Lesson 2 Student 1 DF Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Lesson 2 Student 1 DF - Essay Example It is based on focused areas that have ‘triggered’ questions about practices and requires further research and investigation into whether there are better ways of doing some type of process or providing a solution (Titler, Kleiber, Steelman, Rakel, Budrea, Evertt & Good 2001). Changes are made from such research that shows strong evidence for making changes in clinical practices. This can include innovative approaches, provides cost-reducing measures, and evidence-based solutions which benefit both the medical field and the patients it serves. In using the Iowa Model, some of the improvements it has provided are in enteral tube feeding (ETF), sedation management, bowel sounds assessment after abdominal surgeries, verifying the placement of the nasogastric tube, and double gloving in the surgery room (Melnyk & Fineout-Overholt 2011; Titler et al., 2001). The model also is useful for administration, as you have noted, to encourage an open atmosphere for inquiry as well as providing funding for further testing of medical processes to ensure that the best is made available to both staff and patients. A committee is also formed to oversee the process of discovery and to authorize the change, if deemed essential through supporting data (Melnyk & Fineout-Overholt 2011). A pilot process is created whereby the new policy is implemented and then reviewed as to its success, including the need for adjustments as found during the pilot process. This ensures that a clinic, hospital or organization fits the process to its own particular identity so that it functions at an optimal level. It is well-known that many organizations in the medical field use the Iowa Model as a basis for making change, thus supporting its efficiency. Translating research into practice (TRIP) is also a component of the process in presenting first the pilot process and recording the variables at play which give cause for

Orhan Pamuk, The Art of Fiction Essay Example for Free

Orhan Pamuk, The Art of Fiction Essay Orhan Pamuk was born in 1952 in Istanbul, where he †¨continues to live. His family had made a fortune in railroad construction during the early days of the Turkish Republic and Pamuk attended Robert College, where the children of the city‟s privileged elite received a secular, Western-style education. Early in life he developed a passion for the visual arts, but after enrolling in college to study architecture he decided he wanted to write. He is now Turkey‟s most widely read author. His first novel, CevdetBey and His Sons, was published in 1982 and was followed by The Silent House (1983), The White Castle (1985/1991 in English translation), The Black Book(1990/1994), and The New Life (1994/1997). In 2003 Pamuk received the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for My Name Is Red (1998/2001), a murder mystery set in sixteenth-century †¨Istanbul and narrated by multiple voices. The novel explores themes central to his fiction: the intricacies of identity in a country that straddles East and West, sibling rivalry, the existence of doubles, the value of beauty and originality, and the anxiety of cultural influence. Snow (2002/2004), which focuses on religious and political radicalism, was the first of his novels to confront political extremism in contemporary Turkey and it confirmed his standing abroad even as it divided opinion at home. Pamuk‟s most recent book is Istanbul: Memories and the City (2003/2005), a double portrait of himself—in childhood and youth—and of the place he comes from. This interview with OrhanPamuk was conducted in two sustained sessions in London and by correspondence. The first conversation occurred in May of 2004 at the time of the British publication of Snow. A special room had been booked for the meeting—a fluorescentlit, noisily air-conditioned corporate space in the hotel basement. Pamuk arrived, wearing a black corduroy jacket over a light-blue shirt and dark slacks, and observed, â€Å"We could die here and nobody would ever find us.† We retreated to a plush, quiet corner of the hotel lobby where we spoke for three hours, pausing only for coffee and a chicken sandwich. In April of 2005 Pamuk returned to London for the publication of †¨Istanbul and we settled into the same corner of the hotel lobby to speak for two hours. At first he seemed quite strained, and with reason. Two months earlier, in an interview with the Swiss newspaper Der Tages-Anzeiger, he had said of Turkey, â€Å"thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it.† This remark set off a relentless campaign against Pamuk in the Turkish nationalist press. After all, the Turkish government persists in denying the 1915 genocidal slaughter of Armenians in Turkey and has imposed laws severely restricting discussion of the ongoing Kurdish conflict. Pamuk declined to discuss the controversy for the public record in the hope that it would soon fade. In August, however, Pamuk‟s remarks in the Swiss paper resulted in his being charged under Article 301/1 of the Turkish Penal Code with â€Å"public denigration† of Turkish identity—a crime punishable by up to three years in prison. Despite outraged international press coverage of his case, as well as vigorous protest to the Turkish government by members of the European Parliament and by International PEN, when this magazine went to press in midNovember Pamuk was still slated to stand trial on December 16, 2005. INTERVIEWER How do you feel about giving interviews? ORHAN PAMUK I sometimes feel nervous because I give stupid answers to certain pointless questions. It happens in Turkish as much as in English. I speak bad Turkish and utter stupid sentences. I OrhanPamuk, Interviewed by à ngelGurrà ­a-Quintana have been attacked in Turkey more for my interviews than for my books. Political polemicists and columnists do not read novels there. INTERVIEWER You‟ve generally received a positive response to your books in Europe and the United States. What is your critical reception in Turkey? PAMUK The good years are over now. When I was publishing my first books, the previous generation of authors was fading away, so I was welcomed because I was a new author. INTERVIEWER When you say the previous generation, whom do you have in mind? PAMUK The authors who felt a social responsibility, authors who felt that literature serves morality and politics. They were flat realists, not experimental. Like authors in so many poor countries, they wasted their talent on trying to serve their nation. I did not want to be like them, because even in my youth I had enjoyed Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, Proust—I had never aspired to the social-realist model of Steinbeck and Gorky. The literature produced in the sixties and seventies was becoming outmoded, so I was welcomed as an author of the new generation. After the mid-nineties, when my books began to sell in amounts that no one in Turkey had ever dreamed of, my honeymoon years with the Turkish press and intellectuals were over. From then on, critical reception was mostly a reaction to the publicity and sales, rather than the content of my books. Now, unfortunately, I am notorious for my political comments—most of which are picked up from international interviews and shamelessly manipulated by some Turkish nationalist journalists to make me look more radical and politically foolish than I really am. INTERVIEWER So there is a hostile reaction to your popularity? PAMUK My strong opinion is that it‟s a sort of punishment for my sales figures and political comments. But I don‟t want to continue saying this, because I sound defensive. I may be misrepresenting the whole picture. INTERVIEWER Where do you write? PAMUK I have always thought that the place where you sleep or the place you share with your partner should be separate from the place where you write. The domestic rituals and details somehow kill the imagination. They kill the demon in me. The domestic, tame daily routine makes the longing for the other world, which the imagination needs to operate, fade away. So for years I always had an office or a little place outside the house to work in. I always had different flats. But once I spent half a semester in the U.S. while my ex-wife was taking her Ph.D. at Columbia University. We were living in an apartment for married students and didn‟t have any space, so I had to sleep and write in the same place. Reminders of family life were all around. This upset me. In the mornings I used to say goodbye to my wife like someone going to work. I‟d leave the house, walk around a few blocks, and come back like a person arriving at the office. Ten years ago I found a flat overlooking the Bosphorus with a view of the old city. It has, perhaps, one of the best views of Istanbul. It is a twenty-five-minute walk from where I live. It is full of books and my desk looks out onto the view. Every day I spend, on average, some ten hours there. OrhanPamuk, Interviewed by à ngelGurrà ­a-Quintana INTERVIEWER Ten hours a day? PAMUK Yes, I‟m a hard worker. I enjoy it. People say I‟m ambitious, and maybe there‟s truth in that too. But I‟m in love with what I do. I enjoy sitting at my desk like a child playing with his toys. It‟s work, essentially, but it‟s fun and games also. INTERVIEWER Orhan, your namesake and the narrator of Snow, describes himself as a clerk who sits down at the same time every day. Do you have the same discipline for writing? PAMUK I was underlining the clerical nature of the novelist as opposed to that of the poet, who has an immensely prestigious tradition in Turkey. To be a poet is a popular and respected thing. Most of the Ottoman sultans and statesmen were poets. But not in the way we understand poets now. For hundreds of years it was a way of establishing yourself as an intellectual. Most of these people used to collect their poems in manuscripts called divans. In fact, Ottoman court poetry is called divan poetry. H alf of the Ottoman statesmen produced divans. It was a sophisticated and educated way of writing things, with many rules and rituals. Very conventional and very repetitive.†¨After Western ideas came to Turkey, this legacy was combined with the romantic and modern idea of the poet as a person who burns for truth. It added extra weight to the prestige of the poet. On the other hand, a novelist is essentially a person who covers distance through his patience, slowly, like an ant. A novelist impresses us not by his demonic and romantic vision, but by his patience. INTERVIEWER Have you ever written poetry? PAMUK I am often asked that. I did when I was eighteen and I published some poems in Turkey, but then I quit. My explanation is that I realized that a poet is someone through whom God is speaking. You have to be possessed by poetry. I tried my hand at poetry, but I realized after some time that God was not speaking to me. I was sorry about this and then I tried to imagine—if God were speaking through me, what would he be saying? I began to write very meticulously, slowly, trying to figure this out. That is prose writing, fiction writing. So I worked like a clerk. Some other writers consider this expression to be a bit of an insult. But I accept it; I work like a clerk. INTERVIEWER Would you say that writing prose has become easier for you over time? PAMUK Unfortunately not. Sometimes I feel my character should enter a room and I still don‟t know how to make him enter. I may have more self-confidence, which sometimes can be unhelpful because then you‟re not experimenting, you just write what comes to the tip of your pen. I‟ve been writing fiction for the last thirty years, so I should think that I‟ve improved a bit. And yet I still sometimes come to a dead end where I thought there never would be one. A character cannot enter a room, and I don‟t know what to do. Still! After thirty years. The division of a book into chapters is very important for my way of thinking. When writing a novel, if I know the whole story line in advance—and most of the time I do—I divide it into chapters and think up the details of what I‟d like to happen in each. I don‟t necessarily start with the first chapter and write all the others in order. When I‟m blocked, which is not a grave thing for me, I continue with whatever takes my fancy. I may write from the first to the fifth chapter, then if I‟m not enjoying it I skip to number fifteen and continue from there. INTERVIEWER 3 OrhanPamuk, Interviewed by à ngelGurrà ­a-Quintana Do you mean that you map out the entire book in advance? PAMUK Everything. My Name Is Red, for instance, has many characters, and to each character I assigned a certain number of chapters. When I was writing, sometimes I wanted to continue â€Å"being† one of the characters. So when I finished writing one of Shekure‟s chapters, perhaps chapter seven, I skipped to chapter eleven, which is her again. I liked being Shekure. Skipping from one character or persona to another can be depressing. But the final chapter I always write at the end. That is definite. I like to tease myself, ask myself what the ending should be. I can only execute the ending once. Towards the end, before finishing, I stop and rewrite most of the early chapters. INTERVIEWER Do you ever have a reader while you are working? PAMUK I always read my work to the person I share my life with. I‟m always grateful if that person says, Show me more, or, Show me what you have done today. Not only does that p rovide a bit of necessary pressure, but it‟s like having a mother or father pat you on the back and say, Well done. Occasionally, the person will say, Sorry, I don‟t buy this. Which is good. I like that ritual. I‟m always reminded of Thomas Mann, one of my role models. He used to bring the whole family together, his six children and his wife. He used to read to all his gathered family. I like that. Daddy telling a story. INTERVIEWER When you were young you wanted to be a painter. When did your love of painting give way to your love of writing? PAMUK At the age of twenty-two. Since I was seven I had wanted to be a painter, and my family had accepted this. They all thought that I would be a famous painter. But then something happened in my head—I realized that a screw was loose—and I stopped painting and immediately began writing my first novel. INTERVIEWER A screw was loose? PAMUK I can‟t say what my reasons were for doing this. I recently published a book calledIstanbul. Half of it is my autobiography until that moment and the other half is an essay about Istanbul, or more precisely, a child‟s vision of Istanbul. It‟s a combination of thinking about images and landscapes and the chemistry of a city, and a child‟s perception of that city, and that child‟s autobiography. The last sentence of the book reads, â€Å"„I don‟t want to be an artist,‟ I said. „I‟m going to be a writer.‟† And it‟s not explained. Although reading the whole book may explain something. INTERVIEWER Was your family happy about this decision? PAMUK My mother was upset. My father was somewhat more understanding because in his youth he wanted to be a poet and translated Valà ©ry into Turkish, but gave up when he was mocked by the upper-class circle to which he belonged. INTERVIEWER Your family accepted you being a painter, but not a novelist? PAMUK Yes, because they didn‟t think I would be a full-time painter. The family tradition was in civil engineering. My grandfather was a civil engineer who made lots of money building railroads. My uncles and my father lost the money, but they all went to the same engineering school, Istanbul Technical University. I was expected to go there and I said, All right, I will go there. But since I was the artist in the family, the notion was that I should become an architect. It seemed to be a satisfying solution for everyone. So I went to that university, but in the middle of architectural school I suddenly quit painting and began writing novels. INTERVIEWER Did you already have your first novel in mind when you decided to quit? Is that why you did it? PAMUK As far as I remember, I wanted to be a novelist before I knew what to write. In fact, when I did start writing I had two or three false starts. I still have the notebooks. But after about six months I started a major novel project that ultimately got published as CevdetBey and His Sons. INTERVIEWER That hasn‟t been translated into English. PAMUK It is essentially a family saga, like the Forsyte Saga or Thomas Mann ¸s Buddenbrooks. Not long after I finished it I began to regret having written something so outmoded, a very nineteenth-century novel. I regretted writing it because, around the age of twenty-five or twenty-six, I began to impose on myself the idea that I should be a modern author. By the time the novel was finally published, when I was thirty, my writing had become much more experimental. INTERVIEWER When you say you wanted to be more modern, experimental, did you have a model in mind? PAMUK At that time, the great writers for me were no longer Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Stendhal, or Thomas Mann. My heroes were Virginia Woolf and Faulkner. Now I would add Proust and Nabokov to that list. INTERVIEWER The opening line of The New Life is, â€Å"I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.† Has any book had that effect on you? PAMUK The Sound and the Fury was very important to me when I was twenty-one or twentytwo. I bought a copy of the Penguin edition. It was hard to understand, especially with my poor English. But there was a wonderful translation of the book into Turkish, so I would to put the Turkish and the English together on the table and read half a paragraph from one and then go back to the other. That book left a mark on me. The residue was the voice that I developed. I soon began to write in the first person singular. Most of the time I feel better when I‟m impersonating someone else rather than writing in the third person. INTERVIEWER You say it took years to get your first novel published? PAMUK In my twenties I did not have any literary friendships; I didn‟t belong to any literary group in Istanbul. The only way to get my first book published was to submit it to a literary competition for unpublished manuscripts in Turkey. I did that and won the prize, which was to be published by a big, good publisher. At the time, Turkey‟s economy was in a bad state. They said, Yes, we‟ll give you a contract, but they delayed the novel‟s publication. INTERVIEWER Did your second novel go more easily—more quickly? PAMUK The second book was a political book. Not propaganda. I was already writing it while I waited for the first book to appear. I had given that book some two and a half years. Suddenly, one night there was a military coup. This was in 1980. The next day the would-be publisher of the first book, the CevdetBey book, said he wasn‟t going to publish it, even though we had a contract. I realized that even if I finished my second book—the political book—that day, I would not be able to publish it for five or six years because the military would not allow it. So my thoughts ran as follows: At the age of twenty-two I said I was going to be a novelist and wrote for seven years hoping to get something published in Turkey . . . and nothing. Now I‟m almost thirty and there‟s no possibility of publishing anything. I still have the two hundred and fifty pages of that unfinished political novel in one of my drawers. Immediately after the military coup, because I didn‟t want to get depressed, I started a third book—the book to which you referred, The Silent House. That‟s what I was working on in 1982 when the first book was finally published. Cevdet was well received, which meant that I could publish the book I was then writing. So the third book I wrote was the second to be published. INTERVIEWER What made your novel unpublishable under the military regime? PAMUK The characters were young upper-class Marxists. Their fathers and mothers would go to summer resorts, and they had big spacious rich houses and enjoyed being Marxists. They would fight and be jealous of each other and plot to blow up the prime minister. INTERVIEWER Gilded revolutionary circles? PAMUK Upper-class youngsters with rich people‟s habits, pretending to be ultraradical. But I was not making a moral judgment about that. Rather, I was romanticizing my youth, in a way. The idea of throwing a bomb at the prime minister would have been enough to get the book banned. So I didn‟t finish it. And you change as you write books. You cannot assume the same persona again. You cannot continue as before. Each book an author writes represents a period in his development. One‟s novels can be seen as the milestones in the development of one‟s spirit. So you cannot go back. Once the elasticity of fiction is dead, you cannot move it again. INTERVIEWER When you‟re experimenting with ideas, how do you choose the form of your novels? Do you start with an image, with a first sentence? PAMUK There is no constant formula. But I make it my business not to write two novels in the same mode. I try to change everything. This is why so many of my readers tell me, I liked this novel of yours, it‟s a shame you didn‟t write other novels like that, or, I never enjoyed one of your novels until you wrote that one—I‟ve heard that especially about The Black Book. In fact I hate to hear this. It‟s fun, and a challenge, to experiment with form and style, and language and mood and persona, and to think about each book differently. The subject matter of a book may come to me from various sources. With My Name Is Red, I wanted to write about my ambition to become a painter. I had a false start; I began to write a monographic book focused on one painter. Then I turned the painter into various painters worki ng together in an atelier. The point of view changed, because now there were other painters talking. At first I was thinking of writing about a contemporary painter, but then I thought this Turkish painter might be too derivative, too influenced by the West, so I went back in time to write about miniaturists. That was how I found my subject. Some subjects also necessitate certain formal innovations or storytelling strategies. Sometimes, for example, you‟ve just seen something, or read something, or been to a movie, or read a newspaper article, and then you think, I‟ll make a potato speak, or a dog, or a tree. Once you get the idea you start thinking about symmetry and continuity in the novel. And you feel, Wonderful, no one‟s done this before. Finally, I think of things for years. I may have ideas and then I tell them to my close friends. I keep lots of notebooks for possible novels I may write.Sometimes I don‟t write them, but if I open a notebook and begin taking notes for it, it is likely that I will write that novel. So when I‟m finishing one novel my heart may be set on one of these projects; and two months after finishing one I start writing the other. INTERVIEWER Many novelists will never discuss a work in progress. Do you also keep that a secret? PAMUK I never discuss the story. On formal occasions, when people ask what I‟m writing, I have a one-sentence stock reply: A novel that takes place in contemporary Turkey. I open up to very few people and only when I know they won‟t hurt me. What I do is talk about the gimmicks—I‟m going to make a cloud speak, for instance. I like to see how people react to them. It is a childish thing. I did this a lot when writing Istanbul. My mind is like that of a little playful child, trying to show his daddy how clever he is. INTERVIEWER The word gimmick has a negative connotation. PAMUK You begin with a gimmick, but if you believe in its literary and moral seriousness, in the end it turns into serious literary invention. It becomes a literary statement. INTERVIEWER Critics often characterize your novels as postmodern. It seems to me, however, that you draw your narrative t ricks primarily from traditional sources. You quote, for instance, fromTheThousand and One Nights and other classic texts in the Eastern tradition. PAMUK That began with The Black Book, though I had read Borges and Calvino earlier. I went with my wife to the United States in 1985, and there I first encountered the prominence and the immense richness of American culture. As a Turk coming from the Middle East, trying to establish himself as an author, I felt intimidated. So I regressed, went back to my â€Å"roots.† I realized that my generation had to invent a modern national literature. Borges and Calvino liberated me. The connotation of traditional Islamic literature was so reactionary, so political, and used by conservatives in such old-fashioned and foolish ways, that I never thought I could do anything with that material. But once I was in the United States, I realized I could go back to that material with a Calvinoesque or Borgesian mind frame. I had to begin by making a strong distinction between the religious and literary connotations of Islamic literature, so that I could easily appropriate its wealth of games, gimmicks, and parables. Turkey had a sophisticated tradition of highly refined ornamental literature. But then the socially committed writers emptied our literature of its innovative content. There are lots of allegories that repeat themselves in the various oral storytelling traditions—of China, India, Persia. I decided to use them and set them in contemporary Istanbul. It‟s an experiment—put everything together, like a Dadaist collage; The Black Bookhas this quality. Sometimes all these sources are fused together and something new emerges. So I set all these rewritten stories in Istanbul, added a detective plot, and out came The Black Book. But at its source was the full strength of American culture and my desire to be a serious experimental writer. I could not write a social commentary about Turkey‟s problems—I was intimidated by them. So I had to try something else. INTERVIEWER Were you ever interested in doing social commentary through literature? PAMUK No. I was reacting to the older generation of novelists, especially in the eighties. I say this with all due respect, but their subject matter was very narrow and parochial. INTERVIEWER Let‟s go back to before The Black Book. What inspired you to write †¨The White Castle? It‟s the first book where you employ a theme that recurs throughout the rest of your novels—impersonation. Why do you think this idea of becoming somebody else crops up so often in your fiction? PAMUK It‟s a very personal thing. I have a very competitive brother who is only eighteen months older than me. In a way, he was my father—my Freudian father, so to speak. It was he who became my alter ego, the representation of authority. On the other hand, we also had a competitive and brotherly comradeship. A very complicated relationship. I wrote extensively about this in Istanbul. I was a typical Turkish boy, good at soccer and enthusiastic about all sorts of games and competitions. He was very successful in school, better than me. I felt jealousy towards him, and he was jealous of me too. He was the reasonable and responsible person, the one our superiors addressed. While I was paying attention to games, he paid attention to rules. We were competing all the time. And I fancied being him, that kind of thing. It set a model. Envy, jealousy—these are heartfelt themes for me. I always worry about how much my brother‟s strength or his success might have influenced me. This is an essential part of my spirit. I am aware of that, so I put some distance between me and those feelings. I know they are bad, so I have a civilized person‟s determination to fight them. I‟m not saying I‟m a victim of jealousy. But this is the galaxy of nerve points that I try to deal with all the time. And of course, in the end, it becomes the subject matter of all my stories. In The White Castle, for instance, the almost sadomasochistic relationship between the two main characters is based on my relationship wi th my brother. On the other hand, this theme of impersonation is reflected in the fragility Turkey feels when faced with Western culture. After writing The White Castle, I realized that this jealousy—the anxiety about being influenced by someone else—resembles Turkey‟s position when it looks west. You know, aspiring to become Westernized and then being accused of not being authentic enough. Trying to grab the spirit of Europe and then feeling guilty about the imitative drive. The ups and downs of this mood are reminiscent of the relationship between competitive brothers. INTERVIEWER Do you believe the constant confrontation between Turkey‟s Eastern and Western impulses will ever be peacefully resolved? PAMUK I‟m an optimist. Turkey should not worry about having two spirits, belonging to two different cultures, having two souls. Schizophrenia makes you intelligent. You may lose your relation with reality—I‟m a fiction writer, so I don‟t think that‟s such a bad thing—but you shouldn‟t worry about your schizophrenia. If you worry too much about one part of you killing the other, you‟ll be left with a single spirit. That is worse than having the sickness. This is my theory. I try to propagate it in Turkish politics, among Turkish politicians who demand that the country should have one consistent soul—that it should belong to either the East or the West or be nationalistic. I‟m critical of that monistic outlook. INTERVIEWER How does that go down in Turkey? PAMUK The more the idea of a democratic, liberal Turkey is established, the more my thinking is accepted. Turkey can join the European Union only with this vision. It‟s a way of fighting against nationalism, of fighting the rhetoric of Us against Them. INTERVIEWER And yet in Istanbul, in the way you romanticize the city, you seem to mourn the loss of the Ottoman Empire. PAMUK I‟m not mourning the Ottoman Empire. I‟m a Westernizer. I‟m pleased that the Westernization process took place. I‟m just criticizing the limited way in which the ruling elite—meaning both the bureaucracy and the new rich—had conceived of Westernization. They lacked the confidence necessary to create a national culture rich in its own symbols and rituals. They did not strive to create an Istanbul culture that would be an organic combination of East and West; they just put Western and Eastern things together. There was, of course, a strong local Ottoman culture, but that was fading away little by little. What they had to do, and could not possibly do enough, was invent a strong local culture, which would be a combination—not an imitation—of the Eastern past and the Western present. I try to do the same kind of thing in my books. Probably new generations will do it, and entering the European Union will not destroy Turkish identity but make it flourish and give us more freedom and self-confidence to invent a new Turkish culture. Slavishly imitating the West or slavishly imitating the old dead Ottoman culture is not the solution. You have to do something with these things and shouldn‟t have anxiety about belonging to one of them too much. INTERVIEWER In Istanbul, however, you do seem to identify with the foreign, Weste rn gaze over your own city. PAMUK But I also explain why a Westernized Turkish intellectual can identify with the Western gaze—the making of Istanbul is a process of identification with the West. There is always this dichotomy, and you can easily identify with the Eastern anger too. Everyone is sometimes a Westerner and sometimes an Easterner—in fact a constant combination of the two. I like Edward Said‟s idea of Orientalism, but since Turkey was never a colony, the romanticizing of Turkey was never a problem for Turks. Western man did not humiliate the Turk in the same way he humiliated the Arab or Indian. Istanbul was invaded only for two years and the enemy boats left as they came, so this did not leave a deep scar in the spirit of the nation. What left a deep scar was the loss of the Ottoman Empire, so I don‟t have that anxiety, that feeling that Westerners look down on me. Though after the founding of the Republic, there was a sort of intimidation because Turks wanted to Westernize but couldn‟t go far enough, which left a feeling of cultural inferiority that we have to address and that I occasionally may have. On the other hand, the scars are not as deep as other nations that were occupied for two hundred years, colonized. Turks were never suppressed by Western powers. The suppression that Turks suffered was self-inflicted; we erased our own history because it was practical. In that suppression there is a sense of fragility. But that self-imposed Westernization also brought isolation. Indians saw their oppressors face-to-face. Turks were strangely isolated from the Western world they emulated. In the 1950s and even 1960s, when a foreigner came to stay at the Istanbul Hilton it would be noted in all the newspapers. Do you believe that there is a canon or that one should even exist? We have heard of a Western canon, but what about a non-Western canon? PAMUK Yes, there is another canon. It should be explored, developed, shared, criticized, and then accepted. Right now the so-called Eastern canon is in ruins. The glorious texts are all around but there is no will to put them together. From the Persian classics, through to all the Indian, Chinese, and Japanese texts, these things should be assessed critically. As it is now, the canon is in the hands of Western scholars. That is the center of distribution and communication. INTERVIEWER The novel is a very Western cultural form. Does it have any place in the Eastern tradition? PAMUK The modern novel, dissociated from the epic form, is essentially a non-Oriental thing. Because the novelist is a person who does not belong to a community, who does not share the basic instincts of community, and who is thinking and judging with a different culture than the one he is experiencing. Once his consciousness is different from that of the community he belongs to, he is an outsider, a loner. And the richness of his text comes from that outsider‟s voyeuristic vision. Once you develop the habit of looking at the world like that and writing about it in this fashion, you have the desire to disassociate from the community. This is the model I was thinking about in Snow. INTERVIEWER Snow is your most political book yet published. How did you conceive of it? PAMUK When I started becoming famous in Turkey in the mid-1990s, at a time when the war against Kurdish guerillas was strong, the old leftist authors and the new modern liberals wanted me to help them, to sign petitions—they began to ask me to do political things unrelated to my books. Soon the esta blishment counterattacked with a campaign of character assassination. They began calling me names. I was very angry. After a while I wondered, What if I wrote a political novel in which I explored my own spiritual dilemmas—coming from an uppermiddle-class family and feeling responsible for those who had no political representation? I believed in the art of the novel. It is a strange thing how that makes you an outsider. I told myself then, I will write a political novel. I started to write it as soon as I finished My Name Is Red. INTERVIEWER Why did you set it in the small town of Kars? PAMUK It is notoriously one of the coldest towns in Turkey. And one of the poorest. In the early eighties, the whole front page of one of the major newspapers was about the poverty of Kars. Someone had calculated that you could buy the entire town for around a million dollars. The political †¨climate was difficult when I wanted to go there. The vicinity of the town is mostly populated by Kurds, but the center is a combination of Kurds, people from Azerbaijan, Turks, and all other sorts. There used to be Russians and Germans too. There are religious differences as well, Shia and Sunni. The war the Turkish government was waging against the Kurdish guerillas was so fierce that it was impossible to go as a tourist. I knew I could not simply go there as a novelist, so I asked a newspaper editor with whom I‟d been in touch for a press pass to visit the area. He is influential and he personally called the mayor and the police chief to let them know I was coming.

Digi Telecommunications Sdn

Digi Telecommunications Sdn If there is one defining story in the technology world today, it is most likely the explosive growth of mobile communications. It is more well known that there are more mobile handsets than personal computers and that each of them has more computing power than the NASA computers that placed a man on the moon. This trend is connecting people from all around and across the world and acting as a great leveler as people are able to communicate and collaborate more seamlessly. Leading this trend in Malaysia would be Digi Telecommunications Sdn. Bhd. is a mobile service provider and provides wireless telecommunications services. The company is owned by Telenor ASA of Norway with 49%. On 24 May 1995 DiGi became the first Telco in Malaysia to launch and operate a fully digital cellular network. The company was formerly known as Mutiara Telecommunications Sdn Bhd but changed its name to Digi Telecommunications Sdn Bhd in January 1999. Digi Telecommunications Sdn Bhd was founded in 1995 and bs ed in Shah Alam, Malaysia. Digi Telecommunications Sdn Bhd operates as a subsidiary of DiGi.Com Berhad. Right now, DiGi is listed on the Bursa Malaysia under the Infrastructure category. DiGi Telecommunications Sdn. Bhd. Company provides a variety or broad of mobile communication services. These services include data services to individual and corporate customers, voice under their prepaid plans postpaid plans, SMS, data plans and services, international roaming, international calling card and WAP services. Digi faced challenges understanding the status of opportunities, inputting data manually into multiple systems, tracking proposal approval status and lines activation status, and tracking the success of marketing campaigns. Other challenge faced by Digi would be its directly and indirectly competitors. Competitors which compete directly with Digi are Maxis, Celcom, and U Mobile. DiGi also competes indirectly with broadband services provider such as TM, P1, Redtone, Amax. 3.0 Situation analysis 3.1 General Environment Analysis Political Strong Malaysian Government support: In 2007, Malaysian government has set to achieve 50% Malaysian household with both wired and wireless mobile broadband penetration by the end of 2010. In order to aid service providers further, the government rolls out supplies of broadband infrastructure and services throughout Malaysia. Plus, they also aggressively generate continuous demand in 3 aspects which are awareness, attractiveness and affordability. Malaysian Government discourages the usage of cell phone among school kids: In the year of 2006, Malaysian government banned the usage of cell phone among kids in nationwide school even included the fully residential schools. The decision was taken after many groups especially parents and teachers expressed their concern that allowing the handheld tool to be used by students while in schools could lead to a lot of problems such as affecting students performance in class. Social Influx of foreign worker: Traditionally, Maxis and Celcom have neglected to provide mobile services for this segment on the assumption that foreign workers are unable to afford them. DiGi entered this full of opportunity yet neglected segment after discovering that these migrants were willing to pay for communications to connect with their loved ones back home if they were offered affordable packages without any extras and make it their stronghold. Foreign workers are important in expanding Malaysias economy as they are the ones who willing to work for long hours but only receiving minimum pay. Foreign workers will be willing to work in Malaysia if they could contact their loved ones and family anytime with low cost. Higher standard living among Malaysians: Malaysians are able to enjoy the high-tech tele communication provided. Whether it is to be in touch with their loved ones or family. Communications has improved skills and knowledge among the Malaysian citizens. Globalization The world is now borderless where by economic openness and growing interdependence between countries had spur on increase in movements of people, goods and services. Increasing in Malaysias GDP: The communications and multimedia industry contributed 6.1% in term of revenue to Malaysias GDP. While in 2009, this industry generate about RM40 billion. For 2nd Quarter of 2010, the communication sub-sector registered 8.4% growth, mainly attributed to greater usage of cellular, broadband and 3G services. Economics Offering lower price packages: As economic downturn or during recession, Digi always offer the lowest price compared to its two competitors which are Maxis and Celcom. Therefore, even in the worst economic position, Digi will not lose its market share but more users are switching to Digi for its attracting benefits. Technology Continuous technological advancement in wired and wireless telecommunication: The creation of short messaging service (SMS), multimedia messaging service (MMS), GRPS, and 3G. Demographic Population: With the help of telecommunication services, population in certain areas will be expanding as people are safe to move around since there is a way to communicate with each other. Immigrants who came to Malaysia are able to get in touch with their hometown. Physical The packages offered: There are so many promotions and cheap packages offer by Digi so that people are able to get in touch with each other without paying a large sum of amount. These benefits attracted some populations like students and people with lower salary as promotions offered by Digi could save up money. 3.2 Porters Five Forces Analysis Porters five forces is a framework for the industry analysis and business strategy development that introduced by Michael E. Porter of Harvard Business School in 1979. This theory normally uses to determine the competitive intensity of an organization the overall industry profitability. Therefore, a business has to understand its position in the industry in order to create competitive advantages. There are 5 elements under Porters five forces which are new entrants, bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of buyers, threat of substitute products, and lastly intensity of rivalry among competitors. In telecommunication industry, Digi faces a very stiff competition which come from the main competitor Maxis and Celcom. From the aspect of new entrants, we can see that the capital require to enter this industry is very high, therefore this telecommunication industry is basically owned by 3 big companies. From the perspective of government policy and regulation, The National Telecommunication Policy encourages a healthy and orderly competition. The telecommunications sector has been opened to competition where basic infrastructure and telecommunications services are operated by private enterprises in order to provide a better quality services. In this sector, consumers have a low switching cost between these mobile telecommunication companies. Overall, we can consider a threat to new entrants is medium level. The second element in Porters 5 forces is bargaining power of buyers. In this industry, the bargaining powers of buyers are increasing in these few years. Most of the people need this mobile telecommunication service. Consumers purchase a large portion of industrys total output. Other than that, the switching cost between these companies is very low. Lastly, it is clear to see that the product between Digi and maxis is actually undifferentiated or standardized. Consumers who do not satisfy with the services from Digi can easily switch to other companies. Through these indications above, we can conclude that the bargaining power of buyers is very high. The next element is threat of substitute products. The substitute products may simply increase competition in an industry. When Maxis launch a new package to the market, Digi revenue will decrease due to the stress from its competitors. Therefore, Digi has to introduce some new services to attract consumer attention back. The products in this mobile telecommunication industry is actually undifferentiated, therefore, the threat of substitute products is high. The fourth element is intensity of rivalry among competitors which refer to the major determinant of the competitiveness of the industry. As mentioned earlier, Digi faces a very stiff competition in this sector by equally balance competitors especially Maxis. Basically, the products between these companies are lack of differentiation and the switching cost is low. In order to pursuit an advantage over its rivals, Digi company always adopt some new strategies on changing price and launch a cheaper package such as Digi campus to its users to make sure their customers maintain loyalty to the company. As an overall, level of rivalry that Digi faces can be concluding as high level. The last element in this theory is the bargaining power of suppliers. The bargaining power of suppliers can consists as high because most of the equipment that used to build tower cannot be sources locally, it is highly depend to export from other country. Because of the equipment is unique especially Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM), so most of them are imported from other countries. There are only a few suppliers for Digi and the switching cost of Digi to change to another supplier is quite high. 3.3 Descriptive for key stakeholder In term of organizations, DiGi is doing well in preserving the environment, which was being supported and recognized by peoples that all around the world. This may help in improving their brand name and can be a part of advertising strategies too. For example, On 3 June of 2010, DiGi had donated a total of RM98, 211 to WWF-Malaysia to reforest, which is up to 12 hectares of degraded forest as part of the Kinabatangan Corridor of Life (K-CoL) reforestation project. The fund was collected under the four month DiGi Postpaid e-Billing that derived from DiGis Minus campaign, which was started from December 2009 to March 2010. For each postpaid the customer who paid for the electronic billing, which is so called e-billing, DiGi donated Rm3 for the reforestation project. Although it only Rm3, but each contribution of RM3 can help to reforest an area equal to the size of 75 pieces of postpaid bill envelopes placed side-by-side, which is about 3 square meters. In short, the e-billing campaign was one of the activities that being carried out to reduce the paper usage. This is the main purpose that DiGis Deep Green ambition for minimising the environment impact. This is proven as DiGi always try to reduce their carbon footprints; they keep on encouraging customers make payment through e-billing, moreover, they also reduced the packaging and the size of the DiGi reload cards and the SIM packs. Last but not least, DiGi also provides a total paperless personal accident insurance, which the whole procedures will be done through the mobile phone. Besides, DiGi launched the campaign of Yellow Coverage Fellow through a series of television commercials. Originally called Yellow Man, until renamed by DiGis marketing team as YCF. It entitled with the DiGi Yellow, and DiGis WIDEST Coverage always with you. The theme song is I Will Follow You. Obviously the public response to the campaign was very positive. This is because I Will Follow You had become a phrase among the Malaysian public. In term of Product, the products and the services that provided by DiGi is well known by all the peoples around the worlds and is attracting the subscribers to be one of the DiGi users. DiGi is the first to operate the full cellular network and is the first to operate their cellular network in Sabah and Sarawak Besides, DiGi is the First operator in Asia to be part of the International Roaming Platform and to launch the use of the dual-band mobile phones. On the year 1997, DiGi be the first telcomunication company that being listed on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange Main Board under the Infrastructure Project Companies category, and at that time, DiGi is known as Mutiara Swisscom Bhd. On 1998, Digi also be the first operator in Malaysia that launched the prepaid mobile phone service. The expecting of DiGi continued, to be the first GSM operator in Malaysia to offer Automatic International Roaming service to the United States of America; to be the first telecomuncation to launch a web site in Malaysia, the introduced of e-pay system as mentioned above and the following are the awards of DiGi: Mobile Data Service Provider of the Year by Frost Sullivan Malaysia Telecoms Awards 2005,Mobile Data Service Provider of the Year by Frost Sullivan Malaysia Telecoms Awards 2006,Best Prepaid Telco Service Provider 2005 by IT publications PC.Com, received in 2006,Mobile Operator of the Year, Malaysia by Asian Mobile News, received in June 2006,Malaysias CEO of the Year by Business Times, received in 2006,Malaysias Most Innovative Company survey by the Wall Street Journal Asia, received in October 2006 Mobile Data Service Provider of the Year by Frost Sullivan Malaysia Telecoms Awards 2007, on 24 May, Mobile Service Provider of the Year by Frost Sullivan Malaysia Telecoms Awards 2007, on 24 May and last but not least the Wireless Service Provider of the Year by Frost Sullivan Asia Pacific ICT Awards 2007, on 15 June In addition, DiGi is not only popular with their background but also with the price that they offered for their plan. For example, the prepaid package, DiGi Campus, which is highly demanded by the students that are studying in University. This is due to the low rate of calling and sms rate. Students can enjoy 100 minutes free calls to others DiGi numbers when they meet the conditions of spending RM2 per date. Besides, for the postpaid package, the user is only required to pay as low as 0.15 per minutes. 3.4. SWOT analysis based on stakeholder groups Digi SWOT analysis 3.4.1 Strength 3.4.1.1 Product Innovation Innovation is important because it exploiting new ideas to create a new product, process or service. Innovations become major strength because their research and development had always exceeded customer expectation so that increasing the customer satisfaction toward Digi. For example, innovation product such as Digi Campus for university student and Digi broadband services. Reward system A good reward system can motivate current subscribers and potential subscribers. Good reward system become a strength because Digi have a completely, effective, and efficiency system to service their subscriber. For example, birthday bonus for subscriber, a user can enjoy 50% extra bonus credit when reload before 3 days and after 3 days on the user birthday. 3.4.1.2 Organization Affiliation Telenor ASA now is Digi.Com Berhards first majority foreign-owned telecommunications service provider. Keeping good relationship with Telenor is a major strength of Digi. Affiliation with Telenor is important because Telenors will bring collective strength to Digi such as development of advanced technologies and services and maintaining the Digi status as a leader player in telecommunication sector. For example, Telenor intends to expand DIGIs business and further strengthen and improve the companys market position, with a particular emphasis on mobile product and services. (Arve Johansen, CEO Telenor mobile) Facilities Facilities are important because it bring convenience to customer and save time and cost. Facilities of Digi become strength because it provided many methods to let subscriber easily get what they want. For example, Digi center, reload credit through online banking, online payment and many more. It brings a super convenience to subscriber and will increase the customer satisfaction. Another reason is because too many competitor offering same services, so that Digi must offer facilities that other competitor dont have. 3.4.1.3 Capital Strong financial performance Strong financial performance in Digi becomes strength because Digi have stable number subscribers. An increasing and stable number of subscribers can lead strong financial performance in Digi, Digi are focusing in customer satisfaction, excellent customer experiences and keep attract new subscribers by promoting their product and services. 3.4.2 Weakness 3.4.2.1 Product Late to reach customer in latest information Latest information late to reach end user becomes a major weakness because Digi seldom promote their product and services in society. Latest information late to reach end user will cause lose a lot of potential customer and the sales will start to dropping down. For example, when new product or services release, if no any promoting activities like open booth, promotion to promote product, all the customer will dont know the latest information in Digi. 3.4.2.2 Organization Dependency on strategic sharing Dependency on strategic sharing becomes major weakness in Digi because Digi are still highly depending on product development and RD. They think try through product development can serve the customer better but it may not effectively, too focus on product development will cause the relationship between Digi and customer becomes not strong, they may will ignore the customer feeling and customer satisfaction. Lack of involvement of Digi ambassadors Ambassadors is important because they can lead a company toward successful and influence the telecommunication market. Lack of involvement becomes weakness because Digi ambassador lack of involvement in promoting product and services. Once the ambassador did not showing their responsibility, the latest information cannot be deliver to customer therefore the performances of company will be affected. 3.4.3 Opportunity 3.4.3.1 Product Rising telecommunication demand Higher demand for Digis product and services become an opportunity in Digi because it can lead Digi to produce more product and services to improve their sales and revenue. More people demand for the Digis product and services meaning that the quality of product and services offer by Digi is good and customer willing accept due to larger satisfaction. For example, low cost broadband internet services bring larger demand. Higher standard of living Recently, the Malaysia higher standard of living also becomes an opportunity for Digi Company. Higher standard of living in Malaysia cause the demand for telecommunication increase, many people will start choose the best telecommunication industry to be their communication tool due to the convenient. For example, even nowadays a 7 years old girl has their own mobile phone. 3.4.3.2 Organization Advance technology in human resource Advance technology in human resource are become an opportunity in Digi. Digi must focusing on recruiting new employee and provide training to them so that can maintaining a competent human resources in Digi. 3.4.3.3 Capital High capital investment High capital investments become an opportunity in Digi because of the ultimate holding company, Telenor. Telenor was investing a large amount of capital to expand their business to achieve profitability and enhance shareholder returns. 3.4.4 Threat 3.4.4.1 Product High bargaining power of consumer In telecommunication industry there have a lot of company like maxis, celcom, telekom Malaysia. Consumers are easily to choose and switch to another industry to use. In this case, Digi can offering higher quality of telecommunication services to customer at a lower price so that Digi wont lose their customer. Technology advancement in telecommunication Technology advancement such as in wired and wireless telecommunication becomes a threat in Digi Company. Current level of technology maybe very fast outdated because of other competitor continues offering new product with new technology. So, Digi can keep continue in improving the RD and keep at the lower price of product to compete them. For example, the lower cost of Digi broadband internet services brings a lot of business. 3.4.4.2 Organization High switching cost High switching cost becomes a threat in Digi Company. Switching to another supplier the cost is very high, so, switching to another supplier is very hard. To overcome this problem, Digi must keep a close relationship between the current supplier which is Ericsson and Trisilco Folec. Continue a good relationship with supplier Digi can save more cost in acquiring material to produce product and services. 3.5 Summary of situation analysis Strength Innovation of Digi product Good affiliation with Telenor major foreign service provider Excellent facilities convenience Innovation is very important as every competitor try to innovate in a fast pace to compete with each other. Good innovation will lead to successful or failure of a company. Keeping good relation with major foreign service provider will stabilize the investors investment on the company, which will lead to major profiting in the company for now and future. Providing excellent facilities and service will satisfy customers, and because of that, they will subscribe and be loyal. Weakness Slower in updating latest information Too dependent on strategic sharing Lack of involvement of Digi ambassadors Slowing in updating latest information will cause major loss in long term if the competitor knows the weakness of the company. Everything have to be fast when comes to telecommunication and technology. Focusing or too depending on certain department will influence the environment of the company. It will slowly abandon some important department and cause chaos or blurring of the company organization pattern. Good ambassadors deliver good information to customer, and customer deliver profit to company. Choosing a good ambassador will shape up the message of the company and deliver it to customer clearly. Opportunities Rising of telecommunication demand Higher standard of living High capital investment in expanding business There are a lot of opportunities in telecommunication. As the world moving in fast pace, from 3g to 3.5g and now 4g. The rising of telecommunication demand boost up and open opportunities for existing company to achieve better and stable their company, so that they would not beat down by the new rising advance company. People demand more and create new opportunities as well as idea to satisfy their standard of living. Fast, convenience, save time, save cost, these are the reason people influence the level of living standard. To expand business, we need capital. When we have high capital investment, it shows the how good is the reputation of the company. High investment will influence the size of business, and of course, the profit, and keeping the customers. Threats High bargaining power of consumer Technology advancement in telecommunication High switching cost to another supplier Telecommunication field is full with competitors. Each of the company is very similar to each other. Consumer holds a very strong bargaining power to make their own choice. They choose what they like and what they think it is best for them. They can be switch to A company for today, and maybe tomorrow they will be switching to B company. Current level of technology maybe very fast outdated because of other competitor continues offering new product with new technology. Consumer will go for the company who offer them better technology. Switching to another supplier the cost is very high that makes switching to another supplier is very hard. Keep a close relationship between the current supplier can save more cost in acquiring material to produce product and services. 4.0 The Strategic Option of an organisation (DiGi) Build a powerful competitive advantage The strategic option of DiGi is to build a powerful competitive advantage. DiGi became the first telco in Malaysia to launch and operate a fully digital cellular network on 24 May 1995. On the year 1997, DiGi be the first telecommunication company that being listed on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange Main Board under the Infrastructure Project Companies category, and at that time, DiGi is known as Mutiara Swisscom Bhd. On the year 1998, Digi also be the first operator in Malaysia that launched the prepaid mobile phone service. The expecting of DiGi continued, to be the first GSM operator in Malaysia to offer Automatic International Roaming service to the United States of America; to be the first telecommunication to launch a website in Malaysia. This is the main competitive advantage due the often establishment of the first time in Malaysia. Hence it is well known throughout the world. Besides, DiGi provided a cheap Digi Plan, which is Happy Plan. This is targeted to those customers that make a lot of calls and sms, it only costs 1sen/second and up to 99sen per call to any number in Malaysia and the in year 2008, DiGi is the first Telco in Malaysia to introduce Mobile Number Selection service. This service enables the users to choose their own number rather than just following the traditional way. For example, in the traditional way, the user will purchase a new SIM that has been pre-assign with fix mobile number but now they can choose the numbers that they prefer. Sometimes, extra charges are needed for some special numbers, such as with the same digit that repeated twice or more. Operational Efficiency Besides, Operational Efficiency also is one of the strategic options of DiGi. Nowadays, many companies are focusing on IT Infrastructure .Technology can be either a great source. The applications of technology should be supported by an IT infrastructure that connects a companys users to each other. By connecting the DiGi company to their subscribers, this can help the users of DiGi always alert of the latest information and the promotions of DiGi. In term of technology, DiGi has provided Wireless, 3G and Internet Broadband services. Moroever, Facebook Zero, this is a light-weight, text -only version of the standard Facebook Mobile site and it is free and is accessible by all the Digi prepaid and postpaid users. It brings convenient to the users, as now the users can still stay connected with their fellow friends of family just by using their small device. Besides, in term of broadband, DiGi now is offering the quota of 3GB, cost RM38 per month, and the modem is free of charge. The op erational efficiency also included the peoples. This peoples is referred to those who working at DiGi departments. A current issue, DiGi Telecommunications Sdn Bhd will continue to invest in customer service amid the economic slowdown to provide better value and build brand loyalty Schnitker, Tom. (2009,February 21). Customer service still tops for DiGi. The Star. DiGi is enhancing their service level DiGi Telecommunications Sdn. Bhd. provides a variety of mobile communication services, such as voice under their prepaid plans postpaid plans, SMS, data plans and services, international roaming, international calling card and WAP services. Besides that, the users of DiGi is provided with the service of friend and family where the customers is allowed to set 6 Digi numbers that they will call more often. The calling rate and sms rate for these 6 numbers are lower than the normal prepaid rate. Personal Accident Insurance also is one of the services provided by DiGi, which is the competitive advantage that will the others networks do not provided and followed. DiGi provided 1 month free trial PA insurance for their users. The PA insurance can be categorized into 3 categories which is the RM50000 personal insurance, RM100000 personal insurance and RM100000 Family Personal insurance. Customers can enjoy the 1 month trial of the RM50000 of PA insurance and after one month, they can still continue to purchase the PA insurance at RM2 for 30 days coverage. Then you will still be protecting under RM50000 PA insurance plan, but with the term and conditions applied. Moreover, DiGiRemit, this allowed an individual to transfer through mobile phones and has remittanced to Indonesia, Phillippines and with more countries are following soon. Customers can just send 2 text messages to complete their transfer. This brought high convenient to their customers due to this remittance can be transferred to anyone with or without the bank account in the destination country. Besides, it is secured due to the administering of Citibank until the money is being delivered to the beneficiary. greater shares for its stakeholders Last but not least, DiGi provided greater shares for its stakeholders.DiGi market share is currently 25.00 per share. Which is much more higher than its competitors such as Maxis, only 5.33 per share. The shareholders of DiGi can increase their wealth by invest in DiGi. 5.0 Key selection criteria Strategies Activities/Tactics Key selection/criteria Build a competitive advantage Happy Plan Mobile number selection Focus on customer Focus on low cost of product Operational efficiency Infrastructure Facebook Zero, broadband Peoples Customer service. Focus on customer Focus on product quality Enhanced service levels Friend and Family Personal Accident Insurance DiGiRemit Focus on customer Focus on low cost Focus on quality of service. Greater market share RM25.00 per share Focus on shareholder wealth 6.0 Recommendation Key Question Recommendation Decision criteria Pros Cons 1. How the Digi be the top in its game? 1. More branding and quality product. 2. Build up the quality segment 3. Potential high dividend -Research and development, innovation, creative. -lowest call rate in different segment, eg. Postpaid segment. -the growth of sales and revenue. -increase sales and revenue -more focus the need of customer in different segment. -increase shareholder wealth -compete with diversification product from competitor -too many segments may cause company hard to focus in one. -capital gains decrease due to the higher profit and tax expense. 2. Can Digi maintain strong relationship with suppliers? 1. Always place order on time. 2. Setting Digi account on time. 3. Communication between Digi and suppliers -The time to deliver the material. -The dateline of payment -the understanding between Digi and supplier -Supplier have enough time to prepare -clear payment on time can maintain the liquidation of company -establishing the relationship between each others -late submitting order will let supplier not

Graduation Speech -- Graduation Speech, Commencement Address

Ah, life eh? Hello Class of 2012. There are so many things to say to you. I feel so privileged to get to speak to everyone, and there is so much to say. We have come to this point in our lives that many have come to before us. I almost feel like I have done it already, having watched people grow up and graduate before. But now today it is our turn to really do it. To walk this aisle, to sit in the seats, and to play with these tassels. It seems like so long ago and it seems like just yesterday, those perils of adolescence. Brier Terrace Middle School, just seething with awkwardness and emotions, was where I spent most of my days, chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool, playing some b-ball outside of my school. One of my most memorable days at Brier was a day my friend Kyle kicked me in the face. We were playing Zebra ball in P.E., probably one of the legendary Mr. Soward's inventions, and I was already out, sitting on the wall waiting for the next round to begin. Kyle was still in the game running around, when he, in an attempt to dodge a ball hurling at him, tried to leap over me, unintentionally kicking me squarely in the face. My glasses broke a little and I was super embarrassed. Kyle had no idea that he did it and kept playing. Casually at lunch later, I told him what happened, as if he would want to know. It is funny what an impact, literally, our experience in school has made on us and also the impact we have made on them. Academically, we have achieved much at our school. Every one of us here has accumulated twenty-two Green Terrace High School credits and individually our very own Senior Project. A big pat on the back seems deserved by everyone here for four years of hard work. Some here get a big slap on... ...e that meant something to others, like Kyle and Mr. Tolstoy didn't, but you undoubtedly have. Don't forget the lessons that we have learned from each other. The ones in friendship, in love and all the lessons of just plain how to live well. My prayer for all of you is that you will not give up this wonderful habit of giving to people in this way, but that separately, as we all diverge from this place, you will live lives knowing that human worth is not dependent on achievement, but on simple existence. Find purpose in what comes naturally to all of us, to love. Class of 2003, you have given me more than I asked for, more than the titles I have received or accomplishments I have made, you have called me sister. Go out and be great because you are able to love greatly. Thank you so much for the honor of speaking. I adore you, my brothers and sisters, Class of 2003

American Pastoral :: essays research papers

The Failure to Develop   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Many people stutter; however people usually outgrow stuttering. But it is not something that people just do for a short while to attract attention. People who do stutter are actually really embarrassed by it and the attention they receive from stuttering and fear the next time that it will happen. They will often avoid situations in which stuttering will be a problem. Stutterers have no control over when they stutter or don’t. Contrary to the therapist in the novel American Pastoral, stuttering is not an idea conjured up in ones head to gain attention. It is not a psychological problem that comes and goes as one needs it, or when it would be beneficial to a person. Because the truth is, a stutterer never finds it beneficial to have.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Research has shown that stuttering is one hundred percent physiological, and not at all psychological. The psychiatrist â€Å"got Merry thinking that the stutter was a choice she made, a way of being special that she had chosen and then locked into when she had realized how well it worked†(95). The belief that you will not stutter has no effect on your speech. The anticipation of stuttering does not cause stuttering (5). Stuttering is a developmental disorder that starts in the early childhood and nothing Merry did could change that. It develops at the same time as children learn â€Å"grammar, accents, and other fundamentals of speech and language†(1). When children fail to learn â€Å"speech breathing, vocal fold control, and how to articulate sounds†(1) that is when they develop disfluencies, which can turn into stuttering or stammering. If children do not learn these fundamentals at the right critical time, it is difficult or impossible to learn later. Children will develop these problems between the ages of two and six, when development is most crucial. Which is around the age that Merry developed the stutter in the novel. Usually people will not develop speech problems past the age of eleven. More boys than girls develop speech disorders. Which is why it was even more rare for Merry to have the stutter because it’s not as common in girls. Even then, the girls tend to outgrow their problems, up until their forties. . It is difficult to determine who will outgrow and who will not (4). Merry did eventually outgrow her stutter though. The first time her dad saw her again after the long absence, he couldn’t believe â€Å"she had attained control, mental and physical, over every sound she uttered†(246).

Sports-Cultural Comparison

| | |Sports | |Cultural Comparison | | | |Lisa Bowling Today, as Americans, we are surrounded by an increasing number of very different cultures, and along with that we are surrounded by numerous cultural differences. These differences between our culture and the cultures surrounding us deal with every aspect of life, from clothing to food to music, even our recreational activities, like sports. In our American culture we are flooded by mainstream sports such as basketball, football, and of course baseball, our â€Å"national pastime†. With the huge amount of coverage those main sports receive, Americans are sometimes unaware of what other cultures have to offer. Whether they are being played, watched, read about, or dreamed about, sports are everywhere, as are the cultural differences within them. A brief look at five different sports will reveal just a few of these differences, ranging from variations in rules to sports that are beginning to gain popularity to sports that are almost completely unknown in the United States, as well as show the effects that differences have on our own culture. Korfball First we will introduce you to the sport of Korfball, which was founded in Holland by an Amsterdam teacher, Nico Broekhuijsen in 1903. Nico once attended a physical education workshop in Sweden. He observed a game called ringball with men and women playing together. He liked the coeducational part of the game, so he rewrote the game, refined the rules and changed the ring goal to a basket. This basket is called de korf, which is Dutch, thus the name of the game. He wanted to have all his students be involved in a game, regardless of their gender. It is one of the few sports that involve men and women on the team. As a demonstration sport, it was introduced to the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, and then again in 1928 in Amsterdam. In 1933, the International Korfball Federation was founded in Belgium, but it asn’t until 1985 that the sport was recognized by the International Olympic Committee and also the World Games. Every four years the International Korfball Federation now holds the Korfball World Championships. Out of all the teams competing for the chance to have the championship, only two teams get to compete. Korfball is gaining popularity by many countries like Canada, Australia, England, Germany, Belgium, and South Africa. The object of the game is to shoot the ball with two hands through a cylindrical shaped basket. It is similar to basketball, yet a little harder considering the basket is twelve feet high, attached to a single wooden post, and located in the middle of the attack zone. This differs from basketball, where the baskets are only ten feet high and are located on each end of the court. The court is about 44 yards by 99 yards that is marked by white tape. As stated before the baskets are approximately twelve feet high and are placed eleven yards from the end line. The ball itself resembles a soccer ball and is a tad bit smaller than a basketball (whether it is for men or women). Its circumference is 27 inches, unlike the basketball that is 30 inches for men and 29 inches for women. Since Korfball is a team sport, individual excellence is critical importance, but is only when it is passed through team work. The team consists of four men and four women. Typically the women would defend the women and the men would defend the men. Korfball players catch, throw and run with the ball. It is considered a non-contact, non-collision sport. Each player has their own zone to cover and may not move from it. Each team has four players in each of the three zones. The ball in play is moved only by hand movements. Unlike basketball, there is no dribbling, no backboards, physical contact is not allowed, slam dunks are prohibited (unlikely though since the basket is much higher), and it is a violation of rules to shoot the ball if you are guarded. Height and size of the player is not important since scoring is when the players are constantly moving, running, and perfectly passing the ball to each other. A game lasts about 90 minutes with the object of scoring de korf. Curling Next we will take a look at the up and coming sport of curling. You may have never heard of curling until its recent emergence in the last two Winter Olympics. It is not one of the most traditional sports and there are no monstrosities of men and women participating. It is a sport known more for its grace, skill, and the ability to think through any situation that may be thrown your way. Curling has just begun to gain popularity here in the States, however it originated long ago in Scotland. The first documented games of curling were in Scotland and Holland. The Scots develop the game and formalized rules by 1807. Scottish emigres eventually brought curling to Canada, New Zealand and the United States later in the 1800s (USA Curling), and along with that came many different variations of the game. Canada and Scotland quickly became the two powerhouses of the sport, with Canada revolutionizing the way the game was played, leaving Scotland stuck in the past. Popularity of the sport rose around the world, as the newcomers from Canada took on Scotland in the Scotch Cup matches in 1959. Controversy quickly arose from the â€Å"new style† of curling Canada was playing, as the vanquished the best Scotland had to offer. The old met the new in the first Scotch Cup series of matches in 1959. Controversy there was aplenty in Scotland, as the Canadians of the new game vanquished the best Scotland had to offer. The International Curling Federation is now in place to provide the sport with firm guidelines and internationally accepted rules of play. The federation does leave room for change and improvement, however, as change is sure to arise from technological advances, introduction of new techniques, strategies, rules, and from the improvement of shot-making ability of individual players who strive for perfection in their chosen game (Cowan). Now that you have a slight background on the sport of Curling, we will take a look at curling in the United States. The United States Men’s Curling Association was founded in 1958 and later renamed in United States Curling Association due to gender equality, USCA for short. The sport saw its largest growth in 1998, when curling made its full medal debut at the Nagano Olympics (Karuizawa venue). In the 2002 Olympics held in Salt Lake City, (Ogden venue) curling emerged as a surprise television hit. Later, in 2006 in Torino, U. S. curlers won their first-ever Olympic medal (USA Curling). This sport is obviously on the rise in the American culture and maybe one day will be more widespread in the States. It will probably never be on the same level as basketball, football or baseball. But every sport has to start somewhere. Hockey When it comes to hockey, in order to discuss the cultural differences between the US and other countries, you need not look any further than to our friends up north in Canada. While we as Americans probably view our hockey league as the fourth most important sports league behind baseball, football, and basketball (those being in no particular order), Canadians cherish the sport. It is actually the country’s official winter sport. There is no doubt that hockey has been played in Canada for centuries, still there is no definitive origin of when it was officially established. (Hockey Canada) We do know, however, that â€Å"the first organization actually dealing with the administration and development of the sport was the Amateur Hockey Association of Canada (AHAC), which was organized on the 8th of December, 1886. † (Hockey Canada) In comparison, the National Hockey League (NHL), which is the American hockey league in existence today, did not form until 1917. Even then, the league struggled to field more than a few teams its first couple of decades. In America over the past couple weeks, hockey has been gaining more coverage because of the Olympics, and the United States’ team’s success. The gold medal game against Canada was the most watched hockey game in history in our country, beating out our own league’s championship series. This statistic still pales in comparison to the fact that the preliminary round game against the US was one of the most viewed sporting events on in Canada’s history. Even better, the gold medal game drew an even bigger audience and, in fact, became the most watched sporting event ever in the country. â€Å"Nearly half the Canadian population watched the entire game on average, while 80 percent of Canadians watched some part of the game (26. 5 million). † (Vancouver Sun) As you can see, there is a huge difference in the way the sport is viewed in our two cultures. Lacrosse Another sport that is just beginning to gain more popularity in our country, and culture, is the sport of lacrosse. Again, we don’t have to look far to find where this sport is a large part of a culture. While hockey is Canada’s official winter sport, lacrosse is the country’s official summer sport. Much like the history of hockey, the date in which the sport was invented is not certain, but it is thought to date back to the 12th century. Lacrosse, which was originally played between Native Americans in the US and Canada, flourished in the 19th century in Canada as, â€Å"the National Lacrosse Association became the first national sport governing body in North America. † (Canadian Lacrosse Association) The sport is played both indoors and out, with leagues consisting of both types existing in Canada as well as the US. The National Lacrosse League (NLL) was started in 1987 and is played indoors, while Major League Lacrosse (MLL) was founded in 1999 and is the outdoor version. Although these leagues have both been in existence for at least a decade, the NLL consists of only 11 teams, while MLL is made up of a meager six teams. While the number of teams in the professional ranks, and the leagues in general, are often overshadowed by the major sports in our country, the sport is the fastest growing sport in our country. â€Å"National lacrosse participation increased 8. percent in 2009, according to research by US Lacrosse for its annual participation report. There were 568,021 lacrosse players that were members of organized teams across the country in 2009, from the youth level all the way on up through the professional ranks. † (US Lacrosse) It is estimated that participation in lacrosse in the US will double in the next ten years, and as it continues to grow in will continue to become a grea ter part of our culture. Football Somewhere in America a man, who is referred to as the quarterback, is standing on a field of fake grass made of astro-turf. He is covered almost head-to-toe in enough protective padding that could possibly protect him from a car running into him. He is hurling a cow hide covered prolate spheroid through the air. He is hoping that his teammate will catch this ball without being tackled by someone from the opposing team. His goal is to run with this ball to the opposite end of the field into the opposing team’s end zone to score points. The team with the most points at the end of the game wins. This sport is known as football. The history of American football goes back to the first half of the 19th century and its origins can be traced back to the game of rugby, which is primarily played in the UK. Walter Camp took the game of rugby and converted many of its rules into the American football we know today. Walter Camp is hailed as the â€Å"Father of American Football†. Football can be played at the high school, college, and professional level, and all levels are governed by nationally accredited associations. The Ohio League was the first professional league formed in 1903, and then in 1920 the American Professional Football Association was formed. The first game was played in Dayton, Ohio. Many places around the world also share in playing the sport of football. They include, but are not limited to; Japan, the UK, Germany, England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Mexico. While these countries participate in playing the game, there are many variations in how they play the game. Australia, England, and New Zealand for example play the game of rugby. The ball is slightly larger and heavier than its American counterpart, and requires virtually no physical protective equipment. Consequently, Rugby has been called the toughest and most demanding sport in the world. Canada, the UK, Germany and Japan have very similar football leagues compared to the US, with their rules only varying slightly. Football is one of America’s most played sports and greatest pastimes. It is as much a part of our culture as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. College football in the state of Ohio however has its own culture, and it is huge! ESPN recently ranked Ohio State football #3 in all of the college football programs dating back to 1936. You can walk in almost any grocery store or department store and find Ohio State football accessories. Buckeye necklaces, jerseys, hats and coats are just some of the long list of items you can purchase and wear to support your team. If its game weekend, most work places not only allow but encourage you to wear something to support the team. There is even enough stuff out there to decorate the inside of your entire house. We even have our own candy! The delicious Buckeyes are the official sweet treat at any football party. Every weekend of the football playing season you can find men, women and children of all ages dressed up in their scarlet and grey huddled in front of their televisions cheering for their team. There is nothing that can bring together or separate the tightest of friends and family than an Ohio State game. The line of loyalty to their favorite team runs deep, especially when it comes to the all-so-famous Ohio State-Michigan game. If you are brave enough to declare your loyalty to Michigan, you better get ready for some opposition from someone with scarlet and grey. Ohio State also has the best damn band in the land and Brutus the mascot to add to its long list of signature cultural items. The pay scale for football players even surpasses the salary of the President of the United States. Sources â€Å"2009 Participation Survey. † US Lacrosse. 01 Jan 2010. US Lacrosse, Web. 4 Mar 2010. . A Short History of Lacrosse in Canada. Canadian Lacrosse Association, 13 Jan. 2010. Web. 4 Mar. 2010. . Canada-U. S. Olympic Hockey Final Gold for TV Ratings. Vancouver Sun, 1 Mar. 2010. Web. 4 Mar. 2010. . History of Hockey Canada. Hockey Canada, 2010. Web. 3 Mar. 2010. . International Korfball Federation. International Korfball Federation, 1 Jan. 2010. Web. 2 Mar. 2010. . Korfball. Wikipedia, 26 Feb. 2010. Web. 2 Mar. 2010. .

Social Performance and Social Influence

Social Performance and Social Influence Introduction Social performance is the study of how the presence of others affects behavior. At times, the mere presence of others can have a facilitating or motivating effect, improving performance. However, when others are present, people may also become hindered or less motivated. This class will explore how one's perception of others determines one's response. Hetherington, Anderson, Norton, and Newson (2003) explored how eating behavior is influenced when eating alone, with strangers, or with friends.Would you predict that eating with others has a facilitating effect, increasing food intake, or the opposite effect, decreasing the amount of food eaten? Research on social influence, which refers to how the attitudes and opinions of others influence one's attitudes and opinions, is one of the greatest contributions of social psychological research in understanding human behavior. This class focuses on two different types of social influence, one that serves to maintain group norms (social control: conformity and obedience) and the other that aims to change group norms (social change by minority influence and innovation).Social psychologist, Dr. Robert Cialdini has researched basic principles that govern how one person may influence another. You will read about these six principles in his 2002 article â€Å"The Science and Practice of Persuasion. † Social Performance Aristotle first called humans social animals. People tend to gather, play, and work in groups. Groups fulfill a variety of functions such as satisfying the need to belong, providing support and intimacy, and assisting in accomplishing tasks that individuals could not accomplish alone, etc.In Chapter 13 of the textbook, groups will be defined as two or more people working together on a task in which the outcome is quantifiable. This discussion will focus on two major areas that have been researched since the end of the 19th century: social facilitation and social loafing. Social Facilitation At first glance, these terms seem to be opposing behaviors: social facilitation refers to the fact that people work harder in groups, whereas social loafing describes their tendency reduce their efforts when in groups.The difference, it appears, is how people view the individuals in their groups–whether they perceive those in the group as being with them us or against them. If group members are against them, they perceive them as competitors, evaluators, or sources of comparison, which is likely to increase or facilitate their efforts. If they are with them, sharing in the demands of the task and evaluation, they are likely to â€Å"loaf† or reduce our efforts. These findings appear counterintuitive.Research on social facilitation began with Triplett (1989) who observed that cyclists pedaled faster, or performed better, when others were present than when performing alone. He argued that the other biker was a stimulus, arousing a competitive instinct in the cyclist. He tested his theory by asking children to wind fishing reels either alone or beside other children. The majority of the children turned the wheel faster when working alongside another child than when reeling alone. Allport (1924) termed this effect social facilitation.Still, it seemed that many disagreed about whether the presence of others increased or decreased performance on tasks. Zajonc (1965) renewed interest in social facilitation, and suggested that the presence of others enhanced a dominant response–which is the most probable response on a given task. If the task is simple and well-learned, the dominant response will be facilitated. For example, if you were a skilled concert pianist, performing in front of others would increase your proficiency on the task; you would play beautifully.Since you are not skilled at this art, being observed by others would no doubt cause anxiety and would result in quite the opposite effect, inhibit ing your performance. Zajonc was suggesting that the presence of others increases drive. Others were still arguing that it was the evaluation or the competition associated with others being present that produced the drive. Whether it was mere presence or evaluation apprehension that increased the drive, the drive theory remained the dominant thought of the time.Alternative approaches to social-facilitation effects fall into three classes: The first was the continued thought that the presence of others increases drive by evaluation apprehension. The second thought suggested that the situation places demands on the individual to behave in a particular way; individuals are engaged in self-presentation and self-awareness. The third idea argued that the presence of others affects focus and attention to the task, meaning that the task becomes cognitive. Hence, the controversy over whether it is the mere presence of others or evaluation that causes social facilitation is unresolved.Social Loafing Social facilitation research demonstrates that the presence of others sometimes enhances performance, yet at times reduces it. But, how does working with others affect motivation? Many would argue that groups should energize and motivate. The tendency for individuals to work less hard on a collective task than on an individual task is called social loafing. For example, those group projects at work or school where a few individuals did the majority of the work–social loafing.Research in this area has been conducted in a way that makes individuals believe that they are either working alone or working with others–then measures efforts toward the task. For example, Ringelmann (Kravitz & Martin, 1986) had volunteers pull on a rope as hard as they could in groups of varying sizes. Their efforts decreased as group sizes increased. This was explained in two ways: their motivation decreased as groups size increased or maybe the larger groups were not able to coordinate their efforts efficiently. Researchers sought to tease apart these two factors, focusing on motivation.You can imagine that it was difficult to devise methods that lead participants to believe they were either working alone (when they were not) or with others (when they were working alone), which lends to the difficulty of studying social loafing. However, over 100 studies (Steiner, 1972; Griffith, Fichman, & Moreland, 1989; Jackson & Williams, 1985; Henningsen et al. , 2000) have tested the effects of groups on motivation, and social loafing has been replicated in most of these studies. Other theories have attempted to explain social loafing.Social impact theory states that when a group is working together, the expectation is that the effort should be diffused across all participants, resulting in diminished effort. Arousal reduction postulates that the presence of others should increase drive only when they are observers and reduce our efforts when they are coworkers. Evaluation potential suggests that social loafing occurs because individual efforts are so difficult to identify during a collective task; one can easily hide in the crowd or may feel they will not be acknowledged for their hard work.Dispensability of effort argues that individuals may feel their efforts are unnecessary or dispensable. The group simply does not need them. An integrative theory: the collective effort model states that individuals will work hard on a task only to the degree to which they believe their efforts will be instrumental in leading to outcomes they value, personally. Hence, the value they place on the task (and their efforts) depends on their personal beliefs, task meaningfulness, favorable interactions with the group, the nature of the rewards, and the extent to which their future goals are impacted by the task.Social loafing can be moderated, or reduced, when individuals' efforts can be identified or evaluated, when individuals are working on a task they deem as impor tant or of personal relevance, or when individuals are working with cohesive groups or close friends. Individual differences or characteristics also influence who engages in social loafing less because they value collective outcomes. For example, a need for affiliation, a hard work ethic, or high self-monitoring can influence effort. It should be clear that the mere presence of others is arousing.It appears that if others are competitors or evaluators they facilitate motivation to work harder. If individuals see others as a part of themselves, they can hide behind them or their efforts can get lost in the efforts of others. Further research in this area can help us determine how our view of others affects our motivation and performance. Social Influence Processes of Control and Change Social influence is one of the primary research areas in social psychology and refers to the ways in which opinions and attitudes influence the opinions and attitudes of others.Two types of social infl uence can be identified in groups: influence aimed at maintaining group norms (social control) or changing group norms (social change). The most common form of social control is conformity, where an individual complies with or accepts the group's views. Since the influence is typically within a context of a group of people influencing an individual, it is referred to as majority influence. Another type of social control is obedience, where individuals obey an authority figure, often against their will.For group norms to change, a small subset of the group must resist the majority view, which is termed minority influence. If minorities never resisted, group opinions would persist, fashions would never change, innovations would not come about, etc. It must be clear that the term majority refers to the larger group of people who hold the normative view and has power over others. Minority groups tend to be small, hold nonnormative positions, and wield very little power.This study textbo ok is concerned with two influence processes: processes that ensure that others adhere to the group's position (social control; conformity and obedience) or processes that aim to change the group's position (social change: innovation and active minorities). Social influence has studied how individuals conform to the majority, often by giving an obvious erroneous response to a question. According to Festinger (1950, 1954), this occurs because there are social pressures for groups to reach consensus, especially when there is a group goal.Individuals seek social approval and seek others to verify their opinions. Deutsch and Gerard (1955) distinguish between normative social influence (conforming to expectations of others) and informational social influence (accepting information from the group as reality). Another view is that people conform over concerns for positive self-evaluations, to have good relationships with others, and to better understand a situation by reducing uncertainty. Social influence also addresses why people comply with acts that clearly cause harm to another.The study of obedience is intimately tied to one social psychologist–Stanley Milgram (1963). His post-WWII research aimed to understand why people willingly engaged in the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis. People probably preferred to believe these were evil, disturbed men who were intrinsically evil? However, many of them claimed they were not responsible for their behavior. After all, they were simply following orders. In Milgram's (1963) classic study, he led participants (who were assigned to be â€Å"teachers†) to believe they were administering harmful shocks to the â€Å"learners† each time they made an error on a task.The experimenter (the authority figure) demanded they increase the level of shock for each incorrect response. As shocks increased, the receiver (the learner, who was out of the sight of the teacher) responded with distressed reactions. Howeve r, the teacher was encouraged, even demanded, to continue the experiment, even though he believed the learner was experiencing extreme distress. The question was, to what extent normal people would obey the instructions of the authority figure and administer harmful levels of shock to harm another individual.Milgram's results showed that a full 65% of all participants administered every level of shock, surpassing levels believed to do fatal harm to subjects. Milgram's findings have been replicated with consistent results. Why did they obey? Milgram offered the following explanations: (a) they had entered into a contract with the experimenter and did not wish to spoil the experiment; (b) they were absorbed in the experiment and lost sight of the implications of their actions; (c) the participants are acting for the experimenter; they may be pushing the buttons, but they are not responsible, the experimenter is.Notice these are all situational explanations; participants were put into a powerful role relationship with the experimenter. However, when the experimenter was not visible, or another participant played the role of the experimenter, obedience rates decreased, but did not fall to zero, indicating the role relationship did not fully account for their obedience. Milgram's research remains some of the most intriguing and influential in social psychology. Minority InfluenceMoscovici's (1976) book Social Influence and Social Change, he argues that minorities can create conflict by offering a different perspective, thereby challenging the dominant or majority view. Moscovici claims that people trying to avoid conflict may dismiss the minority position, and possibly denigrate it. However, when the minority demonstrates commitment to their position, the majority may consider the minority view as a viable alternative. He called this the minority's behavioral style–meaning the way the message is organized and communicated.By standing up to the majority, the minority demonstrates that it is certain, confident, committed, and not easily persuaded. Researchers have compared majority and minority influence. Conversion theory is the dominant perspective and argues that all forms of influence, whether minority or majority, create conflict that individuals are motivated to reduce. However, people employ different processes depending on whether the conflict is the result of majority influence or minority influence. Comparison process suggests that people focus attention on fitting in, or complying with what others say.Their goal is to identify with the group and comply with the majority position, often times without examining the majority's arguments in detail. Social comparison can drive majority influence, but cannot motivate minority influence, according to Moscovici (1976), because people desire to disassociate themselves with undesirable groups. Because minority groups tend to be distinctive, they stand out, and this encourages a validati on process where some examine the judgments in order to confirm or validate them–to see what it is the minority saw or to understand the minority's view.This process can lead to increased message processing which results in an attitude change on an indirect, latent, or private level. Convergent-divergent theory is proposed by Nemeth (1986) and simply states that people expect to share the same attitude as the majority and to differ from the minority (the false-consensus heuristic). Stress is the result of realizing that the majority has a different perspective than oneself, especially if one is in the physical presence of the majority. Stress narrows one's attention and majority influence, and then leads to convergent thinking.Minorities, on the other hand, do not cause high levels of stress, since they hold different views, which allows for less restricted focus of attention and leads to a greater consideration of alternatives that may not have been considered without the in fluence of the minority view. This results in creative and original solutions. Other theories that integrate minority and majority influence include mathematical models, objective-consensus models, conflict-elaboration theory, context/comparison model, and self-categorization theory.More contemporary models include social-cognitive responses with an emphasis on information-processing such as the elaboration likelihood model and the heuristic systematic model we discussed in an earlier chapter. New research continues to develop. Conclusion This module reviewed social psychological research that has made great contributions to the understanding of human behavior. Early research (e. g. , Triplett, 1898; Zajonc, 1965) led to the beginning of the relatively new field of social psychology.Research investigating social performance–whether performance is improved (social facilitation) or hindered (social loafing) by the presence of others became widely studied as researchers inquired about under what circumstances and what variables determined our response. Supplementary reading by Hetherington (2006) examined the effects of the presence of others on eating behavior. Milgram's (1963) research on obedience may be some of the most cited research in social psychology. Cialdini's contributions to the study of social influence (and social psychology in general) have been significant, as well.References Allport , F. (1924). The influence of the group upon association and thought. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 3, 159-182. Cialdini, R. B. , & Goldstein, N. J. (2002). The science and practice of persuasion. Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly,43(2), 40-50. Deutsch, M. & Gerard, H. B. (1955). A study of normative and informational social influences upon individual judgment. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 51, 629-636 Festinger, L. (1950). Informal social communication. Psychological Review, 57, 271-282.Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7, 337-360. Griffith, T. L. , Fichman, M. , & Moreland, R. L. (1989). Social loafing and social facilitation: An empirical test of the cognitive-motivational model of performance. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 10, 253-271. Henningsen, D. D. , Cruz, M. G. & Miller, M. L. (2000). Role of social loafing in predeliberation decision making. Group dynamics: Theory, research and practice, 4, 168-175. Hetherington, M. M. , Anderson, A. S. , Norton, G.N. M. , & Newson, L. (2006). Situational effects on meal intake: A comparison of eating alone with eating with others. Physiology & Behavior, 88, 498-505. Jackson, J. M. , & Williams, K. D. (1985). Social loafing on difficult tasks: Working collectively can improve performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 937-942. Kravitz, D. A. & Martin, B. (1986). Ringelmann rediscovered: The original article. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 936-941. Milgram, S. (1963 ). Behavioral study of obedience.Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67, 371-378. Moscovici, S. (1976). Social influence and social change. London, England: Academic Press. Nemeth, C. (1986). Differential contributions of majority and minority influence. Psychological Review, 93, 23-32. Steiner, I. D. (1972). Group processes and productivity. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Triplett, H. C. (1989). The dynamogenic factors in peacemaking and competition. American Journal of Psychology, 9, 507-533. Zajonc, R. (1965). Social facilitation. Science, 149, 269-274.