Mid-Term Essay Essay Example for Free

Mid-Term Essay This paper will concentrate on the impact family foundation and beloved recollections have on journalists and the subject of their compositions. In both the articles picked for nitty gritty investigation here, we perceive how the authors’ reasoning of life and things that they decided to investigate and expound on was interfered with path in their adolescence because of the injuries they confronted. This paper will introduce an examination of how the groups of Sanders and Maduro molded the manner in which these creators get themselves and identify with others. Scott Russell Sanders was the champ of the Mark Twain Award in 2009 and his work A Private History of Awe was selected for the Pulitzer Prize. Conceived in Memphis, Tennessee, to a group of cotton ranchers, Sanders showed Literature and functioned as Professor of English at Indiana University. The primary vision behind his composing is the move in societies from a consumerist to a consideration giving society (Sanders). In his paper, â€Å"Under the Influence: Paying the Price for my Father’s Booze†, Sanders had chronicled the injury he and his kin needed to suffer on account of his father’s liquor abuse. In this journal Sander’s relates the sentiments of blame, disgrace and defenseless that he felt as an offspring of ten when he saw his father’s insecure and brutal upheavals in the wake of becoming inebriated. He reprimanded himself for it and that sentiment of blame nagged him for a mind-blowing duration. â€Å"I reveal to myself he beverages to ease [†¦] a throb I more likely than not brought about by disillusioning him somehow† (Sanders). To offer reparations for his apparent deficiencies as a kid Sanders attempted to go to trying sincerely and attempting to keep the family together and taking on his father’s obligations, â€Å"by vainly looking to delete through my endeavors whatever drove him to drink† (Sanders). Sanders sees that his own youngsters wonder at what drives him to be a â€Å"workaholic† and attempts to mollify their apprehensions and any feeling of blame or weight they may feel by being real to life about his own sentiments of blame, hurt and disgrace at his father’s liquor abuse. On development he understood that he had rebuked himself unnecessarily as a kid and that his father’s liquor addiction was an infection and he had no motivation to feel liable for it. In any case, his dread of beverages and awful direct that he had seen as a kid had left a profound scar in his spirit. He is hesitant about going to bars with his companions and drinking as much as he fears making hurt or disillusionment anyone. He is continually vigilant of any antagonistic responses from individuals around him and still conveys the disgrace of his father’s â€Å"sins† where it counts inside him and avoids having that feature of his life uncovered in broad daylight. The name E. S. Maduro is a nom de plume which the creator discusses her women's activist convictions and her feelings on opportunity of decision and mindfulness for ladies. She records how her own young sentiments of disobedience to the normal practices of marriage and bringing up kids changed upon development yet how she clung to her conviction that ladies ought to have the attention to settle on choices for themselves. They ought to be permitted to pick their profession ways as indicated by their desires and not be constrained into cliché jobs because of cultural weights. In the article â€Å"Excuse Me While I Explode: My Mother, Myself, My Anger† the author portrays her sentiments of outrage, blame and disappointments when she portrays the account of how her mom and ladies of that age needed to forfeit their vocations and all their life’s wants to suit their families and their obligations as home producers and moms. â€Å"Excuse Me While I Explode: My Mother, Myself, My Anger† originally showed up in print as an article in a book entitled The Bitch in the House. In this article Maduro has expounded on her dissatisfaction at the disparity ladies face in the public eye. It essentially manages her anxiety at how she being a post-current lady who was taught and freed fell back and did likewise things that she has found so detestable in her mom. She had felt disobedient at the manner in which her mom and most ladies needed to surrender their own fantasies of a decent and fruitful life to slave at family unit errands and bringing up youngsters. â€Å"Years ago† a lady didn't have a decision to voice her assessments and the job of maid and devoted mother was pushed onto her without even an idea about how she felt about it. Her drudge was underestimated and the mate didn't think it improper to permit his significant other to do all the housework when he could without much of a stretch have offered to help. â€Å"I trusted myself to be a women's activist, and I pledged never to fall into a similar snare of residential weariness and subjugation that I considered my to be as being completely dug in; never to make due with an actual existence that was, through my eyes, lacking autonomy, authority, and respect† (Maduro 5). In any case, as she became more established and had her own understanding of cherishing and living with her accomplice she was astounded that she followed a similar example unknowingly and oversaw both house and work in spite of her accomplice needing to assist her with the tasks. She thinks about why this is so in light of the fact that she trusted herself to know about her privileges not at all like her mom and in full order over her livelihood and what she deeply desired, yet she slaved at family unit tasks: I feel an odd blend of disappointment and love. Together we have an awesome, open, confiding in relationship, however at times I wonder if the threatening vibe as of now in me, and my should resent a person or thing, could in the long run devastate our bond (Maduro 12). The article is a thoughtfulness of why she decided. She thinks of the theory that ladies decided to take on local obligations regardless of whether it implied swearing off their very own portion wants since it made a lady pleased to be a practiced home producer and mother. She recognized this need in a lady to exceed expectations in housekeeping as a wellspring of joy and satisfaction. She ponders the polarity among affection and dissatisfaction, profession and home, bringing up youngsters and work lastly discovers comfort in the way that not at all like her mom she was not constrained into bondage. She did what she did on the grounds that she needed to do it, she had the alternative of dismissing and that had a major effect. She can resolve her contention and furthermore that of numerous other ladies by repeating that deciding to be a decent servant and mother was an alternative and you could decide to be one regardless of whether you felt unequivocally for the reason for woman's rights. Works Cited Maduro, E. S. â€Å"Excuse Me While I Explode: My Mother, Myself, My Anger†. The Bitch in the House. Cathy Hanauer. New York: Harper Collins, 2002. Print. Sanders, Russell Scott. â€Å"Under the Influence: Paying the Price for my Father’s Booze† Harpers Magazine Nov 1989: n. pag. Web. 2 Jun 2010.

How You Can Get an ACT Fee Waiver Complete Guide

How You Can Get an ACT Fee Waiver Complete Guide SAT/ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips Do you want to test costs are introducing a hindrance in your way to school? The uplifting news is, you may be qualified for an ACT expense waiver, which defers the expense of taking the ACT. In this article, we assist you with making sense of whether you’re qualified to get an ACT expense waiver structure. We likewise examine what the waiver covers and doesn't cover, just as the means you should take to utilize your charge waiver while enlisting for the ACT. On the whole, let’s see who is qualified for an ACT expense waiver. ACT Fee Waiver Eligibility Criteria So as to get an ACT charge waiver, you first need to watch that you're qualified for one. Here is the rules you should meet: Be taken a crack at secondary school (eleventh or twelfth grade) Be a U.S. resident or a worldwide understudy testing in the US, US regions, or Puerto Rico Meet at least one of the pointers of financial need recorded underneath: You’re joined up with a government free or discounted value lunch program at school, in light of USDA salary levels (see table beneath) You’re took a crack at a program for the financially impeded (for instance, a governmentally supported program, for example, GEAR UP or Upward Bound) You live in a cultivate home, are a dependent of the government, or are destitute Your family gets low-pay open help or lives in governmentally sponsored open lodging Your family’s complete yearly salary is at or beneath the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) levels for nothing or scaled down value snacks recorded underneath USDA Income Level Guidelines (2017-18) Individuals in Household* Complete Annual Income 1 $22,311 2 $30,044 3 $37,777 4 $45,510 5 $53,243 6 $60,976 Each extra part Furthermore $7,733 per part Source: ACT.org *Members in family incorporate filer. On the off chance that you’re not on Free and Reduced Lunch yet meet one of different prerequisites, you may need to providedocumentation, for example, charge records, to demonstrate your qualification. Since you know whether you’re qualified, let’s take a gander at precisely what the ACT expense waiver does and doesn't take care of as far as expenses. What Does the ACT Fee Waiver Cover? The ACT expense waiver covers the fundamental enlistment charge for either the ACT without Writing or the ACT with Writing.If you’re qualified, you can get a limit of two waivers, which means you will have the option to take the ACT with the expectation of complimentary twice. Expense waivers are substantial through August 31 every year, so you may need to get one waiver your lesser year and the other your senior year.You can likewise forgo the charge to send one score report to your secondary school and up to four score reports to universities. Talk with your direction guide to get familiar with how your school handles ACT charge waiver conveyance. What Does the ACT Fee Waiver NOT Cover? The ACT charge waiver doesn't cover late enlistment expenses in the event that you register past the ordinary cutoff time. It likewise doesn't cover charges forchanges in your enlistment, for example, changes to your test date, test focus, or test alternative (with or without Writing), or backup on the off chance that you wish to be put on a shortlist. As referenced over, the charge waiver will cover four score reports to universities. Any extra score reports should be paid for. Right now, they are $13 each. At long last, an expense waiver must be utilized once for enrollment. On the off chance that you miss the test you pursued, you can’t utilize a similar charge waiver once more. So ensure you don’t miss your test! The most effective method to Get an ACT Fee Waiver To get an ACT charge waiver, first talk with your school instructor. Advisors get the expense waivers straightforwardly and are liable for getting them to understudies. This doesn’t mean you should trust that your guide will come to you, however. As you structure your testing plan, get this dealt with early-in a perfect world by the start of your lesser year.This way you can affirm that you'll have the expense waiver before you pick a test date. At the point when you register for the ACT, you'll have to enter your ACT charge waiver code-i.e.,the sequential number imprinted in the upper right corner of your expense waiver structure. On the off chance that you have any extra charges not secured by the expense waiver, for example, additional administrations or test-date transforms, you'll need to pay for these with Visa before you complete the process of enrolling. On the off chance that you don't have some other charges, your enlistment for the ACT will be totally free! 3 ACT Prep Tips If You're Using an ACT Fee Waiver Before you take the ACT, you have to realize how to get ready and study adequately so as to get a decent score on test day. Here are three hints for the individuals who have made sure about an ACT charge waiver: #1: Prepare Ahead of Time Planning is the #1 factor to improving your ACT scores, yet you have to ensure you’re preparing right. This implies you should do the accompanying: Comprehend your qualities and shortcomings Utilize great ACT prep materials Set sensible objectives Comprehend the ACT design and the abilities being tried You can alsocheck outour free digital book enumerating the five most significant hints all understudies need to know to ace the ACT. #2: Choose a Test Date and Center That Work Well for You As we referenced above,sign up for a test date and centerthat'll work for your timetable. You can’t reuse a similar ACT charge waiver should you miss your test, so it's basic to pick a spot you won't experience difficulty getting to and a period you won't miss. In the event that you are constrained to taking the ACT twice (since you can get a limit of two charge waivers), you'll need to structure your testing plan around this reality. Practically all understudies improve their ACT scores on a subsequent endeavor, and numerous universities will superscore your ACT score(i.e., consider your most noteworthy area scores over all dates to ascertain your most grounded composite score). In wording ofoptimal test dates, numerous understudies test in the spring of their lesser year and again in the late-summer of their senior year. With cautious arranging and modified planning, you'll have the option to amplify your two (free) ACT testing openings. #3: Use Realistic Practice Tests Regardless of whether you're taking the ACT on more than one occasion, ensure totake official ACT practice tests under recreated testing conditions as you prep. By timing yourself, taking brief breaks, and in any event, rehearsing on a Saturday morning (as you'll do on the genuine test), you'll step by step become accustomed to the ACT's pacing and build up the endurance you have to play out your best on test day. Recap: Getting and Using an ACT Fee Waiver All things considered, getting and utilizing an ACT charge waiver is an entirely straightforward procedure, as long as you probably are aware where to begin. Before you apply for a charge waiver, check the ACT site to affirm that you are qualified. At that point, converse with your advocate to get more data on the best way to apply and send one in. The ACT expense waiver takes care of the full expense of the ACT (with or without Writing) yet doesn't cover additional charges, for example, changes to your test date or test focus. Note that you can get up to two charge waivers altogether, and you can't utilize a similar expense waiver for more than one test. As far as tips, ensure you approach your charge waivers well in front of enrollment for your favored test date. Likewise, certainly speak with your school advocate, as the person in question will approach the charge waivers and will be there to help you all through the school procedure. In the event that you intend to get two ACT expense waivers, ensure you have sufficient opportunity to take the ACT twice. Don’t hold up until senior year to get your first charge waiver since this reasonable won't give you sufficient opportunity to take the ACT more than once. What’s Next? Inquisitive about other ACT costs?Learn how much the ACT costs in full and get valuable tips on the best way to get a good deal on the ACT. To what extent is the ACT?Get acquainted with the planning and pacing of the testso that you can set yourself up successfully for test day. Focusing on flawlessness? Peruse master tips and systems from a 36 full scorer. Regardless of whether you're not pointing this high, our guide is useful for improving scores at any level! Need to improve your ACT score by 4+ focuses? Download our free manual for the best 5 techniques you need in your prep to improve your ACT score drastically.

High School Seniors Start NOW on your Letters of Recommendation (LORs)!

High School Seniors Start NOW on your Letters of Recommendation (LORs)! What was your favorite class in high school?   What class did you do best in?   Who was your favorite teacher?   How well do you know your guidance counselor?   Who knows you the best (both adults and fellow students)?   Who will write you the best recommendation? These are questions to answer now! Once you have your answers, make a list of the people who would be your best recommenders. After identifying your best recommenders, ask them if they are willing to write you a letter of recommendation.   Ask in particular  if they will write you a strong one.   If they can’t, see if there’s someone on your list who can. Teachers will appreciate having as long as possible to work on your LORs.    Get a leg up by approaching them now! If you remember particular instances where you demonstrated your intelligence, creativity, responsibility, or other great qualities, don’t be shy about reminding your recommenders about those instances.   You can even give them a list of things you think they might want to cover in their letters. The best letters tell stories, and you probably remember those stories better than anyone else! Examples of things you might want to share with the people writing your letters of recommendation: Copies of your best papers in their class Copies of your creative writing Notes about particular contributions you made in class A list of your activities and accomplishments Your transcript Your student resume (yes you should have one!) Any help you can give your recommenders, whether it’s giving them plenty of time or helping them with material to put in the letter, will generally be appreciated and will make for a stellar LOR! The benefit to you, besides great LORs, is that when December rolls around, you won’t be biting your nails worrying whether your letters will be in by deadline. Thats worth a bit of thought and action now, isn’t it?

Karl Marx History of Economic Thought - 1454 Words

HS11-7,756,1.00 History of Economic Thought Christof Zanecchia 10-992-204 Professor Allgoewer Karl Marx: â€Å"A context for inevitable social revolution† Of particular interest in Rima’s summary and critique of Marx’s background and social/economic contributions is the quote: â€Å"It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social existence that determines their consciousness.† Karl Marx, in reference to modes of production, which refers to the social relationship present in ownership and the use of the means of production, explains how the effects of the control of modes of production on society are intrinsic in a†¦show more content†¦Marx rejects the classical view of exchange, explaining that under conditions of simple reproduction of goods, money serves only as a medium to circulate commodities. In the classical view, this process of production and exchange involves the exchange of individualsà ¢â‚¬â„¢ commodity surpluses for money, which are used to buy other commodities. This process whose purpose is to satisfy only wants can be represented by C-M-C. The capitalist process for Marx is different in that the capitalist uses money to buy labor power as a commodity whose use value, in turn, is at his disposal for the entire working day. The capitalist then uses the selling price of workers’ products (in which their labor power is set) to return an amount of revenue to the capitalist that exceeds the wage cost of the labor he purchased. This can be represented as M-C-M or â€Å"buying in order to sell.† This creates an immediate economic advantage from the standpoint of the capitalist in the M-C-M process because he has the money to purchase the capital labor necessary to create more money through â€Å"surplus labor power.† For Marx, this represents a change in the classical perspective from â€Å"buying in order to sell† to an attitude of â€Å" buying to sell dearer.† This alters the exchange process into an input of M â€Å"en style lapidaire† to create an output of more M or â€Å"value that is greater than itself† – a process that benefits the capitalist agentsShow MoreRelatedThe Wealth Of Nations By Adam Smith1384 Words   |  6 Pages Throughout history, books have influenced the world. Some books, such as the Bible, have influenced Christians. Common Sense by Thomas Paine encouraged Americans to join the fight against the British. Other books, however, do more than simply encourage; they introduce a new philosophy. 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These booksRead MoreMarx: The Economic Basis of Human Societies 1093 Words   |  5 PagesMarx: The Economic Basis of Human Societies Introduction Marxism as it is known today states that â€Å"actions and human institutions are economically determined, that the class struggle is the basic agency of historical change† (Collins English Dictionary, 1994: 959). In this assignment the worldview of Karl Marx will be discovered and the crux of Marxism will be uncovered. Marx’s Life and Work Karl Marx was born in 1818 in Germany during an oppressive time. His Jewish father who; under the discriminatoryRead More Karl Marx and His Radical Views Essay1169 Words   |  5 PagesKarl Marx and His Radical Views Karl Marx[i] Karl Marx is among the most important and influential of all modern philosophers who expressed his ideas on humans in nature. According to the University of Dayton, â€Å"the human person is part of a larger history of life on this planet. Through technology humans have the power to have an immense effect on that life.†[ii] The people of his time found that the impact of the Industrial Revolution would further man’s success within thisRead MoreConflict Theory926 Words   |  4 Pagesanalysis of society. Karl Marx is the father of the social conflict theory, which is a component of the 4 paradigms of sociology [1]. Certain conflict theories set out to highlight the ideological aspects inherent in traditional thought. Whilst many of these perspectives hold parallels, conflict theorydoes not refer to a unified school of thought, and should not be confused with, for instance, peace and conflict studies, or any other specific theory of social conflict. Karl Marx: Conflict TheoryRead MoreWhy Marx s Social Theory Place So Much Emphasis On Class Conflict And The Economic Aspects Of Society? Essay1524 Words   |  7 Pagesdoes Marx s social theory place so much emphasis on class conflict and the economic aspects of society? Karl Marx is one of the most influential and revolutionary philosopher, economist and sociologist of the 19th century. His thoughts not only shaped our understandings of the capitalistic world but also created a new system of social organization, communism. His ideology also defined the key political figures of the cold war period such as Stalin, Mao and Castro. Without Marx, theRead MoreEssay on Biography of Karl Marx1220 Words   |  5 PagesBiography of Karl Marx Only in the course of the world’s history can a person born over a hundred years ago be as famous today as they were back then. Karl Marx is one person that fits this category. He paved the way for people of the same political background as his own. Marx’s ideas were unique and started uproar all over Europe. Marx helped write the Communist Manifesto one of the most important pieces of literature on Communism ever written. 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Augustus Caesar and Emperor Nero Comparision - 980 Words

I believe that being a beloved leader has a huge effect on being a better ruler. In 44 B.C. Julius Caesar was assassinated by his senate chamber. Soon his nephew and adopted son, Gaius Octavian, would join forces with Mark Anthony and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus into a three-way dictatorship. This transformed Rome from being a Monarchy into being a dictatorship. Lepidus left Rome soon after Octavian began reign and went on to lead parts of Africa and Hispania. In 37 B.C. Mary Anthony met Cleopatra. They fell in love and Mark followed her back to Egypt. Octavian took reign over Rome and obtained the name Augustus Caesar. Mark Anthony and Augustus became enemies and war broke out between Rome and Egypt. This is one reason for why I believe that†¦show more content†¦Women gave birth during his shows and some people faked being dead just to be dragged out of it. Some people even went as far as jumping off the ledge of the theater to their death. These plays would go on for several d ays without any breaks. He attempted to set fire to Rome just so he could rebuild the city. In my opinion, the action that Nero is most known for is for persecuting of Jews. Nero would crucify Jews for spreading Christianity throughout Rome. Nero was the persecutor of the apostles Paul and Peter. Nero was a violent leader and a leader who was definitely, not beloved. In conclusion, being a leader that is beloved has a huge effect on being a better leader. For example, Augustus Caesar was so favored that his name was passed on through all the emperors all the way up to 476A.D. The roman citizen would hold festivals just in honor of Augustus. They loved Augustus which made Rome a happier place all in all. In the other hand Nero made Rome become a dark and violent empire. I believe that good rulers always work their hardest to please their people and have positive influences on them. People want a leader who incurages them and is always striving to help the empire grow

Evidence Based Management Free Essays

string(171) " since abandoned this assignment in favor of more selfreflection on the manager students want to become and ways they can develop themselves to move closer to that ideal\." Academy of Management Review 2006, Vol. 31, No. 2, 256–269. We will write a custom essay sample on Evidence Based Management or any similar topic only for you Order Now 2005 Presidential Address IS THERE SUCH A THING AS â€Å"EVIDENCEBASED MANAGEMENT†? DENISE M. ROUSSEAU Carnegie Mellon University I explore the promise organization research offers for improved management practice and how, at present, it falls short. Using evidence-based medicine as an exemplar, I identify ways of closing the prevailing â€Å"research-practice gap†Ã¢â‚¬â€the failure of organizations and managers to base practices on best available evidence. I close with guidance for researchers, educators, and managers for translating the principles governing human behavior and organizational processes into more effective management practice. Evidence-based management means translating principles based on best evidence into organizational practices. Through evidence-based management, practicing managers develop into experts who make organizational decisions informed by social science and organizational research—part of the zeitgeist moving professional decisions away from personal preference and unsystematic experience toward those based on the best available scientific evidence (e. . , Barlow, 2004; DeAngelis, 2005; LemieuxCharles Champagne, 2004; Rousseau, 2005; Walshe Rundall, 2001). This links how managers make decisions to the continually expanding research base on cause-effect principles underlying human behavior and organizational actions. Here is what evidence-based management looks like. Let’s call this example, and true story, â€Å"Making Feedback People-Friendly. † The executive director of a health care system with twenty rural clinics notes that their performance differs tremendously across the array of metrics used. This variability has nothing to do with patient mix or employee characteristics. After interviewing clinic members who complain about the sheer number of metrics for which they are accountable (200 indicators sent This article is based on the address I gave at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management in Honolulu, Hawaii. Chuck Bantz, Andy Garman, Paul S. Goodman, Ricky Griffin, Bob Hinings, Paul Hirsch, Sharon McCarthy, Sara Rynes, Laurie Weingart, and John Zanardelli contributed ideas toward its development. 256 onthly, comparing each clinic to the 19 others), the director recalls a principle from a long-ago course in psychology: human decision makers can only process a limited amount of information at any one time. With input from clinic staff, a redesigned feedback system takes shape. The new system uses three performance categories— care quality, cost, and employee satisfaction—and provides a summary measure for each of the three. Over the next year, through provision of feedback in a more interpretable form, the health system’s performance improves across the board, with low-performing units showing the greatest improvement. In this example a principle (human beings can process only a limited amount of information) is translated into practice (provide feedback on a small set of critical performance indicators using terms people readily understand). Evidence-based management, as in the example above, derives principles from research evidence and translates them into practices that solve organizational problems. This isn’t always easy. Principles are credible only where the evidence is clear, and research findings can be tough for both researchers and practitioners to interpret. Moreover, practices that capitalize on a principle’s insights must suit the setting (e. g. , who is to say that the particular performance indicators the executive director uses are pertinent to all units? ). Evidence-based management, despite these challenges, promises more consistent attainment of organizational goals, including those affecting employees, stockhold- 2006 Rousseau 257 ers, and the public in general. This is the promise that attracted me to organizational research at the beginning of my career— but it remains unfulfilled. THE GREAT HOPE AND THE GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT It is ironic that I came to write this article in my role as the sixtieth Academy of Management president. â€Å"Management† was a nasty word in my blue collar childhood, where everyone in the family was affected by how the company my father worked for managed its employees. When the supervisor frequently called my father to ask him to put in more overtime in an already long work week, all of us kids got used to covering for him. If the phone rang when my father was home, he’d have us answer it. We all knew what to say if it was the company calling: â€Å"Dad’s not here. The idea of just telling the supervisor that he didn’t want to work never occurred to my father, or anyone else in the family. The threat of disciplinary action or job loss loomed large, reinforced by dinnertime stories about a boss’s abusive behavior or some inexplicable company action. From this vantage point, the term management connot es harsh and arbitrary behavior, with undertones of otherness. It is a far cry from the dictionary definition of management as â€Å"a judicious use of means to accomplish an end† (Merriam-Webster, 2005). I acquired a wholly new perspective on management and managers when I became a business school professor. First, many business students, even at the MBA level, have never experienced what it is like to work for a good manager. In the first business course I taught, in organizational behavior, I gave the students two assignments: (1) write about the worst boss you ever had, describing what made that person the worst and how it impacted you, and (2) write about the best boss you ever had, describing what made that person the best and how it impacted you. My MBA students with an average of five years of full-time work experience had no problem with assignment 1. For many of them, the assignment was cathartic, and they frequently exceeded its assigned page limit in writing vituperative portrayals of managers variously presented as self-centered, capricious, or otherwise lacking in capability or character. Assign- ment 2 was another matter. Many students had great difficulty thinking of anyone who qualified as â€Å"the best manager. † Over a third couldn’t think of any boss they could even describe as good. To the extent that people manage others the way they themselves have been managed, I came to worry about what the future held for these managers-in-the-making. Nonetheless, while these business students may never have had a great boss, they themselves still hoped to become one. (By the way, I have since abandoned this assignment in favor of more selfreflection on the manager students want to become and ways they can develop themselves to move closer to that ideal. You read "Evidence Based Management" in category "Management" ) Second, most business students have never worked for a great company either. There is the possibility that only dissatisfied people quit their jobs to study full time for an MBA, but in this regard I suspect availability bias. ) I never have had any difficulty getting students to share their experiences of dysfunctional organizational practices. However, when it comes to identifying a more functional way to motivate workers or restructure firms, they are often at a loss. Still, in-class discussions and students’ own future plans suggest that they do hope to join a company (or to start one) that is better managed than those they have worked for so far. In class and out, I have spent a lot of time helping students learn how to make a business case, with their future employers in mind, for creating financially successful firms that are good for people too. I have come to feel tremendous respect and affection for those students who have the personal aspiration to be a great manager in a great company. Out of these personal and professional experiences, I have nurtured my great hope—that, through research and education, we can promote effective organizations where managers make well-informed, less arbitrary, and more reflective decisions. My great disappointment, however, has been that research findings don’t appear to have transferred well to the workplace. Instead of a scientific understanding of human behavior and organizations, managers, including those with MBAs, continue to rely largely on personal experience, to the exclusion of more systematic knowledge. Alternatively, managers follow bad advice from business books or consultants based on weak evidence. Because Jack Welch or 258 Academy of Management Review April McKinsey says it, that doesn’t make it true. Several decades of research on attribution bias indicate that people have a difficult time drawing unbiased conclusions regarding why they are successful, often giving more credit to themselves than the facts warrant. Management gurus are in no way immune. ) Sadly, there is poor uptake of management practices of known effectiveness (e. g. , goal setting and performance feedback [Locke Latham, 1984]). Even in businesses populated by MBAs from top-ranked universities, there is unexplained wide variation in managerial practice patterns (e. g. how [or if] goals are set, selection decisions made, rewards allocated, or training investments determined) and, worse, persistent use of practices known to be largely ineffective (e. g. , downsizing [Cascio, Young, Morris, 1997; high ratios of executive to rankand-file employee compensation [Cowherd Levine, 1992]). The result is a research-practice gap, indicating that the answer to this article’s title question is no—at least not yet. What it means to close this gap and how evidencebased management might become a reality are the matters I turn to next. THE â€Å"EVIDENCE-BASED† ZEITGEIST The phrase â€Å"evidence-based† is a buzzword in contemporary public policy, with all the risk of triteness and superficiality that buzzword status conveys. Let’s not be misled by its current popularity. Evidence-based practice has tremendous substance and discipline behind it. We can observe its impact in two fields highly influenced by legislative decisions: policing and secondary education. In evidence-based policing, community police officers are trained to treat criminal suspects politely, because doing so has been found to reduce repeat offenses (Sherman, 2002; Tyler, 1990). In evidence-based education, many secondary schools have restored the practice of social promotion, where students who have difficulty passing their courses, even after several tries, are advanced to the next grade level. Research indicates that social promotion’s benefits outweigh its costs, because a high school diploma increases the likelihood of subsequent employment and lowers the incidence of drug use, even among students who wouldn’t otherwise have qualified for that diploma (Jimerson, Anderson, Whipple, 2002; National Association of School Psychologists, 2005). Evidence-based practice is a paradigm for making decisions that integrate the best available research evidence with decision maker expertise and client/customer preferences to guide practice toward more desirable results (e. g. , Sackett, Straus, Richardson, Rosenberg, Haynes, 2000). Proponents are skeptical about experience, wisdom, or personal credentials as a basis for asserting what works. The question is â€Å"What is the evidence? â€Å"—not â€Å"Who says so? † (Sherman, 2002: 221). The answer, as the criminologist Lawrence W. Sherman indicates, can be graded from weak to strong, based on rules of scientific inference, where before-and-after comparisons are stronger than simultaneous correlations—randomized, controlled tests stronger than longitudinal cohort analyses. Strong evidence trumps weak, irrespective of how charismatic the evidence’s presenter is. Sherman sums it up: â€Å"We are all entitled to our own opinions, but not to our own facts† (2002: 223). Medicine is a success story as the first domain to institutionalize evidence-based practice. Evidence-based medicine is the integration of individual clinical expertise and the best external evidence. Its origins date back to 1847, when Ignaz Semmelweis discovered the role that infection played in childbirth fever. Semmelweis was vilified by physicians of the time for his assertion that it was doctors themselves who were infecting women by carrying germs between dead bodies and patients. Nonetheless, his work influenced the formulation of germ theory, which gained acceptance with the work of Lister and Pasteur forty years later (Wikipedia, 2005). Extensive infrastructures promote evidence-based health care (e. g. , the U. S. National Institutes of Health and Institute of Medicine, the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation, and the Cochrane Collaboration). Evidence-based-clinical care as a way of life in health care organizations is of relatively recent vintage, enjoying its greatest growth after 1990. (If you are wondering what physicians did before, the answer is what managers are doing now, but without medicine’s added advantages from common professional training and malpractice sanctions. ) The attributes of evidencedbased medicine provide a useful reference point 2006 Rousseau 259 for exploring what its counterpart in management might look like. By way of example, germ theory is widely understood by clinical care givers. It has led to broad application of infection control systems (gowns, sterile needles, and sterile instruments), medicines to avoid or cure infections, and supporting practices (handwashing). Its application has led to radical but important interpretations of seemingly distant events. Incidence of heart attack, for example, increases immediately after having one’s teeth cleaned. Reflecting on this correlation in light of germ theory led to recognition that teeth cleaning disperses mouth bacteria into the heart’s arteries. Certain bacteria in these arteries create conditions that give rise to heart attacks. Recognizing this causal link led to a risk-reducing solution: giving heart patients antibiotics to take before dental treatments as a preventive. This application of medical evidence involved cause-and-effect connections— how dental practice can disperse mouth bacteria into the heart’s arteries. It also required isolation of variations that affect desired outcomes, requiring knowledge of the mechanisms triggering heart attacks (and, in this case, knowledge that gum disease may itself trigger heart attacks [see, for instance, Desvarieux et al. 2005]). Yet more than scientific insight is needed to create evidence-based practice. In fact, only some physicians recommend this preventive action for their heart patients. Others may not see the risk as that great, are unaware of the finding, or merely have forgotten to make this preventive action part of their standard orders for cardiac patie nts. The involvement of other practitioners further complicates matters: dentists are not necessarily educated to inquire about heart conditions. Organizational factors affect whether evidence-based practice occurs. In health care settings certain features increase the likelihood that an at-risk patient will get the preventive medication. Social networks and organizational culture matter. It helps if the patient’s physician is part of a practice or a hospital where others recommend such preventive care. Similarly, impeding this evidence-based practice is the fact that dentists are unlikely to be in the same professional networks as physicians. In a hospital where medical leadership promotes evidencebased medicine, more physicians are likely to e aware of the finding. Such settings are also likely to have staff in-services to update physician knowledge where this practice might be discussed. Relatedly, participation in research increases the salience of the evidence base. It helps if physicians in the immediate environment have participated in clinical research and are engaged in one of the several online communities that review clinical evidence and then create and disseminate recommendat ions, which raises the next point: access to information on those practices the evidence supports. Physicians have online services that provide ready access to clinical practice best supported by research, based on the review and recommendation of health care experts (e. g. , Cochrane Collaboration). Such services capitalize on the information explosion and internet connections to build communities of practice enabling experts to communicate their knowledge, identify the best-quality evidence, and disseminate it broadly to care givers (Jadad, Haynes, Hunt, Browman, 2000). Decision supports can be designed to make it easier to implement evidence-based practices. A patient care protocol might be written specifying that each heart patient and all post-op cardiac cases be advised of the need to premedicate before teeth cleaning, along with a prescription written for and given to the patient at discharge. This protocol might be formalized to the extent that a premedication instruction is written in each cardiac patient’s discharge orders. Last, a web of factors—individual (knowledge), organizational (access to knowledgeable others, support for evidence use), and institutional (dissemination of evidence-based practice)—promotes, sustains, and institutionalizes evidence-based medicine. Britain’s national health system, for example, promotes evidencebased practice using the Cochrane Collaboration’s recommendations as the standard. Medicare in the United States publishes information on whether hospitals use proven remedies in patient care (Kolata, 2004). In sum, features characterizing evidencebased practice include †¢ learning about cause-effect connections in professional practices; †¢ isolating the variations that measurably affect desired outcomes; 260 Academy of Management Review April creating a culture of evidence-based decision making and research participation; †¢ using information-sharing communities to reduce overuse, underuse, and misuse of specific practices; †¢ building decision supports to promote practices the evidence validates, along with techniques and artifacts that make the decision easier to execute or perform (e. g. , checklists, protocols, or standing orders); and †¢ having individual, organizational, and institutional factors promote access to knowledge and its use. Now let’s consider what such practice might mean for management and organizations. WHY EVIDENCE-BASED MANAGEMENT IS IMPORTANT AND TIMELY Evidence-based management is not a new idea. Chester Barnard (1938) promoted the development of a natural science of organization to better understand the unanticipated problems associated with authority and consent. Since Barnard’s time, however, we have struggled to connect science and practice without a vision or model to do so. Evidence-based management, in my opinion, provides the needed model to guide the closing of the research-practice gap. In this section I address why evidence-based management is timely and practical. Calling Attention to Facts: â€Å"Big E Evidence† and â€Å"little e evidence† An evidence orientation shows that decision quality is a direct function of available facts, creating a demand for reliable and valid information when making managerial and organizational decisions. Improving information continues a trend begun in the quality movement over thirty years ago, giving systematic attention to discrete facts, indicative of quality (e. g. , machine performance, customer interactions, employee attitudes and behavior [Evans Dean, 2000]). This trend continues in recent developments regarding open-book management (Case, 1995; Ferrante Rousseau, 2001) and the use of organizational fact finding and experimentation to improve decision quality (Pfeffer Sutton, in press). In all the attention we now give to evidence, it helps to differentiate what might be called â€Å"Big E Evidence† from â€Å"little e evidence. † Big E Evidence refers to generalizable knowledge regarding cause-effect connections (e. g. , specific goals promote higher attainment than general or vague goals) derived from scientific methods—the focus of this article. Little e evidence is local or organization specific, as exemplified by root cause analysis and other fact-based approaches the total quality movement introduced for organizational decision making (Deming, 1993; Evans Dean, 2000). It refers to data systematically gathered in a particular setting to inform local decisions. As the saying goes, â€Å"facts are our friends,† when local efforts to accumulate information relevant to a particular problem lead to more effective solutions. Although decision makers who rely on scientific principles are more likely to gather facts systematically in order to choose an appropriate course of action (e. . , Sackett et al. , 2000), fact gathering (â€Å"evidence†) doesn’t necessarily lead decision makers to use social science knowledge (â€Å"Evidence†) in interpretating these facts. In my introductory example of the health care system, the executive director might have concluded that the performance differences across th e twenty clinics were due to something about the clinics or their managers. It was his knowledge of a basic principle in psychology that gave him an alternative and, ultimately, more effective interpretation. However, systematic attention to local facts can prompt managers to look for principles that account for their observations. The opening example illustrates how scientific principles and local facts go together to solve problems and make decisions. Opportunity to Better Implement Managerial Decisions In highly competitive environments, good execution may be as important as the strategic choices managers make. Implementation is a strong suit of evidence-based management through the wealth of research available to guide effective execution (e. g. , goal setting and feedback [Locke Latham, 1984]; feedback and redesign [Goodman, 2001]). Indeed, with greater orientation toward scientific evidence, health care management’s guidelines frequently reference social and organizational research on implementation (e. g. , Lemieux-Charles Champayne, 2004; Lomas, Culyer, McCutcheon, 2006 Rousseau 261 McAuley, Law, 2005). The continued wide variation we observe in how organizations execute decisions (e. g. , in goal clarity, stakeholder participation, feedback processes, and allowance for redesign) is remarkable, given the advanced knowledge we possess about effective implementation and what is at stake should implementation fail. Better Managers, Better Learning Given the powerful impact managers’ decisions have on the fate of their firms, managerial competence is a critical and often scarce resource. Improved managerial competence is a direct outgrowth of a greater focus on evidencebased management. Managers need real learning, not fads or false conclusions. When managers acquire a systematic understanding of the principles governing organizations and human behavior, what they learn is valid—that is to say, it is repeatable over time and generalizable across situations. It is less likely that what managers learn will be wrong. Today, the poor information commonly available to managers regarding the organizational consequences of their decisions means that experiences are likely to be misinterpreted— subject to perceptual gaps and misunderstandings. Consider the case of a supervisor who overuses threats and punishment as behavioral tools. A punisher who keys on the fact that punishing suppresses behavior can completely miss its other consequence—its inability to encourage positive behavior. Status differences and organizational politics make it unlikely that the punisher will learn the true consequences of that style, by limiting and distorting feedback. The reality is that managers tend to work in settings that make valid learning difficult. This difficulty is compounded by the widespread uptake of organizational fads and fashions, â€Å"adopted overenthusiastically, implemented inadequately, then discarded prematurely in favor of the latest trend† (Walshe Rundall, 2001; 437; see also Staw Epstein, 2000). In such settings managers cannot even learn why their decisions were wrong, let alone what alternatives would have been right. Evidence-based management leads to valid learning and continuous improvement, rather than a checkered career based on false assumptions. Organizational legitimacy is another product of evidence-based management. Where decisions are based on systematic causal knowledge, conditioned by expertise leading to successful implementation, firms find it easier to deliver on promises made to stockholders, employees, customers, and others (e. g. , Goodman Rousseau, 2004; Rucci, Kirn, Quinn, 1998). Legitimacy is a result of making decisions in a systematic and informed fashion, thus making a firm’s actions more readily justifiable in the eyes of stakeholders. Yet, given evidence-based management’s numerous advantages, why then is the research-practice gap so large? I next turn to the array of factors that align to perpetuate this evidence-deprived status quo. WHY MANAGERS DON’T PRACTICE EVIDENCE-BASED MANAGEMENT The research-practice gap among managers results from several factors. First and foremost, managers typically do not know the evidence. Less than 1 percent of HR managers read the academic literature regularly (Rynes, Brown, Colbert, 2002), and the consultants who advise them are unlikely to do so either. Despite the explosion of research on decision making, individual and group performance, business strategy, and other domains directly tied to organizational practices, few practicing managers access this work. (I note, however, that of the four periodicals the Academy publishes, it is the empirical Academy of Management Journal to which company libraries most widely subscribe. So there is some recognition that this research exists! ) Evidence-based management can threaten managers’ personal freedom to run their organizations as they see fit. A similar resistance characterized supervisory responses to scientific management nearly 100 years ago, when Frederick Taylor’s structured methods for improving efficiency were discarded because they were believed to interfere with management’s prerogatives in supervising employees. Part of this pushback stems from the belief that good management is an art—the â€Å"romance of leadership† school of thought (e. g. , Meindl, Erlich, Dukerich, 1985), where a shift to evidence and analysis connotes loss of creativity and autonomy. Such concerns are not unique: physicians have wrestled with similar dilemmas, expressed in 62 Academy of Management Review April the aptly titled article â€Å"False Dichotomies: EBM, Clinical Freedom and the Art of Medicine† (Parker, 2005). Managerial work itself differs from clinical work and other fields engaged in evidencebased practice in important ways. First, managerial decisions often involve long time lags and little feedback, as in the case of a recruiter hiring someone to eventually take over a senior position in the firm. Years may pass before the true quality of that decision can be discerned, and, by then, the recruiter and others involved are likely to have moved on (Jaques, 1976). Managerial decisions often are influenced by other stakeholders who impose constraints (Miller, 1992). Obtaining stakeholder support can involve politicking and compromise, altering the decision made, or even whether it is made at all. Incentives tied to managerial decisions are subject to contradictory pressures from senior executives, stockholders, customers, and employees. Last, it’s not always obvious that a decision is being made, given the array of interactions that compose managerial work (Walshe Randall, 2001). A manager who declines to train a subordinate, for example, may not realize that particular act ultimately may lead the employee to quit. Evidence-based management can be a tough sell to many managers, because management, in contrast to medicine or nursing, is not a profession. Given the diverse backgrounds and education of managers, there is limited understanding of scientific method. With no formally mandated education or credentials (and even an MBA is no guarantee), practicing managers have no body of shared knowledge. Lacking shared scientific knowledge to add weight to an evidence-based decision, managers commonly rely on other bases (e. g. , experience, formal power, incentives, and threats) when making decisions acceptable to their superiors and constituents. Firms themselves—particularly those in the private sector— contribute to the limited value placed on science-based management practice. Although pharmaceutical firms advertise their investment in biotechnology and basic research, the typical business does not have the advancement of managerial knowledge in its mission. Historically leading corporations such as Cadbury, IBM, and General Motors were actively engaged in research on company selec- tion and training practices, employee motivation, and supervisory behavior. Their efforts contributed substantially to the early managerial practice evidence base. But few organizations today do their own managerial research or regularly collaborate with those who do, despite the considerable benefits from industry-university collaborations (Cyert Goodman, 1997); the globally experienced time crunch in managerial work and the press for short-term results have reduced such collaborations to dispensable frills. Nonetheless, hospitals participate in clinical research and school systems evaluate policy interventions. In contrast to more evidence-oriented domains, such as policing and education, management is most often a private sector activity. It is less influenced by public policy pressures promoting similar practices while creating comparative advantage via distinctiveness. Businesses are characterized by the belief that the particulars of the organization, its practices, and its problems are special and unique—a widespread phenomenon termed the uniqueness paradox (Martin, Feldman, Hatch, Sitkin, 1983). Observed among clinical care givers and law enforcement practitioners too, the uniqueness paradox can interfere with transfer of research findings across settings—unless dispelled by better education and experience with evidencebased practice (e. g. , Sackett et al. , 2000). Yet, despite all these factors, the most important reason evidence-based management is still a hope and not a reality is not due to managers themselves or their organizations. Rather, professors like me and the programs in which we teach must accept a large measure of blame. We typically do not educate managers to know or use scientific evidence. Research evidence is not the central focus of study for undergraduate business students, MBAs, or executives in continuing education programs (Trank Rynes, 2003), where case examples and popular concepts from nonresearch-oriented magazines such as the Harvard Business Review take center stage. Consistent with the diminution of research in behavioral course work, business students and practicing managers have no ready access to research. No communities of experts vet research regarding effective management practice (in contrast to the collaboratives that vet health care, criminal justice, and educational research [e. . , Campbell Collaboration, 2006 Rousseau 263 2005; Cochrane Collaboration, 2005]). Few MBAs encounter a peer-reviewed journal during their student days, let alone later. Consequently, it’s time to look critically at the role we educators play in limiting managers’ knowledge and use of research evidence. EVIDENCE-BASED MANAGEMENT AND OUR ROLE AS EDUCATORS M y biggest surprise as the Academy president turned out to be the most frequent topic of emails sent to me by Academy members: complaints about our journals from self-identified teaching-oriented members. A typical email goes like this: â€Å"I want to let you know what a waste the Academy journals are. There’s nothing in them at all pertinent to my teaching. The Academy should be for everybody, not just researchers. † My first response was to feel guilty (why hadn’t I seen this? ). But then I started to think more deeply about what this message implies. It says that educators aren’t finding ideas in journals that cause them to change what they teach. This might mean that current research is irrelevant to what’s being taught if educators focus on other topics. It could mean that the kind of information research articles provide about principles or practices is insufficient to determine what settings or circumstances their findings apply to. Or it could even mean that professors aren’t updating their course material when research findings differ from what they teach. These emails prompted me to wonder what exactly we are teaching. If we are teaching what research findings support, the content of a class has to change from time to time, with new evidence or better-specified theory. The concern that prompted this address stemmed from these emails: the role we educators play in the research-practice gap. How Professors Contribute to the ResearchPractice Gap Management education is itself often not evidence based, something Trank and Rynes implicitly recognize (2003) as the â€Å"dumbing down† of management education. They also persuasively demonstrated that, in place of evidence, behavioral courses in business schools focus on general skills (e. g. , team building, conflict man- agement) and current case examples. Through these stimulating, ostensibly relevant activities, we capture student interest, helping to deflect the criticism â€Å"How is this going to help me get my first job? † Business schools reinforce this by relying heavily on student ratings instead of assessing real learning (Rynes, Trank, Lawson, Ilies, 2003). Stimulating courses and active learning must be core features of training in evidence-based management, because these educational features are good pedagogy. The manner and content of our approaches to behavioral courses perpetuate the research-practice gap. Weak Research-Education Connection Pick up any popular management textbook and you will find that Frederick Herzberg’s work lives, but not Max Weber’s. Herzberg’s longdiscredited two-factor theory is typically included in the motivation section of management textbooks, despite the fact that it was discredited as an artifact of method bias over thirty years ago (House Wigdor, 1967). I asked a famous author of many best-selling textbooks why this was so. â€Å"Because professors like to teach Herzberg! † he answered. Students want updated business examples but can’t really tell if the research claims are valid. † This conversation suggests that professors are likely to teach what they learned in graduate school and not necessarily what current research supports. (Since many management professors are adjuncts valued for their practical experience but are from diverse backgrounds, even educators of comparable professional age may not share scient ific knowledge. ) I suspect that the persistence of Herzberg will continue until all the professors who learned the twofactor theory in graduate school (c. 960 –1970) retire. However, business schools may discourage inclusion of some well-substantiated topics because they don’t â€Å"sound† managerial. Paul Hirsch, the well-known sociologist, tells the story that when he flies business class, his seatmates ask what he does for a living. When he identifies himself as a business school professor, the next customary question is â€Å"What do you teach? † As a sociologist steeped in Weber and the century of research he spawned, Paul used to say, â€Å"Bureaucracy. † His seatmates frequently 264 Academy of Management Review April moved to the opposite wing at that point, until Paul wised up and found a more appealing response: â€Å"Management† (personal communication). Paul notes that managers still need to understand bureaucratic processes, so he hasn’t changed what he teaches— only what he calls it. I do this too: I no longer call socialization, training, and rules â€Å"substitutes for leadership† (Kerr Jermier, 1978), having found that the last thing a would-be manager wants to hear is how he or she can be replaced. The implications are clear. We frame, and perhaps even slant, what we teach to make it more palatable. Can it be we are on that slippery slope of avoiding teaching the most current social science findings relevant to managers and organizations, from downsizing to ethical decision making, because we fear our audience won’t like the implications? Failure to Manage Student Expectations Student expectations do drive course content, and current evidence indicates that there is a strong preference for turnkey, ready-to-use solutions to problems these students will face in their first jobs (Trank Rynes, 2003). What efforts do we make to manage these expectations? Unless students are persuaded to value sciencebased principles and their own role in turning these principles into sound organizational practice, it will be nigh impossible for faculty to resist the pressure to teach only today’s solutions. We might start by asking students who they think updates more effectively—practitioners trained in solutions or in principles. Effective practices in 2006 need not be the same as those in 2016, let alone 2036, when the majority of today’s business students will still be working. If we teach solutions to problems, such as how to obtain accurate information on a worker’s performance, students will acquire a tool—perhaps, for example, 360-degree feedback. Yet they won’t understand the underlying cognitive processes (whether feedback is task related or self-focused), social factors (the relationships between ratees and raters), and organizational mechanisms (used for developmental purposes or compensation decisions), which explain how, when, and why 360-degree feedback might work (or not). Imagine a doctor who knows to prescribe antibiotics to patients with bronchitis (a common recommendation in the 1980s before recognition of antibiotic overuse [Franklin, 2005]) but doesn’t understand the basic physiology that can lead other therapies to be comparable, more effective, or have fewer downsides. In the case of feedback, basic social science research is quite robust regarding how feedback impacts behavior (Kinicki Kreitner, 2003). Such knowledge is likely to generate broader utility and more durable solutions over time than training in any particular feedback tool. Lack of Models for Evidence-Based Management Case methods are de rigueur in business schools, helping to develop students’ analytic skills and familiarity with conditions they will face as practicing managers. The cases that I find most effective are those that have an individual manager as a protagonist (as opposed to those that describe an organization without developing one or two central personalities). A central character creates tension and evokes student identification with the events taking place. That character is typically a manager, who can be the change agent responsible for solving the problem or a catalyst for the dysfunctional behavior on which the cases focuses. Either way, students have a model—a positive or negative referent—from which they can learn how to behave (or not) in the future. As with most complex behaviors, from parenting to managing, people learn better when they have competent models (Bandura, 1971). Nonetheless, in twenty-five years of using cases in class, I cannot recall a single time in which a protagonist reflected on research evidence in the course of his or her decision making. No Expectation for Updating Evidence-Based Knowledge Throughout the Manager’s Career Upon graduation, few business students recognize that the knowledge they may have acquired can be surpassed over time by new findings. Although social science knowledge continues to expand, business school training does not prepare graduates to tap into it. Neither students nor managers have clear ideas of how to update their knowledge as new evidence emerges. 2006 Rousseau 265 There are few models of what an â€Å"expert† manager knows that a novice does not (see Hill, 1992, for an exception). In contrast, expert nurses are known to behave in very different ways from novices or less-than-expert midcareer nurses (Benner, 2001). They more rapidly size up a situation accurately and deal simultaneously with more co-occurring factors. In the professions, extensive postgraduate development exists to deepen expertise to produce a higher quality of practice. In contrast, business schools often imply that MBAs know all they need to know when they graduate. WHAT WE CAN DO TO CLOSE THE RESEARCH-PRACTICE GAP There is a lot we can do to close the researchpractice gap, both as individual educators and through working collectively. Manage Student Expectations We can manage student expectations with regard to the role of behavioral course work in the student’s broader career. I often introduce myself to full-time students by telling them that the easiest teaching I do has always been to executives, because these experienced managers come to the program convinced that human behavior and group processes are the most critical things they need to learn. At this point in their careers, our full-time students can only be novices whose expertise will grow with time and active effort on their part to understand the dynamics of behavior in organizations. Try asking students what the difference is between ten years of experience and one year of experience repeated ten times. Then let them imagine what ten years of experience in becoming more expert on behavior and group processes in organizations would look like (the types of job, people, settings, etc. ). Let them also imagine this for one year repeated ten times. Reflecting on these contrasting visions of their careers gives students an opportunity to raise their expectations of themselves as professional managers. There are various related means for managing expectations, including the creation of learning contracts based on the learner’s anticipated future roles, the behavioral knowledge and skills these roles will necessitate, and how that knowledge and skill will be acquired in the course (Goodman, 2005). It is easier to do this as part of a larger curriculum framed by anticipated future roles—the would-be-manager’s story (Schank, 2003). Important also is the next feature: providing models of evidence-based practice and evidence-based managers. Provide Models of Evidence-Based Practice We need to model evidence-based practice in our teaching and in the curriculum. Psychological research on learning offers a useful guide for course/curriculum practices (e. g. , Kersting, 2005). These include exposing the learner to models of competent evidence-based managers. I have been fortunate to encounter such a person. John Zanardelli is the CEO of Asbury Heights, the Methodist Home for the Aged, Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania. I first met John in an executive course on change management at Carnegie Mellon. He peppered me with questions about skills, information, and management tactics and wanted to know the research support behind my answers. Trained as an epidemiologist, John understands the scientific method and regularly looks for scientific corroboration of ideas he comes across in popular management books and from self-proclaimed experts. (Not surprisingly, the calls for evidence-based management largely have come from health care professionals and scholars [e. g. , DeAngelis, 2005; Kovner, Elton, Billings, 2005]. I knew that I was seeing an unusual manager, to say the least, when John, faced with the need to redesign his organization’s compensation practices, went off to the Carnegie Mellon library to read J. Stacy Adams’ equity theory! His organization’s vision statement is built around the concept â€Å"Where Loving Care and Science Come Together. † Managers such as John Zanardelli provide exemplars of the complex set of proficiencies required to be come a master management practitioner. Using them as examples reinforces the notion that the typical twenty-something student is a novice taking first steps along the path to becoming an expert (e. . , Benner, 2001; Hill, 1992). Active practice, self-reflection, and feedback are core learning principles (Schon, 1983). ? Developing student competence through active practice entails project work supported by ongoing reflection and debriefing regarding what constitutes valid learning and effective behavior. Similarly, our educational practices, 266 Academy of Management Review April courses, and curricula need that same reflection and evolution to effectively model evidencebased teaching. Promote Active Use of Evidence Students need to know that evidence is available, and they need to learn how to apply it. This necessitates a balance between teaching principles—that is, cause-effect knowledge—and practices—that is, solutions to organizational problems—though the mix is subject to dispute (Bennis O’Toole, 2005). In the spirit of making the course tell a story students can understand and participate in, a course conveying how a novice becomes an expert manager, like any good story, involves a succession of experiences, trials, failures, and successes (Schank, 2003). That story line is marked by the acquisition of distinctly different kinds of knowledge. There is declarative knowledge regarding principles or cause-effect relationships. Students can acquire principles in a variety of ways. They might address the appropriateness of group incentives versus individual incentives by locating evidence in a textbook, in journals, or online. Informing students of the â€Å"evidence† through lectures and books has its place, but there is value in identifying and deriving the principles themselves from the sources that will remain available to them throughout their careers. Students can learn a good deal from actively accessing evidence, using it to solve problems, reflecting—and trying again. Indeed, one of the most powerful forms of learning may be deriving principles from experience and reflection, as when students review cases and then derive the principles governing the underlying outcomes (Thompson, Gentner, Loewenstein, 2003). Thompson and her colleagues found that students learned better when they developed principles from cases than when they derived solutions, a finding consistent with basic psychological research on learning (Anderson, Fincham, Douglass, 1997). Actually using evidence takes a metaskill— the ability to turn evidence-based principles into solutions. A form of procedural knowledge, a solution-oriented approach to evidence use is comparable to product design, where end users and knowledgeable others familiar with the situation in which the product will be used jointly participate in specifying its features and functionality. Perhaps one of the first products of behavioral research in organizations was the revolving spindle restaurants use to convey customer orders to the kitchen. William Foote Whyte (1948) discovered that status differences between restaurent wait staff (typically female) and the (male) chef led to conflicts, because chefs disliked taking orders from women. The revolving order spindle to which waitresses could attach an order and spin it in the direction of the kitchen allowed customer orders to be conveyed impersonally, reducing workplace conflict and improving communication. Other researchbased products include decision supports such as checklists to guide a performance review or action plans to conduct meetings in ways that build consensus (e. . , Mohrman Mohrman, 1997), effectively translating the evidence into guides for action. Build Collaborations Among Managers, Researchers, and Educators As the saying goes, it takes a village to educate people. Changing how we educate managers in professional schools necessitates a collective attitude and behavior shift among educators, researchers, current managers, and recruiters. Pfeffer and Sutt on’s (in press) book calls attention to managerial heroes—people who use evidence to turn troubled companies around and/or to create sustained successes. As in the case of any change in collective attitudes (Gladwell, 2002), turning evidence-based management from a practice of a prophetic few into the mainstream requires champions— credible people like Pfeffer and Sutton’s managerial heroes—to advertise its value. Networks of individuals, excited by what evidence-based management makes possible, need to exist to disseminate it to others. One such collaborative network might parallel the Cochrane Collaboration in medicine and the Campbell Collaboration in criminal justice and education. Such a community has been advocated to promote evidenced-based management of health care organizations [Kovner et al. , 2005], suggesting that communities of experts might effectively be built around the management of specific kinds of organizations. ) Each represents a worldwide community of experts created to provide ready access to a particular 2006 Rousseau 267 body of evidence and the practices it supports. Community members, p ractitioners as well as researchers, collaborate in summarizing stateof-the-art knowledge on practices known to be important. Information is presented in sufficient detail regarding evidence and sources of outcome variation to reduce underuse, overuse, and misuse. While these communities are geographically distributed, they also sponsor face-to-face meetings to promote community building, commitment, and learning. Their major product is online access to information, designed for easy use. EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICE CAN BE MISUNDERSTOOD On a cautionary note, the label evidencebased practice can be misapplied. It can be used to characterize superficial practices (another company’s so-called best practice or the latest tool consultants are selling). Alternatively, it can be used as a club (the kind with a nail in it) to force compliance with a standard that may not be universally applicable. One downside of poor implementation of evidence-based medicine is the challenge the British health care system has faced owing to the use of the Cochrane Collaboration’s recommendations to regulate clinical care decisions, with enforcement of the recommendations regardless of their suitability for particular patients (Eysenbach Kummervold, 2005). Evidence-based practice is not onesize-fits-all; it’s the best current evidence coupled with informed expert judgment. OUR OWN ZEITGEIST PROMOTING EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICE OF MANAGEMENT Forty years elapsed between Semmelweis’s discoveries and the formulation of germ theory. One hundred years later, even basic infectionreducing practices such as hand washing still are not consistently performed in hospitals (Johns Hopkins Medicine, 2004). Considering the personal growth and social and organizational changes evidence-based practice requires, our own evidence-based management zeitgeist still has plenty of time to run. The first challenge is consciousness raising regarding the rich array of evidence that can improve effectiveness of managerial decisions. Educating opinion leaders, including prominent executives and educators, in the nature and value of evidence-based approaches builds champions who can get the word out. Updating management education with the latest research must be ongoing, demanding that educators and textbook writers apprise themselves of new research findings. The onus is on researchers to make generalizability clearer by providing better information in their reports regarding the context in which their findings were observed. All parties need to put greater emphasis on learning how to translate research findings into solutions. In the case of researchers, too much information that might affect the translations of findings to practice remains tacit, in the apparent minutiae research reports omit, known only to the researcher. Educators need to help students acquire the metaskills for designing solutions around the research principles they teach. Managers must learn how to experiment with possible evidence-based solutions and to adapt them to particular settings. We need knowledgesharing networks composed of educators, researchers, and manager/practitioners to help create and disseminate management-oriented research summaries and practices that best evidence supports. Building a culture in which managers learn to learn from evidence is a critical aspect of effective evidence use (Pfeffer Sutton, in press). Developing managerial competence historically has been viewed as a training issue, underestimating the investment in collective capabilities that is needed (Mohrman, Gibson, Mohrman, 2001). The promises of evidence-based management are manifold. It affords higher-quality managerial decisions that are better implemented, and it yields outcomes more in line with organizational goals. Those who use evidence (E and e) and learn to use it well have comparative advantage over their less competent counterparts. Managers, educators, and researchers can learn more systematically throughout their careers regarding principles that govern human behavior and organizational actions and the solutions that enhance contemporary organizational performance and member experience. A focus on evidence use may also ultimately help to blur the boundaries between researchers, educators, and managers, creating a lively community with many feedback loops where information is sys- 268 Academy of Management Review April tematically gathered, evaluated, disseminated, implemented, reevaluated, and shared. The promise of evidence-based management contrasts with the staying power or stickiness of the status quo. Like the QWERTY keyboard created for manual typewriters, but inefficient in the age of word processing, management-asusual survives, despite being out of step with contemporary needs. Failure to evolve toward evidence-based management, however, is costlier than mere inefficiency. It deprives organizations, their members, our students, and the general public of greater success and better managers. Please join with me in working to make evidence-based management a reality. REFERENCES Anderson, J. R. , Fincham, J. M. , Douglass, S. 1997. The role of examples and rules in the acquisition of a cognitive skill. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 23: 932–945. Bandura, A. 1971. Social learning theory. New York: General Learning Press. Barlow, D. H. 2004. Psychological treatments. American Psychologist, 59: 869 – 878. Barnard, C. I. 1938. Functions of the executive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Benner, P. 2001. From novice to expert: Excellence and power in clinical nursing practice (commemorative ed. ). Menlo Park, CA: Addison-Wesley. Bennis, W. G. , O’Toole, J. 2004. How business schools lost their way. Harvard Business Review, 82(3): 96 –104. 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The Dust-Cloud Hypothesis Essays - Planetary Science, Astrochemistry

The Dust-Cloud Hypothesis The universe contains huge clouds made up of very large amounts of dustand gas. About 6,000,000,000 (billion) years ago, one of these clouds began to condense. Gravitation--the pull that all objects in the universe have for one another--pulled the gas and dust particles together. As the dust cloud condensed, it began to spin. It spun faster and faster and flattened as it spun. It became shaped like a pancake that is thick at the centre and thin at the edges. The slowly spinning centre condensed to make the sun. But the outer parts of the pancake, or disk, were spinning too fast to condense in one piece. They broke up into smaller swirls, or eddies, which condensed separately to make the planets. The forming sun and planets were made up mostly of gas. They contained much more gas than dust. The earth was far bigger than it is now and probably weighed 500 times as much. The large body of dust and gas forming the sun collapsed rapidly to a much smaller size. The pressure that resulted from the collapse caused the sun to become very hot and to glow brightly. The newly born sun began to heat up the swirling eddy of gas and dust that was to become the earth. The gas expanded, and some of it flowed away into space. The dust that remained behind then collected together because of gravity. Although the shrinking earth generated a lot of heat, most of this heat was lost into space. Therefore, the original earth was most likely solid, not molten. This hypothesis was developed by a scientest, Harold C. Urey in 1952. It is also known as the Urey's hypothesis. He showed that methane, ammonia, and water are the stable forms of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen if an excess of hydrogen is present. Cosmic dust clouds, from which the earth formed, contained a great excess of hydrogen.

Produce an Interactive Multimedia Application Essay Example

Produce an Interactive Multimedia Application Essay Example Produce an Interactive Multimedia Application Essay Produce an Interactive Multimedia Application Essay The assignment will show the different technical issues involved in the development of the interactive multimedia application. This report will talk about the different media assets that have been used and how well they have integrated within the environment. This report will also assess the technical requirements of using media assets in the application. 3.0 Operation Instruction Introduction Page Open the Movie.exe from the CD drive, which will firstly display the following screen: This page displays an introduction to the assignment. There is also an option where the user can skip the introduction by clicking on the enter button straight away while the introduction page is playing a short tune will be played in the back ground and constantly looped the tune will play for 30seconds after the end of the animated text in the introduction. Figure 1 Introduction Page Main Menu Page After clicking on the enter button the user will reach the main menu. This page contains four animated blades spinning around as well as two graphical images (fig-2). A small tune at 30% of original volume will be played in the background and constantly looped while on the menu page. The spinning blades are the buttons on the page, the user can discover what these buttons are by hovering over the button with the mouse, the role over effect shows the user which page that button is going to lead them to (see fig-3). From the main menu page the user can visit the following pages: * Story page * Image page * Sound page * Video page (Figure-2 main page) (Figure-3 role over button) Story Page Once the user clicks onto the story button animated text appears on the screen describing the story of blade, the same tune will carry on playing in the background, until a graphic of blade appears from that point the sound will change. The user will then only have one option which is to go back to the main menu (fig-4) . (Figure-4 screen shot of the story pages) Image page The image page will give the user the option of viewing three images the image menu will contain the same back ground images as the menu page. All the spinning blades then fade into the back ground and are replaces with three animated symbols which keep changing shape (fig-5). When the user roles over the symbol with his curser he is able to tell which image the animated symbol represents (fig-6). Once the user chooses an image the animated symbol will remain frozen on the specified page so that the user knows which image they are viewing. Sound page The sound page has three sample sounds on it one is from the blade theme tune and the other sounds are sounds that have been used in the application, one is from the introduction menu and the other sound is the same music which is constantly being played in the background (Figure-7). The sound page is similar to the image page the user has to role over and click on to one of the three animated symbols to play the sound file, the role over effect will show which sound number they are about to listen to. Once clicked on the desired sound number, the animation will freeze so that the user knows that it is indeed the sound that they have chosen. Images have also been included in this section, once the sound file starts playing a different image will loads up onto the screen for each sound file. A volume control and a stop button have also been added onto each different sound file. The volume can be controlled by dragging the graphic from right to left(Figure-8). Video Page Two videos have been included in this application they both run in the quick time format. Once the user clicks onto the video option. The option to play both videos is give on the video screen (Figure-8). Two identical images cover the section where the videos will play. Then the user clicks to play the first video, the video plays and the second image remains the same and vice-versa (Figure-9). Interaction Diagram Interaction Diagram Story Interaction diagram images Interaction diagram Sound Interaction diagram Video The problems encountered I encountered many problems while doing this assignment. Even though I thoroughly enjoyed this module. In this module I have learned a great deal about Director and Flash. There were many things I discovered that were not allowable in director. For example I had a movies, which I really wanted to play in my Director movie, but was not able to do so, as Director did not accept the format of the videos (.ram format). I did not expect any coding in Director, however the Lingo was not difficult to pick up. Also when I wanted to import an AVI movie in the Director the Play and Stop buttons were playing fine, however the Fast Forward and Rewind buttons were playing rather slow, even when I tried to change the numbers in the scripting to play at different speeds. Doing further researched I found that the AVI files are highly compressed and as a result of this they slow down once they are imported into Director. I then reverted back to my original idea of using quick time videos. I have tried to apply number of different functions to the Director movie, purely because I wanted some form of experience of creating a same effect, but in a different format. For example by rolling a cursor over the spinning blades in the main menu, the role over changes to, story, images, sound and Video. Images Throughout all of this assignment I have used jpeg images. The reason for this that the image size can be kept small and you can still retain the same image quality. The following is a comparison of two images one is a jpeg and the outer is a .. Animation One of the problems that I had when designing my menu page was that I wanted the animation to move to the top right had corner when clicked on. I had great difficulty in achieving this at first as I thought that I would need to do it in flash and I may have to redo all my buttons. I discovered that within director I could get an image or graphic to move towards a sprite. I did this by creating a small transparent spot and putting it onto sprite 7. I then made which ever button was clicked on to move towards this spot. Sound With regards to sound I had difficulty locating the sound track from the BLADE movie. Once I had managed to find the soundtrack of the internet. The sound file was very large. I had to take large portions of the sound track out so I was left with the sound that I wanted. I also realised that if I converted the sound into mp3, the sound file was substantially smaller yet still the same quality. So there for I have used the mp3 format for sound through out the application. Video I have included two videos in this application both videos are in the quick time format, I have kept them in quick time because this is the format, that I feel works best and the video size is smaller. The main major problem that I have encountered was after the creation of the application. As I have sound playing through out the application, the projector file was starting to freeze up especially when you clicked onto the enter page at the beginning of the application and when ever you clicked onto the sound button or video buttons. I rectified the problem by streaming. Time Management Throughout this assignment I spend a lot of time on getting all of my animations to work correctly, all the animations where done in flash. It was only after I had imported them into director, did I discover that some of the animations could have easily been done in director and in half the time taken in flash. For example the spinning blades that are on the menu screen where done in flash, but these could have easily been done in director by using the library pallet and by choosing the rotate Continuously button as shown in figureX Figure X the video page; The fire on the text page; The rotating world on the main menu; The rotating ball on the sound page and the cinema. Technology Analysis Multimedia Asset Wave file A Wave file is an audio file format, created by Microsoft, that has become a standard PC audio file format for everything from system and game sounds to CD-quality audio. A Wave file is identified by a file name extension of WAV (.wav). Used primarily in PCs, the Wave file format has been accepted as a viable interchange medium for other computer platforms, such as Macintosh. This allows content developers to freely move audio files between platforms for processing. For example in addition to the uncompressed raw audio data, the Wave file formats stores information about the files, number of tracks, sample rate, and bit depth. Graphics Interchange Format A GIF (the original and preferred pronunciation is DJIF) is one of the two most common file formats for graphic images on the World Wide Web. The other is the JPEG. On the Web and elsewhere on the Internet, the GIF has become a standard form of image. Technically, a GIF uses the 2D-raster (sequence of horizontal lines that are scanned rapidly with an electron beam from left to right and top to bottom) data type. An animated GIF is a graphic image on a Web page that moves for example, a twirling icon or a banner with a hand that waves or letters that magically get larger. In particular, an animated GIF is a file in the Graphics Interchange Format specified as GIF89a that contains within the single file a set of images that are presented in a specified order. An animated GIF can loop endlessly (and it appears as though your document never finishes arriving) or it can present one or a few sequences and then stop the animation. JPEG A JPEG (pronounced JAY-peg) is a graphic image created by choosing from a range of Compression (reduction in size of data) qualities. When you create a JPEG or convert an image from another format to a JPEG, you are asked to specify the quality of image you want. Since the highest quality results in the largest file, you can make a trade-off between image quality and file size. Together with the GIF file formats, the JPEG is one of the image file formats supported on the World Wide Web, usually with the file suffix of .jpg. You can create a progressive JPEG that is similar to an interlaced GIF. Assets used Introduction Flash intro Bit map A bit map (often spelled bitmap) defines a display space and the colour for each pixel or bit in the display space. A GIF and JPEG are examples of graphic image file types that contain bit maps. A bit map does not need to contain a bit of colour-coded information for each pixel on every row. It only needs to contain information indicating a new colour as the display scans along a row. Thus, an image with much solid colour will tend to require a small bit map. Because a bit map uses a fixed or roaster graphics method of specifying an image, the image cannot be immediately re-scaled by a user without losing definition.