Adultery and inappropriate relationships among the ranks in the Army Research Paper

Adultery and inappropriate relationships among the ranks in the Army - Research Paper Example Female and male veterans are reported to confirm reports of rampant sexual trauma during their service in the military. The military has been reluctant to take action against these allegations. Military officials are said to have received over 3000 reports on sexual assault in the year 2011. However, reports indicate that only 191 cases have successfully been convicted in the court-martial. This has encouraged the outrageous behavior in the military circles. No wonder, the majority sexual predators are repeat offenders. Sexual assailants in the military are said to be unaware of the impact of their actions to the lives of the victims. This essay seeks to explore the issue of adultery and inappropriate relationships among ranks in the military. Many people believe that sexual ethics in the military fall under personal choices and should never be governed by the military. Research shows that most people believe that extramarital affairs should not be punishable in the military. A poll indicated that 49 percent of Americans believe that adultery should be allowed in the military. The argument in based on the fact that adultery is a personal choice regardless to whether it is right or wrong. Most of the people who back adultery in the military use the natural law theory (Mitchell, 1998). The argument suggests that the essence of having sexual urges is to explore sexual relationships with multiple partners (Brinson, 2008). The natural law suggests that it is natural to fulfill the sexual urges and desires. Multiple cases have been reported dealing with cases of immorality in the military. Army major John Lonhouser, Air force General Joseph Ralston and General David Petraus are representative of what is happening in the top ranks of the United States military. The junior ranking troops imagine that the drill sergeants live in an insular world. The junior officers believe the word from their commanders is final. As a result, they suffer from rape and sexual assaults w hile serving in the United States military. Most of these troops suffer retaliation after reporting these cases (Brinson, 2008). Sexual assaults have resulted to demoralization of the United States military, especially those who have fallen victims. The military is expected to be a moral leader in the United States. Research indicates that there is a culture of condoning military adultery and improper sexual relationships in the units of the United States army. However, the rules tend to be different for the generals (Mitchell, 1998). According research, consensual sex seems to be widely tolerated in the United States army. The media seems to put top generals into limelight. However, the military structures, culture and attitude is accustomed to sexual offences (Valente & Wight). Soldiers are known to work in extreme conditions (Brinson, 2008). They spend most long period of time away from their families. This has been attributed to the multiple cases of adultery in improper relatio nships among the ranks in the army. The department of defense has conducted large-scale surveys with regard to adultery and improper relationships in the coast guards, Marine Corps, navy army and air force active-duty personnel (Mitchell, 1998). Research confirms the women and men experience gender-related discrimination which has been in the rise in the last one decade. For long, sexual harassment had been termed as a problem facing the military women. However, men are increasingly becoming targets of improper relationships at an alarming rate. The military culture and gender based imbalances while on active duty have been cited as some of the causes of adultery and improper relationships among the military personnel. The military environment provides the sexual offenders

Child Development Observation Essay Example for Free

Child Development Observation Essay The setting of where I observed the baby was at my house in the family room. The family room can be pictured as a square. The door to enter the house is in one corner of the family room. To the left of the door there is a mirror on the wall and next to the mirror there is a single person couch. The color of the couch is brown. That sits in the corner adjacent to the corner where the door is. Then, there are the sliding doors to enter the patio and in the corner adjacent to the couch there is a big, black television. Next to the television, my baby’s pink Winnie the Pooh play yard. Next to that is her small pink and brown, vibrating bouncer. Then there’s the last corner of the room which opens to the bedrooms. This is the room where the observation took place. The baby I observed is my nephew, Gabriel. He is four months and three weeks old. He will turn five months on the 22nd of this month. He was wearing a blue jean overall with a brown onesie that has little puppies. He also had some soft tennis shoes on. They are white with a navy blue stripe on each side each shoe. He barely has any hair and he has no teeth. In twenty minutes, Gabriel was very active. I started observing as soon as he woke up from a nap. He began by stretching both of his legs straight out and his left arm stretched straight up towards his head and his right arm stretched up towards the sky. My boyfriend then picked him up and started talking to him. Gabriel started laughing and kicking his feet back and forth, starting with his right foot and continued by alternating each kick with the opposite foot. He stopped laughing and shoved both of his hands in his mouth. He made himself gag. He was then tickled again and started laughing. Again he began kicking his legs, left then right. He grabbed his face with his left hand. He started to get hungry. While his bottle was being prepared, he began sucking on his left hand and he began to make sucking noises. As my boyfriend got the bottle close to Gabriel’s face, his eyes popped open and he opened his mouth. While he ate, he moved his right hand over his face and made sucking and snorting noises. He was also just looking around while eating. He was about a quarter done with his bottle, when he stopped eating and started pushing. Both of his hands clasped together and he made a noise which let us know that he was pushing. All of a sudden, I heard him pass gas but it wasn’t just gas. The gas came with a little surprise. He kept his fists closed and kept pushing. He was pooping. Once he was done, he gave a big smile and started kicking his legs again. He also began sucking on his hands. My boyfriend laid him on the floor on top of his blue, fuzzy blanket. Gabriel began making cooing noises. As my boyfriend began taking off Gabriel’s clothes, he continued kicking and making cooing noises. As his diaper was coming undone, Gabriel started laughing. My boyfriend got a hold of his legs and took off his diaper. Gabriel just began sucking on his hands again. Gabriel’s mom saw him and took his hands out of his mouth. She gave him a pacifier. He began rubbing his eyes with both hands. He then began to cry. My boyfriend put his clothes back on and continued feeding him. Gabriel was lying with his feet dangling off of my boyfriend’s leg. His right arm was around my boyfriend’s back and his left arm was on his stomach. He was making a sucking sound and was opening and closing his eyes. Gabriel jumped when he heard a loud noise. He opened his eyes and his left arm went straight up into the air. He was calmed down and closed his eyes again. His left arm dangled to his side. He stayed like that until he finished eating. He was stood up straight and burped. He fell asleep and he was laid in my daughter’s play yard with his arms to the side and his legs spread apart.

Schizophrenia Essay examples -- Psychology Disorders

Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder that causes severe mental disturbances which disrupt ones thoughts, speech, and behavior. According to Paul Thompson, Associate Professor of Neurology, one percent of the world’s population suffers from this disorder. There is no one specific cause of schizophrenia, because it is caused by a combination of problems during development. It is a disorder which not only affects the patient, but their family and society as well. Schizophrenia can be a debilitating disorder, however, there are many treatments that can allow people who suffer from it to lead normal lives. â€Å"Schizophrenia, a complex and often disabling mental illness, is among the most serious of brain diseases† (Veague 1).To some schizophrenic patients, imagination and reality become so intertwined that they cannot distinguish between them. Those who suffer hear and see what no one else around them hears or sees and sometimes finds it impossible to believe the voices and visions are all a part of their imagination. Before the 1950’s, many schizophrenics had to remain in mental hospitals. Emil Kraepelin, a German psychiatrist, provided the first characterization of schizophrenia, in the late nineteenth century. â€Å"He believed that the disorder was caused by irreversible physical damage to the brain† (Veague 3). Eugen Bleuler, who was a contemporary of Emil Kraepelin, believed that schizophrenia was caused by psychological trauma sustained early in life. Since then, scientists have blocked the action of dopamine on certain nerve cells and also have deve loped other drugs which control the symptoms with fewer side effects. Schizophrenia is much less common than bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and major d... ...ects. They are effective in treating both positive and negative symptoms. There are some mild side effects such as drowsiness and weight gain. Other than medication, which is the most common type of treatment, there is therapy. There is individual therapy, group therapy and family therapy. This way the patient is usually medicated and also expresses their feelings about being schizophrenic. Schizophrenia causes those who suffer to have severe mental disturbances, act uncontrollably, loses touch with reality and not able to take care of themselves. It causes family members to become stressed, develop drug or alcohol problems for themselves or family members, to become homeless, or even try and take their own life. Schizophrenia can be a debilitating disorder, however, there are many treatments that can allow people who suffer from it to lead normal lives.

Cross Cultural Issues Essay

With hot topics like globalization and cross-cultural opportunities in the Asia Pacific rim, one might think it would be easy to research the implications of cross cultural issues. Rather, what the writer found was a significant discussion all around the periphery but little in-depth analysis. Discussion prevailed on the socio-economic and technological ramifications. Others resources focused on the language issues but little work was intuitively available on the subtleties of cross cultural issues one may encounter. Based on experience working in the Asia Pacific rim for two years as a PMO Manager, and training PM’s in many European countries, I decided that understanding international socio-cultural issues encountered in business is essentially at the heart of the issues companies will encounter in globalizing operations. Therefore, the writer will approach the crosscultural issues from a personalized understanding based on his many months of first hand mistakes in understanding cultural issues encountered in Asia Pacific. I will base my observations of cross-cultural issues on my experiences in working most closely with individuals from China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, and India. Naturally there are more countries in the Pacific Rim but these mentioned provided the most opportunity for interaction. I want to also acknowledge the contributions of my wife, Helena Shiu Leung Chow Ballow, whom I initially met in Asia. Her wisdom, coaching, and meaningful insights on the many differences between Western and Eastern business and cultural practices were, and remain till this day, illuminating, helpful and daunting. Introduction Clearly we all understand to some degree the impact of cultural issues in communications. If nothing else, we have encountered situations where language was the barrier. But language may be the smallest of the issues when dealing with other cultures. Even when we pull out our Translation Guides or employ translators we may get pass some of the language difficulties. But from the writer’s experience, language is the least of the issues. Ingrained and systemic patterns of cultural behaviours can be so subtle as to completely deny meaningful communications. I found a really good example of just how easily cultural variances can cause communications problems. In this case the issues was â€Å"psychological filtering† of appearance or gesture. I would think is would also be easy for the reader to extrapolate this example into some experiences that may have encountered even in the West. Timofeev (2002), in an article in National Concepts and Globalization, provided the following example: â€Å"The idea or rather the hypothesis that underlies this paper was stimulated by a trivial chat with a friend of mine. Being a linguist by trade, Russian by origin and living in Finland, she is well aware of cross-cultural discrepancies and provided me with a curious example. It was a TV commercial of an international brand of Persil washing powder. Two young ladies were shown sitting in a crowded place, some restaurant or a cafe. One of the ladies notices quite a peculiar manner her friend has chosen to wear her wristwatch. It was placed above the cuff of her blouse. It turned out in a second that the only reason for placing her watch there was to cover some stain that regular detergents failed to deal with. Oh dear, you should use Persil instead! † So everything was straight and simple. But before that, when the attentive and thoughtful lady was describing her version of her friend’s peculiar manner of wearing her watch in Finnish (and I guess that the German, French and English versions were quite similar to that in Finnish), she said: â€Å"You are such a busy person. You have to wear your watch so that it can always be seen. † While in Russian the same lady made quite a different guess: â€Å"Your watch must be terribly expensive since you wear it so that everyone can notice it. † †¦ The Russian version, when translated into English, seems to be full of irony; it describes the lady’s manner as showing off. It would definitely undermine the main purpose of the ad, which was to provide a friend and those watching the commercial with thoughtful advice about using detergents. (p. 1)† To understand the issues we must start with a framework definition of culture. There are just too many definitions of culture, and even speaking the same language, we might get off tract pretty quickly. So, the writer did some research and decided on the following foundational definition of culture upon which to proceed. This is summarized by Kim (1999): â€Å"As the author himself confesses that there are 160 different definitions of the term ‘culture’ and picks up the definition of scholar Clyde Kluckhohn. According to him, â€Å"Culture consists of patterned ways of thinking, feeling and reacting, acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiment in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional (i. e. historically derived and selected) ideas and attached values. † continued  © 2004, 2005 Dennis G. Ballow, Sr. , PMKT, Inc. , All Rights Reserved Globalization and Cross-Cultural Issues in Project Management, page 2 Another scholar, Triandis, presents a psychological perspective to the description. â€Å"Culture is a subjective perception of the human – made part of the environment. And this includes the categorization of social stimuli, associations, beliefs, attitudes, roles, and values individuals share. † Culture thus is a melting pot consisting of many things gathered over a period of time in which religion and language play a great role. (p. 228)† Now, with a definition of culture in hand, and a real life example to back up the idea, we will look at some relatively common cultural issues that impact communication, and thus, also have implications for Western corporations working in the Asia Pacific Rim. Cross-Cultural Issues and Implications I will present the materials in a table format such that it may be easier to digest. A simple summary provided by Bhagat et al (2002 provides a good stepping-stone for analysis of the cross-cultural issues: Cross-border transfer of organizational knowledge is most effective in terms of both velocity and viscosity when the type of knowledge (i. . , human, social, or structured) being transferred is simple, explicit, and independent and when such transfers involve similar cultural contexts. In contrast, transfer is least effective when the type of knowledge being transferred is complex, tacit, and systemic and involves dissimilar cultural contexts. (p. 204) Table 1: Cross-cultural Implications – Asian (China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan) and the West Cross-culture Dimension Language Implications Asian Perspective Not that complicated to the Asian. Foreigners should have more respect and learn the language. American Perspective English is the international business language so everyone should use it. Implications It is generally good practice to â€Å"localize† materials when feasible. Local words and expressions sometime just do not properly translate for English and may actually be offensive. A focus on team activities and collaboration vs. individual competitive activities is preferred. Individualism vs. Collectivism Strong Collectivism – The Asians depend more on groups or institutions to determine what they should do and emphasize loyalty to the group. They are more likely to cooperate with others to avoid risks and reduce responsibilities. Their value systems appreciate duty to the group and harmony among its members while pursuing personal goals is viewed rather negatively in Asia. The Asian person does not consider contracts as seriously as the Americans. They think there will always be changes and the contracts can be reasonably modified according to changes. Instead, they tend to pay more attention to relationships than contracts. Strong Individualism – They rely on their own view to determine what they should do. They tend to work alone and are reluctant to cooperate because their individualism and masculine culture view cooperation in general as a sign of weakness and place a high value on independence and control. Americans place greater importance on contractual safeguards than the Asian. They believe that contracts can ensure that their partners’ tendencies to focus on individual goals and aspirations do not interfere with their own individual goals and aspirations. Cooperation Nothing is cast in stone for the Asians. Authority is seldom, if ever, challenged. But when encouraged and trust is gained by the instructor, students will interact better, and challenge each other in a negotiative manner as not to create a †save face† problem. This takes much longer that you will ever plan – so take time to let the process work itself through. Asian employees seldom have the chance to really participate in the decision-making process. So activities requiring decisions may well take longer. continued

Tsingtao Beer Case Study

Consumer buying behavior Consumer behavior of purchasing beer is definitely emotional and of low involvement. The pleasure and gratification getting from drinking beer can be sensual but fleeting. When making purchase decisions, consumers hardly spend any time to recognize problems or to search information because when they feel like drinking, they will just buy some. Generally speaking, customers keep loyal to their favorite beer brand. In fact, many of my friends have told me that Yanjing Beer tastes the worst among all they have tried and even though it’s relatively cheap, they are not likely to buy it after first try.As you can see, among all the brand attributes of beer, the price is not a significant concern while taste, which can lead to brand value, matters much more. Once customers have recognized the nice taste of a certain beer brand, probably they are never going to switch brand and all the beer decisions they make later will be regular purchases. Beer market segme ntation The bases I choose for segmenting the Chinese beer market include age, gender, income level, life style, user rate and geographic area. All these factors matter in that they determine the different consumer behavior of drinking beer, as concluded in Table 1.AgeFrom 18 to 60 Young customers at 20-35 have strong potential GenderMen and women Women might drink beer less often than men or choose light flavor, out of concern of weight control Income levelFrom low to high-middle Income does not matter a lot due to beer’s relatively low price compared with other alcohol LifestyleWith leisure time and maybe some pressure User rateLight drinker, medium drinker, heavy drinker Geographic areaNortheast, southeast, northwest, southwest and middle Some areas have notable drinking habits such as northeast China. Besides, there is a tendency for people to choose their local beer brand.Table 1. Competitive landscape and Tsingtao’s status China is the largest beer producer throu ghout the world. Many local Chinese brands as well as foreign competitors are engaged in the competition. There are three main characteristics about the competitive landscape of Chinese beer market. First of all, price war is the main competitive tactic used by most local brewery brands. Not only small regional brands, but also large brands like Yanjing are entangled in price war. In general, price war does not lead to a favorable market position for any company because their profit margins will definitely be influenced.And most importantly, as I have mentioned before, price is not a significant factor that people will consider when buying beer. If companies put too much emphasis on lowering price through lowering cost rather than improving taste and quality, it will not work to their advantage in the long run. Secondly, there is a trend of foreign companies buying local brewers’ stock, meaning that foreign competitors are flooding into Chinese market in a more strategic way. Tsingtao’s collaboration with Anheuser-Busch is a case in point. It facilitates mutual learning and internationalization.The third characteristic might be a future trend that the consolidation and centralization level of Chinese beer market will become higher. With regard to Tsingtao Beer, it is one of the gigantic tiers of China beer brewers. Its competitive advantage is the superior quality due to unparalleled brewery techniques. According to the consumer survey results posted on its website, customers perceive Tsingtao beer as high quality and high price. In general, the fierce competitive marketplace has influenced Tsingtao a little but I think its established brand image is still far from being hurt.Positioning alternatives for Tsingtao Tsingtao’s positioning alternatives are whether to get more low-price market or to adhere to the current â€Å"high quality, high price† strategy, especially when it penetrates into Beijing market and compete with the local giant Yanjing. In my opinion, Tsingtao can adopt a multibrand strategy to fulfill needs of different target markets. For people who have great concern about price, Tsingtao can lower the price as a response to the local price war. For other people, however, Tsingtao should never pursue more sales at the expense of quality.To implement this strategy, Tsingtao has to do a complete consumer survey and then better segment the market. In the segmentation process, income level and geographic area might be the two most important bases. Besides, Tsingtao has to improve its advertising and packaging because beer is low- involvement and emotional product. As is mentioned in the case, nowadays the main reason for consumers to buy a certain brand of beer is brand image and the culture attached to the brand. I think Reeb beer, based in Shanghai, has done a great job in this part, although Reeb is just a small regional brand compared with Tsingtao.I remember when I was a primary school student, Reeb’s TV commercial was an interesting song. The lyrics were mainly saying that Reeb has witnessed the quick development of Shanghai and people’s great change after the opening policy of Pudong District (See the appendix). And at the end of the commercial, it said â€Å"Reeb beer is the reason why you love Shanghai†. Almost everyone from Shanghai of my age or older than me can sing this song and the attachment with this city definitely has enhanced Reeb’s brand image. I think Tsingtao might learn from Reeb to improve its advertising.