English investigation Essay

Introduction: For this project I am going to analyse how women and men behave when using language in casual situations? There have been many previous research finding and conclusions about gender and conversational behaviour. For example Jennifer Coates identified two approaches, which she describes as dominance and difference. Jennifer Coates was a writer to wrote about the language differences between men and women. Dominance argues that because women occupy a less powerful position in society than men, their constitutional behaviour is less assertive and less confident. Men are dominant within society, so it is not surprising that they tend to dominate mixed sex conversations. Women are said to be used to male dominance, and as a result of social conditioning will often be polite and respectful when speaking to men. Whereas the idea of difference is where the focus is more on differences in male and female attitudes and values, that are said to be inculcated from childhood, when we form, and are influenced by, single sex peer groups. Studies of children’s play have found that in boy’s games there is more emphasis on competition and confrontation, while girl’s games are more cooperative. In adulthood, women’s talk often focuses on personal feelings and problems and this helps to explain why their approach to conversation is more sympathetic and supportive. Also this Description of Data: My data consists of three transcripts; one, which took place in a college canteen between four girls meaning it, was very informal and casual. My second transcript took place on a college field while three boys were watching a game of football played by fellow peers. They discussed the game and also had background conversations. My third transcript is of three girls talking about the world cup football match very briefly while talking more about football and surrounding topics. I felt that my first transcript I recorded was not sufficient enough to be analysed well and in detail, I therefore recorded a further transcript to increase my data and to make a more intricate analysis. Aims: The aim of my investigation is to find out to what extent are there significant differences in the ways that men and women behave on conversation. Methodology: For my investigation I collected three transcripts; I did this, as this is the most effective way of collecting sufficient data that I would be able to analyse for my specific subject. I am going to look at how women talk in casual situations looking at aspects that expert researchers have found such as Jennie Coates, she found two approaches based on the ideas of dominance and difference which I will look at and try to find out to what extent do my transcripts prove this. I will also look at cooperation and competition as the experts have found that boys seem to be more competitive when using language whereas girls seem to be more co operative, even though this research was proved by using children as examples I would still like to see if it is still the case when men and woman are older and to what extent they still either are competitive or cooperative when using language. As well as looking as what the experts have found I am also going to look at the role played by the speakers in my transcript and relate it too attitudes and values as well as educational background, which is pretty much the same for each speaker as they all go to the some college. I will also look into the social class of the speakers. I will look at the status, purpose, context and audience for each transcript and analyse each topic accordingly. I am also going to look at the 6 frameworks – lexis, semantics, phonology, graphology, grammar, discourse, pragmatics and the sociolinguistics which has been defines as the study of language in its social context. Analysis: First of all I am going to analyse the context of my data. The first transcript is between four friends occasionally five when they contribute to the conversation. The conversation is very informal and very casual with no real meaning or purpose except for socialising during break time, which means the conversation is quite forced to some extent even though they were talking about what they liked to talk about. All the women contributed equally I would say; to the conversation. Although women are characteristically and socially known for being quite capable and good at making conversation there is not a lot of prove from the experts or researchers that suggests that males do not make conversation or are any less capable. Therefore when looking at the men’s conversation I saw that they were just as able and good at making conversation. The men’s conversation was between three people occasionally four or five when they contributed to the conversation. This conversation was also very informal and casual and was also something that the men wanted to talk about. In the conversation you can see that between them there is one more dominant male who tends to initiate conversation and interrupt or overlap other speakers also could be know as holding the floor. However I researched about dominance in conversation and read, â€Å"you just don’t understand- men and women in conversation† by Deborah Tanning and she said â€Å"claiming that interruption is a sign of dominance assumes that conversation is an activity in which one speaker speaks at a time, but this reflects ideology more than practice. She also said that she recorded conversations in which many voices were heard at once and it was clear that everyone was having a good time. She then asked people of their impressions of the conversation and they said they had enjoyed themselves. However when she played the tape back they were embarrassed about their conversational style. Which suggests that when people being female or male do dominate the conversation they maybe don’t realise they are doing it. I also found that in my other female conversation between three girls there was one slightly more dominant participant mainly due to her personality, however it was also in most cases successful cooperative over lapping as the over lapping is positive and as Deborah tanning says in her book † the overlaps are cooperative because they do not change the topic but elaborate on it. However in my male conversation there is unsuccessful cooperative overlapping as for example when a participant says he had England trials† (referring to a friend out side the conversation) another participant says â€Å"yer but don’t he look like peter pan† which is quite negative and stops the conversation which is a negative response that does not enable the conversation to carry on without changing the topic. In one of my transcripts where the four or five female participants are talking on participant says, â€Å"Err she looks really bad† (referring to a celebrity in a magazine that looks rough) by saying the word â€Å"really† she is intensifying what she is saying. In my other transcripts there are two examples of women using intensifiers, one where a participant says, â€Å"she’s really pretty† and another when a participant says â€Å"well I think peter crouch is actually quite really cute† Robin Lakoff published an influential account of women’s language. In a related article she published a set of basic assumptions about what marks out the language of women. Among these assumptions were the use of intensifiers especially the words ‘so’ and ‘very’ for example † I’m so glad to see you† I found intensifiers within my female transcripts but none in my male transcripts. However as my transcripts were quite short and the time I had to collect my data was limited if I had more data I could have compared this more fairly to get better and faired results. Zimmerman and West (1915) taped informal conversations between students in coffee bars, shops and other public places. They found that women talk about ‘feelings’ whereas men talk more about ‘things’. Women conversation is often focused on personal experiences, relationships and problems. The topic of male conversation tends to be more concrete, relating to information, facts objects and activities. And from my own experiences these finding are accurate but also my data could also suggest this as well, for example in my females transcripts there is reference to a personal experience that doesn’t really play a part in the structure of the conversation, it is quite random. The participant says † Rory always corrects my spelling its well annoying on msn he always like types things in a little star and then says correct spelling† the participate gets interrupted while saying this as it is nothing to do with the conversation. Also in my transcript I can see that men use more taboo language than women do for example in my male conversation one participant says â€Å"fucking legend† whereas in my female conversation there was no swearing words used. However as my transcripts were quite short they do not relate to all females.

Volunteering at East Lansing Health Care for elder people

Reflection Paper Volunteering at East Lansing Health Care for elder people Trough class I learned about the opportunity to volunteer at East Lansing Health Care for elder people. So far, I and have spent 15 hours helping the elderly at the institution. Every day senior people face obstacles that they need help with. First, it is hard for many of them to move and they need help with doing regular things. Second, senior people have much to say and they require moral support. By socializing with the elderly, I help them express their thoughts and ideas. They know that I truly care about them, and they feel safe and open with me.I begin my usual volunteer day by talking with the elderly and keeping the conversation going until they have expressed themselves fully. These people need to be heard and understood – this is what mostly help them with. I provide moral support for the once who need It. Some seniors like to talk about their family and relatives. When I first started workin g at East Lansing Health Care for elder people, I met a resident named He was very friendly and keen to socialize with me. He told me that for him, family means everything and that he always keeps pictures of his family n his drawer. Lulled out his photo album and started introducing me to his family and telling me stories about them. It was very fascinating and interesting. I also showed him my family on the phone, after which started asking me about my family and what they do. It was a very friendly and relaxed conversation that I really enjoyed. A few days ago, I had a quite scientific conversation with one of the residents about the possible consequences of global warming. Was very knowledgeable of the issue and told me many interesting facts that he read in the news.He told me that If our planet warms up by Just four degrees, no permanent Ice will remain on the planet. Also said that should this happen, rising sea levels will threat the humanity. I was amazed at how much passio n this resident had trying to explain me what Is happening to our planet. At the end, asked about my plans for the Thanksgiving. He advised that I go vaults the Great Lakes and enjoy the wonderful nature in that area. Conversations like this really make me feel involved and I get personal satisfaction from the time I am devoting to volunteering.Yesterday, I helped organize a Halloween party for the elders at the facility dining room. We served them food and a cake and made sure they were engaged in the party. I think events like this help the elders come together and remember their youth. I could see Joy in their eyes as they sang a country song together. Overall, I believe that my service benefits the community. Moreover, I am certain that volunteering experience also benefits me. First, it broadens my horizons by connecting me with the segment of the population I would not normally encounter In my day-to-day life on campus.Through volunteering, I am able to see a clearer picture o f the American society, which Is making me more aware. Moreover, by leaving my comfort zone. I am able to develop. Second, through volunteering I am people. In the future, I am also planning to volunteer at East Lansing Refugee Development Center and help refugees from all over the world. I am sure I will be able to help refugees with adapting to the American culture and getting over with the past. Many friends ask me, why do you volunteer? I usually respond that I feel like it is my moral obligation to help people.In this particular case, helping the elderly reminds me helping my grandparents and I feel rewarded when they simply say â€Å"Thank you! † or ask â€Å"When will you come again? † I establish personal connections with the elders I help and instill trust in our relationships. We are friends, friends that can help each other for no profit. Thus, my experience volunteering at East Lansing Health Care for elder people has been very positive and rewarding. I pla n to continue volunteering at the organization until the end of semester, and hopefully will be able to benefit many seniors, who need my help and attention.

Hengisbury Head Coastal Processes

What are geomorphic processes and how do they affect the coast at Hengistbury Head? Setting the scene Hengistbury Head is a scenic and historic headland near the town of Bournemouth on the south coast of England. It stands mid-way between Poole harbour and Hurst spit and forms the main division between Poole and Christchurch Bays. Coastal Processes| Description| Sub Aerial | Coastal erosional processes that are not linked to the action of the sea. Erosion occurs via rain, weathering by wind and frost. Its impact is often seen in soil creep, slumping and landslides. Corrosion| When waves approach the coastline they are carrying material such as sand, shingle, pebbles and boulders. Abrasion occurs when this material is hurled against cliffs as waves hit them, wearing the cliff away. | Human activity| Much building and recreation occurs at the coast, and this increases pressure on cliff tops, making them more liable to erosion and subsidence. The building of sea defences upsets the dyna mic equilibrium of the coastline| Hydraulic pressure| Cliffs and rocks contain many lines of weakness in the form of joints and cracks.A parcel of air can become trapped/compressed in these cracks when water is thrown against it. The increase in pressure leads to a weakening/cracking of the rock. | Corrasion| When waves approach the coastline they are carrying material such as sand, shingle, pebbles and boulders. Abrasion occurs when this material is hurled against cliffs as waves hit them, wearing the cliff away. | Coastal Transport| Description| Solution| Minerals are dissolved in seawater and carried in solution. The load is not visible.Load can come from cliffs made from chalk or limestone, and calcium carbonate is carried along in solution. | Suspension| Small particles are carried in water, e. g. silts and clays, which can make the water look cloudy. Currents pick up large amounts of sediment in suspension during a storm, when strong winds generate high-energy waves. | Saltati on| Load is bounced along the seabed, e. g. small pieces of shingle or large sand grains. Currents cannot keep the larger and heavier sediment afloat for long periods. | Traction| Pebbles and larger sediment are rolled along the seabed. |

Competitive Edge Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Competitive Edge - Essay Example As the paper stresses business Ethics informs Olivia Jones to notify her employer over the need for competitive edge and uncover the situations she met while at the factory in Bombay. Her comfort all the way from the airport to the Hotel, in addition to her Limousine rides in the city against the inhumane conditions she face while at the factory demands an action, a debt to the society.  This study highlights that  there are a number of consequences that might result if she opts for either option. A company aiming to be at the pinnacle of a business field can be faced with the dilemma as well as Olivia Jones, exercising a social conscience in the business field and their careers respectively. Olivia Jones is not the ultimate decision maker, her fate lie with her employers, i.e. towards social conscience or profits.   A profit driven company’s drive must meet their targets and thrive in situations where they exploit their workers.   Ethical principles demand beneficence , and the decision maker is expected to do what is right and good. This should be priority; performance of a good deed and from the excerpt, a good deed is choosing the humane conditions over the competitive edge.  The justice principle states that decision makers must focus on those actions that are fair to certainly those people are involved. Ethical decisions must be consistent with ethical theory save for extenuating situations that can be justified which exist in this particular case.

Assignment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words - 1

Assignment - Essay Example Is this type of art not as important as the art made with refined material? A lot of questions arise when we try to figure out what are the measures for artwork. According to Lazzari and Schlesier (2011), no definition of art is absolute or timeless. Definitions are framed keeping cultures, values, taste of people in mind. The most appropriate way to answer the question, what is art? Is to understand when was the art made and for which target audience? Art helps us in preservation of memory, emotion and time. It develops with time and keeps on changing its form. Cave paintings have evolved as graffiti in today’s world. The first institutional theory of art is sketched by Danto in 1964. Institutional theory of art describes art as part of â€Å"art world†. The main function of art world is to define, authenticate, uphold and replicate the â€Å"cultural art†. In the later works, Danto defined art in terms of â€Å"aboutness†. Danto kept art as an â€Å"open concept†. If art is kept as an open concept then the photograph, painting or song of any nature even doodling around will be considered as art. Consider the photography used here. In my opinion, this is also a photography but cannot be accepted as an artwork because it does not follow any principles of art and is not aesthetically appealing. The Transfiguration of the Commonplae of George Dickie was inspired by Artworld of Danto. Dickie refers to the artworld as an â€Å"institution† which is operated with a lot of subordinate systems. These systems are made up of different forms of art like music, paintings, theatre and dance etc. these systems have further categories. According to the definition of art provided by Dickie, any piece or work of art which is displayed or presented in places like museums, theatres etc is a piece of art. Reason being that it is accepted by people who are there to scrutinize over the object or performance

Green IT for Services Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Green IT for Services - Research Paper Example Description of these reasons is an important part of this paper. It contains the present situation of the process of making IT green. It talks about the Green IT products that are already on the market. Furthermore, it also talks about the major IT companies that are spending significant volume of resources in making IT green by developing Green IT products. In addition to these, this paper includes the future of Green IT. It can be predicted that over the next few years, a lot of efforts will be made in making IT greener and this will certainly change the outlook for the industry. Information Technology (IT), in the present global society, acts as the ‘central nervous system’ for the business organizations, governments as well as for the social infrastructures. Global communities are connected with each other by means of IT. Today business organizations are ‘Going Green’ as the societies have become more conscious about the environment which is under tremen dous pressure due to massive modernization, industrialization and irresponsible deforestation throughout the world over the past few decades. ... Uncontrolled consumption of electricity puts huge pressure on the financial capacity of an organization. Such practices actually make the entire system an unsustainable one (Baroudi et al, 2009). Furthermore, in order to meet the growing demand for electricity more power plants would be in need and this would ultimately threaten the environment. Hence, it is very important to make IT green. There is hardly any general definition of ‘Green IT’. According to Gary Hird, Green IT can be seen as the collection of tactical as well as strategic initiatives that directly trims down the organizations’ carbon footprint and/or that use information technologies for reducing carbon footprint and/or that incentivize the ‘greener behavior’ by the stakeholders of the organizations (Hird, 2008). During the last few years â €˜Green IT’ has been a popular subject of research for the organizations like IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Cisco etc. These large multinational IT firms have already started to develop products which are more energy efficient and environment-friendly. There are organizations like Green Grid that assists the global IT industry in addressing the issue of energy use (Baroudi et al, 2009). It is important to notice that IT has an inherent ‘Green aspect’. Information technologies deal with data which is a nonpolluting entity. They enable virtual client visits and virtual meetings which require relatively less energy. However, the volume of consumption varies with the nature of the industry. For instance, IT in case of airline industry consumes significantly more energy as compared to other industries (Baroudi et al, 2009).  Ã‚  

History and development of international law Essay

History and development of international law - Essay Example Despite existence of the political, global and territorial differences the whole world is considered as a global village and such concept mainly enhances the idea of universal brotherhood. At the same time in the context of trade, cultural intercourse, the idea of globalization plays a major part. In this context it needs mentioning that no matter how much the globalization aspect seems positive and flawless but at the same time it includes several lacunas. In this global society also the superior nations are finding an opportunity to show their aggression, to inflict oppressive approaches towards the other nations, their people and their economy. The rate of crime has also increased to a great extent and most of the criminal, after committing the criminal deeds flee to other nations to seek shelter. As administrative system of a particular nation does not have the power to exercise the hold over other jurisdictions, the fear of being caught is reduced to a great extent for those cri minals. At the same time economic aggression is also taking a brutal shape. According to modern international treaties in the post World War II situation it has not been possible for the nations to exaggerate the power of politics to express their imperialistic mentality. Thus, those nations have adopted the procedure of economic aggression through which a superior nation can enjoy economic hold over the other nation through trade relationship. Thus, the importance has also been realized by legal scholars that there must be some kind of restraints that prevent one nation to become havoc over the other. These are some of the typical situation; rather problems at the international level that generated the emergence of this new discipline of legal jurisdiction: International Law. Legal and scholars of jurisprudence have attempted to provide definition of the International Law in different

Water Pollution of Duwamish River (Seattle) Essay

Water Pollution of Duwamish River (Seattle) - Essay Example For instance, this pollution has resulted to a decrease in the number of Salmon fish. This is because the River Duwamish is the major breeding and rearing ground of the Salmon fish, and the chemical pollution that occurs in the river, has resulted to the depletion of oxygen, making it impossible for these fish to survive. Human beings are affected because they cannot consume fish from this river. Consumption of food substance that emanate from this river are polluted, hence it is a danger to the life of human beings. Hence, there is a need of initiating measures aimed at conserving and protecting the river from pollutants. Goel (7) begins his study by the definition of water pollution. He defines water pollution as negative changes in the quality of water bodies, making it harmful for use by any living organisms (Goel, 9). There are different types of water pollution. Some of these include nutrients, surface, oxygen depleting, ground water, microbiological and chemical water pollution. All these have a negative effect on marine animals, as well as on human beings who are using the polluted waters under consideration. For instance, one of the major effects of water pollution is that it leads to the death of marine animals. Crabs, seas gulls, dolphins, and other marine animals are always killed by contaminated water. Water pollution also has the capability of disrupting the natural food chain. Chemical pollutants like lead are always consumed by tiny sea animals. Later on, these tiny animals are consumed by fish, which in turn is consumed by human beings. This can lead to an aspect referred to as food p oisoning. Water pollution affects the entire world, and therefore, there is a need of coming up with a water resource policy, that can help in the reduction of water pollution. Furthermore, there is a suggestion and proof that water pollution is one of the leading causes of deaths in the world (Hauser-Davis, Reinaldo and Roberta,

Answer these questions Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Answer these questions - Assignment Example Since Brazil dependent on primary commodities, it experienced a case of Dutch Disease during this time. Another obstacle towards Brazilian development was the elastic supply of labor. Initially Brazil took advantage of the import of slaves from Africa but with the abolition of slavery that Brazil tried to ignore for as long as it could, Brazil began to gain labor from Southern Europe. The plantation owners began to press the government to transport labor from southern Europe at low costs. Thus an elastic supply of labor was maintained which resulted in a stable labor costs. While labor costs should have increased with the abolition of slavery, Brazil managed to keep them down through its lax immigration laws. One obstacle to the development of Brazil was the high cost of transportation. The country depended on waterways for the transportation of labor and other commodities. But the topography is Brazil is such that these waterways are not strategically placed within the country. Also the flow of certain rivers did not allow for an advantage through water transportation. The other option available to Brazil was land transportation. Unfortunately, land transportation was not a feasible option as most roads were broken and vehicles could not pass by them. The high cost of transportation therefore led to a limited interregional and international trade. Agriculture producers were only limited to market in their immediate vicinity. The surplus that was being produced in certain areas could not be transported in such a manner as to profit the crop owners. The inelasticity of supply that generated as a result meant that prices would increase every time the demand of advanced products increased i n the market. Thus the domestic agriculture sector of Brazil was unable to flourish as a result of the inelastic transportation system within the country. Even though the government realized the impact of the under development

The Ugly American Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

The Ugly American - Essay Example policymakers, journalists, and officers made leading to the loss of Sarkhan to the Communists knowing that Sarkhan has border difficulty with the Communist country to the north. Lederer and Burdick The Ugly American, set in the mythical southeast Asian nation of Sarkhan, is a critique of U.S. foreign policy. Lederer and Burdick point to the willful ignorance, careerist self-interest, and cultural arrogance that confound American efforts to close down the spread of communism. Their novel, essentially a series of loosely linked vignettes relating to the actions of foreign service officials, is meant as a counteractive to many harsh assessment. Even though liberal and unsparing in their representation of administrative incompetence and bureaucratic inertia, Lederer and Burdick appear oblivious of the use of terror by U.S. agents. They attribute the failure of U.S. policy to the lack of ability to distinguish the competent deception of communists, a refusal to learn native languages and customs, a lack of enthusiasm to leave the comforts of the capital city and its American enclave, a preoccupation with diplomatic social life, and an overriding anxiety with lar ge-scale, capital-intensive projects rather than with less significant innovations more likely to develop the daily lives of the native population. On the other hand, communist success is attributed to the careful training of its diplomats, their enthusiasm to respect native language and customs, and their capability to sarcastically prey upon natives' mistaken resentment. Consequently, the communists are on the threshold of world power and domination. As one Sarkhanese states, "America had its chance and it missed. And now the Communists are going to win" (Neilson p. 24). Or as a fictional U.S. senator declares, "we're facing the final crisis with Russia . . . the next few years will decide whether we're going to win or lose" (p. 242). This paranoia about the imagined abilities of communists is seen in the imaginary timetables by which they are said to plot world domination. The Senator in The Ugly American glimpses the fate of the world being determined in the next few years; Soviet agents in The Ugly American plan "to bring [Burma] within the Communist orbit within 30 months" (p. 35), and, according to Time, Anthony Eden's m ilitary advisors estimated in 1956 that by 1961 the communists would be ready to endeavor violent global conquest. Despite the fact that their basic thesis is that the United States needs more competent foreign service officers, Lederer and Burdick also give specific examples of policies and programs the United States might adopt that might make a difference in the struggle against communist hegemony: providing Asians with powdered milk to accustom them to fresh milk, which is alien to their diets, so they can begin raising dairy cows; broadcasting surreptitiously taped conversations of Russian field operatives telling their local agents not to "talk about 'socialist ownership of lands' " because that "only scares the peasants. Peasants are backward types" (Neilson p. 63); constructing simple water pumps run by bicycles, without exporting technology or giving aid money, since "Whenever you give a man something for nothing the first person he comes to dislike is you" (p. 216); or teaching Asians to construct and use long-handled brooms (rather than the traditional

The Greatest Movie Ever Sold Review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

The Greatest Ever Sold - Movie Review Example It was a bold movie because Morgan Spurlock is actually making a movie that shows how prevalent advertising and product placements in our daily lives are. The movie started showing how ubiquitous brand messages are in our lives. That from the day we wake up until we sleep, we are bombarded with advertising messages. But basically I know this already that advertising are everywhere. It was however a prelude, or a case build up, of Mr. Spurlocks intention to create a movie that will show the flip flop of advertising and yet, make companies pay for it. I am not sure if it was deliberate or a coincidence with how the film evolved that Mr. Spurlock had an initial difficulty of selling his idea to companies. During the first phase of the film, his meeting with advertising executives was met with hesitance and fear. It illustrated the normal reaction of companies to be anxious about being included in a film that they do not know how will they be perceived by the audience. These brands spent millions if not billions of dollars to build their image to become what they are today and it is normal that they are going to be protective of their brands. At one point, an executive told Mr. Spurlock to turn the camera off and I thought he already had a deal that was actually documented. All the while, as told by Mr. Spurlock himself, that they do not want to be a part of it. I already expected this part of the movie. Of course companies are going to be worried that they might make a fool of themselves in a movie that will feature how offensive advertising are getting now. Moreso, that they are going to pay for it. It is like frying themselves with their own oil if the film actually negatively projects them. As the film progresses in this part, I was wondering how Mr. Spurlock is going to convince advertisers to actually pay for his film that will show how much these companies are bombarding the consumers with its advertisements. But the lessons actually starts here which I myse lf learned a lot. After this initial failure, Mr. Spurlock asked around on how is he going to get advertisers pay for his film. It was not only a tutorial to him but also to the audience especially to students like me. During this process of asking around, I understood what brand collateral really meant when it was applied in real world marketing. Of all the things that has been said about it, it just meant â€Å"what do you bring on the table?† or â€Å"what are you offering?† I also learned what brand personality was when Mr. Spurlock consulted what brands will most likely support him. He met with an Analyst (I think she was a pyschoanalyst) and from there he realized what kind of brand Mr. Spurlock is. He is playful and risk taker which is quite unusual. Because typically people are fearful of the unknown which is part of human nature. Both Mr. Spurlock embraces risk and adventure as part of his personality. He was advised that the brands that will most likely to su pport him are brands that shares his personality. Armed with this new set knowledge, his previous research seemed to work. He had a meeting with Ban deodorant whom he struck a conditional agreement that if he convinces 15 others to be a part of his film, then they are in. I was smiling in this part of the movie thinking that hard work really pays and knowing how to do things really pays off. I also had the feeling that Mr. Spurlock’s moment that his break is already coming in when he

Taylorism Is An Outmoded And Outdated Form Of Technical Control Essay Example for Free

Taylorism Is An Outmoded And Outdated Form Of Technical Control Essay Perfected by Henry Ford, Taylorism was developed in the early 20th Century and was a revolutionary outlook on scientific management. Its aim was to make the workplace a science, taking all control away from the worker and placing total power in the hands of management. By observing workers behaviour and how long it was taking for tasks to be completed he believed he could say how much an average worker could produce under optimum conditions. Using this he devised a means of detailing a division of labour in time-and-motion studies and a wage system based on performance. At the time and throughout the last century Taylorism was and has been the only way to manage, but is it now outdated and irrelevant. I hope to be able to provide some of the arguments for and against this viewpoint and give examples of Taylorism. First, what exactly is Taylorism? Simply Taylorism is the breaking down of the production process into simple, menial tasks to the extent that even the most unskilled worker can be efficient. He researched these methods knowing that management lacked the knowledge to maximise production and that workers were not efficient. Taylor spoke about rewarding good men i.e. good employees, with higher pay for completing tasks or working harder. He called for scoring and ranking workers, thus posing the argument: how can one compare someone who is really good at a given task against someone who is good at another task? The two individuals may well be very good at what they do; however, it quite often requires a mix of these talents to produce a quality product or service. Taylor also aimed to transfer the control of the work process away from the individual worker and instead have the work performed in a way that is detailed by management who train the worker and share all the responsibilities. He used pig-iron handlers during the American-Spanish war to test his theories. He picked the four best workers and, in exchange for a higher wage, asked them to work under a managers orders. The manager had complete control, telling them when they could have a break, when to pick up more iron, how much to lift etc. The experiment was a resounding success; with one man Schmidt working at a constant 47.5 tonnes a day. This was used to show that Taylorism could work. However it could be argued that the experiment was fixed as it used workers who were mentally sluggish and therefore, by their nature, were more likely to follow orders than to think for themselves. Nevertheless Taylorism became the standard for businesses worldwide and this led to a clockwork world of tasks timed to the hundredth of a minute for standardized factories, machines and the de-humanising of men and women. A man named Braverman argued in his book in the 70s that because of Taylor and Ford, more and more jobs became and are becoming deskilled and de-humanised and the thought processes are being taken over by managers and programmed into machines (Braverman 1974). This raises a very important point about Taylorism; it makes processes so precise and repetitive that humans are being turned into machines. In this state as machines, humans are very easy to control and so it could be argued that Taylorism, whilst being effective as a production method, is also designed to control the workforce and thus highly skilled workers threaten labour control. Read more:Â  Scientific Management Taylorism Such early 20th century thought is being practised not only in business, but in the schools as well where students, like workers, are be scored and ranked. Now we have moved to a system where this ranking and grading of students and schools is of such importance that they are no longer run by teachers, but managed by managers to improve efficiency. Whilst not being a strict example of Taylorism, it shows how Taylors ideas have changed the way people think in that people now assume anything and everything can be ranked. Whilst on the subject of culture changes that have been influenced by Taylor, it can be argued that Taylorism has led to gender differences. Women have been, at least they were, categorized into certain jobs; mainly clerical and secretarial. This may not be as true today with many high-powered businesswomen in the world but, especially in the 60s, this was true. Taylorism is scientific management but how scientific is it? In Websters book there is a case where a businessman complained about how slow his secretary worked and asked, How many times a minute should she be able to open and close a file drawer? The workers handbooks answer would be Exactly 25 times. Times for other open and close operations would be .04 minutes for opening and closing a folder, and .026 minutes for opening a standard centre desk drawer (Webster, J 1990). Another example of the scientific nature of Taylorism can be seen in UPS, the parcel company. Management have said that workers should walk at 3ft per second, packages should be carried under the left arm and that drivers should step into the van with their right foot first whilst holding the keys in the middle finger of the right hand. These are two classic and blatant time-and-motion pigeonholing that leads to the de-humanizing of the worker. This pigeonholing can be classically seen in some of todays big business, especially in fast-food chains. McDonalds, the most classically discussed example, where there is absolutely no autonomy for the worker; they have no option about what to do. Machines are set to cook quarter-pounders in 107 seconds and fries in 150 seconds. Guns exist that put exactly the same amount of sauce in each burger and fill the drinks to the right level. All the worker has to do is put it together and place in a bag. Even the bagging process is Taylorised; workers must place the goods in the bag in the correct order. Ritzer sees McDonalds as a paradigm of efficiency that has led to a consumer being able to go into any McDonalds in the world and expect the same service and the same product. This very tedious monotonous work has very little job satisfaction and so to keep the worker motivated McDonalds have used Taylors idea about incentives. McDonalds have a star system which rewards hard working individuals with stars. These stars are worn on the name badge to show the consumer that they are a noted worker. More importantly it develops a friendly rivalry within the store as workers compete to win stars. This leads to more productive and efficient workers. Some workers can take this to extremes however. A friend of mine started in McDonalds and almost straight away was working up to two hours overtime on closing shifts. He earned his stars very quickly as well as employee of the month two months in a row and within 8 months was promoted to floor manager. This is, in my view, a slightly extreme case as he is naturally a hard worker but shows how hard work is rewarded in McDonalds. The efficiency of McDonalds and its ability to retain workers has made it a very successful multinational company. Leidner argues in his book that the drive for efficiency within McDonalds has led to inefficiency for the consumer as it turns them into involuntary unpaid labour because they have to queue for the food, clear their own rubbish away etc. For McDonalds to be as efficient as it is, it must offer a very restricted menu so that deliveries and production can be streamlined. This leads to a loss for the consumer who can only expect a very small choice from McDonalds. In the beginning this may have been a problem but now people go to McDonalds and expect a burger, fries and a drink which are the same every time. Despite these critiques of Taylorism there are authors who believe that Taylorism is as relevant today as it ever was. Taksa argues in her 1992 article that Taylor and his ideas are still useful in resolving todays management issues especially as firms are larger these days. The limiting of verbal exchange due to written instructions means that the teaching mangers are also under as much control as the workers from the planning group (Taksa,1992). This is especially useful in the large firms of today where middle management can be very large and therefore they must be put under the same controls as the workers. Many firms however are extremely efficient and successful without adopting Taylorist methods. It can be argued that Taylorism is not suitable for every type of business. An example of this is Dixons, where I used to work, where if any type of technical control would greatly hinder the sales of goods and insurance. The salesperson must have the freedom to react to the customers situation and what they say. There would be no way of, for example, telling sales staff that this type of person must have this product or that the sale must be complete in x minutes. It would be impossible to implement as, unlike McDonalds, every customer is different with different needs and without talking these needs cannot be ascertained to result in the sale of a product. Even shops are individual, while common theme run from shop to shop, where products are placed and how they are displayed is up to the mangers discretion and not controlled by main management. So to conclude; Taylorism is a very restrictive practise which leads to the de-humanising of the worker and complete management control. However it is an extremely efficient and productive system. I would say that in certain business environments, like McDonalds, it is the only way to manage that would produce effective results. However nowadays individuals require job satisfaction out of their roles and to that end Taylorism is outdated as it allows no sort of autonomy and thus make working very dull. To that end I cannot conclude either way; Taylorism is very effective in the food sector where customers are indistinguishable from each other but would be highly ineffective once individuals needs must be catered for. Bibliography Braverman, H.: Labour And Monopoly Capital: The Degradation Of Work In The 20th Century, 1974. Monthly Review Press, NY Leidner, R: Fast Food, Fast Talk, 1993. University Of California Press Ritzer, G: The McDonaldisation Of Society, 1993. Pine Forge Press Taksa, L: Scientific Management: Technique Or Cultural Ideology?. Webster, J: Office Automation, 1990. Harvester Wheatsheaf

Self-handicapping Behavior with Decker and Mitchells Theory

Self-handicapping Behavior with Decker and Mitchells Theory Introduction As a part of initial few assignments, I took the series of self- handicapping survey suggested and designed by Prof. Phillip Decker and Prof. Jordan Mitchell to determine the self-handicapping behavior during general work situation, people management, and leadership role, and identified the traits and knowledge that I need to acquire, learn and practice to be a good team member and leader. But after reading through specific chapters based on identifying self-handicapping situation and behaviors relating to key managerial and leadership role such as accountability, tunnel vision, engagement, analysis and decision making; I have identified many more areas in my professional and personal life which I was practicing and was holding myself back, making excuses and creating obstacles for myself, about which I wasnt aware of. Some causes for handicapping are similar to the earlier findings of self assessment exercise like poor listening habit and low self esteem, and some of them I wasnt aw are of. I consider this as an opportunity or blessing in disguise, being an international student and moreover for a person planning a career shift, assessing my strengths and weakness, determining the behavioral aspects and personal approach techniques that handicap my progress honestly, at this point of time is very pivotal. Today as well, I find myself looking for excuses to this mentioned shift when I dont understand anything or I am unable to achieve the desired results and moreover create hurdles for myself which really affects my learning process adversely. So, during the course of this report I will be discussing my experiences and behaviors that I now recognize as self-handicapping my professional development and learning path with respect to most relevant and related key managerial areas; accountability, tunnel vision, engagement, analysis and decision making; devising a firm action plan to slowly and gradually incorporate a small, positive and permanent behavioral change in profes sional and personal lifestyle. Reading through the four book chapters, I took the brief self-assessment survey in the self-handicapping book by Dr. Phillip Decker and Dr. Jordan Mitchell to identify key management and leadership areas out of the four that I really need to focus on to bring around positive change in personal and professional approach following the recommendations and baby steps mentioned in the book. My Score Accountability 11 Tunnel Vision 15 Engagement 8 Analysis and Decision Making 7 Accountability At the start of the career, I was more focused on taking care of my responsibility and wasnt concerns about the accountability part or maybe at that time I didnt know the difference between being responsible and accountable in the true sense. It took me some time to learn the meaning of accountability through a fair share of good and bad experiences and bit of mentoring, now I understand that personal accountability is about understanding and accepting the task, taking actions to achieve agreed-upon results, answering and taking ownership of the results obtained, regardless of the outcome. In the book The Oz Principle: Getting Results Through Individual And Organizational Accountability authors Roger Connors and Tom Smith defined personal accountability as, making a personal choice to rise above ones circumstances and demonstrate the ownership necessary for achieving desired results; to see it, own it, solve it and do it. Based on the what they have mentioned and experienced, I infer that accountability is something you choose to demonstrate, it is not something that is consigned to you. Going through the chapter and relating to my professional experiences and management roles, I realized that I have been self-handicapping myself by not prioritize tasks based on the importance, avoiding accountability and in confronting peers, boss and customers at times, and most importantly due to lack of self esteem not taking difficult tasks and assignments which really dented my career progression and learning curve. In a group task or in a leadership role, I observe that at times I procrastinate and put stress on myself, teammates and subordinate. Also lacking to define the roles and task boundaries which tend to overlap and create confusions; moreover most of the times I find myself doing most of the correction works for my subordinates rather than managing resources which in the end, puts more pressure on me playing as the person who is responsible and accountable. The key skills that I need to work on in order to progress would be to reduce and eliminate the fear of accounta bility; plan, learn and improve self-efficacy. Personal Accountability Self-Handicap What is the Situation Triggers Impact on Others What to Do Specific Behavioral Plan of Action Timeline Assessment Lack of what/how question asking I avoid asking my senior/ boss regarding work related issues and try to find solutions by myself. Avoidance and Fear Due to lack of knowledge and self confidence, I procrastinate and put stress on my teammates. Also I try to find the answers to what I dont know myself or consult a peer and the resultant of the approach sometime works in the favor of the team and at times effects the task timelines. (Improve Self confidence, look, listen and learn new knowledge and skill sets) Start believing in my abilities by shifting locus of control internally, to enhance knowledge base and become more approachable. 1. Be assertive, come out of my comfort zone, reach out to people for knowledge and advice. 2. Take a honest self assessment of specifics management traits to identify the management traits where am I lacking, verify and validate the findings through third parties consultations such family, friends, peers and trustworthy seniors. 3. Find mentors and learn from their experience and knowledge. 4. Engage myself in constructive and supportive managerial/ leadership activities to increase self efficacy. 5. Take steps to create positive environment to promote free flowing ideas and exchange knowledge on management related subject matter. 6. Break-down the difficult tasks into smaller meaning parts, and as I gain confidence in achieving those goals and increase self-efficacy, aim at mastery completing complex, challenging and autonomous jobs. Mar-2017 Feb-Mar 2017 Feb- Apr 2017 Mar- 2017 Mar-2017 Feb-Apr 2017 Analysis my progress with respect to this particular dimension by noting how many times I went up to my boss for a question/ suggestion/ idea and the severity of impact of that on the task or project. Compare the findings with past results. Do a 360-degree feedback to verify and validate the applied behavioral changes. Take advice, rectify the approach if necessary and reassess. Personal Accountability Self-Handicap What is the Situation Triggers Impact on Others What to Do Specific Behavioral Plan of Action Timeline Assessment Rather just hide or do my old job Due to lack of knowledge on work related subject matter and conservative nature, I often dont participate voluntary or optional work related assignment for professional growth, like seminar training and during a business presentation or conference, I usually sit at the corner or at the end to avoid interaction and answering to a question. Expedient avoidance Due to my conservative nature, I have become really restrictive, I hesitate to share ideas or constructive dialogues with the team and likewise. At times feel left out in a group meeting. (Improve self- efficacy and facenew challenges) Improve the public image and socialize, so that they recognize me and my ideas. Create a positive image for me amongst the people around to remember. 1. Practice empathy towards work, people, environment and most importantly towards self. 2. Set small meaningful personal and professional daily targets for me like reading an article or writing a blog about things that interest me and professional related. 3. Present paper at a conference or work related seminar to boost the confidence for public speaking. Thoroughly practice and prepare for the subject matter. 4. Be visible on social media, and connect to profession related group and people, to share thoughts and idea about a subject matter and recent development to mark my presence in the professional circle. 5. Seek mentorship, to verify and validate my ideas before presenting. Mar-2017 Feb-May 2017 Feb- Apr 2017 ongoing Mar-Apr-2017 Take feedback from external sources and compare the findings with initial documents to identify the area that I have improved on and what needs further rectification. Observe and note small behavioral changes made that have made been made and evaluate whether they have become a habit or not and permanent part of the routine. Set new goals or re-devise the implementation part to improve on them. Poor presentation of self and speech in presentation, social media Avoidance and Fear Holding Other Accountable Self-Handicap What is the Situation Triggers Impact on Others What to Do Specific Behavioral Plan of Action Timeline Assessment Not holding peers accountable There have been many instances in my managerial career that at the time of job performance evaluation, my subordinates often respond to accountability questions by they werent aware of the criteria, even though I had mentioned to them in the initial project stage. Self Deception Such situation put too much pressure on myself on behalf of the team to get the things done, and at times finds myself getting things done for my subordinates and peers just to meet the project timeline. Deliberate Action Design proactive approach on task accountability for the subordinates and peers. Discuss and communicate with them before finalizing, and document them. 1. Hold a daily morning meeting with the team to review performance and discuss what needs to be done and how, so that peers can suggest better advice to complete specific tasks, prioritize and assign workload with realistic timelines and set accountability goals. Include buffer in the schedule to accommodate unexpected events. 2. Make daily meeting note or place a white board for everybody to see, on which task timeline with an accountable person is mentioned, and is updated every morning after the meeting. 3. Publicly acknowledge peer and subordinate performance. 4. Set daily personal task and note them down based on the priorities. Feb-Apr 2017 Feb-Apr 2017 Feb-Apr 2017 Feb-Apr 2017 A good indicator of this change would be to evaluate peers and subordinates the task related approach and behavioral change in the daily morning. If I consider the things not improving, have a private talk with the person and try to understand his perspective. Instead of yearly performance review, have a monthly or quarterly review, to assess the performance, and correct them if required. Key behaviors and Baby steps: (derived from Self-Handicapping Leadership- the nine behaviors holding back employees, managers and companies and how to overcome them, by Phillip Decker and Jordan Mitchell) Most of the behavioral changes are focused on improving self-efficacy and regaining confidence to complete difficult tasks and face new challenges. Arrive at the next meeting/ class before time and prepare for it respectively. I heard an interesting technique for time management from a third person that Reaching a meeting 5 mins early is being on time and reaching on time means youre late., I will try to implement this philosophy. Be humble and honest in accepting my shortcomings. Enhance my understanding for the respective, seek assistance and push myself in questioning and analyzing regarding the unknown. Start writing a daily diary to self-analysis, what I have achieved and lost during the day, and mark positive events and their outcomes. Try to incorporate small positive behavioral change around my daily routine, like reading, writing and meditating. Resultant of these activities would be: I would feel confident when I walk into a meeting or class. The desire to learn and improve would push and drive me to accept my shortcomings and reach out people to overcome them. I would be better able to identify positive and negative behavior, devise a personal action plan for them. Incorporating small behavioral change around daily routine would soon become a habit and will have a positive impact. Tunnel Vision: Reading through the chapter and relating it to my previous professional and limited managerial experience, I consider tunnel vision as one key self-handicapping factor that executives and professional face as a hurdle in the growth and more importantly remain unaware about this shortcoming. We always ask our self why arent we getting a promotion and the other person is, even though I have more knowledge and experience, now I understand that the reason for it is tunnel vision. The top management looks at the person from various dimensions but the most critical and important one is they see whether the person takes into account the bigger picture and absolute goals when approaching smaller tasks, their understanding of what is happening beyond the boundaries of our particular job, department or organization. We need to avoid blindness in relation to information, internal and external environment, and understand the fine line between company vision and tunnel vision. During the process of identifying behavior and self-analyzing my work philosophy with the newly acquired knowledge and understanding of tunnel vision, honestly found out that I focus on whats in my inbox and isolate in my workplaces, working in my particular department, head down, and focusing on the specific job. I have little to no awareness of what may be going on outside of my little sphere. Often, restricting myself to useful information from the colleagues which could assist me in decision making. Reviewing and revisiting my 7-year career in textiles, I can well identify the decisions and approaches where I exercised tunnel vision. Switching jobs for small benefits and not taking into account the learning path early on in my career; which dented my resume and progress. Later on, in the managerial role due to my introvert nature, the team often got pressurize to meet the result and had to go though unnecessary efforts to meet the timeline. Digging into reasons, taking the self-assessment and analysis test, talking to friends, family and close acquaintances relating the findings to my previous limited professional experience; I found out the lack of self-confidence and self-efficacy in my abilities as one of the prime reason of self-handicapping and exercising tunnel vision. Due to the mentioned I never reached out to people and connected to them, exercised poor listening and writing skills which added to the misery and always procrastinated to make things even difficult for myself and people around me. During the action plan and baby steps, I would be primarily focused on improving my listening, writing and networking skills to open myself up to new idea and experiences which would help in the longer run. Implementing a behavioral change around my routine schedule, so that they slowly and latterly become permanent and a positive change. Tunnel Vision Self-Handicap What is the Situation Triggers Impact on Others What to Do Specific Behavioral Plan of Action Timeline Assessment Deal with procrastination I consider myself as not a good writer, and always try to avoid or take too much time doing it. I try to mask my shortcomings and indulge myself other non-related activities like social media to avoid the task at hand. Apprehension In a group project setting, due to my habits and I tend to put too much pressure on myself by procrastinating things, which is later transferred to other team members, resulted is there is a hassle to meet the project timeline and often we have compromise on the results. Face it I need to focus on building my self-confidence and writing abilities. I have to face my fear and take baby steps to convert my weakness into strength. Timely manage my work to effectively and efficiently get the required results. 1. Get out of my comfort zone and embrace myself for change. 2. Self assess and take professional help to identify areas where I need to improve, learn new skills and new perspectives. 3. Write a daily personal and professional to do list, in the order to priorities. 4. Identify and park/ block unproductive activities during work hours like face- book and whatsapp. 5. Find a method of meditation and exercise daily for 10-15 mins to self reflect on the changes happening, analysis them and gain positives out of them. 6. Set small meaningful personal and professional daily targets for myself to write a blog or personal article about things that interest me. Take feedback from close friends and family, also professional acquaintances like ex- boss about respective piece of writing, listen to the criticism positively and implement the changes gradually. Feb-2017 Feb-Mar 2017 Feb-Apr 2017 Feb-Apr 2017 Feb-Apr 2017 Feb-Apr 2017 Take 360-degree feedback to check the progress and rectify the shortcomings. Self-evaluates the consistency in the mentioned behavioral change. Honestly, answer the important question Have they became a habit and are they having a positive impact?, if required make necessary changes. Tunnel Vision Self-Handicap What is the Situation Triggers Impact on Others What to Do Specific Behavioral Plan of Action Timeline Assessment Ignoring people after get your way At times, I find myself so much into things that I blind side myself by not hearing to what others have to say or suggest and what is happening around me. Self Deception Due to my introvert nature, I restrict myself to new ideas from my peers and subordinate, create a perception about them without knowing their story and thoughts; which really effects my ability to approach them during an assignment and after also. Resultant of this affects group cohesion and ability to achieve better and positive team efforts. Look and Listen One of the reasons that I self-analyzed during the initial assignments that I am not a good listener and have low self-esteem which greatly impacts my people interaction. So my prime objective would be to improve my verbal and non-verbal communication techniques to gain self-confidence. 1. Practice being patience during a conversation and discussion. 2. Divert my full focus and attention to the speaker and to what they are saying. Avoid distraction from the surrounding. 3. Clear my mind, try to visualize what the speaker is referring to and not jump to conclusions. 4. Respect the person speaking and their ideas. Contain the urge to ask unnecessary questions and learn the art of supportive questioning through taking support from mentors and reading articles based on it. Monitor my self-talk. 5. Learn to use and interpret non-verbal communication through reading and observing the people and surrounding. 6. Every day, greet people around me with a simple smile or hello; and if the conversation follows, go with the flow. Have an open and casual discussion with team members. 7. Join team members during lunch and tea time and have a casual non-work related conversation in order to understand the person and likewise. Feb-2017 Feb-Mar 2017 Feb-Apr 2017 Feb-Apr 2017 Feb-Apr 2017 Feb-Apr 2017 Feb- Mar 2017 Take different listening psychometric tests , and get it evaluated through third party to compare the finding with self analysis. Take 360-degree feedback to check the progress and rectify the shortcomings. Self-evaluates the consistency in the mentioned behavioral change. Honestly, answer the important question Have they became a habit and are they having a positive impact?, if required make necessary changes. Key behaviors and Baby steps: Â   Â   The baby steps are particularly focused on reducing the personal isolation, socializing and exposing me to new information, opportunities and challenges. Set up Google Alerts account and set a preference to the areas that I need to improve and profession related update, this will bring information to me. Take out 10-15 mins daily to go through the information. Seek advice and network with people not having same preference or profession, and share ideas and discuss on general issues this will give me more perspectives and new angles to approach an issue. Develop a regular questioning habit and a focus on finding the right questions to explore. Develop a habit to reassess my strength and weakness by taking into account external factors, if required take help from family, friends and close acquaintance. Resultant of these activities would be: Reading through profession related topic would really enhance my knowledge and by commenting on them on social media like Twitter and LinkedIn would improve the thinking process and articulating skills. Seeking advice and networking with non-profession related people will help me bring in information and ideas that will reinvigorate what I do and how I do it, providing me new interesting perspectives and ideas that will improve my general management and leadership skills. During the professional career shift, continuously reassessing my strength and weakness in connection to what is happening in the outside world would help me in providing a clarity that what I need to fight career tunnel and realign my action plan accordingly to focus my efforts towards better personal development.

Employee Involvement and Participation in Service Industry

Employee Involvement and Participation in Service Industry INTRODUCTION The paper will discuss employee involvement and participation in the service industry with reference to Canary Wharf GBK. The paper starts with the objective of the research and ends with the conclusion and recommendation of the research. Employee involvement is a very important programme to utilize the tacit knowledge of the employees to increase commitment and performance with a limited cost. This paper will discuss different types and models of employees involvement and their benefit and limitations. The research start with the secondary research through collected theories to write the literature reviews to build the base of the research. In the literature reviews, it has explained views of different writer on employees involvement. The literature reviews includes types of involvement, models of employees involvement and management support for employees involvement Further, this research includes a methodology where the research strategy, approach, data collection and sample of the research are outline. Research methodology is crucial, as it is giving the researcher ways to conduct the primary research. The research is base on a case study and the data collection methods are interviews and a survey. In the third section the researcher, outline the finding of interviews and survey. In this research, there are three interviews and one survey conducted by the researcher. The participants in the interviews are the managers and the respondent in the survey are the employees of the organisation. Finally, in the last section the researcher presented analysis and conclusion of the research. In the analysis, the data collected from the research has been tested with the theories of literature. The research concludes with a brief conclusion where the result of the research has discussed. In the end, the researcher gives recommendation and discusses the scope, limitation, and interesting issue of the research. Research objectives are Critically analyse the importance of employee involvement as outlined in the literature review that includes its importance in recession. Evaluate Gourmet Burger Kitchen employee involvement strategy in the light of the research finding and theoretical literature. Discuss the benefits and limitations of Employee involvement. Benchmark the GBK canary wharf case study with other restaurant. Reason for choosing this topic The purpose of this study is to investigate the methods of effective involvement of the employees in a company where the researcher is working. Employees are the most valuable assets of a company. Employee involvement is important as it can result in empowerment and democracy in the organisation. This may result in increased motivation to take more responsibility (Judge and Gennard (2005). In this current economic situationwhen the confidence of the employees is low, EIP can motivate the employees to deliver good customer services, which can eventually result in improved profitability. The researcher aims to explore the role of employee involvement in the hospitality industry where the employees turn over is highest. The researcher is presently working at GBK and has accessto conduct interviews and surveys. Furthermore, the researcher is interested in opening a business in India that is why the researcher has chosen this topic. PART ONE LITRETURE REVIEW Definition of employee involvement Employees, the strongest pillar of the organization are the most valuable asset that contributes significantly to its success and prosperity. According to Price (2004), the involvement of employees in the organizational operation not only motivates them but also enables them to contribute more effectively and efficiently. Further, he explains employee involvement as a process involving participation, communication, decision making which leads to industrial democracy and employee motivation. Further CIPD (2009) explain employee involvement as a commitment of the employees towards the values of the organisation and willingness to help each other to achieve the organisational goal. The results are not only to increase job satisfaction, or motivation but the increasing performance of that organisation. In short, employee involvement is creating an environment where people have a continuous impact on decisions and actions that affect their jobs. Employee involvement Vs participation Understanding and defining the concept Employee involvement and employee participation are like two sides of a coin. Both are supplementary to each other and existence of one depends on the other. There is not any significant difference between the two terms. Participation is an act of sharing information and the meaning of involvement is the day-to-day activity of the organization. Many writers have contributed towards the development of this thought of employee involvement or participation. For example Delaney (1996) had used the term participation as a voice of the employee in the decision making process and to describe different types of involvement of employee in the organizations affair. But very few writers tried to find the difference between the two concepts. Kale (1999) argues that participation is any organizational arrangement under which employees have some sort of share in some aspect of the business which is not specific types of employee involvement. Furthermore Ang (2002) has contributed towards the development of the difference between the two terms and concluded that, Employee involvement calls for participation which is all about sharing information, training, mutual decision making process whereas traditional participative managementviews participation as a part of other organizational process. Marching ton et al. (1993) have used employee participation in a different context and as an umbrella term covering all forms of employee influence in the organization. Employee involvement is used to describe managerially inspired initiatives aimed at winning employee commitment, as part of the practices of industrial democracy, whose aim is to increase the rights of employees to participate in management decisions. This not only results in enhanced employee morale but also retaining the potential manpower resulting in lower attrition rate. Many writers have contributed differently and each one of them has different approach to the concept and the context. Employee involvement was and is still known and referred to by different writers under such headings as participative management, employee participation, and worker involvement. Employee involvement and empowerment The concept of employee involvement is incomplete without it being associated with employee empowerment. According to Cunningham and Hyman (1999) there cannot be a single or simple definition of empowerment as some writers see empowerment as a recent development after increase employee involvement. Further Apostolouain (2000) explains that empowerment is the next step of employee involvement means where the employees have the power to take decisions. Blanchard et al. (1999) has defined its scope referring it as a means for involving team members as business partners in determining company success or failure. The real essence of which comes from releasing the knowledge, experience, and motivational power that is already in people but is being severely underutilized. In short it can be said that employee involvement leads to empowerment of the employees in different management decision process. Importance of Employee involvement The increasing competition and technological changes in the last 20 years have demanded higher skills and flexibility from the employees for the organisation. Walton (1985) stated that the highly competitive environment needs a different strategic approach to manage the employees. He further stated that in order to achieve that the jobs needs to be broader. The jobs structure should be made with proper planning and implementation to improve the performance unless just to maintain it. This situation leads to formation of teams, which are accountable for the performance. Employee involvement not only maintained the standard of the operation process but gives emphasis on continuous improvement and it is reflecting the requirement of the market place. Further Marchington (2001) argues that the employee involvement come into focus in the early 90s when the employer looking for a participative way to manage the work force. Judge and Gennard (2005) further outline the other important aspect of employee involvement is the increases job security of the employees by offering them priority in training and retraining. The training equipped them with the skill and knowledge that the job demands. Greater employee commitment leads a growing expectancy to better job satisfaction and performance. It is difficult for the organisation in current business scenario to improve the performance without employee commitment towards the organizations mission and objective. Employee involvement allows the employee to input their views and ideas on performance and the quality of the service. This will lead the development where the employees want to be part of successful organisation, which provides them a good income and opportunity to enhance their skills for a secure employment. Grates (2009) stated that the engaged employees significantly contributes to the success of the organisation to achieve the goal and objective. H e further said that employee involvement could give competitive advantage in the market. It can help to reduce turnover and increase the productivity. An industrial services survey conducted in 1999 on 49 organisations experiences on employee involvement over the period of 1991-1999 has reported that more then 33% people believe that it enhanced employee commitment and motivation. The same number of people believes that it is really help to improve the relationship between the employee and the employer. Approximately 60% people said that the quality of the product and the services has improved. More then 50% believe that their job satisfaction had increased and the organisational profit has increased. Importance of employee involvement in recession The world has seen its worst recession since 1930s and most of the world economies are fighting against it. The economic crisis forces the employers to introduce cost-cutting measure and one of them is redundancies. According to an article HR focus (2009) most of companies in the world complete the lay offs of employees. Now the big question is how this organisation can use the most of the remaining employees. The other important question is how the company survive and can increase their performance in this difficult time. One of the measures that the organisation uses to give confidence to their employees is greater emphasis on employee involvement and participation scheme. According to Frauenheim (2009) the importance of employee involvement is more crucial in this difficult environment of economic trouble. As it is revels by many experts that worker commitment is more important then before as the confidence of the employees are badly hit by the lay offs. Haters stated that its the employees help that improving the situation during this economic turmoil as employee involvement can give the sense of value to the employees and can increase the job security. Juile Gebauer managing director of Towers Perrin believe that the company must give more attention to employee involvement to survive and performing good in recession as his organization found there is direct link between performance and involvement. Low employee satisfaction or confidence may results poor customer services and in recession where customers are very reluctant to spend, companies can not afford bad customer service. In this difficult time companies have to be more efficient to attract more customers to surviveand customer service isof the tool to do that. It is found that EIP can increase employee satisfaction which can lead better performance Types of employee involvement Employee involvement practices/ approaches According to Ang (2002) the idea of employee involvement is still developing although there is large amount of research done in the last decade still there is not any developed ways to use employee involvement as a management approach. The management approach depends how the employer wants to involve their employee in different operation. According to Lawler et al (1998) the most important factor of employee involvement approaches is how it can represent comprehensively in the process of problem solving, sharing information, rewards for performance and developing knowledge and ideas. He further says that in order to implement these practices the organization needs a particular employee involvement program. Traditional versus current perspective There is a significant difference between the current and the traditional way of employee involvement and participation. According to Gary and Sisson (1994) the traditional way is mostly indirect participation and limited direct participation. Further indirect participation includes trade union and work council and direct participation was limited to improve the quality of the work to counter turnover and absenteeism. He further explains that current employee participation is more direct as it concern with improve the performance of the organization that can be linked with the objective of the organization like customer satisfaction. The types of jobs in the current environment is changing as more and more company recruiting part time employees and they need to adopt different strategy to involve them in the process. Representative participation According to Apostolou (2000) one of the main ways to achieve representative participation is joint consultation where employees elected representative to discuss with the management on various issues which concern them. These processes give the employees an opportunity to influence the proposal before it is finally made. Further Judge and Generd (2004) explain that, joint consolation involves seeking acceptable solutions to problem through a genuine exchange of views and information .Employee communication is concerned with the interchange of information and ideas within an organization. Direct, indirect and financial participation In 1999 Oosthuizen and du Toit classify the employee involvement and participation practice as direct, indirect and financial. Direct participation is the communication between the management and the employees regarding different function of the organization like decision making process to problem solving. Whereas in indirect participation the employees are involve through their representatives who are elected leaders. Financial participation is the economic participation of the employees in the success or failure of the organization through share ownership, profit sharing scheme. Marchington et al (1992) talk of direct and indirect employee participation practices the direct participation consist of downward communication from management to employees which includes team briefing, workplace wide meeting ,staff newsletters and cascading of information down via the management chain. Downward Communication from Managers to Employees According to Marchington et al (1992) the downward involvement technique is used to inform employees of management plans. The management can use different ways to do that. Regular and continuous distribution of the company reports, journal, company publication and videos are the effective way to inform employees about the development of the company. Team briefing and regular team meeting is another ways for the top management to aware the employees about the organization news and development. Upward involvement Marchington et al (1992) explain the other way of direct communication which are upward problem solving communication practices and that includes suggestion schemes, employee attitude surveys, and employee groups established to solve specific problems or discuss aspect of performance or quality and suggestion scheme. Further Taily et al (2003) outline the importance of employees attitude survey and it can be done through questionnaire to a sample of employees to find out their views about different factors of the work. He further explain that formal processes like suggestion scheme can be put forward to find out employees thinking on different issues like quality improvement to enhance performance. Financial participation Financial participation is one of the best direct and tangible forms of employee involvement. The financial participation allows the employee to be a part of the financial success and failure of the organization. This will encourage the employees to show greater commitment and encourage them to take extra responsibility.Further, it is argued that a financial stake gives employees increased enthusiasm for the success of the organization. In its most developed form employee share ownership means that employees become significant shareholders in the business or even their own employer (Judge and Gennard, 2005). Financial employee involvement scheme can be carried out in three ways and that is profit sharing, profit related pay and share ownership. Profit sharing According to Judge al (2004) profit sharing methods can help to build a motivated and committed workforce. Further Taily et al (2004) explains that these schemes encourage employees to work as a team rather then individual as the rewards for working together is more then working individually. Profit sharing scheme ensure that employees benefit from an organization that makes profits. Profit related pay Taily et al (2003) explains that profit related pay scheme where employer rewards the employees for their contribution to the business. Further he outlines that it works where a group of people get pay to the profit of the business for their work. This kind of scheme generally found in the sales business where there is bonus for achieving the target. This scheme can increase the motivation and commitment of the employees. Share ownership Judge et al (2004) stated that latest way of financial participation of the employees is share ownership where the employees are owner of some part of the company through share. It means that they have shareholders right. Further Apostolou (2000) stated that it produces interest among the employees about the company matters. In UK one of 5 employees have share ownership in their company .This kind of schemes seeks long term commitment from the employees and its take the employee involvement in a new stage where employees are promoting to some part of the ownership of the company. Owing share makes the employees more motivated and committed as the loss or the profit directly have an impact on them. Task based participation Task based participation is mainly to the job and an integral part of day-to-day life. It is all about perform the task in the same level or higher level, which can be managers or supervisor. Team working and self management Teamwork one of the important ways of employee involvement described by Pfeiffers (1998) as it is one of the seven key HRM practise. It allows employees to take extra responsibility for the task, without direct supervision, to have discretion over work method and time, to multi skill and to recruit team members. Managerial control is at it most subversive and effective when employees take on responsibility for peer surveillance (Marchington and Wilkinson (1998 Benefit of Team working Team meeting benefit both the employer and the employees. Through introducing team working the employer can improve productivity, customer service, cost cutting. In addition the employers can spread the ideas and be competitive in the market by improving the performance. Further its increase the employees motivation to extra responsibility and care for the organization. Team working is benefited for the employees as well as the outcome of team working are greater job satisfaction and motivation. Service industry characteristics and customer driven attitude or orientation is suits team working (Wilkinson et al 1998).Cully et al (1999) claim that team working participation is used in two third of the British industries. In order to introduce team working the organization needs skillful management and resources. Employee Involvement Model Psychological contracts First used in 1960s the psychological contract became very popular following the development in the world economy like globalization and economic crisis in 1990s.It is described as mutual obligations without any written contract between the employee and the employer. As it is not a written contract these obligations are informal and imprecise and are made in the requirement process or in the performance appraisal. Some obligation is seen as a promise whereas others are term as an expectation. The important part of that is the belief by the employees to be part of good relationship with the employer (CIPD, 2009). The difference between the legal contract and psychological contract can be easily distinguished. Legal contract is a paper sign contract between the employee and the employer which represent the limited reality of the employment. The nature and importance of that can be found in an employment tribunal. On the other hand Psychological contract is more influential than the formal contract as it is affecting the employee behavior. This contract helps the employee to understand the requirement to represent their side and bargain and what they can expect from the job. The contract is based on mutual trust and understanding and cant be enforceable as it is not a legal one (CIPD2009). Professor David Guest (2002) of Kings College London outlines the importance of psychological contracts and what it can offer to the employee and the employer. The model suggests that the importance of employer to adopt people management as it is directly influence the psychological contract .The contract is based on mutual trust and fairness of the employee and the belief that the employer is respecting the deal between them. Further he explains that positive psychological contract increase employee commitment and satisfaction which results increase performance. Limitation of psychological contract The main problem with Psychological contract arises when it is broken by management by not delivering the promises. This can leads to low job satisfaction, low morale and dispute between the employee and management. The employees are feeling cheated if the promise like rewards, training is not fulfilled or negative feedback from the managers about the work. Another limitation could be emerging when the company merges or restructure and the employees concerns are not listened to, this can raise dissatisfaction among the employees. What Psychological contract is important? The nature of the jobs changed dramatically in the last 20 years and there are more temporary and part time jobs available and the people do not have a permanent future in that company, they need to build a relationship with the management to secure their future. The cost of labor is increasing and most of the organization wants to work more with less employees makes the jobs more hectic stressful. Human resources are becoming more critical to get competitive advantage by their tacit and explicit knowledge. Team work culture is increasing. Finally positive psychological can result in high efficiency. Black box model People, Performance link In order to understand the importance or significance of employee involvement and participation it is really important to understand the people and performance link. A research team lead by Professor John Purcell (2003) at Bath University carried out an investigation on people and performance link called as black box model. In that they have carried out interviews in 18 organizations which lasted over three years. In the interview with the managers the aim is to collect the information regarding their attitudes, level commitment, views about the job, team and reporting relationship. There information had been investigating in depth the relationships between practice and performance to develop understanding of the nature and mechanics of the relationship. After analyzing the data the team develops the people and performance model famously called as black box model. These models found that the people management creates the building blocks of performance and that are ability, motivation and opportunity. As in the figure shows Purcell make four pillars to describe the people performance link. The first pillar is the human resources; the second is the AMO factors which is with the help of the line management in pillar three can result in employee commitment, job satisfaction and motivation which can finally lead to discretionary behavior. Further he explains that ability is the willing to learn new skill and apply and recognized, motivation assume that the use of ability in an effective way and finally opportunity assume the involvement of the employees in different operation like problem solving and the decision making process. These factors like ability, motivation and opportunity are very important as they are directly related to job satisfaction and commitment of the employees. It will encourage the employee to exhibit discretionary behavior which means the way doing the job like in speed, care and innovation. These activities are the heart of the employment relationship as it is very difficult for the employer to monitor all the activities in an organization. This behavior makes the performance of the organization to a next level with greater job satisfaction and better performance. (CIPD, 2009). Role of line managers According to Judge and Gennard (2005) the main reason of the failure of employees involvement is the attitude of the middle and lower management. The middle and lower management fail to support the scheme as they think they will lose power to control employees Further a research done by CIPD the role of line managers are the most important to implement the employee involvement and practice. Line managers are constantly in the communication with the employees. The line managers are the best person in explaining the variation in both job satisfaction and discretionary behavior as it one of the most important factors in order to developing commitment in the organization .The managers can encages employees towards their jobs and make them responsible for their jobs. The line managers can evaluate the performance through performance appraisal and motivates them by introducing more bonuses for better performance (CIPD, 2009). Organization culture According to CIPD (2009) it is found that the practice and performance is highly influenced by the organization environment. The practice performance link depends on the origination goal mission statement which must influence by the values the organizations stands for. And want to achieve in the future. The goal or the mission is very important for employee commitment. The goals or the mission should be spread throughout the organization to embed that in the policies of the organization. These values encourage employees to achieve new height in their jobs. This will motivate them as they are feeling valued and that eventually result in better performance. Comparison between Psychological contract and black box model Black box model is a medium for creating the atmosphere that reinforces psychological contract through the power of line managers. While psychological contract is a state of mind that already exists between the management and the employees. Implementation of employee involvement schemes Different organization operates differently so it is very important to understand that the schemes good for one organization may be not appropriate for the other one. There are few factors that are really important in order to successfully implement the schemes. The factors are good employee relations, the organization culture and the top management support, monitoring and reviewing and resources. Good employee relation Judge and Gennard (2005) explains that good employee relation is the basic need in order to implement employee involvement scheme as it is very important to motivate the employees and the management to take part in the process. The management and the employees must be open in their attitude and behavior. The scheme cant be successful in a case of dispute between them. Employee involvement can gain and develop in the background of trust and motivation among the management and the employees. Commitment by the top management The most importance factor regarding the success of employee involvement is the support of the top management. It is the top management who can encourage employee involvement and participation. According to Lawler et al (1995) it is essential, as employee involvement needs the management support to develop and smooth implementation without any obstacle. It is the management responsibility to introduce EI through suggestion programs and problem solving teams. The management can give more training to the employees to increase their skills and when they believe that the employees are knowledgeable and more skilled they can involve them in different organization function through EIP. This can leads to introduce reward and recognition for better performance to encourage employee involvement. Further Judge et al (2005) explain that the management must be keeping the momentum after the introduction of the scheme. This will develop trust and motivation among the employees and the employees feel the seriousness of the management about the scheme. Any inconstant management behavior in the workforce involvement can put the scheme in trouble as the employees will de motivates and questioning the management commitment about the scheme. According to Apostolou(2000) there are four important actions the management needs to take to run the scheme successfully and those are trust the employees and give them more responsibility, always updating the training programme to train the employees about the recent change in the business and technology the third action is effective communication and regular feedback of the work. This is the most crucial one as its shows the management seriousness about the scheme and that can motivate the workforce. Finally introducing of rewards and recognition for good work really helps to increase the commitment of the employees. Free flow of information is another important aspect of employee involvement. The management must provide information about the company through different sources to their employees .But the management should be careful to provide too much or too little information as it may create confusion among the employees. The role of leader is even more crucial in the time of recession and economic turmoil where the environment is not conducive for employee involvement because of lay offs. According to Day(2009) the roles of leader is more important then before as it is not possible for them to maintain the same employee involvement scheme if the company is not getting profit. The leadership should be aware the workforce the reason behind the lay off and must use the most remaining talent. The leadership must regain the confidence of the employee by regular informing about the company progress and make them understand about the difficult time. By giving more seriousness on employee involvement the management can help the organizat Employee Involvement and Participation in Service Industry Employee Involvement and Participation in Service Industry INTRODUCTION The paper will discuss employee involvement and participation in the service industry with reference to Canary Wharf GBK. The paper starts with the objective of the research and ends with the conclusion and recommendation of the research. Employee involvement is a very important programme to utilize the tacit knowledge of the employees to increase commitment and performance with a limited cost. This paper will discuss different types and models of employees involvement and their benefit and limitations. The research start with the secondary research through collected theories to write the literature reviews to build the base of the research. In the literature reviews, it has explained views of different writer on employees involvement. The literature reviews includes types of involvement, models of employees involvement and management support for employees involvement Further, this research includes a methodology where the research strategy, approach, data collection and sample of the research are outline. Research methodology is crucial, as it is giving the researcher ways to conduct the primary research. The research is base on a case study and the data collection methods are interviews and a survey. In the third section the researcher, outline the finding of interviews and survey. In this research, there are three interviews and one survey conducted by the researcher. The participants in the interviews are the managers and the respondent in the survey are the employees of the organisation. Finally, in the last section the researcher presented analysis and conclusion of the research. In the analysis, the data collected from the research has been tested with the theories of literature. The research concludes with a brief conclusion where the result of the research has discussed. In the end, the researcher gives recommendation and discusses the scope, limitation, and interesting issue of the research. Research objectives are Critically analyse the importance of employee involvement as outlined in the literature review that includes its importance in recession. Evaluate Gourmet Burger Kitchen employee involvement strategy in the light of the research finding and theoretical literature. Discuss the benefits and limitations of Employee involvement. Benchmark the GBK canary wharf case study with other restaurant. Reason for choosing this topic The purpose of this study is to investigate the methods of effective involvement of the employees in a company where the researcher is working. Employees are the most valuable assets of a company. Employee involvement is important as it can result in empowerment and democracy in the organisation. This may result in increased motivation to take more responsibility (Judge and Gennard (2005). In this current economic situationwhen the confidence of the employees is low, EIP can motivate the employees to deliver good customer services, which can eventually result in improved profitability. The researcher aims to explore the role of employee involvement in the hospitality industry where the employees turn over is highest. The researcher is presently working at GBK and has accessto conduct interviews and surveys. Furthermore, the researcher is interested in opening a business in India that is why the researcher has chosen this topic. PART ONE LITRETURE REVIEW Definition of employee involvement Employees, the strongest pillar of the organization are the most valuable asset that contributes significantly to its success and prosperity. According to Price (2004), the involvement of employees in the organizational operation not only motivates them but also enables them to contribute more effectively and efficiently. Further, he explains employee involvement as a process involving participation, communication, decision making which leads to industrial democracy and employee motivation. Further CIPD (2009) explain employee involvement as a commitment of the employees towards the values of the organisation and willingness to help each other to achieve the organisational goal. The results are not only to increase job satisfaction, or motivation but the increasing performance of that organisation. In short, employee involvement is creating an environment where people have a continuous impact on decisions and actions that affect their jobs. Employee involvement Vs participation Understanding and defining the concept Employee involvement and employee participation are like two sides of a coin. Both are supplementary to each other and existence of one depends on the other. There is not any significant difference between the two terms. Participation is an act of sharing information and the meaning of involvement is the day-to-day activity of the organization. Many writers have contributed towards the development of this thought of employee involvement or participation. For example Delaney (1996) had used the term participation as a voice of the employee in the decision making process and to describe different types of involvement of employee in the organizations affair. But very few writers tried to find the difference between the two concepts. Kale (1999) argues that participation is any organizational arrangement under which employees have some sort of share in some aspect of the business which is not specific types of employee involvement. Furthermore Ang (2002) has contributed towards the development of the difference between the two terms and concluded that, Employee involvement calls for participation which is all about sharing information, training, mutual decision making process whereas traditional participative managementviews participation as a part of other organizational process. Marching ton et al. (1993) have used employee participation in a different context and as an umbrella term covering all forms of employee influence in the organization. Employee involvement is used to describe managerially inspired initiatives aimed at winning employee commitment, as part of the practices of industrial democracy, whose aim is to increase the rights of employees to participate in management decisions. This not only results in enhanced employee morale but also retaining the potential manpower resulting in lower attrition rate. Many writers have contributed differently and each one of them has different approach to the concept and the context. Employee involvement was and is still known and referred to by different writers under such headings as participative management, employee participation, and worker involvement. Employee involvement and empowerment The concept of employee involvement is incomplete without it being associated with employee empowerment. According to Cunningham and Hyman (1999) there cannot be a single or simple definition of empowerment as some writers see empowerment as a recent development after increase employee involvement. Further Apostolouain (2000) explains that empowerment is the next step of employee involvement means where the employees have the power to take decisions. Blanchard et al. (1999) has defined its scope referring it as a means for involving team members as business partners in determining company success or failure. The real essence of which comes from releasing the knowledge, experience, and motivational power that is already in people but is being severely underutilized. In short it can be said that employee involvement leads to empowerment of the employees in different management decision process. Importance of Employee involvement The increasing competition and technological changes in the last 20 years have demanded higher skills and flexibility from the employees for the organisation. Walton (1985) stated that the highly competitive environment needs a different strategic approach to manage the employees. He further stated that in order to achieve that the jobs needs to be broader. The jobs structure should be made with proper planning and implementation to improve the performance unless just to maintain it. This situation leads to formation of teams, which are accountable for the performance. Employee involvement not only maintained the standard of the operation process but gives emphasis on continuous improvement and it is reflecting the requirement of the market place. Further Marchington (2001) argues that the employee involvement come into focus in the early 90s when the employer looking for a participative way to manage the work force. Judge and Gennard (2005) further outline the other important aspect of employee involvement is the increases job security of the employees by offering them priority in training and retraining. The training equipped them with the skill and knowledge that the job demands. Greater employee commitment leads a growing expectancy to better job satisfaction and performance. It is difficult for the organisation in current business scenario to improve the performance without employee commitment towards the organizations mission and objective. Employee involvement allows the employee to input their views and ideas on performance and the quality of the service. This will lead the development where the employees want to be part of successful organisation, which provides them a good income and opportunity to enhance their skills for a secure employment. Grates (2009) stated that the engaged employees significantly contributes to the success of the organisation to achieve the goal and objective. H e further said that employee involvement could give competitive advantage in the market. It can help to reduce turnover and increase the productivity. An industrial services survey conducted in 1999 on 49 organisations experiences on employee involvement over the period of 1991-1999 has reported that more then 33% people believe that it enhanced employee commitment and motivation. The same number of people believes that it is really help to improve the relationship between the employee and the employer. Approximately 60% people said that the quality of the product and the services has improved. More then 50% believe that their job satisfaction had increased and the organisational profit has increased. Importance of employee involvement in recession The world has seen its worst recession since 1930s and most of the world economies are fighting against it. The economic crisis forces the employers to introduce cost-cutting measure and one of them is redundancies. According to an article HR focus (2009) most of companies in the world complete the lay offs of employees. Now the big question is how this organisation can use the most of the remaining employees. The other important question is how the company survive and can increase their performance in this difficult time. One of the measures that the organisation uses to give confidence to their employees is greater emphasis on employee involvement and participation scheme. According to Frauenheim (2009) the importance of employee involvement is more crucial in this difficult environment of economic trouble. As it is revels by many experts that worker commitment is more important then before as the confidence of the employees are badly hit by the lay offs. Haters stated that its the employees help that improving the situation during this economic turmoil as employee involvement can give the sense of value to the employees and can increase the job security. Juile Gebauer managing director of Towers Perrin believe that the company must give more attention to employee involvement to survive and performing good in recession as his organization found there is direct link between performance and involvement. Low employee satisfaction or confidence may results poor customer services and in recession where customers are very reluctant to spend, companies can not afford bad customer service. In this difficult time companies have to be more efficient to attract more customers to surviveand customer service isof the tool to do that. It is found that EIP can increase employee satisfaction which can lead better performance Types of employee involvement Employee involvement practices/ approaches According to Ang (2002) the idea of employee involvement is still developing although there is large amount of research done in the last decade still there is not any developed ways to use employee involvement as a management approach. The management approach depends how the employer wants to involve their employee in different operation. According to Lawler et al (1998) the most important factor of employee involvement approaches is how it can represent comprehensively in the process of problem solving, sharing information, rewards for performance and developing knowledge and ideas. He further says that in order to implement these practices the organization needs a particular employee involvement program. Traditional versus current perspective There is a significant difference between the current and the traditional way of employee involvement and participation. According to Gary and Sisson (1994) the traditional way is mostly indirect participation and limited direct participation. Further indirect participation includes trade union and work council and direct participation was limited to improve the quality of the work to counter turnover and absenteeism. He further explains that current employee participation is more direct as it concern with improve the performance of the organization that can be linked with the objective of the organization like customer satisfaction. The types of jobs in the current environment is changing as more and more company recruiting part time employees and they need to adopt different strategy to involve them in the process. Representative participation According to Apostolou (2000) one of the main ways to achieve representative participation is joint consultation where employees elected representative to discuss with the management on various issues which concern them. These processes give the employees an opportunity to influence the proposal before it is finally made. Further Judge and Generd (2004) explain that, joint consolation involves seeking acceptable solutions to problem through a genuine exchange of views and information .Employee communication is concerned with the interchange of information and ideas within an organization. Direct, indirect and financial participation In 1999 Oosthuizen and du Toit classify the employee involvement and participation practice as direct, indirect and financial. Direct participation is the communication between the management and the employees regarding different function of the organization like decision making process to problem solving. Whereas in indirect participation the employees are involve through their representatives who are elected leaders. Financial participation is the economic participation of the employees in the success or failure of the organization through share ownership, profit sharing scheme. Marchington et al (1992) talk of direct and indirect employee participation practices the direct participation consist of downward communication from management to employees which includes team briefing, workplace wide meeting ,staff newsletters and cascading of information down via the management chain. Downward Communication from Managers to Employees According to Marchington et al (1992) the downward involvement technique is used to inform employees of management plans. The management can use different ways to do that. Regular and continuous distribution of the company reports, journal, company publication and videos are the effective way to inform employees about the development of the company. Team briefing and regular team meeting is another ways for the top management to aware the employees about the organization news and development. Upward involvement Marchington et al (1992) explain the other way of direct communication which are upward problem solving communication practices and that includes suggestion schemes, employee attitude surveys, and employee groups established to solve specific problems or discuss aspect of performance or quality and suggestion scheme. Further Taily et al (2003) outline the importance of employees attitude survey and it can be done through questionnaire to a sample of employees to find out their views about different factors of the work. He further explain that formal processes like suggestion scheme can be put forward to find out employees thinking on different issues like quality improvement to enhance performance. Financial participation Financial participation is one of the best direct and tangible forms of employee involvement. The financial participation allows the employee to be a part of the financial success and failure of the organization. This will encourage the employees to show greater commitment and encourage them to take extra responsibility.Further, it is argued that a financial stake gives employees increased enthusiasm for the success of the organization. In its most developed form employee share ownership means that employees become significant shareholders in the business or even their own employer (Judge and Gennard, 2005). Financial employee involvement scheme can be carried out in three ways and that is profit sharing, profit related pay and share ownership. Profit sharing According to Judge al (2004) profit sharing methods can help to build a motivated and committed workforce. Further Taily et al (2004) explains that these schemes encourage employees to work as a team rather then individual as the rewards for working together is more then working individually. Profit sharing scheme ensure that employees benefit from an organization that makes profits. Profit related pay Taily et al (2003) explains that profit related pay scheme where employer rewards the employees for their contribution to the business. Further he outlines that it works where a group of people get pay to the profit of the business for their work. This kind of scheme generally found in the sales business where there is bonus for achieving the target. This scheme can increase the motivation and commitment of the employees. Share ownership Judge et al (2004) stated that latest way of financial participation of the employees is share ownership where the employees are owner of some part of the company through share. It means that they have shareholders right. Further Apostolou (2000) stated that it produces interest among the employees about the company matters. In UK one of 5 employees have share ownership in their company .This kind of schemes seeks long term commitment from the employees and its take the employee involvement in a new stage where employees are promoting to some part of the ownership of the company. Owing share makes the employees more motivated and committed as the loss or the profit directly have an impact on them. Task based participation Task based participation is mainly to the job and an integral part of day-to-day life. It is all about perform the task in the same level or higher level, which can be managers or supervisor. Team working and self management Teamwork one of the important ways of employee involvement described by Pfeiffers (1998) as it is one of the seven key HRM practise. It allows employees to take extra responsibility for the task, without direct supervision, to have discretion over work method and time, to multi skill and to recruit team members. Managerial control is at it most subversive and effective when employees take on responsibility for peer surveillance (Marchington and Wilkinson (1998 Benefit of Team working Team meeting benefit both the employer and the employees. Through introducing team working the employer can improve productivity, customer service, cost cutting. In addition the employers can spread the ideas and be competitive in the market by improving the performance. Further its increase the employees motivation to extra responsibility and care for the organization. Team working is benefited for the employees as well as the outcome of team working are greater job satisfaction and motivation. Service industry characteristics and customer driven attitude or orientation is suits team working (Wilkinson et al 1998).Cully et al (1999) claim that team working participation is used in two third of the British industries. In order to introduce team working the organization needs skillful management and resources. Employee Involvement Model Psychological contracts First used in 1960s the psychological contract became very popular following the development in the world economy like globalization and economic crisis in 1990s.It is described as mutual obligations without any written contract between the employee and the employer. As it is not a written contract these obligations are informal and imprecise and are made in the requirement process or in the performance appraisal. Some obligation is seen as a promise whereas others are term as an expectation. The important part of that is the belief by the employees to be part of good relationship with the employer (CIPD, 2009). The difference between the legal contract and psychological contract can be easily distinguished. Legal contract is a paper sign contract between the employee and the employer which represent the limited reality of the employment. The nature and importance of that can be found in an employment tribunal. On the other hand Psychological contract is more influential than the formal contract as it is affecting the employee behavior. This contract helps the employee to understand the requirement to represent their side and bargain and what they can expect from the job. The contract is based on mutual trust and understanding and cant be enforceable as it is not a legal one (CIPD2009). Professor David Guest (2002) of Kings College London outlines the importance of psychological contracts and what it can offer to the employee and the employer. The model suggests that the importance of employer to adopt people management as it is directly influence the psychological contract .The contract is based on mutual trust and fairness of the employee and the belief that the employer is respecting the deal between them. Further he explains that positive psychological contract increase employee commitment and satisfaction which results increase performance. Limitation of psychological contract The main problem with Psychological contract arises when it is broken by management by not delivering the promises. This can leads to low job satisfaction, low morale and dispute between the employee and management. The employees are feeling cheated if the promise like rewards, training is not fulfilled or negative feedback from the managers about the work. Another limitation could be emerging when the company merges or restructure and the employees concerns are not listened to, this can raise dissatisfaction among the employees. What Psychological contract is important? The nature of the jobs changed dramatically in the last 20 years and there are more temporary and part time jobs available and the people do not have a permanent future in that company, they need to build a relationship with the management to secure their future. The cost of labor is increasing and most of the organization wants to work more with less employees makes the jobs more hectic stressful. Human resources are becoming more critical to get competitive advantage by their tacit and explicit knowledge. Team work culture is increasing. Finally positive psychological can result in high efficiency. Black box model People, Performance link In order to understand the importance or significance of employee involvement and participation it is really important to understand the people and performance link. A research team lead by Professor John Purcell (2003) at Bath University carried out an investigation on people and performance link called as black box model. In that they have carried out interviews in 18 organizations which lasted over three years. In the interview with the managers the aim is to collect the information regarding their attitudes, level commitment, views about the job, team and reporting relationship. There information had been investigating in depth the relationships between practice and performance to develop understanding of the nature and mechanics of the relationship. After analyzing the data the team develops the people and performance model famously called as black box model. These models found that the people management creates the building blocks of performance and that are ability, motivation and opportunity. As in the figure shows Purcell make four pillars to describe the people performance link. The first pillar is the human resources; the second is the AMO factors which is with the help of the line management in pillar three can result in employee commitment, job satisfaction and motivation which can finally lead to discretionary behavior. Further he explains that ability is the willing to learn new skill and apply and recognized, motivation assume that the use of ability in an effective way and finally opportunity assume the involvement of the employees in different operation like problem solving and the decision making process. These factors like ability, motivation and opportunity are very important as they are directly related to job satisfaction and commitment of the employees. It will encourage the employee to exhibit discretionary behavior which means the way doing the job like in speed, care and innovation. These activities are the heart of the employment relationship as it is very difficult for the employer to monitor all the activities in an organization. This behavior makes the performance of the organization to a next level with greater job satisfaction and better performance. (CIPD, 2009). Role of line managers According to Judge and Gennard (2005) the main reason of the failure of employees involvement is the attitude of the middle and lower management. The middle and lower management fail to support the scheme as they think they will lose power to control employees Further a research done by CIPD the role of line managers are the most important to implement the employee involvement and practice. Line managers are constantly in the communication with the employees. The line managers are the best person in explaining the variation in both job satisfaction and discretionary behavior as it one of the most important factors in order to developing commitment in the organization .The managers can encages employees towards their jobs and make them responsible for their jobs. The line managers can evaluate the performance through performance appraisal and motivates them by introducing more bonuses for better performance (CIPD, 2009). Organization culture According to CIPD (2009) it is found that the practice and performance is highly influenced by the organization environment. The practice performance link depends on the origination goal mission statement which must influence by the values the organizations stands for. And want to achieve in the future. The goal or the mission is very important for employee commitment. The goals or the mission should be spread throughout the organization to embed that in the policies of the organization. These values encourage employees to achieve new height in their jobs. This will motivate them as they are feeling valued and that eventually result in better performance. Comparison between Psychological contract and black box model Black box model is a medium for creating the atmosphere that reinforces psychological contract through the power of line managers. While psychological contract is a state of mind that already exists between the management and the employees. Implementation of employee involvement schemes Different organization operates differently so it is very important to understand that the schemes good for one organization may be not appropriate for the other one. There are few factors that are really important in order to successfully implement the schemes. The factors are good employee relations, the organization culture and the top management support, monitoring and reviewing and resources. Good employee relation Judge and Gennard (2005) explains that good employee relation is the basic need in order to implement employee involvement scheme as it is very important to motivate the employees and the management to take part in the process. The management and the employees must be open in their attitude and behavior. The scheme cant be successful in a case of dispute between them. Employee involvement can gain and develop in the background of trust and motivation among the management and the employees. Commitment by the top management The most importance factor regarding the success of employee involvement is the support of the top management. It is the top management who can encourage employee involvement and participation. According to Lawler et al (1995) it is essential, as employee involvement needs the management support to develop and smooth implementation without any obstacle. It is the management responsibility to introduce EI through suggestion programs and problem solving teams. The management can give more training to the employees to increase their skills and when they believe that the employees are knowledgeable and more skilled they can involve them in different organization function through EIP. This can leads to introduce reward and recognition for better performance to encourage employee involvement. Further Judge et al (2005) explain that the management must be keeping the momentum after the introduction of the scheme. This will develop trust and motivation among the employees and the employees feel the seriousness of the management about the scheme. Any inconstant management behavior in the workforce involvement can put the scheme in trouble as the employees will de motivates and questioning the management commitment about the scheme. According to Apostolou(2000) there are four important actions the management needs to take to run the scheme successfully and those are trust the employees and give them more responsibility, always updating the training programme to train the employees about the recent change in the business and technology the third action is effective communication and regular feedback of the work. This is the most crucial one as its shows the management seriousness about the scheme and that can motivate the workforce. Finally introducing of rewards and recognition for good work really helps to increase the commitment of the employees. Free flow of information is another important aspect of employee involvement. The management must provide information about the company through different sources to their employees .But the management should be careful to provide too much or too little information as it may create confusion among the employees. The role of leader is even more crucial in the time of recession and economic turmoil where the environment is not conducive for employee involvement because of lay offs. According to Day(2009) the roles of leader is more important then before as it is not possible for them to maintain the same employee involvement scheme if the company is not getting profit. The leadership should be aware the workforce the reason behind the lay off and must use the most remaining talent. The leadership must regain the confidence of the employee by regular informing about the company progress and make them understand about the difficult time. By giving more seriousness on employee involvement the management can help the organizat