HR Planning at Qantas Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

HR Planning at Qantas - Essay Example In this situation organizations have been increasingly trying to find out what employees think and want from them1. The question of trade union has an important role to play in this context. They are meant to ensure that employees desires are satisfied and that they get a proper working environment and culture for conducting their jobs conveniently and comfortably too. It is also crucial that the strategies that the management undertakes are willingly accepted by employees and unions in order to ensure to make them effective and successful. Employee’s acceptance of the organizational strategies accounts for a key factor for their effective implementation. The project seeks to present the present situation at Qantas Airways which Australia’s flag carrier and regarded as one of the most well known airlines in the world. The company’s maintenance and repair costs account for one of the most expensive in the world; however, they are the least efficient at the same ti me. The most important and prominent contingency faced by the company was to implement any plan as the staff were not willing to accept in change initiated by the management. As presented by Kavanagh and Ashkanasy, (2006), any change management strategy must strive to bring about a complete cultural change in the organization in order to be successful and the most important component in this change process is effective communication and transparency and must be led under proper and competent leadership .... Strategic contingencies affecting the strategic choices that Qantas has from theoretical and practical perspective and effect of the choices on human resource planning The most important and prominent contingency faced by the company was to implement any plan as the staff were not willing to accept in change initiated by the management. As presented by Kavanagh and Ashkanasy, (2006), any change management strategy must strive to bring about a complete cultural change in the organization in order to be successful and the most important component in this change process is effective communication and transparency and must be led under proper and competent leadership2. The various contingencies towards bringing out the changes can be discussed under the certain theories and models3. The primary change management principles are discussed as under. Figure 1: Primary Change Management Principle (Source: Hiatt & Creasey, 2003, P. 15) In this case the resistance towards change is primarily th e main focus of concern. The main aim was to reduce the maintenance costs for which new maintenance regulations were attempted to be implemented. The new maintenance regulations were issued by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority to align the functioning of the airline in accordance to that followed by the European airlines. It also tries to make further advancement in its technologies and services. He realized that the numerous people were responsible for maximizing the profitability of the aircraft in terms of fuel efficiencies and introduction of new products and services. However, it was also realized that the maintenance costs and repair costs were extremely high and this required a complete

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Essay Example for Free

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Essay For my book report I read the book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. This book was published by Haughton Mifflin in 2005.  The novel takes place mostly in New York City, shortly after terrorists destroy the Twin Towers in 2001. However, the time switches from the narrators present to the late 1940s when his grandparents are newlyweds and even farther back to when they are teenagers in Germany. In the present time, Oskar lives in an apartment building. Across the street, in another building, is his grandmother. The two of them sometimes communicate with one another through signs in their windows and walkie-talkies. The main protagonist of the novel is a 9 year old boy named Oskar Schell. Oskar’s father, Thomas Schell, dies in the attack on the world trade center in 2001. While looking through his fathers closet, Oskar finds a key inside a vase, along with a slip of paper reading Black. Curious, Oskar sets off on a mission to contact every person in New York City with the last name Black, in alphabetical order, in order to find the lock to the key his father left behind. The novel also tells a separate narrative that eventually converges with the main story through a series of letters written by Oskar’s grandfather to Oskar’s father and by Oskar’s grandmother to Oskar himself. After almost a year of searching, Oskar is about to give up. After Oskar got vital news from one of the first blacks he met he goes and meets with a peculiar man named William Black. Oskar then gives William Black two keys, the one to the William’s father’s safe-deposit box and one for Oskar’s apartment. Oskar returns home and decides to dig up his father’s grave. He is joined in his mission by the renter, and after opening the empty coffin Oskar decides to fill it, but he is unable to decide what with. The renter suggests the letters that he wrote but was never able to send to his son, and they fill the coffin and re-bury it. Upon coming home, Oskar flips through a succession of photographs depicting a man’s fall from the World Trade Center. The main character of the story, Oskar Schell, a self-proclaimed inventor, is the nine-year-old protagonist. His thoughts have a tendency to trail off into several far-flung ideas, such as ambulances that alert passerby to the severity of their passengers’ conditions and plantlike skyscrapers, and he has several assorted hobbies and collections. He is very trusting of strangers and makes friends easily,  though he does not have many friends his own age. Oskar’s grandfather, Thomas Schell Sr. (also referred to as â€Å"the renter†) is an important character in the story, even though he does not physically meet Oskar until the book’s end. After the death of his first love, Anna, Oskar’s grandfather loses his voice completely and consequently tattoos the words â€Å"yes† and â€Å"no† on his hands. He carries around a â€Å"daybook† where he writes phrases he cannot speak aloud. Major themes of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close include trauma, mourning, family, and the struggle between self-destruction and self-preservation. One literary journal provides an in-depth analysis of the specific types of trauma and recuperative measures that Oskar’s grandmother and Oskar’s grandfather go though after the Dresden fire bombings, and that Oskar goes through after the lo ss of his father. The journal states that Oskar has a simultaneous death wish and extreme need for self-preservation: this theme is echoed in Thomas Schell Sr.’s pronounced survivor guilt and Oskar’s grandmother’s well-disguised inability to cope with her trauma. It also states that though Oskar’s journey to â€Å"find† his father does not help him get over his traumatic experience, it does allow him to grow closer to his mother. In my opinion the book was a well written story and honestly made me look at my life and made me realize that it’s not as bad as I thought it was. I think that Oskar’s grandfather should have told him who he was. Even if I don’t read this book again I would definitely recommend this book to others.

Great Literature - Some Things Never Change :: Literature Essays Literary Criticism

Great Literature - Some Things Never Change Great literature is a book or piece of literature that passes through the ages and allows the reader to identify with the characters. Another element that makes great literature are morals that fit with each passing generation. The last element of great literature is heroism. An example of literature that passes through the ages is Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. By not attaching current stereotypes and standards to characters, Holden Caulfield is a timeless character. Each generation that has read the book has been able to identify with his antics. Lashing out at his teachers and assuming sundry identities to fit in is a common thing among adolescents. Writing about problems that regular people encounter is another way literature goes from one generation to the next. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is a boy's struggle against society's standards. Most young men rebel against society and any form of authority. Running away from home and problems is a thought most adolescents consider. Morals that pass from one generation to another are important in literature. A literary example is The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne. Most of the morals contained in the book are religious. Being faithful to a spouse has always been an important moral, especially in Puritan New England where adultery was considered as heinous as murder. Even thought adulterous spouses aren't looked down upon now as severely as in Puritan New England, it is one thing that is still taught consistently in church and in the home as being bad. Another literary example is The Odyssey by Homer. More heroic and hardworking morals are presented in the epic poem. Work hard and you will obtain what you want or desire and good will always triumph over evil are the main morals in the epic poem. The last element that makes great literature is heroism. Although the character may be fighting ancient gods, demons, monsters, or his or her own destiny, a reader is able to scale down the size of the fight and apply it to his or her life.

Social Environment And Its Effect On Ones Life Essay -- essays researc

Social Environment and Its Effect On One's Life Social environment is influenced by one's power and wealth. This, in turn, determines success or failure in peoples' lives. If one were born with a "silver spoon" in his mouth, he would easily be able to attend a fancy school no matter how intelligent he is or have any luxury he wants just because of power and wealth. On the flip side, if one were born to a poor family in a bad neighborhood infested with violence and drugs, he would have a much smaller chance of succeeding in life, more especially, going to an upper-class school. It is hard for many poor to go to college because of such high tuition costs. Scholarships are available; but, even though one shows financial need, one still has to have a high grade point average and test scores. Even if one has a good mind, trying to study in a gang-ridden neighborhood with constant gunfire isn't easy. With both parents working two jobs, there isn't any parental guidance. Whereas, the affluent, even if busy or working, have the means to insure that their children are supervised and well taken care of. The rich also have the luxury of affording special tutors to help their children while other children are on their own. For example, there are three students, one from a clean, upper-class community, another from a small, middle-class suburb and the other from a graffiti-ridden slum. A... Social Environment And Its Effect On Ones Life Essay -- essays researc Social Environment and Its Effect On One's Life Social environment is influenced by one's power and wealth. This, in turn, determines success or failure in peoples' lives. If one were born with a "silver spoon" in his mouth, he would easily be able to attend a fancy school no matter how intelligent he is or have any luxury he wants just because of power and wealth. On the flip side, if one were born to a poor family in a bad neighborhood infested with violence and drugs, he would have a much smaller chance of succeeding in life, more especially, going to an upper-class school. It is hard for many poor to go to college because of such high tuition costs. Scholarships are available; but, even though one shows financial need, one still has to have a high grade point average and test scores. Even if one has a good mind, trying to study in a gang-ridden neighborhood with constant gunfire isn't easy. With both parents working two jobs, there isn't any parental guidance. Whereas, the affluent, even if busy or working, have the means to insure that their children are supervised and well taken care of. The rich also have the luxury of affording special tutors to help their children while other children are on their own. For example, there are three students, one from a clean, upper-class community, another from a small, middle-class suburb and the other from a graffiti-ridden slum. A...

Argument Summary

Taking a Blue Book Exam is a Social Practice According to Literacy Practices by David Barton and Mary Hamilton, literacy is a social practice. To explain this, Barton and Hamilton point out literacy Is how people discuss and interpret written text. Literacy practices are described to us by Barton and Hamilton as â€Å"in the simplest sense literacy practices are what people do with literacy† (8). Literacy practices eventually lead to literacy events which are defined as observable episodes which arise from practices and are shaped by them.The notion of events stresses the situated nature of literacy and that it always exists in a social context† (8). Text Is crucial In molding our Institutions Into what they are and literacy is deeply rooted in our everyday lives in unexpected ways. In their essay, Barton and Hamilton present to us six propositions to further prove the nature of literacy as a social practice. Next, I will share a literacy event that adheres to two of tho se propositions. My first semester of college had started and I was feeling confident and determined to do well.Although I was fresh out of high school. I didn't doubt my abilities. In all honesty, I underestimated the difficulty of college due to the college courses and advanced placement courses I'd taken throughout my high school career. It was a simple and short-lived time. Then, I was Introduced with a bluebook test. You see, multiple choice, fill in the blank, matching, and true or false worked just fine for me. But when my history professor told us to buy a bluebook, I had no Idea what to expect. When I went hunting for this said bluebook, most people didn't even now what it was!I went to Walter, office supply stores, book stores, and no one knew what I was talking about Finally. I found one In the campus store and when I opened it, blank pages stared back at me. Even though we went over what was to be expected on the test in class, I was still concerned. How am I supposed to succeed at something so foreign to me? Well. I spent a lot of my time just studying the best I could. And then I had an idea. I took my extra bluebook (which I'd bought for my second exam in the course) and I took a list of topics and began writing.The best way to see how to fill these pages with information is to do so without material in front of me as if I were taking the exam in my own home. Secondly, I went through my notes and asked myself the series of who, what. Where, when and why for each event. After discovering some new study tactics, I realized that not much had actually changed. The only deference between this dreaded bluebook test and a high school test Is that I have to communicate to my professor that know the material without a written medium such as a structured question.Instead, I simply had to write down everything I know about the topic and hopefully point out the aspects and details There are two of the six propositions from Barton and Hamiltonians Literacy P ractices that apply to this literacy event. The first is, â€Å"literacy practices are purposeful and embedded in broader social goals and cultural practices† (8). My goal is, of course, to get the best grade possible on this test. However, there is a broader goal that applies here as well. I want to do well in college and gain knowledge that could potentially be useful to me later in life.The second proposition from Barton and Hamilton that applies to my literacy event is, â€Å"literacy practices change and new ones are acquired through process of informal learning and sense making† (8). By leaving high school and entering college, I am acquiring a new literacy. At first, I was mistaken by thinking college would be the same level of difficulty as high school and I later realized I needed to change and adapt in order to be successful in my new environment. A bluebook test is not the only aspect of college that was new to me. In fact, there are continuously new things for me to learn here.Like the bus system, the campus alert system, being aware of traffic so I can predict my commute time, balancing a school schedule I'm not used to with my work schedule, trying to make friends with classmates, and even simply discovering the direction I really want to go in my life. Barton and Hamilton were right; I had acquired new literates and I had broader goals beyond that bluebook test. There are literacy practices, literacy events and those propositions prove true to me. Literacy is a social practice and I understand that now, thank you to Barton and Hamilton.

Out Of Many essays

Out Of Many essays This week in class we read two chapters in the Out of Many book. The first chapter was mainly related to the history of slavery beginning in Africa. It talked about how as resources were found in the land that slaves always seemed to follow. It provided a brief history of West Africa. I found it interesting that it claimed the reason Africans made the best slaves was because of the previous knowledge of farming in Africa. This makes a good introduction for the history of slave trading, which surprisingly lasted over 300 years. The demand for labor was so high in those 300 years that over 11 million slaves were exported from Africa. It was also disturbing to learn that they burned villages and captured men at night to sell them to the slave traders. Even more disturbing is the fact that these people who are kidnapping the Africans were black themselves. It makes you wonder how long it took for them to get captured and sold to slavery. It then describes some of the conditions of the s hips, but it just reiterated what I had already learned about the amount of slaves they crammed into the pits of the ships. As anyone can imagine when you take 11 million people from a country you create a social stagnation in economy, but what I learned was that it also destroyed the social order because they would enslave nobles and create chaos in tribes. It goes on to describe the daily life of a slave and the differences between the North and the South. I found it interesting that because when slaves did the cooking and farming they inadvertently introduced African culture to men who didnt even notice. After reading the chapter I guess the main point that I got out of it would be to remember that without the African influence on America we would not have the stable economy we have today. This chapter deals with the cultivation of the Americas through the paths of the Spanish, French, and English. It describes all the areas that the...

University of Guilan Essays - British People, Consensus Reality

University of Guilan Essays - British People, Consensus Reality University of Guilan Department of English Language and Literature A Deconstructive Study of Moral/Unmoral and Male/Female Oppositions as Social Conventions in Harold Pinter's The Homecoming By: Mahsa Mokhtari January 2015 Contents Abstract Introduction 1 What Are Social Conventions? 2 Social Conventions as Rooms 3 Moral/Unmoral Opposition as a Social Convention 4 Male/Female Opposition as a Social Convention 9 Conclusion 11 Bibliography Abstract Nobel Prizewinning playwright Harold Pinter (b. 1930) is one of the most important literary figures in post war British era. Pintersque ' is the adjective that was coined to show the mysterious and baffling quality in his plays. This essay aims at reading Harold Pinter's The Homecoming (1965) in terms of challenges it creates for the social conventions and deconstructing two of those conventions which are moral/unmoral and male/female oppositions . The present study calls attention to the nature of social conventions and the ways by which they have affected our lives. Moreover, it examines moral/unmoral and male/female oppositions as two social conventions that are provided with the opportunity of being deconstructed in Harold Pinter's The Homecoming . This study traces these social conventions in the play, unmasks the privileged central term, and then subverts the center by foregrounding the borderline , that results in the dance of the both oppositional pairs in free play of non hierarchi cal and unstable meanings . Introduction From the early days of The Room (1957) and The Birthday Party (1958), the inability to place Pinter alongside his contemporaries ( followers of trends such as Kitchen Sink drama and Theater of Absurd) baffled critics. Subsequently, Pinter's works were dubbed comedies of menace,' thought to be dealing with "unspeakable terror," or an atmosphere that is "before all else, of terror " (Harman 2008). As Ronald Knowles remarks, "understanding Pinter involves understanding society as the twe ntieth century draws to a close " ( Knowles 1995: 18). Pinter's politics are premised on power-structured relationships and, in particular, how social relations involving authority and power threaten the autonomy a nd importance of the individual or in other words how these power relations and social conventions leave no place for individualism. Pinter's individuals struggle to retain their sen se of self, despite the social and political rel ations, which is doomed from the beginning although their effort is considerable and in fact they do as Samuel Becket says, " Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better. The critic John Lahr describes the impact o f experiencing this play: "'The Homecoming' changed my life. Before the play, I thought words were just vessels of meaning; after it, I saw them as weapons of defence . Before, I thought theatre was about the spoken; after, I understood the eloquence of the unspoken. The position of a chair, the length of a pause, the choice of a gesture, I realised , could convey volumes" (Lahr 2007). In a sense The Homecoming is about all of these unspoken elements that give rise to the social conventions and about the individuals of this play that are unconsciously in the process of deconstructing them. They fail because their efforts lead to the development of new social conventions but their failure, and all of the other failures of this nature, function as delicate historical movements that form a process, a process that can one day lead to the downfall of the tendency of society toward conventions. The dichotomy between moral and unmoral has been and will be one of the most controversial concepts. What do we mean when we say that something is moral? A behavior is moral, when it goes in line with the purposes of the social convention that has the power at a specific time, and all other behaviors are unmoral. The power relations through morality, create the concept of self' and other' (to use Lacan's terms) in people, so that people automatically see the person with the moral behavior as self' and try to reach to this self' at any cost even at the cost of sacrificing their own individuality, and the person with the unmoral behavior as other' who should be avoided. The characters in this play (as well as other plays by Pinter) try