Saturday, February 29, 2020

Advantages and Disadvantages of Psychological Contract

Advantages and Disadvantages of Psychological Contract Outline and critically evaluate the concept of the ‘psychological contract’. Why is an understanding of the psychological contract considered to be important to the management of the contemporary employment relationship? The concept of psychological contract Introductions There are two kinds of contracts which are the formal, written economic contract as well as the euqally important, informal and unwritten psychological contract. It’s all about how people think they should be treated. Both involve rights, obligations and expectations on the part of employer and the employee. The key feature of the word ‘contracts’ is exchange in term of reward or the effort that employee puts in etc. For instance, the level of effort which employee puts in or employee’s perception can be affected by how they are being treated by the organization. A quite large research literature on the psychological contract has been produced in only a short time with the ke y players being, in the United States, Denise Rousseau (Rousseau, 1995, 2001), Schein (1980) etc. Although much of the interest in the psychological contract is recent, its roots go back a long time, it having originally been discussed by Argyris (1960). History The concept of a â€Å"psychological contract† was first coined by Argyris (1960); it refers to employer and employee expectations of the employment relationship as well as represents the mutual beliefs, perceptions and informal obligations between an employer and an employee. Expanding the concept of the contract was Schein (1980). According to Schien it may be defined as an†Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦unwritten set of expectations operating at all times between every member of an organization and the various managers and others in that organization.† More recently Rousseau and her co- workers (Robinson and Rousseau, 1994) have suggested a more specific definition of the psychological contract. According to them, the psychological contract is characterised not only by expectations, but by promissory and reciprocal obligations. When these obligations are broken, they produce more emotional and extreme reactions than weaker expectations produce feelings of disappointment. Broken obligations lead to feelings of anger and reassessment of the individual’s relationships with the organization. Content The term psychology is derived from the Greek, meaning ‘mind, spirit or soul’ and contract is that the expectations concern non- tangible, psychological issues. There are significant elements of all definitions of the psychological contract include: 1.3.1 integration of beliefs, values, expectations and aspirations of employer and employee, the beliefs of implicit promises and obligations are included, the level to which these are perceived to be met or violated and the level of trust within the relationship. 1.3.2 All the expectations must not be made explicit. It could be the implici t deal between employers and employees. Fairness and good faith are involved. 1.3.3 An significant feacture of the concept is it can be repeatedly re-negotiated, changing with an individual’s, and an organisation’s, expectations, and in shifting economic and social contexts. Yet, a snapshot of one point in time was only provided thus capturing only one stage in this social process. 1.3.4 Because it is based on individual perceptions individuals in the same organisation or job may perceive different psychological contracts, which will, in turn, influence the ways in which they perceive organisational events for instance redundancies or developing or modifying a flexitime system.

Thursday, February 13, 2020

The End of History Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

The End of History - Essay Example What we may be witnessing in not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.In the controversial 1989 essay titled "The End of History", Francis Fukuyama attempted to give Western capitalism's victory over communism a Hegelian interpretation. He argued that the end of history has eliminated all but one intellectual option for the future evolution of the planet. Liberal Democracy and the 'American way of life' were hailed as the only rational coherent system of values and practices; everything else that happened in the past was only leading up to this new Enlightenment and triumph of reason, in a teleological sense of inevitability. In a way, neither is the advent of man the end of evolution, nor is the widespread prevalence of liberal democracy that we witness in our day the "end" of history. Yet they represent effective points of resolution. If we were to assert that man is the pinnacle of natural evolution, it would be factually very incorrect as man modern man evolved barely 100-120 thousand years ago, and evolution takes place in a geological time scale spanning millions of years. Though it may be difficult for us to conceive any life form beyond human beings, evolution is simply a naturally phenomenon that cannot be stopped and has not stopped with humans. Humans may only be representing a transitional life form, or dolphins may evolve to be more intelligent that humans ever were, in a million years or so. We also would like to think American-type liberal democracy as being the pinnacle of evolution of political organisation of society, but we could be wrong. In the course of evolution, there occurred a decisive encounter between Homo sapiens neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens sapiens for over ten thousand years, in which Homo sapiens sapiens finally emerged as the survivor to assert supremacy over the planet, about 28,000 years ago. Eerily echoing this epic evolutionary clash between the two rival human species, there raged a monumental battle in the twentieth century between communism and democracy during the years of the Cold War, in which the forces of democracy finally emerged victorious and asserted supremacy over the planet. However, there is nothing intrinsically final about both these phenomena. Man has of course no rival on the planet now, and liberal democracy too, even with all its defects and shortcomings, appears the sole viable alternative for the present and the future of human society. However, if we were to claim that man is the culmination and the end of natural evolution, we could be accused of brazen anthropocentrism. Similarly, if we were to claim that democracy is the culmination, and more than that, the end itself, of ideological evolution, we could perhaps be accused of "American-centrism". Yet the fact remains that, considered on a rational basis, emergence of man represents an evolution of consciousness that offers a satisfactory resolution to the six hundred million years of natural evolution, despite his war-like nature and other selfish, brutish tendencies. In this sense, enlightened liberal democracy too, notwithstanding its myriad inadequacies, offers a satisfactory resolution to the ten thousand years of evolution of human society. If Neanderthals took over the Cro-Magnon man (that is, us), of if Hitler won the Second World War, or if the Soviet Union somehow succeeded in annihilating the United States in the Cold War, would we have been at the end of history too Certainly, Neanderthals were very robust, they had already been flourishing for about two hundred thousand years when the Cro-Magnon man arrived on the ice age European scene and made his presence felt. There were also many times in the Second World War, where the German forces were on the ascendency, and in fact Hitler

Saturday, February 1, 2020

Why is the subject of migration in this period c.300-1087 so Essay

Why is the subject of migration in this period c.300-1087 so controversial - Essay Example ontinued to be the common language of England (non-Danelaw) until after the Norman Conquest of 1066 when, under the influence of the Anglo-Norman language spoken by the Norman ruling class, it changed into Middle English roughly between 1150-1500. (Stenton, 54) But the central paradox of the Anglo- Saxon migration stays firm within the unavailability of substantial evidences. Till date there are considerable debates as to the extent of Anglo-Saxon migration from the fourth to the sixth centuries. This because we are unable to finds enough evidences regarding this migration and whatever is available proves to be unworthy as a sustainable source to prove within the academic consensus. As a result no single model of Anglo- Saxon migration can be taken into account academically. The initial interpretation of the Anglo- Saxon migration during the fourth to the sixth centuries suggested that the Anglo-Saxon tribes arrived in Britain in large numbers and settled down instantly. This process was instigated by mass genocide and effective displacement of the local communities of the ‘Britons’ (as depicted in Latin Texts) from the eastern and southern parts of the island. It is also believed that a minority of the Romano-British fled to Brittany and Galicia in northern Spain. Probably during the early sixth-century or late fifth century monk Gildas narrated the defeat of the British in the hand of the English and stated that this defeat was the result of a punishment from God in his writing De Excidio Britanniae. (Gildas, 77) A similar narrative appeared in Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, written in the early eighth century, which drew heavily on Gildas. This era of cataclysm was focussed by later Anglo-Saxon and British (Welsh) documents on the basic differences between the English and the Welsh. But many historians doubt the story - believing many or most Britons survived - but evidence to back up their account has always been hard to find. This is