Communication Processes and Maslows Hierarchy of Needs

Communication Processes and Maslows Hierarchy of Needs Introduction Communication is extremely important to organisations and individual alike. The effectiveness of the communication will directly relate to the success of the organisation and the achievements of the individuals within it. Communication in the retail industry is all important to survival and profitability. The successful retailer is constantly developing a network of communication channels to customers, distributors, financial institutions, the government and employees. Each of these groups is composed of people with differing interests and cannot be reached by the same communication channels. Similarly, employees need skills for a range of communication activities that are used a daily in the retail environment. These include written communication, verbal communication and an understanding of non-verbal communication. There is also an increasing need for retailers and staff to adopt and effectively use new communication technology such as integrated computer systems with functions su ch as e-mail, customer data bases and Internet information access. Because communication is a central factor in the emerging knowledge economy and a major consideration for anyone entering todays workforce, we need to look more closely at the total process of communication. Purposes of communication are the transmission of information and meaning from one individual or group to another. The crucial element in this definition is meaning. Communication has as its central objective the transmission of meaning. The process of communication is successful only when the receiver understands an idea as the sender intended it. Both parties must agree not only on the information transmittee but also on the meaning of that information. Communication Process Sender Has Idea The process of communication begins when the person with whom the message originates the sender has an idea. The form of the idea will be influenced by complex factors surrounding the senders mood, frame of reference, background, culture, and physical makeup, as well we the context of the situation and many other factors. The way you greet people on campus or on the job, for example, depends a lot on how you feel, whom you are addressing (a classmate, a professor, a colleague, or your boss), and what your culture has trained you to say (Good morning, Hey, Hi, Howdy, or How ya doing?). The form of idea, whether a simple greeting or a complex idea, is shaped by assumptions based on the senders experiences. A manager sending an e-mail announcement to employees assumes that will be receptive, whereas direct-mail advertisers assume that receivers will give only a quick glance to their message. The ability to accurately predict how a message will affect its receiver and skill in adapting that message to its receiver are key factors in successful communication. Sender Encodes Idea in Message The next step in the communication process involves encoding. This means converting the idea into words or gestures that will convey meaning. A major problem in communicating any message verbally is that words have different meanings for different people. When misunderstood, skilled communicators choose familiar words with concrete meanings on which both senders and receivers agree. In selecting proper symbols, senders must be alert to the receivers communication skills, attitudes, background, experiences, and culture. Message Travels Over Channel The medium over which the message is physically transmitted is the channel. Messages may be delivered by computer, telephone, cell phone, letter, memorandum, report, announcement, picture, spoken word, fax, Web page, or through some other channel. Because communication channels deliver both verbal and nonverbal messages, senders must choose the channel and shape the message carefully. A company may use its annual report, for example, as a channel to deliver many messages to stockholders. The verbal message lies in the reports financial and organization news. Nonverbal messages, though, are conveyed by the reports appearance (showy versus bland), layout (ample white space versus tightly packed columns of print), and tone (conversational versus formal). Anything that interrupts the transmission of a message in the communication process is called noise. Channel noise rangers from static that disrupts a telephone conversation to typographical and spelling errors in a letter or e-mail message. Such errors damage the credibility of the sender. Channel noise might even include the annoyance a receiver feels when the sender chooses an improper medium for sending a message, such as announcing a loan rejection via postcard or firing an employee by e-mail. Receiver Decodes Message The individual for whom the message is intended is the receiver. Translating the message from its symbol form into meaning involves decoding. Only when the receiver understands the meaning intended by the sender that is, successfully decodes the message does communication take place. Such success, however, is difficult to achieve because no two people share the same life experiences and because many barriers can disrupt the process. Decoding can be disrupted internally by the receivers lack of attention to or bias against the sender. It can be disrupted externally by loud sounds or illegible words. Decoding can also be sidetracked by semantic obstacles, such as misunderstood words or emotional reactions to certain terms. A memo that refers to all the women in an office as girls or chicks, for example, may disturb its receivers so much that they fail to comprehend the total message. Feedback Travels to Sender The verbal and nonverbal responses of the receiver create feedback, a vital part of the communication process. Feedback helps the sender know that the message was received and understood. If, as a receiver, you hear the message Hoe are you, your feedback might consist of words (Im fine) or body language (a smile or a wave of the hand). Although the receiver may respond with additional feedback to the sender (thus creating a new act of communication), we will concentrate here on the initial message flowing to the receiver and the resulting feedback. Senders can encourage feedback by asking questions such as, Am I making myself clear? And is there anything you dont understand? Senders can further improve feedback by timing the delivery appropriately and by providing only as much information as the receiver can handle. Receivers can improve the process by paraphrasing the senders message with comments, such as, Let me try to explain that in my own words. The best feedback is descriptive rather than evaluate. For example, heres a descriptive response. I understand you want to launch a used gold ball business. Heres an evaluative response. Your business ideas are always goofy. An evaluative response is judgemental and doesnt tell the sender whether the receiver actually understood the message. Common forms of communication use in hospitality and tourism industry there are: Auditory communication Visual communication Tactile communication Multichannel communication Auditory communication is where messages are perceived through the sense of hearing. Words, music, sounds and noises take part in this type of communication. In the hospitality sector we can establish auditory communication through different media according to activity and objectives such as: direct conversation or face to face communication, phone conversation and radio broadcasting. Visual communication is where messages are perceived through sight. Sign, gesture and images are very important when communicating. There are different media such as, letters, complaint forms, contracts, invoices, labels and leaflets. Tactile communication is where messages are perceived through the sense of touch. Affection is conveyed through tactile sensations. Shaking hands or tapping someones shoulder can have positive or negative effects, so it is necessary to be very respectful in this matter and know cultural conventions. There are different mediums such as greetings at meetings and negotiations. Multichannel communication is where messages are perceived through different senses at a time. There are different media through which this is possible such as television, video and computer. Conclusion Managers need complete and correct information in order to perform their functions efficiently and effectively. If such information is not properly communicated, the whole organisation suffers from mismanagement. For instance, business planning, requires information on available resources, strength of competitors, government policies, and other external factors. Such information provides very important inputs for management to be able to formulate the right objectives and strategies for achieving its goal. Proper communication is again needed. Decision-making is a crucial function of management. It greatly depends on accurate information. Wrong information means wrong decisions; hence, the need for proper communication. Likewise, good communication is needed in controlling. However, it is in leading or directing where effective communication is most needed. People have to be influenced or motivated to think and move towards the right directions; to achieve peak performance; and to act in consonance with the culture of the organization. These clearly require a lot of communication. Managers do not only deal with their peers and subordinates, but also with customers, suppliers, and bankers. Their success in dealing with the said outsiders greatly depends on their ability to communicate. Customers are No.1 in any business organization. Without customers, there is no business. To create customers and satisfy them are certainly big jobs for communication. These require proper planning, organizing, and implementation of marketing strategies. All the said activities depend on effective communication. Introduction Motivation is to supply a motive to and also be the motive of. The willingness to exert high levels of effort to organisational goals, conditioned by the efforts ability to satisfy some individual needs. It is also to cause a person to act in a particular way. Stimulate the interest of a person in an activity. This definition is a good example of the problems associated with the concept of motivation. In essence, there seem to be two conflicting views of motivation. In one way, the definition indicates that motivation is where someone (perhaps a team leader) causes someone else (a team member) to act in a certain way. In other way, it appears that motivation is something that someone uses as a motive for doing things. This apparent conflict reflects an ongoing debate research into motivation. Traditional views of leadership and motivation reflected a passive view of motivation. In effect, people required strong leaders to motivate them towards certain goals. If someone says they are demotivated and we offer them a bag of cash or threaten to sack them, and then they get on with the task in hand, what has happened? This approach to motivation implies that the leader had to motivate his or her team member through various rewards and/or punishments. Motivation is described, usually, as intentional. That is, motivation is assumed to be under the workers control, and behaviours that are influenced by motivation, such as effort expended, are seen as choices of action. One can look at motivation as a deficiency, a need that must be fulfilled. Hunger is a motivation- it is an internal force, food. Before you can motivate your staff, you must first understand what motivates each employee in his or her specific job position. As a manager with human resources responsibilities it is easy to realize that differences exist between what motivates hourly and management employees. What makes a job interesting to a group of hourly employees is different from what makes a job interesting to a group of managers. Furthermore, what one employee may find interesting may not be of any interest to another employee. No matter what, there will be some jobs in the hospitality industry that just cannot be made interesting. There are some motivation theories that the organization must understand in order to motivate their employees to excel at their jobs. Maslows Hierarchy of Needs, Abraham identified the whys of motivation theory. His theory (Hierarchy of Needs) states that man is motivated by satisfying a set of needs common to all individuals. In ascending order of importance these are: Physiological needs (food, clothing, and shelter). Safety/security needs (freedom from fear of losing job, clothing and shelter). Acceptance needs (to belong and be accepted by others). Esteem needs (status, prestige, and power). Self-actualization needs (maximize ones potential). Maslow believed that until the physiological needs are satisfied, the other would not serve as motivators. Furthermore, once a need is met, it no longer acts as a motivator, and another need takes its place. One of the problems with Maslows theory is that although it works in life situations, it is not applicable to work settings. Hertzbergs two-factor theory identified job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction as separate elements that are not polar opposites of each other. The two-factor concept states that job factors generally regarded as motivators should actually be divided into two groups: one consisting of motivation factors (or satisfiers) and one consisting of maintenance factors (dissatisfies or hygiene). Because job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction do not balance each other out, the elimination of a dissatisfier does not necessarily lead to job satisfaction. Motivation factors include such conditions as recognition, achievement, advancement, and responsibility. Hygiene factors include working conditions, company policies, and salary. One of Hertzbergs major conclusions was that money was not a motivator. Hertzberg believes that if motivation factors are present in the workplace, employees will be motivated; if such factors are not present, then motivation will not occur. If hygiene factors are present, then employees will be satisfied with their work; if such factors are not present, then employees will be dissatisfied. Hygiene factors in no way affect motivation, whether they are present or absent. Expectancy theory is one of the more implementable motivation theories. The theory states that a person will be motivated when the individual perceives a link between what he or she is doing and the expected reward. The higher the effort, the greater the reward and vice versa. It is important that the reward is attainable and that your human resources will feel rewarded for the effort they produce. Pay-for-performance compensation systems operate on this principle. Fixed hourly wages and salaries do not motivate because there is no link between effort and reward. For the reward to operate as a motivator, the employee must value attainment of the reward, the employee must see a link between his or her work efforts and receiving the reward, and the individual must possess the abilities and skills to do the job. Money as a motivator, the motivational value of money may change after a persons basic needs have been reasonably well satisfied. Because human beings have a way of continually redefining their needs, whether money will motivate is to some degree a matter of the amount the employee is already earning. Therefore, while some people will be more motivated to work for money, companies find that for most employees other things are equally, if not more important. Job enrichment, Hertzberg proposed the idea of job enrichment as a reaction to the KITA (kick-in-the-ass) motivational approach there are most managers practicing. Job enrichment is based on that the only way to motivate employees is to give them challenging work in which they can assume responsibility. This strategy includes modifying jobs so that they are more meaningful and give the employee an opportunity for recognition and greater responsibility. Motivational effectiveness, there is no consensus on how best to motivate your work force. As a human resources manager, consideration needs to be given to several factors that involve human resources functions other than development. Selection procedures need to be effective so that individuals are places in job positions that they are capable of performing. Training programs must be effective in ensuring that our employees have the necessary skills, and evaluation procedures must be in place to monitor employees performance. Compensation practices needs to be developed that link performance and pay. Furthermore, these practices must all be viewed as fair; that poor performance is not tolerated, high performance is recognized. If your work force is to be motivated, they must believe that extra effort and superior performance is of benefit to them. Rewards do not have to be monetary. Flexible work hours, recognized achievement, increased responsibility, and the opportunity to develop personal and career goals work directly toward a motivated work force has to create desire, commitment, and confidence in your employees. Communication channels have to be open and organizational goals clearly defined. Conclusion There is always an interesting group of drives in every human being that determines how we interact with the world around us. The basic survival drives, like the need for food and water, are not as evident in the workplace as some of our other instincts-our need for activity, curiosity, and manipulation. People need to be active. The level of activity we seek differs tremendously, but, generally, people dislike being confined in a small space with nothing to do. People also have a drive to explore new and unknown places and stimuli. We have a preference for complexity over simplicity, because complexity is more interesting. We also have a tendency to enjoy manipulation; we want to touch, play with, and handle specific objects. These very basic needs have far-reaching implications for the design of jobs and of workplaces. No wonder boring, repetitive, or make-work jobs, even if they are easy, lead to burn out frustration, and even sabotage (just to liven things up.)

Business continuity and disaster recovery Essay

The mission-critical business systems and services that must be protected by this DRP are as follows: Payroll, Human Resource Data, POS backup media, and Web Servers and their services. b. Internal, External, and Environmental Risks b. i. Examples of internal risks that may affect business are unauthorized access by individuals who are employed by the company, and those who aren’t employed by the company but still have access to individual store’s computer systems, applications, or areas where the servers and backup media are located. Other external and environmental risks include fire, floods, power outages, hardware failure, software glitches and failure, storms, and other acts of nature. II. Disaster Recovery Strategy a. Most cases, having an alternative site (a hot site, or cold site depending on the disaster) would be the correct way of dealing with most disasters. As well as having a backup and retention site to work from, and recover from for the main servers and web services. b. Unwanted access can be turned off, or excluded when logged in via a monitoring service, as well as time restricted login. Any unauthorized logins will be recorded and terminated as well as site information and tracing information. Security measures are implied (camera, onsite security, etc. ). III. Disaster Test Plan a. Monthly walkthroughs of the equipment, as well as quality assurance through the electric company, Internet Service providers, will ensure upkeep of the facilities main sources of outside connection as well as power. Weekly walkthroughs from management will keep the records up to date, as well as daily walkthroughs by IT will keep day to day evaluations up to date. b. Working with the electric company, as well as the internet service provider for the company will ensure that during a â€Å"Blackout† that services will be restored or alternative accommodations are made. Such as Internet Service Provider at the main location has been lost, the backup â€Å"hot† site is then initiated and work to restore the main site is commenced as well as recorded. If the hot site is compromised as well, the cold site and/or the backup media site will then come into play. This goes for in an event where power is lost, or a natural disaster happens at the main location, the services then begin on alternative sites where backup has been made, or at least working services implemented. c. Unwanted access will again be monitored and recorded, as well as terminated upon login. d. During a full interruption of service, where the site as well as backup media, hot site, and cold site are not accessible, emergency protocol is implemented to recover main site as soon as possible with minimal loss. In worst case scenario, the hot site will become the main site until main site become available again.

Land Question and Ethnicity in Darjeeling Hills Essay

ABSTRACT Although economic factors are often considered as essential for augmenting ethnic movements, the analytic relationship between economic issues and ethnicity is far from being clear cut. In an attempt to address the problem of ethnicity in a non-Marxist theoretical plane, most of the studies on ethnic problems inadvertently indulge such logical inconsistencies. Such a critical reading led us to conceptualize ethnicity as a lived-in category – much like the concepts of class or caste – where both the material and cultural domain of routine life congregates. With the help of a case study of the Gorkhaland movement in the Darjeeling Hills (India) and the input of a particular field of material predisposition – namely, the issues related with land and agrarian social formation, this paper attempts to argue that ethnic movements are a dynamic podium wherein the encoded meanings of material and/or economic issues/grievances are decoded in cultural idioms. Even if the discussions on ethnicity have an inbuilt tendency to develop a theoretical plane that criticizes Marxian class analysis and demands an autonomous conceptual frame duly encouraged by post-Marxist and poststructuralist/postmodernist theoretical renditions, literatures on ethnicity for the most part have stressed economic factors, in some way or the other. Hence, finding available studies, which have made considerable advances in understanding the problem of Gorkha ethnicity, that have concentrated their focus on economic factors as the root cause of ethnic antagonism and conflict in the Darjeeling Hills (West Bengal, India) is common. ‘Economic stagnation’ (Dasgupta 1988), ‘uneven implementation of development policies’ (Chakrabarty 1988), ‘economic deprivation and negligence’ (Bura Magar 1994; Lama 1988; McHenry Jr. 2007; Nanda 1987), ‘petty-bourgeoisie aggrandisements against the dominance of monopoly capitalists of the Centre and the State’ (Sarkar 1988), ‘economic negligence, exploitation, and unavailability of white-collar jobs’ (Chadha 2005), ‘growing unemployment and step motherly attitude of the state regarding the overall development of the hill areas’ (Timsina 1992), ‘uneven development’ (Dasgupta 1999; Datta 1991), ‘endemic poverty, underdevelopment, and the perception of being â€Å"malgoverned†Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ (Ganguly 2005), are some such factors many scholars put as the root cause of the Gorkhaland movement in the Darjeeling Hills. However, none of these studies have made it abundantly clear how economic conditions – the domain of the material – are linked to the desires of ethnic separatism, which conceptually remained under the rubric of culture – the non-material. Again, if the economic factors remarkably remained so significant, as the studies show, then why ultimately the cultural warpath (i.e., 81 ethnic conflict) and not an economic one (i.e., class conflict) appeared as a suitable remedial strategy? One obvious question arises thus: how the ‘material’ is transposed into ‘cultural’? The present paper is an attempt to answer such questions by analyzing the case of the Gorkha ethnicity and movement as it emerged out of the people’s grievances experienced through their quotidian life processes cloaked in their relative positions within the structural inequality. In fact, ethnic identity much like the issues of class or caste is a lived-in category that emerges out of the perception of reality and receives constant reformulation, since the reality is itself dynamic. In our treatment ethnic identification – much like all other identifications – is overall rooted in the larger canvas of social experience, which determines the processes of framing contending relationships between and among groups based on their varying capacity of possessing the valued and scarce resources available in the society. Instead of pinpointing the causes of the movement, our analysis attempts to show that the assertion of Gorkha ethnic identity has had payoffs with respect to resource access and utilization and that the protracted struggle of the Gorkhas for separate statehood is that trajectory wherein both the cultural and material aspects of routine life coalesce. Sometimes this happens even without an immediate ethnic ‘other’. This is particularly the case, as the study shows, with the hill agrarian sector. It thus becomes imperative that the problem should be studied in a historical plane putting utmost emphasis on the social formation of the Darjeeling Hills, which would help us focus the pattern of resource distribution on an ethnic plane vis-à  -vis the question of structural inequality. The importance of treating the issue of Gorkhaland movement as a historical phenomenon can hardly be ignored, especially when one finds that the Darjeeling Hills has experienced a century long historicity of protest – sometimes accommodative, sometimes violent – to achieve a separate politico-administrative arrangement for self rule. Moreover, the historical perspective is needed to show the fundamental changes that have taken place within the social formation of the region since the colonial days and had corresponding effects for furthering the cause of the movement in the post-colonial period. Therefore, a proper historical analysis of ethnicity can help us understand how the grievances of the masses were articulated and were translated into the courses of violent action, how new equations came up because of state intervention and how the overall dynamics of the movement kept on rolling, putting ethnicity at the center stage. SOCIAL FORMATION AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS Indeed, there can never be a single cause of an ethnic movement that stretched over a century.1 However, our concern regarding the causes of Gorkhaland movement is not about degree but of kind, by which we mean that Gorkha ethnicity, or for that matter the Gorkhaland movement, is embedded in the social formation of the Darjeeling Hills. It is neither entirely the product of primordial sentiments nor even the result of elite manipulation, but had been the outcome of a dynamic social formation that reproduced its productive forces, relations of production, as well as the relations of subjugation and exploitation meted out by its incumbents. The onus of social formation in augmenting the cause of social movement has been stressed by most of the major theoretical paradigms in some form or the other. For example, functionalism, though lately emerging from its erstwhile position of bracketing social movements as pathological social behavior, became increasingly concerned with the analysis of social movement as a variety of (normal) collective action and showed the necessity of framing a general hypothesis on the social system while analyzing social movements as a collective phenomenon of some sort. Likewise, symbolic interactionism and resource mobilization theory, in their attempts to analyze social movement, put stress on the relational structures and on the complex processes of interaction mediated by certain networks of belonging, respectively. The Marxist tradition, perhaps, has given utmost emphasis on the necessity to view social movements in relation to structural arrangements available in the social formation. Each social formation is rooted in a particular structure of relationship and movement is not the cause but the outcome of the differentially arranged social order in which privileges and rewards are more in possession of some minority groups compared with the majority others. Even the post-Marxist or for that matter the New Social Movement (NSM) perspective in their zeal to study the identity-based movements as manifestations of post-material claims hardly denied the importance of social formation while understanding the so-called post-material claims of the NSMs. In outlining the principles for the analysis of collective action, Melucci (1996:24) – a prominent figure of NSM school – points out that the analytical field of the NSMs depends on the systems of relationships within which such action takes place and toward which it is directed. The recorded history of the Gorkhaland movement suggests that the first spurt of the movement can be marked out in the year 1907 when the hill people submitted a memorandum – for the first time – to the colonial government urging separation from the then Bengal and the need to formulate a separate administrative arrangement for the Darjeeling Hills. ALTHUSSER, SOCIAL FORMATION, AND THE DYNAMICS OF RURAL DARJEELING Taking a cue from the centrality of social formation in the study of social movement as analyzed above, an attempt has been made to focus on the social formation of the Darjeeling Hills2 and its contribution to the development of a protracted ethnic movement in the region. Our treatment of the concept of social formation is Althusserian in inspiration and is viewed as a complex whole composed of concrete economic, political and ideological relations that provide the pretext upon which the consolidation of selfhood of the individual or the group within a given social space becomes feasible. It is worth mentioning here instead of using such terms like ‘social system’, ‘social order’ or for that matter ‘society,’ Althusser (1997) preferred the use of ‘social formation’. Since he believed while terms like ‘social system’ and ‘social order’ presupposes a structure that reduces the form of all its emanations, ‘society’ as a concept is loaded with pre-Marxist humanist conception that treats social life as ultimately the product of individual human beings. Althusser has used the concept of social formation with some broader theoretical appeal. He problematized the so-called base-superstructure module by bringing together the notions of social system, order, and society closer to his postMarxist formulation of social formation. Social formation, for Althusser, is constituted of a complex of concrete economic, political, and ideological relations, bound together and given their particular character as capitalist, feudal or whatever by the fact that economic relations, is the ‘determinant in the last instance.’ Conceived in this manner the concept of social formation presupposes that under this model social reality is neither determined, nor to be explained by a single causal variable but always by the whole structure (a notion that he labels as ‘overdetermination’), which remains amenable to the economic determinant only in the last instance. The uniqueness in Althusser’s concept of social formation lies in the fact that it problematizes the ‘base-superstructure’ relationship (that remains central, almost invariably, to the whole realm of post-Marxist scholarship) to that extreme of Darjeeling has been one of the prominent hill stations developed by the British i n colonial India.

ESL Learning, Teaching Direct Objects

A direct object is a person or thing that directly affected by the action of a verb. For example: Jennifer bought a book.Egan ate an apple. In the first sentence, a book is affected because it is bought by Jennifer. In the second sentence, an apple disappeared because it was eaten by Egan. Both of the objects are directly affected by a specific action. In other words, they are direct objects. Direct Objects Answer Questions Direct objects answer the questions: What was affected by the action of the verb? or Who was affected by the action of the verb? For example: Thomas sent a letter. - What was sent? - a letter / letter is a direct objectFrank kissed Angela. - Who was kissed? - Angela / Angela is a direct object Direct objects can be nouns, proper nouns (names), pronouns, phrases, and clauses. Nouns as Direct Objects Direct objects can be nouns (things, objects, people, etc.). For example: Jennifer bought a book. - The direct object book is a noun.Egan ate an apple. - The direct object apple is a noun. Pronouns as Direct Objects Pronouns can be used as direct objects. Its important to note that pronouns used as direct objects must take the object pronoun form. Object pronouns include me, you, him, her, it, us, you, and them. For example: I watched it last week. - it (a television show) is an object pronoun.Shes going to visit them next month. - them (a few people) is an object pronoun. Phrases as Direct Objects Gerunds (ing form) and gerund phrases and infinitives (to do) and infinitive phrases can also function as direct objects. For example: Tom enjoys watching TV. - watching TV (gerund phrase) functions as the direct object of the verb enjoy.I hope to finish soon. - to finish soon (infinitive phrase) functions as the direct object of the verb finish. Clauses as Direct Objects Clauses contain both a subject and a verb. This type of longer phrase can also be used as a direct object of a verb in another clause. For example: Hank believes that she is doing well at school. - that she is doing well at school directly tells us what Hank believes. This dependent clause functions as a direct object.She hasnt decided where she is going on vacation. - where she is going on vacation answers the question What has she not decided yet? it functions as a direct object.