our greatest asset. Useful contributions made by each individual bring us that much closer to our goals. The Banglalink family is made up of a group of passionate individuals, uniquely qualified from diverse disciplines but working towards our vision. † Thus, Banglalink has delineated their HR mission regarding their employees and customers. 3. 2 HR Dept. and Divisions The Human Resource Department of Banglalink has three departments under control of the Head of the Department. 1. Compensation and Benefits 2. Employees Relations 3. Organizational Development (Commercial and Sales) 4. Organizational Development (IT) Compensation and benefit department show interest on the employee reward or compensation and other benefits. They approve sick leave, annual leave and other fringe benefits of the employee. The company gives their employee an increment at the end of the year based on their performance appraisal and the recommendation of their line manager. The second department is employee relations. They deal with the employee behavior with their superiors. They also train their employees if needed. In some cases, Banglalink borrow trainers from abroad to train their employees. The organizational development has two different divisions. One deals with the development of network and other IT. The other division deal with sales and other commercial aspects. The most widely criticized service of Banglalink is its network coverage. So they have created separate department of HR to keep their IT support in continuous construction. Head of Human Resources Compensation & Benefits Manager Compensation & Benefits Senior Executive Administrative Assistant Employees Relations Manager Employees Relations Executive Employees Relations Senior Executive Employees Relations Executive Organizational Development Manager Organizational Development Senior Executive Organizational Development Executive Organizational Development Manager Organizational Development Assistant Manager Organizational Development Executive NEW organization chart for Human Resources department Payroll Senior Executive ————————————————- Chapter 4 SHRM Awareness of Banglalink The Strategic Human resource management literature is increasingly concerned with whether human resources can be source of competitive advantage. More recently, this literature has begun to draw from the resource based view of strategy. Banglalink believes that teamwork is their greatest asset. Useful contributions made by each individual bring that much closer to our goals. The Banglalink family is made up of a group of passionate individuals, uniquely qualified from diverse disciplines but working towards our vision. Thus, Banglalink refocus on the conception of Human Resource Competencies within a human resource-capability (RC model) view of strategy to articulate their strategic role for HRs in and outside the origination. It is worth noting to the traditional situational-contingency perspective. Finally, Banglalink’s RC model sees their HRs and capabilities as a driver for their strategy. ———————————————— Chapter 5 HR Policies in a Global Extent Banglalink ensures for the tigers/tigress * a  friendly, professional and mutually supportive environment that encourages our people to develop their potentials to an optimal level. * a  true quality of pro fessionalism that can be found in all world-class multinational companies. * team oriented professionals, who contribute to the greater whole of the organization through their participation in decision making situations. * a  system which recognizes and rewards groups as well as individuals for their efforts and contributions to the company. By developing their policies in the following sectors- * Workforce planning * Recruitment (sometimes separated into attraction and selection) * Induction, Orientation and On-boarding * Skills management * Training and development * HR Personnel administration * Compensation in wage or salary * Payroll (sometimes assigned to accounting rather than HRM) * Employee benefits administration * Personnel cost planning * Performance appraisal * Labor relations PART Two Staffing & Workforce Planning ————————————————- Chapter 6 Strategic HR Planning and Job Analysis 6. The Overall Purpose Banglalink developed the following aspirations for their strategic HR planning. * Ensure adequate human resources to meet the strategic goals and operational plans of an organization – the right people with the right skills at the right time. * Identified and minimised capability risks. * Ski ll development and training policies and practices are linked to strategy. * Remain flexible so that an organization can manage change if the future is different than anticipated 6. 2 The strategic HR planning process Banglalink follows the conventional Four steps to develop their HR planning model. Assessing the current HR capacity * Forecasting HR requirements * Gap analysis * Developing HR strategies to support organizational strategies 6. 2. 1 Assessing current HR capacity Based on its strategic plan, the first step in the strategic HR planning process is to assess the current HR capacity of the organization. The knowledge, skills and abilities of the current staff need to be identified. This can be done by developing a skills inventory for each employee. The skills inventory should go beyond the skills needed for the particular position. List all skills each employee has demonstrated. For example, recreational or volunteer activities may involve special skills that could be relevant to the organization. Education levels and certificates or additional training should also be included. SWOT Analysis During this phase, a company begins to analyze and look at what skills, knowledge and abilities are available internally, and where shortages in terms of people skills or equipment may exist. Organization begins to analyze its external environment, its strength and weaknesses, its opportunities and threats, in terms of whether they can be achieved with the current organizational resources. . 2. 2 Forecasting HR requirements The next step is to forecast HR needs for the future based on the strategic goals of the organization. Realistic forecasting of human resources involves estimating both demand and supply. Questions to be answered include: * How many staff will be required to achieve the strategic goals of the organization? * What jobs will need to be filled? * What sk ill sets will people need? When forecasting demands for HR, Banglalink HR professionals also assess the challenges that it will have to meet its staffing need based on the external environment. 6. 2. 3 Gap analysis In The next step, HR personnel determine the gap between where it wants to be in the future and where they are now. The gap analysis includes identifying the number of staff and the skills and abilities required in the future in comparison to the current situation. They also look at all its HR management practices to identify practices that could be improved or new practices needed to support the organization's capacity to move forward. 6. 2. 4 Developing HR strategies to support organizational strategies The five core HR strategies for meeting an organization's needs in the future followed by Banglalink. . Restructuring strategies 2. Training and development strategies 3. Recruitment strategies 4. Outsourcing strategies 5. Collaboration strategies 6. 3 Job analysis A job analysis is a step-by-step specification of an employment position's requirements, functions, and procedures. Just as a seed cannot blossom into a flower unless the ground is properly prepared, many human resource m anagement (HRM) practices cannot blossom into competitive advantage unless grounded on an adequate job analysis. 6. 4 Purpose of the Job Analysis The HR department of Banglalink conducts job analysis to prepare job description and job specification which in turn helps to hire the right quality of workforce into the organization. * The general purpose is the job and compensation plans. * Establishing fair and effective hiring practices * Developing training and appraisal programs * Remedial uses 6. 5 Information Collection for Job Analysis The Different Types of Job Content Information Broad Level Function or Duty * Definition: The major areas of the job-holder's responsibility. Example: A professor's functions are teaching, research, and service to the university/community. Intermediate Level Task * Definition: What a worker does when carrying out a function of the job; it is an activity that results in a specific product or service. * Example: The function of teaching requires a professor to perform several tasks like lecturing, giving/grading exams, and meeting with students. Work Behavior * Definition: An important activity that is not task specific; such behavior is engaged in when performing a variety of tasks. Example: â€Å"Communicating†Ã¢â‚¬â€a professor engages in this behavior when performing several tasks, such as lecturing and meeting with students. Specific Level Subtasks * Definition: The steps carried out in the completion of a task. * Example: The task of providing lectures consists of several subtasks, such as reading the text and other relevant materials, deciding on what information to convey, and determining how this information can be communicated in a clear and interesting manner. Critical Incidents * Definition: Specific activities that distinguish effective from ineffective job performance. Example: â€Å"The professor uses several examples when explaining difficult concepts. † 6. 6 Key Factors in Job Analysis Task identities 1. Variety 2. Responsibility 3. Autonomy 4. Working environment 5. Recognition and support 6. Outcomes & performance measures 6. 7 Sources of Data Information associated with a job analysis can be gained from the following sources: * supervisor/manager of the proposed/established position, * the current incumbent (or a staff member who has undertaken the duties in the past), * team members of the proposed/established position, a staff member from another work area with a similar position, * managers who employ similar positions, * performance plans and key performance indicators of current incumbent, * workforce plans, * program timetables or customer feedback forms, * student evaluations, and * HR staffs. 6. 8 Data Analysis During the analysis phase the following should be included: * Group the tasks into functional areas, eg. Process enrolment forms and respond to student enquiries should be under the functional heading of Student Administration. * Eliminate all unnecessary and wasteful activities. Simplify unnecessarily complex activities or procedures. * List the functional areas in order of importance. —†”——————————————- Chapter 7 Recruitment and Selection Employees Recruitment is the process of seeking sources for job candidates and attracting qualified candidates for jobs in the public or private sector. It is a process by which the needed personnel are found and they become interested to apply for the vacant post. The Selection Process is the process of choosing from among available applicants who are most likely to successfully perform a job. The objective the selection process is to choose the individual who can successfully perform the job from the pool of qualifies candidates. 7. 1 Recruitment & selection process flowchart Organization Vacant or new position occurs Perform job analysis & plan recruiting effort Generate applicant pool via internal or external recruitment methods Evaluate applicants via selection Process process Select applicants Make offer 7. 2 Recruitment process of Banglalink 7. 2. 1 Recruitment Goals Banglalink has recognized the following recruitment goals over their competitors to achieve their HR Vision and Mission. Attract highly qualified applicants. * Attract applicants willing to accept offers. * Fill vacancies quickly. * Fill vacancies at minimal cost. * Hire people who perform well. * Hire people who will continue with the organization. 7. 2. 2 Sources of Recruitment Recruitment sources are divided by two parts – 1. Internal sources of recruitment: Promoting employees is an internal s ource of recruitment. 2. External sources of recruitment: the external sources of recruitment are- Advertisement Advertisement is prepared by Banglalink for publication in the national Daily newspaper. Cyberspace Recruiting Banglalink use the internet to recruit new employees by adding a recruitment section to their web site. Employment agency Agencies like ‘PeopleScape’ help Banglalink to find the require-skilled employee. 7. 2. 3 Issuances of Interview Card After receiving the application Banglalink prepares necessary database of the candidates and after screening the applications they issue invitation card by normal mail but in case of emergency currier service used, or interview schedule should be known to the candidates over telephone. On the basis of resume evaluation, ratings are made as per the weight age chart. . 3 Selection Process of Banglalink 7. 3. 1 Interview Method Interview-1: Short listed candidates are called for interview-1. In this step a panel of concerned managers and experts will interview the incumbent. Result of the interview-1 is published in the Company Notice Board. Interview-2: The selected candidates from the first interview-1 are called for a second interview which will be taken by the head of the department and head of the human resource. Final interview: The candidates who approved from the interview-2, is called the final interview. Final interview is taken by Director. Placement: Banglalink gather necessary documents and sends the selected candidates to his/her respective department for placement. 7. 3. 2 Present Condition about Selection Procedure of Banglalink (For the contractual employees to be permanent worker) The company selects qualified Personnel/Specialized officer/Junior executives on the basis of some relevant tests based on the following manner. ————————————————- Chapter 8 Training and Development Training is important for an organization because every organization needs stable, trained and experienced people to perform its actions. Employee training is a learning experience. Basically employee training is present-oriented training that focuses on individual’s current jobs, enhancing those specific skills and abilities to immediately perform the jobs. Training is now considered as more of retention tool than a cost. The training system in Bangladeshi Industry has been changed to create a smarter workforce and yield the best results. 8. 1 Training and Development process of BANGLALINK Banglalink is the second largest mobile operator in our country. For their employee training they follow both * On-the-job method and Off-the-job training method. 8. 1. 1 On-the-job training is when an employee learn the through his/her daily work and also learn from a mentor. May be the manager or immediate senior to the employee can take over this task. Slowly he learn about his position clearly and also the method that the organization follow to accomplish their activities. This organization arranges a performance appraisa l after a certain period of time. And to assess their employee performance they follow the†Competency Gap Analysis†. Now there are two categories of competencies required to do the internal tasks. Core Competency- the basic requirements for a job. For example -communication skills -team work -fluency in English speaking etc. 2 Technical Competency- if there is any technical eligibility needed for a particular position This analysis is sort of self analysis. The manager gives the employees specific categories and asks to evaluate themselves in those categories. They have certain parameters like – * Unacceptable (U) * Need Improvement (NI) * Meet Expectation (MI) * Exceed Expectation(EE) * Outstanding (O) The manager assesses these results and made their decision that if the employee needs any training. Then they report to the HR about the number of employees need training. If an employee is lack of core competency then the management arrange for a training internally. 8. 1. 2 Off-the-job training And if it is for a higher level position or lack of technical competency then the HR arrange for an Off-the-job training. 8. 2 Outsourcing There are some organizations that provide corporate training. Banglalink outsources these organizations and arrange the training program. They segregate their employees in different batches if the number is elevated and place different time schedule for them. HOLISTIC, AAMRA are two organizations who provide training for the employees of Banglalink. PART THREE Sustaining Sky-scraping Performance : Performance Management ————————————————- Chapter 9 Performance Management Every year, employees of Banglalink experience an evaluation of their past performance. There is a one hour informal discussion between employees and their supervisors. This evaluations lead to some direct effects to their work lives. Based on the result they get increment, promotion or assistance in personal development areas for which the employee needs training. The performance management system serves three purposes that are designed to support employees, appraisers and organization. 9. 1 Appraisal They follow a common appraisal process. The chart below shows the appraisal process Banglalink follow the Competency GAP Analysis to measure the performance of their employees. There is a number of traits and a range of performance for each degree of each trait. It is used to identify the score that best describes the employee’s level of performance. 9. 2 Who does the Appraising? Generally the immediate supervisor does the appraising in Banglalink. First, they arrange self rating for the employees. Based on the self rating, their past behaviors and information from their peers, the supervisors submit the appraisal to the head of the department. 9. 3 Frequency of Appraisal The performance occurs two times in a year. The first evaluation occurs at the end of the year and according to the evaluation the company announces the name of the promoted employees. Another evaluation take place in the middle of the year and the worthy employees get promoted. On the other hand, the employees get only one increment in a year. This way the company tries to keep good performance of their employees. 9. 4 The Appraisal Interview The appraisal interview is done for comparing the evaluation and employees expectation about their performance. The appraisal interview can be four types * Satisfactory- promotable * Satisfactory- not promotable * Unsatisfactory- correctable * Unsatisfactory- uncorrectable In this interview session the superior encourage the employee to talk about his expectation, if he aspects any promotion or have a good evaluation which will lead into a better payment. Sometimes if the employee has a bad evaluation and had been criticized for his past action that is in the correctable category, the supervisor’s aim is to lead the interview such a way that it will improve the interviewee’s performance in near future. If an employee is in the uncorrectable category the supervisor will warn him informally and if that doesn’t work he will proceed for a written warning. ————————————————- Chapter 10 Career Management Generally the responsibility to managing a career belongs to an individual. There was time when employment with a reputed firm actually meant lifelong employment. Today with intense competition everywhere, coupled with economic changes sweeping the world, companies are aggressively pursuing the strategies for acquisition, divestment, down-sizing, outsourcing, and synergy through alliances. In such an uncertain environment, it is ultimately the responsibility of the individual to decide and make choices to pursue a desired career. An organization can at best support an individual’s career aspirations if it falls in line with its business goals. 10. 1 Role of HR Employee loyalty to the company is higher when the job fulfills intrinsic needs and personal goals of the employees. By assisting an individual in planning his career and providing opportunities for career development, Banglalink ensures higher loyalty and productivity from employees. The HR professionals of Banglalink match and support career expectation of high performers with organizational requirements. Few of the ways in which this has been done is shown below: * Mentoring- through which the organization create context for directing careers of youngsters * Enriching the jobs – Encourage people to continuously redesign the work procedures * Job rotations in line with individual apability and company requirements * Providing organization wide, team based and individual learning opportunities * Taking stock of future leadership requirements and designing the career path of capable and performing individuals * Design developmental programs that improve the employability of the people and engage them with challenging assignments 10. 2 Role of Individual and Organization Role of an individual and that of an organization with respect to some of the aspects of individual carreer planning is brought out below: Individual and organizational role in career management| Key Aspect| Individual role| Organizational Role| Goal seting (by an indiviual)| Developing and gaining clarity on long term goal | * Managing the expectations realistically * clarifying possibilities of knowledge based and hierarchical based goals | Action planning(by an individual)| Planning and duration of jobs to be taken up, companies or industry to be targeted, and other developmental needs | * Support individual plan through movement along the career path * Job rotations, advancements, problem solving assignments etc. | Mentoring & coaching (by the org. | Learn from the experience and insights of mentors / coaches | * Align individuals to the company values * provide informal guidance about building career within the organization| Assessment (by individual & org)| Learn about present profile and gaps that need to be fulfilled in the long run| * assess values synchronization, performance, potential and likely career path| Development (by the individual & org. )| Obtaining exter nal certifications as authentication of skills possessed| * Honest performance appraisals, providing opportunity to implement learning for organizational benefit| Challenging work (by the org. | focus on de-bottlenecking processes, thus keeping the element of â€Å"challenge in the work† alive | * opportunity to participate in various task forces to solve real time business problems * exposure to new business improvement tools| ————————————————- Chapter 11 Compensation 11. 1 Category of Compensation Banglalink provides a lucrative compensation package for their employees. The category of compensation can be two types * Direct financial payments * Indirect financial payments 11. 1. 1 Direct financial Payments This is a form of payments which is in the form of Wages * Salaries * Bonuses * Overtimes etc. 11. 1. 2 Indirect financial Payments This form of payment consist s of financial benefits such as * Insurance- they provide health insurance for the employees * Transport- for call center agents Banglalink provide transportation service as the agents have to perform night duty. * House- the company provide house for its higher level employees 11. 2 Compensation Process The compensation process is based on four particular degrees. | | Requirement | Degree of compensation| | Outstanding| | Exceed Expectation| | Meet Expectation| | Need Improvement| 1. 3 Employee Benefits Banglalink provides benefits to their employees according to the Government Rules. The employees have health insurance, they get a good payment, they get bonuses and increments etc. The employees obtain vacations like * Sick Leave * Casual Leave * Annually Earned Leave * Maternity Leave (for women) ————————————————- Chapter 12 Health and Safety The terms health, safety and security are closely related to each other. Health is the general state of well being. It not only includes physical well being, but also emotional and mental well being. Safety refers to the act of protecting the physical well being of an employee. It will include the risk of accidents caused due to machinery, fire or diseases. Security refers to protecting facilities and equipments from unauthorized access and protecting. For smooth functioning of an organization, the company ensures safety and security of its employees. Health and safety form an integral part of work environment. A work environment enhances the well being of employees and thus accident free. 12. 1 HR Responsibility In Banglalink the responsibility of employee health and safety falls on the supervisors or HR manager. The HR manager help in coordinating safety programs, making employees aware about the health and safety policy of the company, conduct formal safety training, etc. Responsibilities of managers: * Monitor health and safety of employees * Drug testing * Coach employees to be safety conscious * Investigate accidents if happens * Communicate about safety policy to employees 12. 2 Supervisors Responsibility The supervisors and departmental heads are responsible for maintaining safe working conditions. They are responsible for * Provide technical training regarding prevention of accidents * Coordinate health and safety programs Train employees on handling facilities an equipments * Develop safety reporting systems * Maintaining safe working conditions Again the company provides health insurance to their employees. They also arrange a monthly increment system in case of an employee is sick and also provide sick leave to the employee. ———————à ¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€- Chapter 13 Employment Method 13. 1 Promotion For promotion Banglalink give importance to those employees who perform well. An employee can’t get promotion unless his job length is one year in the company. 13. 2 Transfer of Employees Transfers take place when it’s needed. Banglalink has their office in the six divisions around Bangladesh. They give importance to the origin of the employees. Suppose, an employee’s permanent address is in Rajshahi, so if they take a decision to transfer that employee they will give priority to Rajshahi. 13. 3 Retirement The company observes its 5th anniversary few days ago. The company is young and the highest age of employees is 40 years in an average. Yet they have not planned for Retirement procedure. Concluding Part ————————————————- Chapter 14 Winding Up 14. 1 Conclusion Growth over the last years have been fuelled with innovative products and services targeting different market segments, aggressive improvement of network quality and dedicated customer care, creating an extensive distribution network across the country, and establishing a strong brand that emotionally connected customers with Banglalink. It made them possible only for their SHRM skill and their dedicated relationship manager who provides the employees with personalized HR care and innovative-proactive management round the clock. 14. Criticisms Banglalink initially failed to expand its EEO opportunities pace of employees with increased numbers of subscribers. This is because Banglalink was the fastest growing mobile operator at that time in the whole world. It has the record of violating the Employment Act of Age Discrimination and Employment Act for Women. However, the state of affairs is getting better now-a-days. They are investing to improve their EEO prospects especially in gender and tribal segments. References Contact persons: Md. Farhad Hossain Dept. of Quality Assurance, Banglalink Shiban Mahmud HR Senior Executive, Human Resource, Bangallink Website: www. banglalinkgsm. com http://www. linkedin. com/companies/banglalink Appendices ————————————————- Questionnaires 1. How does the company’s mission and vision influence/affect the employee? 2. Are there any divisions under Human Resource Department? 3. If yes, how they are related with the functional HR dept.? 4. Is there any formal/conventional structure for the HR Department? 5. How does the HR Structure affect the Mission and Vision of the company? 1. What are the future directions/objectives of the local area? . What are the responsibilities of the position? 3. Is the position academic or professional/general (does the role require knowledge of the teaching and learning environment)? 4. What is the length of appointment and/or service fraction? 5. What are the specific tasks and how will they be done? 6. W hy do they need to be done? 7. What impact will there be on other positions in the area? 8. Where will the work be done? (physical location) 9. Who are the clients and what are their needs? 10. How the work is currently organized? 11. Who will the position report to? 12. Will any positions report to this position? 13. What is the minimum knowledge and skills required to do the position? 14. What equipment or working aids are required? 1. What are the recruitment goals of banglalink does keep up? 2. Sources of recruitment? 3. Are there any external sources of recruitment process? 4. What are the components of selection process the banglalink does sustain? 5. Who conduct the interview? 6. What are the selection processes of contractual employees to be permanent employee? 1. What types of training program are you using to enhance your employees’ skills & abilities? . How would you determine the needs of training of an employee to do certain task? 3. Is there any outsourcing organization that provides training for the employees of banglalink? 4. Does banglalink think that there is any requirement of cross-cultural training program for the employees to adopt with the on-going globalization process? 1. How does banglalink manage their performance ap praisal process for the employees? 2. Is there any absolute appraisal method that banglalink is currently following? 3. How does HR dept. monitor their employees’ performance & evaluate or measure them? . While managing the performance assessment, does the decisions may become emotional or focus on the process? 1. What types of reward system does the HR dept. maintain with their employees? 2. How does banglalink relate the motivational factors with their compensation programs? 3. Any special cases of compensation or reward programs? 4. Is there any govt. influence on compensation administration? 5. What is the employee benefits HR dept. does provide the employees? 6. Is there any current employee legally considered necessary benefit the HR dept. is dealing with? . What does banglalink think about career management from the perspective of the company? 2. What kind of role does the HR dept. play in career development of an employee? As a mentor or advisor? 3. Does the company a rrange career workshops or carry out career counseling? 1. What types of promotional decisions does the HR dept. capture? 2. How does they manage employee transferring for the betterment of the geo-expand of the company’s service? 3. What are the retirement policies that the company does follow? 4. What’s about managing employee turnover

Major League Baseball and Nippon Professional Baseball

Baseball is an international sport played by young and old, amateurs and professionals. After Team USA failed to win the 2006 and 2009 World Baseball Classics, Barry Bloom wrote in March 2009, â€Å"And now it can't be ignored: The U. S. is no longer the undisputed leader of the game that was invented on its own soil. † (Bloom, 2009) The World Baseball Classic, sanctioned by the International Baseball Federation and supported by professional baseball leagues from around the world, is the first international baseball tournament to feature players from major leagues around the world (International Baseball Federation, 2010). The inaugural World Baseball Classic was played in 2006. The second was held in 2009, with tournaments to be held every four years (International Baseball Federation, 2010). Team Japan, Nippon Professional Baseball, won the first two World Baseball Classics while Team USA, Major League Baseball, finished sixth in 2006 and fourth in 2009. The basic objective in baseball is to win by scoring more runs than your opponent. Rule 1. 1 of Official Baseball Rules states, â€Å"Baseball is a game between two teams of nine players each, under direction of a manager, played on an enclosed field in accordance with these rules, under jurisdiction of one or more umpires. † (Major League Baseball, 2010, p. 1). The infield is a 90 foot square and the pitchers mound is 60’6† from home plate. The ball is round and â€Å"formed by yarn wound around a small core of cork, rubber or similar material, covered with white horsehide or cowhide, tightly stitched together. † (Major League Baseball, 2010, p. ). The bat, one piece of solid wood, is a â€Å"smooth, round stick not more than 2. 61 inches in diameter at the thickest part and not more than 42 inches in length. † (Major League Baseball, 2010, p. 6). While the rules and objectives are generally the same, just what differences exist between Major League Baseball and Nippon Professional Baseball? Major League Baseball is divided into two leagues with a total of thirty teams. The National League is comprised of sixteen teams and the American League is comprised of fourteen teams. The thirty teams play a 162 game schedule and compete for eight post-season playoff spots and teams are named after the city or state they represent. In contrast, Nippon Professional Baseball is divided into two leagues with a total of twelve teams. Six teams comprise both the Central and Pacific Leagues. The twelve teams play a 144 game schedule and compete for six post-season playoff spots and the teams are named after the company that owns them. Major League Baseball games are scheduled for nine innings. If the score is tied at the end of nine innings, play continues until a winner is determined; no matter how long it takes (Major League Baseball, 2010, p. 37). However, tie games are a possibility in Nippon Professional Baseball games. Similar to Major League Baseball, Nippon Baseball games are scheduled for nine innings. In contrast, if the score is tied at the end of nine innings, the teams play three additional innings. If no winner is determined, the game is called a draw (Williams, 2009). Major League Baseball players and managers place an emphasis on home runs and pitching. Former Baltimore Orioles Manager Earl Weaver said, â€Å"The key to winning baseball games is pitching, fundamentals, and three run homers† (Baseball Almanac, 2011). By contrast, Nippon Professional Baseball managers place less emphasis on home runs. Instead they focus more on the fundamentals of bunting, base running and fielding. Because of these differences, Nippon baseball games typically have closer and lower final scores (Hardcastle, 2006). Major League stadiums are standardized (Major League Baseball, 2010, p. 2). Infields and outfields are well-groomed grass or synthetic turf. Nippon Baseball stadiums, on the other hand, are smaller and irregularly shaped. The outfields are grass while almost all of the infields are dirt (Yates, 2005). While the rules are generally the same, Major League Baseball has more teams, plays more games, games do not end in a tie and teams are named after the city or state they represent. Players and managers focus on home runs and pitching and the stadiums are standardized and infields well-groomed. On the other hand, Nippon Professional Baseball has less teams, play less games, allows ties and the teams are named after the company that owns them. The focus is on bunting, base running and fielding and the stadiums are smaller and most infields are dirt. No matter the similarities and differences, both Major League Baseball and Nippon Professional Baseball have the same objective. Score more runs than your opponent!

Leadership Styles in Professional Nursing Dissertation

Leadership Styles in Professional Nursing - Dissertation Example Leadership Styles in Professional Nursing The literature suggests that there are many traits that go into forming an effective leader. As an example, Boumans and Landerweerd (1993) suggest that leaders must have "clinical knowledge, people orientation, communication skills, reality orientation, the ability to identify problems and to delegate responsibility" (p. 768). These skills were stated to be those that made a positive impact on the nurses that were supervised. Most leadership styles have their base in social leadership if the nurse is effective. Boumans and Landerweerd found in their study that when social leadership was presented, the nurses under their leadership felt that their job had meaning and they felt increased job satisfaction. Also, the social leadership style promotes more positive health and well being than a style that is more dictatorial or direct. Sellgren, Ekvall, and Tomson (2006) state that nursing leadership styles are more involved with the characteristics that leaders have rather than having a sp ecific style. There are preferred traits that are more important as well. In their style, communication was the highest ranking trait that a leader ship exhibit. This goes along with what Boumans and Landerweerd found. Therefore, communication is one of the most important aspects of a nurse's leadership style. There should also be a way to communicate the leader's needs in specific ways that are understandable to their subordinates. This will bring about a happier group of nurses on the ward. (Sellgren, Ekvall, and Tomson, 2006). Kenmore (2008) found that the styles that most nurses used were either affiliative or coaching. Affiliative leaders work well when everything is running smoothly and when staff is highly motivated. The afffiliative style creates harmony and the style also works well when teams need to be healed or when staff needs motivating. When a leader has a more coaching orientation to leadership, they are more interested in improving staff's professional development

Information Systems Paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Information Systems Paper - Essay Example The latter is typically referred to as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. A typical ERP platform would encompass all major functions in an organization such as Operations, Inventory & Stores, Accounting, HR, Payroll, etc. Most clients tend to purchase an off the shelf product, and contract a software deployment specialist to make the required customizations to the platform and adapt the system for use at a particular company. I was involved with the specific deployment of an ERP system at a ceramics manufacturing company with roughly 1300 employees. The company was migrating from a legacy FoxPro based system to an MS .net based client-server ERP system, which would encompass all departments and be written in the newer Microsoft .net framework with a user friendly Graphic User Interface (GUI) as opposed to the text based interface for the legacy system. The specific departments that the ERP presently covers is Accounts, HR, Payroll, Inventory & Stores, Commercial Department, Sales, and Fixed Asset Control. The Manufacturing module is being developed and will be integrated into the ERP system over the next 10 - 12 months. The ERP platform, in its present state controls virtually every business process in the company. A closed loop workflow ensures tight knit integration between departments with electronic authorizations and checks at every stage of the process. Global connectivity of the system with users in 2 factories and 4 sales offices meant that user groups had to be able to interact with the system in a secure environment to manage workflows in these remote locations. For the factory locations, the company decided on connectivity through leased lines with direct point-to-point connectivity. However, with the geographically diverse locations of the 4 sales offices, leased line connectivity was not feasible. The company decided to utilize Internet based connectivity using Virtual Private Networks (VPN) to be establish connectivity from these remote locations to the main server housed in the corporate office. Connectivity to the system was a critical requirement for all remote locations. In the factory environment, the only way for the factory warehouses to check-in and enter fresh production into inventory is by utilizing the Stores & Inventory module to generate an inward bound Material Note. The Warehouse in turn is required to generate the Material Receipt Note to complete transactions. Similarly, when the Warehouse receives an electronic request to dispatch new products to one of the four remote sales locations, it uses the system to create a Material Dispatch Note that is closed once material is received by the remote location and the ticket workflow is closed in the system electronically. In case of an unplanned system downtime or a network outage, the company's operations come to a standstill since workflows cannot be completed. One of most critical workflows that get affected is the inventory process. No inventory can move in and out of any warehouse of the company until the sys tem electronically updates its records. The company had to put in exception handling for these circumstances, which involve emailing data packets to update inventory and complete workflows when there is scheduled maintenance of the system, or where longer system shutdowns may be required. System security was another important aspect of the system.

Social work essay- community care and vulnerable user groups Essay

Social work - community care and vulnerable user groups - Essay Example Health care provisioning in Scotland has been integrated at both the basic primary level and the advanced secondary stage. Moreover, for ease of convenience and excellence in health services delivery, the regional boards have narrowed down to provide the services at community level. Localized subgroups of community health partnerships are very effective in health care provision at the ground level here. All classes of health workers are well represented in the healthcare framework in Scotland. Also in existence are the â€Å"extended community care teams† who work hand in hand with the system of health care and social care teams. They were introduced to ensure the effectiveness of service delivery and management of resources to ensure equitable and efficient utilization of resources at the community level. The health care provisions have been centralized as regards the funding. It is the role of the government to fund the services and as such, the public health care is free. H owever, this does not refute the existence of private sector in medical healthcare provision in Scotland. There is equally a well-pronounced private healthcare system in the country, which helps regulate the public sector and thus control monopoly. The nationals are thus not restricted to the choice of the services that are wholly offered by the public system (Gibbins, 2007, 1-5). These are strategic for those who require the hospitalization services or well too those who cannot access the community health care services when needed. Therefore, the public hospital system, the community based care system and the private sector work hand in hand to guarantee basic health care to the population of Scotland. The NHS (National Healthcare System), providers are commissioned to provide high quality services to the deserving population. By quality, the sector is expected to offer safe, efficient and patient sensitive services. According to â€Å"a Health Services

The Importance of Tea and Coffee in the Emergence of a Globalized Essay

The Importance of Tea and Coffee in the Emergence of a Globalized World - Essay Example We haven't had any tea for a week... The bottom is out of the Universe.†1 It is quite evident what Kipling feels due to that lack of tea. The bottom is out of the universe, meaning he can’t find any balance in the universe. Nothing to make him steady on his feet. This is the importance of tea. Coffee drinkers feel the same as well, although there exists quite a rivalry among the two groups. The bottom line is the same. People cannot survive without their tea or coffee. From necessity, these drinks have now taken a more important place in our lives. At work, we get tea breaks that help us refresh ourselves, when we want to socialize, we usually â€Å"catch up for coffee† and so on.2 Coffee and tea have taken such an important role in our lives today that businessmen could only think of profiting out of this. Look at the success of coffee chains like Starbucks, Costa, Barista and so on and one can understand just exactly how important this drink is to us. Let us vis it how these drinks came to be a part of the global economy. History of Tea Tea was said to be discovered in China almost 5,000 years ago. Legend says that in 2732 B.C., Emperor Shen Nung was exposed to tea when wild leaves leaves from a tree blew into his pot of boiling water. He was intrigued by the pleasant aroma of the brew and curiously drank some.3 It is said that the Emperor felt a warm feeling pass through his body as he drank the brew and said that he felt â€Å"as if the liquid was investigating every part of his body.† 4 The Emperor Shen Nung decided to name the brew "ch'a", the Chinese character meaning â€Å"to check or investigate†. In 200 B.C., a Han Dynasty Emperor decided that tea would be referred to by writing a special character that illustrated wooden branches, grass, and a man between the two. This written character was also pronounced "ch'a". It symbolized the balance that tea brought in human life.5 The 4th to 8th century saw a great growth spur t for tea. It was now used for more than medicinal purposes and began to be enjoyed even recreationally for pleasure and refreshment. There were more and more tea plantations across the country and all that dealt in the crop ended up rich! Upto the mid-17th century though, all tea was green. When this tea was fermented, people realized that the resultant black tea could hold the aroma longer and was stronger than the mild green teas. This also meant that they could export these teas as they would not lose their aromas and flavor on the journey. Thus, with the advent of foreign trade, black tea was discovered and was a huge success. Role of Tea in Globalization From the start, tea spread from China to different countries such as Tibet, Japan, Russia and Europe. In all these countries, tea has its own space in medicine, culture and status. In Tibet, tea was used as a currency. In Japan, a special Tea Ceremony was created. It is now a very integral part of Japanese lifestyle. Tea is se rved with every meal and served while greeting guests. In Russia, the Trans-Siberian Railway was constructed to help transport tea. In Europe, tea is treated as a status symbol. Tea based traditions such as â€Å"Afternoon Tea† and â€Å"High Tea† were also said to be created in Europe. While one is more of a light refreshment, the second is an entire meal. Until 1678, tea trade was dominated by the Dutch. But post that, the British began to import tea on a commercial basis and that created a completely new

Discuss artistic production during the Byzantine period Essay

Discuss artistic production during the Byzantine period - Essay Example The history of artistic production in the Byzantine period Arguably, artistic production denotes the creation of objects that viewers would perceive as significant or rather beautiful. Further, art highlights on the important factors prevailing in a certain community over a given period. During the Byzantine period, Emperor Constantine ruled the territory and enforced construction of Aelia Capitolina, which served as the main city after replacing the ruins of Jerusalem city (Nici 261). He emphasized that the whole empire needed to profess the Christian faith thus inhibiting the inhabitants from adapting or embracing any other religions presented in the kingdom. Fig. 1 Constantine Sculpture Therefore, Constantine served as a major stimulating factor towards the renowned artistic production in the empire as he ordered the building of some of the historically renowned churches in the Middle East (Richardson, Angeliki, and Kim 82). For instance, Constantine ordered for the building of th e Basilica church and other monuments around the city. Chronological accounts further present that the Byzantine society built the Rotunda during the reign of Emperor Constantine as an owner to his mother’s dreams about the tomb of Jesus Christ (Jeffreys 132). Further, the society had other numerous distinctive cultures that prevailed over several dynasties. Mainly, the building of streets marked the second largest and globally recognized cultural activity of the Byzantium dynasty. For instance, the building of the Cardo street and narrowing of the Roman-built streets such that the Byzantine streets intersected at the empires city square and extended perpendicularly to other worshipping sites in the North and South regions, and the East and West regions of the empire. Further, Constantine elevated numerous monuments along the streets that led to the worshipping centers to honor numerous biblical teachings (Onians 164). Therefore, it is sound to argue out that Byzantine art wa s a form of denoting Christian teachings and promoting the religion during the barbaric period. Further, the empire’s culture contributed to the recognition of the Renaissance period after the evasion of obstacles that focused on savoring the empire into rubbles. Some of the period’s most renowned artistic productions The empire’s artists were well known for their passion in the creation of monuments and mosaics for example, creation of â€Å"The Image of Christ of Pantocrator.† The artistic production is one of the most infamous mosaics of the Byzantine period, from the Hagia and Sophia in Constantinople period. Mainly, history assumes that most of the Christian paintings targeted to draw the involvement of Christianity in the region despite the threat of Muslim invaders who were apparently seeking to spread their religion across the Asian and European regions (Richardson, Angeliki, and Kim 85). Fig.2 the mosaic of Christ of Pantocrator Since the Constan tinople Empire toppled the Roman Empire, it did not readily produce its own art but continued to develop the Roman Empire’s arts. Mainly, the Byzantine art coincided with the Greek artwork since the predecessors had borrowed their artistic designs,

Annotated bibliography Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Annotated bibliography - Assignment Example The dancers therefore wore appropriate costumes and practiced sophisticated dance moves. The French noble created the minuet, which became popular at the time. The dance involved systematic movement of the legs and hands among other body parts. The dancers maintained harmony as they moved the various parts systematically and in tandem with the rhythm of the music. Hilton Wendy and Susan Bindig trace the life of Hilton Wendy, a renowned choreographer, dancer, teacher and dance scholar. In doing this, the two discover the relationship between the various classical dance styles thereby showing that the classical baroque dance metamorphosed into numerous other successive dance styles possibly having influence in some of the contemporary dance styles. They explain that baroque dance just as any other dance style was a cultural product associated with the baroque music. Dancers at the time wore systematic costumes that enhance their body movements as they danced to the sophisticated baroque music. Harmony was an overriding thematic issue in the various dance styles in the baroque era. The two scholars investigation Hilton’s evidence of the relationship in various dance styles beginning with ballerina to ballet among many others before ending with the French Noble style which was a major genre of the baroque dance between 1690 and 1725. Such a systematic relationship between the various dance-styles that became popular in various eras proves their thesis that as a cultural concept, dance has transmuted sequentially through time. Sparti, Barbara. Breaking down barriers in the study of Renaissance and baroque dame. Dance Chronicles Volume 19, Issue 3. 255-276, 1996. Internet resource. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/ref/10.1080/01472529608569249#tabModule Sparti Barbara sets to clarify the difference between renaissance and the baroque dance, which appear confusing to most people. She begins by explaining that the

To the Betrayed Inhabitants of the City and Colony of New York By Essay

To the Betrayed Inhabitants of the City and Colony of New York By Alexander McDougall - Essay Example McDougall wrote that the people of New York were being tyrannized by evil forces and factions working overtime to see that their vested interests were fulfilled rather than ensuring that the country was insulated from disasters. The message clearly breathed the spirit of reconstruction rather than retribution, and was easily more constructive than destructive. McDougall's message was not only powerful, but as any historian can make out, it was a wakeup call, a call to liberty and freedom, and not a baleful message addressed to the masses, giving them false hope and instigating wanton and unnecessary violence. In his message to the people of New York, McDougall wanted to warn them to beware of "the minions of tyranny and despotism." These words written at the very outset of his message, we can very well appreciate his deepest interest in his fellowmen - the people of New York to whom he had addressed his message. In the message, McDougall praised the efforts of all his fellow merchants, who like himself, had solely sidestepped their personal egos and ambitions in favor of public welfare. The initial bearing of his message is more about the efforts taken by the Massachusetts and South Carolina assemblies towards collecting and dispatching money for the troops: which is an act he felt extremely unreasonable from the very beginning. McDougall's message communicated the words: Our granting money to the troops, is implicitly acknowledging the authority that enacted the revenue acts, and their being obligatory on us, as these acts were enacted for the express purpose of taking money out of our pockets without our consent; and to provide for the defending and support of government in America; which revenue we say by our grant of money, is not sufficient for the purpose aforesaid; therefore we supply the deficiency. These words clearly specify the reason why McDougall felt that the money sent to the troops by the two assemblies testify the fact that colonies still were oppressed by corrupt sources in the assembly, and that they had to break free as soon as they could. The entire message was revolutionary in its truest sense but must not be confused with instigating anti-British and revolutionary feelings among the people. That was the entire beauty of McDougall's broadside message. Upon a close analysis, we will find that his call was to rally the people, make them realize their rights, and look up to the English "friends of liberty," as he addressed them, and to help them stand on their own feet. He also wrote that the sorry state of the New Yorkers could be attributed only to the oppressive and corrupt elements present in the assembly and he fervently pleaded with his countrymen to assert themselves the way they should have. Even as we read the text we can clearly observe McDougall's fantastic expression. Using that persuasive tone, McDougall had touched the most sensitive of topics, and yet made it look as if he was teaching to inspire, and not plotting to revolt. In this context, we can observe the manner in which he wrote about

Pet food recall Essay Example for Free

Pet food recall Essay A recent recall across the United States and Canada has pet owners in frenzy. More than 60 million cans and pouches of pet food have been recalled as they have been linked to 10 cat and 6 dog deaths recently. The manufacturer sells food under 95 different brands, including Wal-Mart, Iams, and Safeway. As of yet the specific ingredient linked to the pet deaths has not been determined. Speculation links the liver failure of the cats to a wheat gluten ingredient. The FDA said that wheat gluten itself would not cause liver failure, but if it was contaminated with metal or mold toxins it could cause liver damage. The chief executive of menu foods, Paul Henderson issued a statement saying, â€Å"Our hearts go out to all of the pet owners across Canada, the United States and Mexico for any losses they experience and certainly for the worry this incident may be causing† (â€Å"Company behind pet†, 2007). Pet owner’s expectations when buying pet food are to keep their pets happy, healthy, and well fed. Many of the products recalled were manufactured under the best pet food names in the industry. Pet owner Chris Wood says â€Å"We love our pets just like children. They are not careful enough with the ingredients they put in pet food. That’s scary† (Molina, 2007). Pet’s are companions that owner’s have a deep responsibility to care for. Implications caused by this recall include worry for one’s pet, having to find a new brand of food not manufactured by menu foods, and in the worse case scenario losing one’s pet to liver failure. The worry alone is taking time and energy from pet owners across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Pet owners are not only returning the recalled food but are taken precautions that cost a lot of money to ensure the safety and well-being of their pets. A veterinarian at the Animal Medical Center on the East Side of Manhattan, Dr. Ann Hohenhaus, said one cat died there over the weekend of kidney failure linked to the recalled food. Hohenhaus said the Animal Medical Center has tested 143 animals for renal failure since worried pet owners started taking their cats and dogs in for blood and urine tests on Saturday (March 18th, 2007)†(Mathews , 2007). Retailers are taking all measures to reassure pet owners. After the recall â€Å"PetSmart general manager Gary Brown said, ‘Everything on our shelves is 100 percent safe for your pet’(Molina, 2007). Petsmart is offering a full refund on all food purchased between December 3-March 6. A Long Island family whose two year old bull mastiff, Princess, died as a result of the recall are suing Menu Foods. Princess ate nothing but Nutro Foods all of her life and passed away from liver failure. The family is absolutely devastated by their loss. The family filed a lawsuit â€Å"Wednesday against Nutro and manufacturer Menu Foods. The lawsuit, filed in state Supreme Court in Nassau County, seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, said Bobbs attorney, Kenneth Mollins†(Mathews, 2007). Quite often consumers put much research and time into products they purchase. When a consumer makes a purchase they assumed the manufacturer is offering a product that will be satisfactory and meet standards. Menu foods did switch to a new supplier for wheat gluten. As of the March 6, 2007 issued recall Mend Foods has once again changed its wheat gluten supply and is once again stocking shelves with premium pet food. Menu Foods expects losses of 24-60 million dollars for this recall and lawsuits that will prevail as a result of the contaminated pet food.

Information Retrieval from Large Databases: Pattern Mining

Information Retrieval from Large Databases: Pattern Mining Efficient Information Retrieval from Large Databases Using Pattern Mining Kalaivani.T, Muppudathi.M Abstract With the widespread use of databases and explosive growth in their sizes are reason for the attraction of the data mining for retrieving the useful informations. Desktop has been used by tens of millions of people and we have been humbled by its usage and great user feedback. However over the past seven years we have also witnessed some changes in how users store and access their own data, with many moving to web based application. Despite the increasing amount of information available in the internet, storing files in personal computer is a common habit among internet users. The motivation is to develop a local search engine for users to have instant access to their personal information.The quality of extracted features is the key issue to text mining due to the large number of terms, phrases, and noise. Most existing text mining methods are based on term-based approaches which extract terms from a training set for describing relevant information. However, the quality of the extract ed terms in text documents may be not high because of lot of noise in text. For many years, some researchers make use of various phrases that have more semantics than single words to improve the relevance, but many experiments do not support the effective use of phrases since they have low frequency of occurrence, and include many redundant and noise phrases. In this paper, we propose a novel pattern discovery approach for text mining.To evaluate the proposed approach, we adopt the feature extraction method for Information Retrieval (IR). Keywords –Pattern mining, Text mining, Information retrieval, Closed pattern. 1.Introduction In the past decade, for retrieving an information from the large database a significant number of datamining techniques have been presented that includes association rule mining, sequential pattern mining, and closed pattern mining. These methods are used to find out the patterns in a reasonable time frame, but it is difficult to use the discovered pattern in the field of text mining. Text mining is the process of discovering interesting information in the text documents. Information retrieval provide many methods to find the accurate knowledge form the text documents. The most commonly used method for finding the knowledge is the phrase based approaches, but the method have many problems such as phrases have low frequency of occurrence, and there are large number of noisy phrases among them.If the minimum support is decreased then it will create lot of noisy pattern 2.Pattern Classification Method To find the knowledge effectively without the problem of low frequency and misinterpretation a pattern based approach(Pattern classification method) is discovered in this paper. This approach first find out the common character of pattern and evaluates the weight of the terms based on distribution of terms in the discovered pattern. It solves the problem of misinterpretation. The low frequency problem can also be reduced by using the pattern in the negatively trained examples. To discover patterns many algorithms are used such as Apriori algorithm, FP-tree algorithm, but these algorithms does not tell how to use the discovered patterns effectively. The pattern classification method uses closed sequential pattern to deal with large amount of discovered patterns efficiently. It uses the concept of closed pattern in text mining. 2.1 Preprocessing The first step towards handling and analyzing textual data formats in general is to consider the text based information available in free formatted text documents.Real world databases are highly susceptible to noisy, missing, and inconsistent data due to their huge size. These low quality data will lead to low quality mining results. Initially the preprocessing is done with text document while storing the content into desktop systems.Commonly the information would be processed manually by reading thoroughly and then human domain experts would decide whether the information was good or bad (positive or negative). This is expensive in relation to the time and effort required from the domain experts. This method includes two process. 2.1.1 Removing stop words and stem words To begin the automated text classification process the input data needs to be represented in a suitable format for the application of different textual data mining techniques, the first step is to remove the un-necessary information available in the form of stop words.Stop words are words that are deemed irrelevant even though they may appear frequently in the document. These are verbs, conjunctions, disjunctions and pronouns, etc. (e.g. is, am, the, of, an, we, our). These words need to be removed as they are less useful in interpreting the meaning of text. Stemming is defined as the process of conflating the words to their original stem, base or root. Several words are small syntactic variants of each other since they share a common word stem. In this paper simple stemming is applied where words e.g. ‘deliver’, ‘delivering’ and ‘delivered’ are stemmed to ‘deliver’. This method helps to capture whole information carrying term space and also reduces the dimensions of the data which ultimately affects the classification task. There are many algorithms used to implement the stemming method. They are Snowball, Lancaster and the Porter stemmer. Comparing with others Porter stemmer algorithm is an efficient algorithm. It is a simple rule based algorithm that replaces a word by an another. Rules are in the form of (condition)s1->s2 where s1, s2 are words. The replacement can be done in many ways such as, replacing sses by ss, ies by i, replacing past tense and progressive, cleaning up, replac ing y by i, etc. 2.1.2 Weight Calculation The weight of the each term is calculated by multiplying the term frequency and inverse document frequency. Term frequency find the occurrence of the individual terms and counts. Inverse document frequency is a measure of whether a term is common or rare across all documents. Term Frequency: Tf(t,d)=0.5+0.5*f(t,d)/max{f(w,d):wbelongs to d} Where d represents single document and t represents the terms Inverse Document Frequency: IDF(t,D)= log(Total no of doc./No of doc. Containing the term) Where D represents the total number of documents Weight: Wt=Tf*IDF 2.2 Clustering Cluster is a collection of data objects. Similar to one another within the same cluster. Cluster analysis will find similarities between data according to the characteristics found in the data and grouping similar data objects into clusters.Clustering is defined as a process of grouping data or information into groups of similar types using some physical or quantitative measures. It is an unsupervised learning. Cluster analysis used in many applications such as, pattern recognition, data analysis and web for information discovery. Cluster analysis support many types of data like, Data matrix, Interval scaled variables, Nominal variables, Binary variables and variables of mixed types. There are many methods used for clustering. The methods are partitioning methods, hierarchical methods, density based methods, grid based methods and model based methods. In this paper partitioning method is proposed for clustering. 2.2.1 Partitioning methods This method classifies the data into k-groups, which together satisfy the following requirements: (1) each group must contain at least one object, (2) each object must belong to exactly one group. Given a database of n objects, a partitioning method constructs k partitions of the data, where each partition represents a cluster and k 2.2.2 K-means algorithm K-means is one of the simplest unsupervised learning algorithms. It takes the input parameter, k, and partitions a set of n objects into k-clusters so that the resulting intra cluster similarity is high but the inter cluster similarity is low. It is centroid based technique. Cluster similarity is measured in regard to the mean value of the objects in a cluster, which can be viewed as the clusters centroid. Input:k: the number of clusters, D: a data set containing n objects. Output: A set of k clusters. Methods: Select an initial partition with k clusters containing randomly chosen samples, and compute the centroids of the clusters. Generate a new partition by assigning each sample to the closest cluster center. Compute new cluster centers as the centroids of the cluster. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until an optimum value of the criterion function is found or until the cluster membership stabilizes. This algorithm faster than hierarchical clustering. But it is not suitable to discover clusters with non-convex shapes. Fig.1. K-Means Clustering 2.3 Classification It predicts categorical class labels and classifies the data based on the training set and the values in classifying the attribute and uses it in classifying the new data. Data classification is a two step process (1) learning, (2) classification. Learning can be classified into two types supervised and unsupervised learning. The accuracy of a classifier refers to the ability of a given classifier to correctly predict the class label of new or previously unseen data. There are many classification methods are available such as, K-nearest neighbor, Genetic algorithm, Rough Set Approach, and Fuzzy Set approaches.The classification technique measures the nearing occurrence. It assumes the training set includes not only the data in the set but also the desired classification for each item. The classification is done through training samples, where the entire training set includes not only the data in the set, but also the desired classification for each item. The Proposed approaches find the minimum distance from the new or incoming instance to the training samples. On the basis of finding the minimum distance only the closest entries in the training set are considered and thenew item is placed into the classwhich contains the most items of the K. Here classify thesimilarity text documents and file indexing is performed to retrieve the file in effective manner. 3. Result and Discussion The input file is given and initial preprocessing is done with that file. To find the match with any other training sample inverse document frequency is calculated. To find the similarities between documents clustering is performed.Then classification is performed to find the input matches with any of the clusters. If it matches the particular cluster file will be listed.Theclassification techniques classify the various file formats and the report is generated as percentage of files available. The graphical representation shows the clear representation of files available in various formats. This method uses least amount of patterns for concept learning compare to other methods such as, Rocchio, Prob, nGram , the concept based models and the most BM25 and SVM models. The proposed model is achieved the high performance and it determined the relevant information what users want. This method reduces the side effects of noisy patterns because the term weight is not only based on term spac e but it also based on patterns. The proper usage of discovered patterns is used to overcome the misinterpretation problem and provide a feasible solution to effectively exploit the vast amount of patterns generated by data mining algorithms. 4. Conclusion Storing huge amount of files in personal computers is a common habit among internet users, which is essentially justified for the following reasons, 1) The information will not always permanent 2) The retrieval of information differs based on the different query search 3) Location same sites for retrieving information is difficult to remember 4) Obtaining information is not always immediate. But these habits have many drawbacks. It is difficult to find when the data is required.In the Internet, the use of searching techniques is now widespread, but in terms of personal computers, the tools are quite limited. The normal â€Å"Search or â€Å"Find† options take several hours to produce the search result. It acquires more time to predict the desire result where the time consumption is high.The proposed system provides accurate result comparing to normal search.All files are indexed and clustered using the efficient k means techniques so the information retrieved in efficient manner. The best and advanced clustering gadget provides optimized time results.Downtime and power consumption is reduced. 5.References [1]K. Aas and L. Eikvil, ‘’Text Categorization: A Survey,’’ Technical Report NR 941, Norwegian Computing Centre, 1999. [2] R. Agarwal and R.Srikanth, ‘’Fast Algorithm for Mining Association Rules in Large Databases, ‘’ Proc. 20th Int’l Conf. Very Large Data Bases(VLDB’94), pp.478-499, 1994. [3] H. Ahonen, O. Heinonen, M. Klemettinen, and A.I. Verkamo, â€Å"Applying Data Mining Techniques for Descriptive Phrase Extraction in Digital Document Collections,† Proc. IEEE Int’l Forum on Research and Technology Advances in Digital Libraries (ADL ’98), pp. 2-11, 1998. [4] R. Baeza-Yates and B. Ribeiro-Neto, Modern Information Retrieval. Addison Wesley, 1999. [5] N. Cancedda, N. Cesa-Bianchi, A. Conconi, and C. Gentile, â€Å"Kernel Methods for Document Filtering,† TREC, trec.nist.gov/ pubs/trec11/papers/kermit.ps.gz, 2002. [6] N. Cancedda, E. Gaussier, C. Goutte, and J.-M. Renders, â€Å"Word- Sequence Kernels,† J. Machine Learning Research, vol. 3, pp. 1059- 1082, 2003. [7] M.F. Caropreso, S. Matwin, and F. Sebastiani, â€Å"Statistical Phrases in Automated Text Categorization,† Technical Report IEI-B4-07- 2000, Instituto di Elaborazionedell’Informazione, 2000. [8] C. Cortes and V. Vapnik, â€Å"Support-Vector Networks,† Machine Learning, vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 273-297, 1995. [9] S.T. Dumais, â€Å"Improving the Retrieval of Information from External Sources,† Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 229-236, 1991. [10] J. Han and K.C.-C. Chang, â€Å"Data Mining for Web Intelligence,† Computer, vol. 35, no. 11, pp. 64-70, Nov. 2002. [11] J. Han, J. Pei, and Y. Yin, â€Å"Mining Frequent Patterns without Candidate Generation,† Proc. ACM SIGMOD Int’l Conf. Management of Data (SIGMOD ’00), pp. 1-12, 2000. [12] Y. Huang and S. Lin, â€Å"Mining Sequential Patterns Using Graph Search Techniques,† Proc. 27th Ann. Int’l Computer Software and Applications Conf., pp. 4-9, 2003. [13] N. Jindal and B. Liu, â€Å"Identifying Comparative Sentences in Text Documents,† Proc. 29th Ann. Int’l ACM SIGIR Conf. Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR ’06), pp. 244-251, 2006. [14] T. Joachims, â€Å"A Probabilistic Analysis of the Rocchio Algorithm with tfidf for Text Categorization,† Proc. 14th Int’l Conf. Machine Learning (ICML ’97), pp. 143-151, 1997. [15] T. Joachims, â€Å"Text Categorization with Support Vector Machines: Learning with Many Relevant Features,† Proc. European Conf. Machine Learning (ICML ’98),, pp. 137-142, 1998. [16] T. Joachims, â€Å"Transductive Inference for Text Classification Using Support Vector Machines,† Proc. 16th Int’l Conf. Machine Learning (ICML ’99), pp. 200-209, 1999. [17] W. Lam, M.E. Ruiz, and P. Srinivasan, â€Å"Automatic Text Categorization and Its Application to Text Retrieval,† IEEE Trans. Knowledge and Data Eng., vol. 11, no. 6, pp. 865-879, Nov./Dec. 1999. [18] D.D. Lewis, â€Å"An Evaluation of Phrasal and Clustered Representations on a Text Categorization Task,† Proc. 15th Ann. Int’l ACM SIGIR Conf. Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR ’92), pp. 37-50, 1992. [19] D.D. Lewis, â€Å"Feature Selection and Feature Extraction for Text Categorization,† Proc. Workshop Speech and Natural Language, pp. 212-217, 1992. [20] D.D. Lewis, â€Å"Evaluating and Optimizing Automous Text Classification Systems,† Proc. 18th Ann. Int’l ACM SIGIR Conf. Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR ’95), pp. 246-254, 1995. [21] G. Salton and C. Buckley, â€Å"Term-Weighting Approaches in Automatic Text Retrieval,† Information Processing and Management: An Int’l J., vol. 24, no. 5, pp. 513-523, 1988. [22] F. Sebastiani, â€Å"Machine Learning in Automated Text Categorization,† ACM Computing Surveys, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 1-47, 2002. [23] Y. Yang, â€Å"An Evaluation of Statistical Approaches to Text Categorization,† Information Retrieval, vol. 1, pp. 69-90, 1999. [24] Y. Yang and X. Liu, â€Å"A Re-Examination of Text Categorization Methods,† Proc. 22nd Ann. Int’l ACM SIGIR Conf. Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR ’99), pp. 42-49, 1999. : .

Cantebury Tales. Brief Characterization Of Monk :: essays research papers

Geoffrey Chaucer’s, The Canterbury Tales was written in the late fourteenth century. It is a compilation of short stories, set in the Medieval Period England, told by travelers who are going on a pilgrimage to the Cathedral at Canterbury. Among the traveling band, a Monk of likely Franciscan ties was a pilgrim of high rank and nobility.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The Monk in The Canterbury Tales, ranks among the highest compared to the other pilgrims. The Monk belonged to the ecclesiastical estate, which was one relating to a church. The church he belongs to is of Catholic origin and is hinted at by this line, â€Å"The Rule of good St.Benet or St.Maur†¦Ã¢â‚¬  He is likely a member of the order founded by Saint Francis of Assisi in 1209, an order that had concrete connections with the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church at that time assumed much influence and power in England.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Even though the Monk is rich, he does let his money corrupt his faith or character. The Monk was â€Å"fat and a personable priest† who did not carry himself as a snob of the higher class. He was basically respectful to the old and kind to the young. The Monk also was more open to ideas and did not follow his faith where he found wrong. For example, â€Å"he did not rate that text at a plucked hen Which says that hunters are not holy men†. He was also considered brave and righteous by Chaucer’s opinion, â€Å"And I agreed and said his views were sound†¦Ã¢â‚¬    Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The Monk is a wealthy man as shown by his appearance, and greatly enjoys hunting, reading books and deeply appreciates the finer things in life. â€Å"Was he to study till his head went round†¦Ã¢â‚¬  describes his long-term commitment to learning. His â€Å"many dainty a horses†, â€Å"fine grey fur† and â€Å"wrought gold cunningly fashioned pin† leads the reader to think that he enjoys living a comfortable life. â€Å"As old and strict he tended to ignore; He let go by the things of yesterday And took the modern world’s more spacious way†¦Ã¢â‚¬  describes how he does not allow the troubles of the day throw him off his happiness.

Power, Morality, and Terror Essay -- Terrorism Terrorist September 11

Power, Morality, and Terror In the wake of events stemming from the bombing of the World Trade Center, citizens of the United States have slowly been coming to grips with many changes- new threats, new fears, and a new vision of the world and our place within it. As we re-adjust the lens through which we see our geopolitical landscape and begin to formulate a national security policy which can effectively respond to the terrorist threat, we must acquire a firm understanding of what motivates terrorist operatives. It will not suffice to merely throw out simplistic explanations of terrorist motives such as, "they’re evil. . .they hate us. . .they’re irrational. . .they hate freedom." Rather, we must take a systematic look at what motivates terrorism on the theoretical level. In some ways, terrorism is just a new variation on an old theme. For as long as men have lived in societies, there have been the haves and the have-nots, the dominant classes and the oppressed groups, the weak and the strong. Whereas the tactics of terrorists may be more technologically advanced and, arguably, more cruel than those used by insurgents of the past, their primary goal of altering either the regional or global polarity is as old as mankind itself. For their part, those dominant nations against whom the repressed campaign tend to engage in a brand of rhetoric which portrays the opposition as morally depraved. While this may or may not be the case, two important questions follow which are asked all too rarely. The first question is: how valid are the claims of the repressed that the dominant state itself is morally culpable? In the current case, the United States is responsible for committing a number of evils against Muslims. This is esp... ...orism is the last resort of a desperate people. Perhaps its best cure is to confront and rectify the grievances of those who suffer so greatly at our hands (often because of our narrow oil-interests in the Persian Gulf). Even a minimal increase in the standard of living in such countries, even a small acknowledgment of our role in maintaining and exacerbating this suffering- would instill in potential insurgents the one thing that stops terrorism dead in its tracks- hope. Sources: Betts, Richard K. ed. Conflict After the Cold War: Arguments on Causes of War and Peace. Carr, Edward Hallett. "Realism and Idealism." Second Edition. Longman Press: New York. 2002. Coates, AJ. The Ethics of War. Manchester University Press. New York: 1997. Liang, Qiao and Wang Xiangsui. Unrestricted Warfare. Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House. 1999.

Fourth Amendment Exceptions :: essays research papers

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution states that people have the right â€Å"to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,† but the issue at hand here is whether this also applies to the searches of open fields and of objects in plain view and whether the fourth amendment provides protection over these as well. In order to reaffirm the courts’ decision on this matter I will be relating their decisions in the cases of Oliver v. United States (1984), and California v. Greenwood (1988) which deal directly with the question of whether a person can have reasonable expectations of privacy as provided for in the fourth amendment with regards to objects in an open field or in plain view.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The differentiation between open fields and private property must be made before one can proceed to form an opinion regarding the constitutionality of a warrantless search of an open field. Oliver v. United States is a case in which police officers, acting on reports from neighbors that a patch of marijuana was being cultivated on the Oliver farm, entered on to private property ignoring â€Å"No Trespassing† signs, and on to a secluded open portion of the Oliver property without a warrant, discovered the marijuana patch and then arrested Oliver without an arrest warrant. The Maine Judicial Court held that â€Å"No Trespassing† signs posted around the Oliver property â€Å"evinced a reasonable expectation of privacy,† and therefore the court held that the â€Å"open fields† doctrine was not applicable to the Oliver case.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Upon hearing the case, the Supreme Court argues that the special protections accorded by the fourth amendment do not extend to open fields. â€Å"Open fields do not provide the setting for those intimate activities that the Amendment is intended to shelter from government interference or surveillance.† The court refers to the case of Hester v. United States (1924) which set the precedent for â€Å"open field cases† and interprets that case to imply that â€Å"an individual may not legitimately demand privacy for activities conducted out of doors in fields, except in the area immediately surrounding the home.† The patch of marijuana being no where near the Oliver home, and in an open field, regardless of its visibility from public access, left the court affirming Oliver v. United States, and reversing the case of Thornton v. Maine, and in essence reaffirming that

A Comparative Analysis of Devlin and Mill Essay

It can be assumed that if J.S. Mill and Lord Devlin ever coexisted some intoxicating deliberations regarding the role of morality in society would transpire. However, time has a peculiar habit of erecting boundaries amid centuries, allowing us only to presume discourse between the contemporary and the historical. Consequentially, each individual has an obligation to formulate his or her own appraisal established through the logistic unification of the particular instant and one’s own conception of idealistic righteousness. But the acquisition of an infallible and tangible philosophy with universal application would be as obstinate to create as it would to fathom. In such regard, the apparatus on which debate must rest is well constructed. If each were to believe in the intricate purity of his inspiration than no philosophy but his own would be received. It is subsequently the responsibility of that creature to sell his faculty, ensuing the continued survival of dispute. It is the function of this formula to patiently arrive at a conciliated truth in which the majority of a society can divulge. If the perceived truth were to have an impact on the thirst and fertility of an entire society than it would be in that institution’s interest to create a fountain from which everyone could drink. It is this motive that has justifiably birthed meticulous curiosity in the works of both Lord Devlin and John Stuart Mill, each of whom have crafted disparate cures for the perils of harm in society, but neither of whom have succeeded in absorbing the values of the other. However, to adequately dissect values there must first be an ample understanding of the beliefs of each party concerned, only then can one interpret the mutual ethics from the personal. Mill perceives only one instance in which society is justified in interfering with or limiting the freedoms of its adult members, that being to prevent harm to others. Though Mill would also claim that not all harm could rationalize intruding on an individual’s freedom, the harm must overshadow the liberty being reduced. Additionally, Mill introduces two forms of harm, direct and indirect. Direct harm occurs when the actions of one member of a society has a negative impact on another as a result of that individuals  behavior. Consequently, Mill would argue that a mugger has had a direct harm on his victim because the outcome of the event was immediate and detrimental. Indirect harm is habitually tolerable because most acts can affect others; accordingly, if the act has a detrimental effect on others but only as being consequential of the affect of the individual on himself, it is justifiable. For instance, if a man chooses to remain in ill health rather than obtain appropriate medical assistance, he is detrimental to society, but only as a result of him harming himself. This is distinguishable as indirectly harmful because there was an intermediate source of the harm, that being the man’s preference. Contrary to Mill, Devlin would categorize this form of indirect harm as immoral and injurious to society as a whole. While Mill argues that harmless actions, such as a man choosing ill health rather than being a productive member of a society must not be the subject of social coercion, Devlin would assert that the harmless action is in actuality damaging societies moral composition, requiring it to be made the subject of social control. Stressed by Devlin is the belief that â€Å"†¦there are certain standards of behavior or moral principles which society requires to be observed; and the breach of them is an offense not merely against the person who is injured but against society as a whole.† In context we find the incongruity. Mill approaches the permissibility of regulating personal liberties only as an edict to preventing harm, never consenting to use the regulation of liberty to enforce morals. In contrast, Devlin’s tactic is to implement a moral principle to help protect society from itself, trusting that without this principle there would be social disintegration. Moreover Devlin asserts that moral legislation is crucial to maintain a social bond. He maintains that society has a right to protect its own existence by barring behavior that threatens that existence. This is distinctly divergent from Mill’s perceptions on paternalism. Mill claimed that there must be unconditional rejection of paternalism by the state, only invalidated to prevent persons from selling themselves into slavery. Reinforcing his case Mill argued that paternalistic intervention is unlikely to work because an individual is acutely more aware of his or her own needs than the state is. Additionally, he argued that it is improbable  compulsion would work. This can also be taken into account in the form of liberty. Mill alleges that an autonomous life has more value than a life of dependency, since one cannot be forced to be autonomous paternalism has a damaging effect on an individual. As a contemporarily relevant issue, Devlin indirectly delivers his rebuttal to paternalism by embodying a stance on homosexuality. He defends societies right to protect its own existence by vetoing behavior that threatens its sustainability, since homosexuality is detrimental to society that union has a right to prohibit it. This is consistent with Devlin’s definition of â€Å"tangible harm†, described as a harm that instigates a diminution of the physical strength of society. When practiced in trivial quantities these activities can be harmless, however as its participants grow it has a linear effect on its harm. In accordance, he also argues that â€Å"unrestricted indulgence in vice† will weaken an individual to the extent that he ceases to be a useful member of society and society itself will deteriorate in the event that a sufficient number of its members are plagued by vice. However, the tangible harm that certain forms of conduct allegedly cause is restricted to the applicability of that behavior’s breach to the shared morality. If homosexuality is injurious to society it is so regardless of whether it violates the shared morality or not. In conjunction with this notion, Mill would affix his fundamental belief that this individual’s decision to practice homosexua lity is impartial because it is a sovereign decision. Mill asserts, â€Å"If a person possess a tolerable amount of common sense and experience, his own mode of laying out his existence is the best, not because it is the best in itself but because it is his own mode.† Likewise, if it is generally believed that sexual immorality will effectively cause the collapse of a society there may be validation for suppressing this deviant conduct but individual freedom prevents us from accepting this. If the repression of seemingly deviant acts were the norm there would exist an agency to justify intolerances founded on, among many others, religion and race. Mill would also note that it allocates a leeway to repressing self-regarding actions, which include liberty of conscience and expression, tastes and pursuits and liberty of association. Besides the value of the self-regarding sphere, Mill stresses the importance of freedom of expression, which in proviso to Devlin, is capable in itself of tugging at the societal nit. Devlin has suggested that society is a culturally elastic entity that persists through various changes in social mores, owing to his elastic principles it can be argued that he has a general tolerance for individual freedom. However, he rejects Mill’s perception of freedom on the basis that he has an idealistic picture of human beings. He professes that Mill holds an earnest view of an individual conscientiously doing what he thinks is right regardless of the acceptance of his behavior. This is easily categorized as Mill’s claim to freedom of expression. According to Mill, opinions or beliefs cannot be suppressed for the reason that they are among other things immoral or shocking, the only validity for suppression is if they are harmful. As Devlin has claimed, â€Å"†¦freedom of action follows naturally on [freedom of expression]; men must be allowed to do what they are allowed to talk about doing†¦what Mill visualizes is people doing things he himself would disapprove of, but doing them earnestly and openly and after thought and discussion†¦This seems to me on the whole an idealistic picture.† But Devlin believes this is seldom true of those who violate the shared morality of society. He believes that most individuals acknowledge the fallibility of their conduct but continue it for lust and money. He believes, â€Å"Freedom to do what you know to be bad is worthless.† However, a person may breach the values of his society with the belief that those morals are not intrinsic and encompass various modes of conduct that he believes are morally permissible. If the action does not harm others the liberty to pursue ones own tastes and pursuits should be boundless. By this notion, vices are only such if they are acknowledged by those who engage in them. Mill reinforces his conviction against censorship by indicating that a censored opinion might be true, or if it is literally false may contain part of the truth, additionally, if it is entirely false, a censored opinion would prevent true opinions from becoming dogma and as a dogma an unchallenged truth will lose its meaning. An individual, as mentioned by Mill, is more inclined to pursue personal righteousness with unlimited access to the truth, which requires freedom of expression. As Devlin would concede, the pursuit of individual infallibility would coincide with the aspiration of a morally entrenched society. Although Devlin has the benefit of criticizing Mill’s assertions without the risk of rebuttal he has yet to disprove the accuracy of Mill’s libertarian approach. Devlin’s disputes address a number of Mill’s themes, including his harm principle, paternalism and freedom of expression, but fail to yield an internalized acceptance of their circular approach to discrediting one of philosophies nobles. Furthermore, Devlin’s disintegration thesis attempts to secede harm to society from harm to individuals, as such, his appeal to the concept of gross social injury could be viewed as an application of a public harm principle. As such, the cumulative effect of harm on a collective group of individuals has the capacity to cause a disturbance in public interest. Consequently, the incongruity between Mill and Devlin can be reduced to the acceptance that Mill embraces both public and private harm, while Devlin incorporates a deviant version of private impairment and a similar notion of public hurt. If, then, the claims made by Devlin are accurate, it can also be argued that Mill would support the legal enforcement of shared morality. As of yet society still covets the search for a public fountain, probing our faculties for the cure to all our vices, but refusing to accept the likelihood that there may never be enough water to satisfy every persons thirst.