Monday, September 30, 2019
Majoring in Philosophy Essay
An event was organized in a school for students who were going to attend college soon. Their main aim was to emphasize Major in philosophy. Many experts explained importance of philosophy. There are numerous reasons for choosing this course. In philosophy major, students are taught about how to interpret, imagine, converse, and write well. Philosophy answers many human quires which grouped into three traditional categories. These are axiology: the theory of value, Epistemology: the theory of knowledge, Metaphysics: basic kinds of things exist. Students can successfully complete philosophy if they posses good level of reading comprehension, transparency of thought, and good communication skill. Principles of philosophy apply to everyday life therefore courses are designed to use thoughts and theories from the history of philosophy to concentrate on real world issues in area of education, business, law, public policy, and society. The purposes of course in philosophy Major in applied ethics are particularly pertinent for students who are interested in the role played by ethical values in a diversity of professional settings. Philosophy courses are important because philosophical concepts, ideology, and process of inquiry are related in several fields. Whatever students learn in philosophy can be applied in practically all aspects of life. This course allows candidates to know when to use a liberal sprinkling of words and when to use imagination power. Philosophy is good area of study that provides a high degree of personal accomplishment. Students will also have opportunities to critically test the potential and the influence of contemporary theoretical and philosophical schools of thought in normal life. In studying profoundly about great philosophers, students can gain knowledge to think thoroughly about every aspect of human life. Philosophy major allows students to observe relations between very different fields of thought such as science, religion, and ethics. This course widens skills in writing, in argumentation, and in the communication of complex ideas. Philosophy course equip students to develop inherent personal value. They can experience expansion of consciousness, self-discovery, self-renewal, and a more clear direction in life. In short, philosophy is learning for full life span. For doing philosophy major, candidate must be well versed in a broad education and have good credits which must be upper division. Philosophy majors have the maximum average score of any major on the verbal reasoning, analytic writing section and on the quantitative reasoning section. The most clear career path for students majoring in philosophy is to complete graduation in philosophy and involve in teaching in reputed college or university. Many philosophy graduates choose non-academic profession. Philosophy major courses prepare students for vocations requiring a liberal arts education, including law, government, communication, management, the ministry, teaching, or even business administration. To summarize, event attended in school encourages students to join Philosophy Major to enhance career and get steep success. It was communicated that philosophy is one of the most flexible majors in the humanities. It intersects with economics, politics, mathematics, psychology and history. Students studying philosophy will have a good understanding of about themselves and the world. In the event, professionals drew attention of students by stating important facts of philosophy. The reason of studying this course is that philosophy makes the mind healthy and develops numerous skills to sharpen human mind. If a person wants to develop a variety of skills that prepare him for a wide variety of intellectual challenges, he must be serious in joining a philosophy major.
Sunday, September 29, 2019
Pierre Bourdieu and Social Construction of Reality Essay
Introduction            Berger and Luckmann in their book, Social Construction of Reality did not only seriously dealt with several sociological themes, they also attempted to found a new idea of the ‘sociology of knowledge’. They provided an introduction to Schutz and social phenomenology and established a theoretical background for later works, especially in the fields of sociology of religion and industrialization. However, the most daring presentation of the authors in this book was the consolidation of the two major theoretical postures in the study of the man and his society: objectivism and subjectivism to arrive at a new sociology of knowledge.            The social construction of reality entails the first major effort at detailing the interrelation and dynamic relationship between man and his society, a field hitherto polarized by the antithetical stances of the objectivist and subjectivist schools of thought. While on the one hand, objectivism holds that individual’s perception of reality is defined by the forces of the society imposed upon the individual, notwithstanding his consciousness or will, in this respect, social facts are seen as things that determine the conduct and representations of individuals; in contrast, subjectivism, in line with Max Weber reasoning, holds that â€Å"the object of cognition is the subjective meaning complex of action†(quoted in Berger & Luckmann, 1966). Berger and Luckmann posited that both stances should not be seen as contradictory or mutually exclusive. They explain that both understandings come into play in the construction of social reality. Their position is aptly conveyed in the statement ‘Society is a human product. Society is an objective reality. Man is a social product.’            Although, Berger and Luckmann are renowned for their work in this field, Pierre Bourdieu can be regarded as the most prolific author on the subject of social reality. His work on the understanding of social reality is wide, diverse and at the same time convergent. The purpose of this paper is to examine Berger and Luckmann’s ‘social construction of reality’ from a Bourdieu perspective, to determine if Bourdieu strengthens and expands Berger and Luckmann’s theory of social reality or addresses the topic from a different theoretical position.            Berger and Luckmann on Social Construction of Reality            For Berger and Luckmann, albeit man and his society both take the position of product and producer interchangeably, the relationship between the two is not causal, mechanistic or unidirectional, it is, according to them, dialectic. Dialectic, in the sense that social reality is defined by the unending relationship between man and his society. In explanating this theory, the author took recourse to the conceptual arsenals of habitualisation, Externalisation, typification, Objectivation, institutionalisation, and legitimation. These concepts effectively describe how society, which was the product of man, became the producer of man. The basic understanding that runs through these concepts is that the society is the product or ongoing product of man, however, through internalisation of the norms of the produced society, as it is passed from one generation to the other, actions and perceptions of reality become limited and restrained by these societal norms, until they become established as facts that defines realities. The next question that will seek our attention is how does man produces the society and in turn, man becomes the product of the society.            From Berger and Luckmann viewpoint, habitualisation is the first step in the creation of the society. They assert that actions frequently repeated become cast into a pattern. That is, as individuals act, they organise perceptions and actions into a coherent pattern that can be reproduced with minimal efforts, thus such pattern of actions have been habitualised. Albeit, habitualised actions still retain their individual meanings and character, they are lost over time, as the meanings become embedded in the individual’s general stock of knowledge and thus taken for granted in present and future projects. The authors suggest that habitualisation holds positive advantages for an individual. For one, it frees the individual from the burden of choice, for while there might be a hundred ways of carrying out a project, habitualisation narrows these down to one and thus providing a background in which human activities may be carried out with minimal decision making. Furthermore, the meanings embedded meanings of habitualised activities makes it unnecessary for every situation to be defined individually, since complex and diverse situations can be subsumed under habitualised predefinitions, such that activities can be anticipated and alternatives assigned standard weights.            Habitualisation precedes and gives birth to institutionalisation. According to Berger and Luckmann, â€Å"Institutionalisation occurs whenever there is a reciprocal typification of habitualised actions by types of actors†, though what should be stressed is the â€Å"reciprocity of institutional typifications and the typicality of not only the actions but also the actors in institutions.†Furthering this argument, they suggest that typification of habitualised actions that build up institutions are always shared habitualisations that are available to the members of a particular social group, though not only individual actions, but also the actors are typified in such institutions.            However, institunalisation is effected through history. The authors contend that the reciprocal typification actions that constitute institutions are built up in the course of a shared history. They stress that â€Å"They cannot be created instantaneously. Institutions always have a history, of which they are the products. It is impossible to understand an institution adequately without an understanding of the historical process in which it was produced†(Berger and Luckmann, 1966 p.54). Moreover, it was emphasised that institutions generally manifest in collectivities with considerable number of people and by their very existence, control and define human conducts by setting up predefined patterns of conducts, which channels individual actions in a particular direction, as against the numerous directions that is possible theoretically. To adequately conceptualise how society is created through habitualisation and institunalisation and how these come to define human actions and perceptions, the authors created an imaginary situation of a society created by the interaction between two individuals A and B thus: â€Å"[If] A and B alone are responsible for having constructed this world. A and B remain capable of changing or abolishing it. What is more, since they themselves have shaped this world in the course of a shared biography which they can remember, the world thus shaped appears fully transparent to them. They understand the world that they themselves have made. All this changes in the process of transmission to the new generation. The objectivity of the institutional world â€Å"thickens†and â€Å"hardens,†not only for the children, but (by a mirror effect) for the parents as well. The â€Å"There we go again†now becomes â€Å"This is how these things are done.†A world so regarded attains a firmness in consciousness; it becomes real in an ever more massive way and it can no longer be changed so readily. For the children, especially in the early phase of their socialization into it, it becomes the world. For the parents, it loses its playful quality and becomes â€Å"serious.†For the children, the parentally transmitted world is not fully transparent. Since they had no part in shaping it, it confronts them as a given reality that, like nature, is opaque in places at least†(Berger and Luckmann, 1966 p.59)            In the example above, the child becomes incapable of distinguishing between the objectivity of the natural world and the objectivity of ‘social formations’. Using the language as an example, a thing is what it is called; the child is incapable of comprehension beyond this level. It is argued that it is only at this stage that we can now speak of a social world, in a complete sense. This is the period when individuals now come to see societal realities like the facts of the natural world, and it is in this manner that social formations transmitted from one generation to the other.            Pierre Bourdieu on Social Reality            Bourdieu, undeniably offered a more extensive treatise on social knowledge and social realities, however, the underlying ideology that unifies the work of Berger and Luckmann, and Bourdieu is that bought works seek to reconcile the differences and so doing merge the subjective and objective conceptions in sociology. Both works suggest that the differences and antimony between the â€Å"structuralist†view of the society that seeks out â€Å"invisible relational patterns operating†behind the control of individuals and the â€Å"constructivist†viewpoint â€Å"that probes the commonsense perceptions and actions of the individual†(Wacquant, 2006 p.6) are artificial and unnecessary, and thus sought to reconcile both approaches to studying the society.            In line with Berger and Luckmann contention, Bourdieu too believes that the society is the product of man’s habituated actions and that the externalisations of these habituations reinforce the objectivity of societal realities. However, Bourdieu deploys more extensive conceptual models to explain his contention, thus, he did not only strengthened Berger and Luckmann’s understandings of social knowledge, he further expands the reach of their theory. The conceptual arsenals deployed by Bourdieu in explaining social knowledge and social reality include the notions of habitus, capital, field, and doxa. These are intertwined and interrelated in a dynamic fashion, so that each fully explains social knowledge only in relation with the others. Thus a brief examination of these concepts is pertinent in highlighting Bourdieu stance on social knowledge.            Habitus, though considered an old philosophical notion originating in the thoughts of Aristotle, was retrieved, expanded and popularised by Bourdieu in the 1960s. The term is used to describe the externalisation of internality and the internalisation of externality i.e. it is a system of durable and transposable ‘dispositions’ through which an individual judges, perceives and acts in the social world (Wacquant, 2006, 2002). The author contends that These unconscious schemata are acquired through lasting exposure to particular social conditions and conditionings, via the internalization of external constraints and possibilities. This means that they are shared by people subjected to similar experiences even as each person has a unique individual variant of the common matrix (this is why individuals of like nationality, class, gender, etc., spontaneously feel â€Å"at home†with one another). It implies also that these systems of dispositions are malleable, since they inscribe into the body the evolving influence of the social milieu, but within the limits set by primary (or earlier) experiences, since it is habitus itself which at every moment filters such influence (Wacquant, 2006 p.7)            From the above, it is evident that while societal realities defines the actions and perceptions of individuals, this occurs within the cognitive realm of the individual, to some extent, as the habitus tend to act as a mediator between past experiences and present situations, a reason why Bourdieu refers to it as structured, by the patterned social forces that produced it in the first place, and structuring, since it defines and gives coherence to an individual’s activities across the different segments of living (Bourdieu, 1977). This fact was adequately illustrated in the study of the peasant and his body, a study Bourdieu carried out in his childhood village of Bà ©arn (Bourdieu, 2004).            Since this system of disposition acquired by individual over time and space influences perception, judgement and action, it also infers that the system of disposition acquired by an individual will depend on his position in the society. Bourdieu called this ‘capital’. He differentiated between economic capital subsuming material and financial assets; cultural capital comprising scarce symbolic goods, skills and titles; and social capital consisting of resources accrued by an individual by virtue of membership of a group. The fourth branch of capital not commonly mentioned is the symbolic capital, which is slightly different from the three mentioned above. Symbolic capital is taken to represent capital that is available to an individual on basis on honor, prestige and recognition. It is basically derived from culturally classificatory modes, a war hero, for instance, is highly regarded. However, while the other three species of capital mentioned earlier do have symbolic values, symbolic capital cannot be converted to other forms of capital. For Bourdieu, the position of any individual or institution and the disposition gathered is defined by the overall volume of capital and the composition of the capital possessed.            While habitus and capital determines individual’s social knowledge, Bourdieu extends this concept further with the notion of fields. This is based on the contention that the â€Å"various spheres of life, art, science, religion, the economy, the law, politics, etc., tend to form distinct microcosms endowed with their own rules, regularities, and forms of authority†(Wacquant, 2006 p.8) making up the various ‘fields’. Field is described as ‘a structured space of positions that imposes its specific determinations upon all those who enter it’. It infers, therefore, that a field structures action and perception within from without, just as habitus defines practice from within. The field channels and directs individual actions by providing an array of options and alternatives with the associated costs and benefits, but the individual still acts within the scope of his habitus. Thus, â€Å"It takes the meeting of disposition and position, the correspondence (or disjuncture) between mental structures and social structures, to generate practice†(Bourdieu, 1989, quoted in Wacquant, 2006 p.8).            It is thus clear that both Burger and Luckman, and Bourdieu adequately stressed the fact that social reality is neither the sole product of structural dictates of the society nor that of intentional pursuit of goals as canvassed in objectivism and subjectivism, but the product of the dialectical relationship of both. Again, although the work of Bourdieu extends this argument further, as can be seen in his work on class, tastes and classification (Bourdieu,1984), the whole argument still boils down to the fact that the interrelationship of structures and cognition influence man’s social knowledge, perception of objective reality and practice. Both arguments can be seen to reason along the same line, with that of Bourdieu strengthening and expanding the reach of that of Burger and Luckman.            This similarity between these two approaches to social knowledge is explicitly presented in habitualization of Burger and Luckman and habitus of Bourdieu. In the former, the authors contend that as humans act, their actions and perceptions are organized into coherent patterns. For Burger and Luckman, it is through this habitualization that individuals construct social meanings, over time. Similar meanings can be deduced from Bourdieu’s habitus, which also contend that by exposure to certain societal conditions and conditioning, individuals begin to create an internal inventory of meanings that later serve as the basis of practice. Such similarities can also be extended to include Bourdieu’s concept of ‘field’ which can be likened to ‘institutions’ conceived by Burger and Luckman. Both concepts could easily be converged to mean that, while human practice is influenced internally by organized patterns of actions or perceptions, this influence is moulded by the factors prevalent in the immediate society of the individual.            Unfortunately, similarities between both authors cannot be extended further. Burger and Luckman’s idea tend to infer that structures and actions influence action in sequence that is, individual actions are institunalized, producing the society, and henceforth, the societal structure totally influences practice. In contrast, Bourdieu deploys an arsenal of conceptual tools in explaining the relationship between structure and action. He uses capital to indicate how the social position of individual influences practice, he also extends the concept of habitus (action) and field (structure) further than the shallow meanings ascribed to these by Burger and Luckman. Unlike the later, Bourdieu could be said to effectively bridge the divide between subjectivism and objectivism, when he indicated that neither habitus nor field is capable of unilaterally determining social action, at any particular time. He argued that it takes the meeting of habitus and capital (social position), and the correspondence (or disjuncture) between mental structures and social structures to generate social action. What this means is that to explain any social event or pattern, one must inseparably dissect both the social constitution of the individual and the makeup of the particular social structure within which he operates as well as the particular conditions under which they come to encounter and impinge upon each other (Bourdieu 1989).            One can also find another evidence of Bourdieu going deeper and diverse than Burger and Luckman, in his ‘An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology’ (1992) where Bourdieu insisted that sociologist must at all times be present to the effects that their own internalized structures and meanings can have on their studies. He argued that this could distort or prejudice their objectivity (Bourdieu, 1992). Here again, it becomes apparent that Bourdieu delves deeper and provides a better understanding of social knowledge than did Burger and Luckman, although this does not take away from the fact that both authors seek to achieve the same thing: the bridging of the antimony between the subjective and objective views, with the primary differences lying in the depth and substance of each authors’ views. References Bourdieu, Pierre (2004). The Peasant and His Body. Ethnography, 5(4): 579–599. â€â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€. (1990). Language and Symbolic Power. Edited and with an introduction by John         Thompson. â€â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€. (1989). Social Space and Symbolic Power. Sociological Theory 7-1 (June): 18- 26 â€â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge,   MA: Harvard University Press. â€â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University     Press. Bourdieu, Pierre and Loic Wacquant (1992). An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology.        Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Berger, L. Peter and Thomas Luckmann (1966) The Social Construction of Reality: A  Treatise its the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books,          pp. 51-55, 59-61. Wacquant, Loà ¯c (2006).Pierre Bourdieu. In Rob Stones (ed.). Key Contemporary           Thinkers. London and New York: Macmillan. â€â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€. (2002). The Sociological Life of Pierre Bourdieu. International Sociology, 17(4):         549–556.
Saturday, September 28, 2019
Strangers on a train
Big Ben had just struck midnight when Helen and her friends joyfully burst through the doors of the Westminster Academy. ‘What an amazing concert', she cried. ‘We should definitely go and watch another one soon!' replied Tom. ‘Guys, I think we should just forget about the concert for one split second and actually think about our journey home at such a ridiculous hour!' said Sarah. ‘True, look I'll go with you Helen and Jim, you go with Sarah' said Tom. As the couple waited anxiously for the last train to approach, they silently reminisced over what had really been a well and truly, unforgettable night. After a long wait of what felt like an hour, the last train clumsily slid along the rail tracks and hesitantly pulled up to a halt at Westminster station. Its rickety doors, lethargically slid open and wickedly beckoned the two friends into its carriage of mystery. As Helen looked directly in front of her to look through the pane of glass on the other side of the carriage, she caught a glimpse of a strange looking girl sitting in between two puny but psychotic looking boys. Helen always felt uncomfortable making any form of eye contact with strangers as she had heard of various incidents concerning people in the same situation as her. However, it was as if some strong wave of curiosity was encouraging her face to keep on studying these characters and as she did this, she noticed the vibrant blue veins ridged into the girl's skin and the trembling hands of the boys. All through this, the girl stayed unmoving. ‘Tom look over to the other side but try to make it as discreet as possible', Helen said to her friend. ‘You mean that dodgy looking bunch opposite us yeah?' he replied. ‘Yeah, they're really starting to creep me out; please do something!' ‘Ok,right I've got a plan.' he said, ‘Now, Helen listen to me very carefully, when I get off at my stop, come with me and pretend that it's also your stop and just try and cleverly change carriages ok?' When the train ground to a halt at Paddington station, the two got off and indeed executed the plan of action. ‘Are you sure you're going to be alright Helen?' Tom worriedly gasped, ‘you can always come back to mine and then I'll drive you back home instead.' ‘Oh come on Tom, when exactly are you going to stop treating me like a baby and realize that I'm a 25 year old grown woman' she proclaimed, ‘Look, I think I can deal with a couple of freaks who have nothing better to do than put fear into the hearts of innocent people!' However, as she settled into her new seat, three familiar faces could be made out from the far seats of the carriage and by now it was too late as the sliding doors banged shut. ‘Just keep calm', she thought but in reality she was extremely hysterical. As she subtly tried to gaze over to the far side of the carriage, the boys suddenly began to shift uncomfortably in their seats and almost seemed nervous. The boys with their eyes bloodshot and their faces flushed gave the impression that they were under the influence of drugs, alcohol or perhaps both. The boy on the right of the girl had on a crumpled white t-shirt that was stained with heavy blotches of brown. A bruise lay on his left eye and his lip had a small cut in it. He seemed the more nervous of the two and was literally trembling. However, the boy on the left of the girl seemed to be quite serene and composed in comparison to his companion who was quite the opposite. He had a severe expression and wore a thick jacket of fur. He had a heavy gash on his right arm and his nose was bleeding. Still. The girl stayed still, unmoving as a statue in a garden. Her face almost death like and as pale as a white sheet of paper. Her bright, vast, ginger bob of curls heavily contrasted with this strange and ghostly complexion. Her eyes, piercing like the rays of a bright sun. Her jaw, fully agape as though it were an opening into a mysterious cavern. Her shirt was slashed across the torso and her underwear lay exposed due to this. Great slashes lay from her upper arm right down to her wrist. The boys had entwined their arms around that of the girl's and seemed to be making a great effort to sustain her in a sedentary position. At this moment in time, Helen decided to turn her face away from this ghastly, frightening sight towards the other side of the carriage. She really didn't understand why these strange beings that she was trying to get away from had followed her into the new carriage. However, she then spotted a man that looked officious but overpowering at the same time moving over towards the seat next to her. By now Helen was really starting to lose her calm and collected aura.Suddenly,he started mumbling something but Helen felt that this was just another unfamiliar being that was just trying to get her attention. Nevertheless, he persisted and finally got through to Helen by writing something on the newspaper he was reading and showed it to Helen. ‘GET OFF AT THE NEXT STOP!' it read, ‘YOU'RE IN SERIOUS DANGER-THAT GIRL YOU SEE IS DEAD-THIS IS NO JOKE-I AM A DOCTOR AND I KNOW THIS FOR SURE, SO HELP YOURSELF WHILE THERE'S STILL TIME!!' By this time, Helen was well and truly in a hysterical state and it was almost as if her heart was about to leap out of her body. However she still managed to keep a cool cover as the train approached Hammersmith station. She then got up, stood, walked through the sliding doors and made her final exit off the train. As she did all these actions, she made sure that she acted as if she were the most innocent and unsuspecting creature in the whole world. When the train moved slowly away, she first of all turned around to see whether she could spot the man that saved her and give her his thanks, but the station lay empty. Lifeless. Dead. Before she even had time to think her legs had turned into that of a professional sprinter and carried her out of the station at the speed of lightning. Never again would she be so reckless and try to prove herself tough, by encountering such a life threatening ordeal at such a perilous hour.
Friday, September 27, 2019
Business performance Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words
Business performance - Essay Example An organization showing high performance succeeds in creating competitive advantage for the company and makes the owner and other interested body happy by generating value for them. In today’s competitive environment it is not important which professional discipline utilises the obtained information. The thing which is important is the mutual interaction between the information obtained from financial accounting, human resource management, marketing and logistics. Kral (2010) developed the thought of interdisciplinary approach. All these disciplines have their own models, conceptions and terminology to conduct the performance evaluation of the organization. In order to control and mange the operations of an organization effectively, performance management is most crucial tool used by the mangers. Performance management is needed to conduct over various functional disciplines. Interdisciplinary approach is the most appropriate technique to explore the performance of the busines s as a coherent whole (Halir, 2012). This study focuses on conducting a performance evaluation on Tesco by following the interdisciplinary approach. Tesco is one of the leading retailers in the world with more than 530000 colleagues (Tesco PLC. 2013a). They conduct their business both through stores and online services. Every week they serve millions of customers. In this study the performance will be evaluated on the basis of finance, its operations and service provided to the customers and corporate governance. For every organization financial performance plays an important role since it helps in generation of value. Moreover, since Tesco is a retailer and directly deals with customer so customer satisfaction and corporate governance also becomes important. Development Operational Performance The business of Tesco follows a multi channel approach by leveraging the online expertise and existing network of stores so that the shopping trip of the customers are made easier. Tesco clai ms to be the first retailer who in 1997 initiated grocery home shopping and has grown to be the most profitable and largest online grocery retailer in the world, with sales of over ?2 billion. In order to fulfil the high demands of the customers the in-store picking model is balanced by few specialised dotcom stores. The â€Å"Click and Collect service†is the most popular and important part of the multichannel offering done by Tesco, which allows the customers to shop whenever they desire and wherever they are. For general merchandise the organization has 1500 Click & Collect service points and more than 150 grocery drives in UK (Tesco PLC, 2013a). â€Å"Finest, Everyday Value, Chokablok and Technika†(Tesco PLC, 2013a) are some of their own-label range that has gained substantial importance in strategic area. Everyday Value and Finest are the largest food brands, each of which contributes about ?1 billion to the sales of UK in each year (Tesco PLC, 2013a). Innovation takes a very important place in developing strategies to satisfy the customers. They are multichannel retailers and not just grocery stores. They deals in variety of services starting from Tesco mobile to Tesco bank to many more services like video on demand. The company has further plans of implementing larger formats inside the store so that the store becomes appealing to the customers and they get attracted to it. But this drive for innovation has lead to criticism against Tesco over how they store the email address and passwords of the customers. The software architect Troy Hunt has pointed out flaws in the website of Tesco regarding usage of poor quality
Thursday, September 26, 2019
Role and Impact of Strategic Thinking for the Competitive Options of Assignment
Role and Impact of Strategic Thinking for the Competitive Options of Anglo American Mining Company - Assignment Example The Ansoff Matrix. (Electronic print) Available at: (Accessed 19th June 2012) 24 List of Figures and Tables Figure 1: A graph representing Profit in Million Dollar against Business Unit in 2010...........7 Figure 2: The Ansoff matrix-business†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.10 Figure 3: Representation of porter’s diamond†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.12 Table 1: The 2010 profit distribution in various business units of the company†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦...6 Role and Impact of Strategic Thinking for the Competitive Options of Anglo American Mining Company Section A Anglo American is one of the globally dominant mining companies. It is an international mining company with operations stretching from Europe through Africa to North and South America among other n ations. It has an employee pool of approximately 100,000. Its portfolio is normally focused on mining and exploitation of natural resources. Some of these natural resources include platinum, diamonds, metallurgical coal and nickel (Jack, 2003, p.55; Runge, 2003). According to BBC business news (2012), the Anglo American management predicts a robust improvement in demand for its commodities as exemplified by 2011 revenues, which showed operating profits increased by 14% to record $11.1bn (?7bn). According to the company director, Rene Medori, the company is expanding iron ore business in West Africa and Brazil (BBC, 2011). This paper discusses business strategies that enables the company attain competitive advantage over its competitors. Strategic Setting A strategy defines short to long-term plan by which the objectives and aims of an organization are achieved. The company has a range of strategic programs formulated to improve performance of the company as well as minimizing the im pact of its operations on the environment. The company also targets to uplifting the lifestyle of the resident communities in those regions where it operates (Campbell, 2007). They develop programs that support innovation and application of new technology. The company has also invested in use of alternative energy such as wind power that accounts for 20% of the company’s energy supply. This prevents shortages or depletion of energy sources like organic fuels. Wind power is more reliable and does not pollute the environment. Values The company culture is determined by value statement. Anglo-American company has six strategic values that guide its business operations, these are; 1. Safety for the employees and environmental welfare: This value postulates that the company cannot maintain enhanced productivity for a longer time without ensuring them of their safety such as protective clothing and insurance schemes. Measures applied in catering for environmental welfare include re habilitation of mines and reduction of sound pollution especially in Africa that provides 76% of the company’s workforce. 2. Accountability; Activities such as corruption or any measure that may result into enticing any parties to get favors. This ensures that the all employees are treated equally
Paintings and allusions in English Patients Essay
Paintings and allusions in English Patients - Essay Example The essay "Paintings and allusions in English Patients" explores The English Patient, a recipient of the Man Booker Prize and the Governor General’s Award, written by a Sri Lankan-Canadian novelist, Michael Ondaatji. The reference comes to light when Kip surveys the chapel with his rifle telescope, â€Å"reached the great face and was stilled by it, the face like a spear, wise, unforgiving. (77)†. When Kip asks a fellow soldier about the true identity of the face, he learns that it is indeed the â€Å"great face†of Isaiah. The painting is a clear depicting of the catastrophic prophecies of Isaiah with regards to the Satanic bombing of Japan. The novel thus challenges the apocalypse (the nuclear bombing) by highlighting a community oriented eschatological society (through the means of Kip). The Queen of Sheeba, also known as â€Å"queen of the south†in the Hebrew bible, is in reality from a South African origin, which apart from other things, talks of kin g Solomon. In the book, The English Patient, her chastity is symbolized by the statue of Virgin Mary. In the passage from Isaiah 60:0; â€Å"And they from Sheeba shall come; they shall bring forth gold and incense; and they shall show forth the praises of the lord.†This is a clear indication that Sheeba is indeed a provider of wealth and a friendly giver. Out here, the chastity of Kip was given a tight joust when catastrophe struck on Japan in the form of an atomic bomb. David and Goliath is a painting by Master Caravaggio, who happened to be an Italian Baroque master.
Wednesday, September 25, 2019
Japan U.S. relation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words
Japan U.S. relation - Essay Example In 1639, the shogunate commenced the isolationist sakoku ("closed country") policy spanning two and a half centuries of feeble political unity known as the Edo period. (Frost, 25-7) Late in the nineteenth century, abundance of the prerogative and the resignation of the shogunate led to the founding of a centralized state integrated under the name of the Emperor. Influenced by Western political, judicial and military institutions, the Cabinet prepared the Privy Council, brought in the Meiji Constitution, and assembled the Imperial Diet. This transformed the Empire of Japan into an industrialized world power that got into a number of military conflicts to increase the empire's sphere of authority. Today, Japan is a constitutional monarchy, with the powers of the Emperor being very limited. Seen as a ceremonial figurehead, the constitution defines him as "the symbol of the state and of the unity of the people". (NDL, 1) Power is chiefly vested in the Prime Minister of Japan and other elected members of the Diet, while Japanese people are the root of the sovereignty. The relationships between U.S and Japan date back to the 1850's when Commodore Matthew Perry with his "Black Ships" sailed to Japan and signed the Convention of Kanagawa in order to initiate trade between Japan and U.S. This ended the sakoku policy of Japan and 300 year seclusion from the outside world. A few years later, the first Japanese embassy to the United States ever, was sent to ratify the new Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation among the two regimes. Subsequent to the Meiji Restoration of 1867, the United States aided Japan in its modernization of its economy and of its military. This resulted in the new constitution of Japan being partly influenced by the United States Constitution. (Hay, 1) Diplomatic relations ended with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, drawing the United States into World War II. The war ended after the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. After the end of the Second World War, Japan was taken under control by the Allied Powers, led by the United States. The San Francisco Peace Treaty, signed on September 8, 1951, manifested the end of the Allied occupation, and Japan regained its independence on April 28, 1952. The early post-occupation period Japan needed direct United States economic assistance. The general Japanese public feeling of dependence decreased gradually as the devastating results of World War II faded into the background and commercial activities with the United States saw a significant growth. (Huntington, 3-17) Self-confidence increased as the country applied its assets and organizational skill to retrieve economic health. This led to a general want for greater autonomy from United States influence. Bilateral talks on improving the 1952 security pact started in 1959, and the new Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security was signed in Washington on January 19, 1960. The pact, when presented to the Diet for approval, stirred a bitter argument over the Japan-United States relationship and a violent all-out effort was made by the leftist opposition to thwart its passage. Under this treaty, both U.S and Japan assumed an obligation to aid each other in case of an armed attack on provinces under Japanese supervision. (LaFeber, 165) It was however implicit, that Japan could not come to
Tuesday, September 24, 2019
President Clinton's Crime Policy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words
President Clinton's Crime Policy - Essay Example He successfully stole the "War on Crime" idea and added it into his campaign, and rode it all the way to victory in the White House. However, Clinton soon put his money where his mouth was, and showed just how tough on crime he was going to be during his Presidency. Throughout the entirety of Clinton's administration he "consistently supported increased penalties and additional prison construction. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 provided state and municipal governments with $30 billion to add 100,000 new police officers, to build more prisons, and to employ more prison guards, as well as funding for crime prevention programs". This was just the start of Clinton showing how he was going to continue his programs against crime in our country. Another potentially surprising figure is that during Clinton's reign as President, 225,000 more jail inmates were put into prisons than during Regan's administration. Clinton took what was considered a more Republican ideal, and turned it swiftly to benefit his campaign, and he also came through with the promises he made during his time in office. Also, by "signing the Violent Crime Control Act and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which provided prison construction funds to the states, President Clinton's policies had already helped shift funds from higher ed
Monday, September 23, 2019
Decision Making Process Model in Real Life Marketing Essay
Decision Making Process Model in Real Life Marketing - Essay Example The process involves a number of factors that influence the decision making of an individual and includes the various stages that a shopper goes through while purchasing a product thus outlining the flow of activities (both physical and psychological) from the beginning to the end. The interview conducted in this certain scenario was that of an individual who had decided to buy a new pull-out sofa to add to the furniture in their house. The individual needed the sofa for visiting individuals who wanted to spend the night and thus the subject was very particular about getting this particular type of sofa. By studying the decision making process that took place one is able to identify the various variables that were taken into consideration as well as other influences that a played a part in the formation of the final decision. The stages that the consumer went through during this process included: This was the first stage and the consumer identified the problem that they were faced with (the need that they had) and what was required in order to solve the issue once it has been pointed out (Blythe, 2008). In this case the main need of this particular consumer was the provision of a place to sleep for overnight guests that would not take up too much space due to the size of the individual’s living quarters. This could effectively rule out the need for a bed as another one would not be able to fit in the apartment and thus a pull-out sofa arose as the best alternative option on offer. The main issue was ensuring that the needs of the consumer will be satisfactorily met by the purchase of the product that they had in mind (Cheng, Luckett & Schulz, 2003).
Sunday, September 22, 2019
Pricing and Costing Methods Essay Example for Free
Pricing and Costing Methods Essay Organizations today more than ever before must ensure that they reduce costs as well, as the time used to avail products and services to the market. Since planning as well as the estimation of costs are critical to businesses it is important that organizations chose the best pricing and costing techniques. (Seonen, 2006). The implication here is that the fundamental goal of any business concern is to minimize its costs of operation while maximizing its returns to the shareholders. In order to achieve this, there is need to put in place the best pricing policies as well as the most appropriate costing techniques. This paper will attempt to examine the various costing as well as pricing methods that are available for use by business organizations. Traditional costs estimation methods like marginal and absorption costing will be looked at. Equally the newer costing method, the activity based costing will be discussed alongside other pricing methods. (Seonen, 2006) Pricing Methods Average cost pricing One example of pricing methods is the average cost pricing. Average cost pricing as a cost method involves the calculation of average costs per unit. To obtain this, the total cost of goods available for sale is divided by the total units available for sale. The weighted average approach is applied to all the closing inventories. (Duffie, 1992) The disadvantage with this method is the fact that it ignores the effects of cost increases as well as decreases. This is usually due to the fact that cost of closing inventory calculated under this category is usually affected the prices paid in the entire year as well as the cost of the opening stock. The method thus ignores more recent costs which are more reliable in income determination and decision making. Pricing methods Cost plus pricing: this is one of the pricing methods where by the price for a given product or service is the sum of the actual cost of the product or service plus a profit margin. This method of pricing is mostly used as an interim contractual measure. (Lintner 1965) The major advantage of this method is that it’s easy to calculate and need little information in computing the project costs and thus mostly used in pricing government contracts. The other hand this method has come under sharp criticism for encouraging wasteful expenditures in government contracts coupled by corruption. The other pricing method is the option pricing method that is commonly used in the motor vehicle industry. (Birge, 1997 ) option pricing method is basically where by an organization prices its products in a way that it provides a base price for its products which in most cases is always low to attract customers who upon visiting the store find other product accessories that can be purchased and added to the product. For example most vehicle manufacturing companies will provide a base price for their cars and use their showrooms to market other product parts like the car music systems, alarms e. t. c. Capital asset pricing model (CAPM) is another pricing approach that can be used in the financial sector, (Lintner 1965, pp. 12-39) it basically based on the investors ability to invest in many other fronts (divest) without additional costs, this approach is advantageous in that any future cash flows can easily be monitored with only knowing the investments correlation with the market, market risk premium as well as the risk free rates. Comparable uncontrolled price method(CUP),this is a method that seeks to establish the ALP, through comparing the controlled and the uncontrolled transaction in relation to the asset or service that has been transferred, (Duffie,1992) this method is mostly used in provision of loan by financial institutions as well by other organizations that sell intangibles. Resale price method, this is a method that seeks to evaluate the process of activities performed or done rather than the eventual output (product) (Lintner,1965,pp. 2-37)its commonly used in instances where the reseller do not add any meaningful value to the finished product and no physical changes are made on the product, the eventual resale price is determined by the resale price of a commodity then subtracting the gross profit margin achieved from the resale as well as all the expenses incurred, before arriving at the resale price of the commodity Bid pricing: This is a method of pricing that is commonly used in the stock exchange markets. it basically involve the respective clients placing bids or prices they would like to purchase the stocks of shares, and with the buyers and the sellers, with the highest bidder purchasing the property, price movements at times in the stock market always leads to the uncertainty in the market prices. (Sharpe,1964,p. 425-442) Target pricing: This is a method of pricing where business organizations price their products differently basing on the different market segments that they target with their products, the products may not necessarily have diverse differences to justify the difference in prices but the underlying idea is to maximize on profit in market segments that can pay higher prices for the product as this helps to cover on the lower segment, where the product may be priced lower. (Dominick,2008,p. ) The basic advantage of this pricing method is that it enables a company to earn higher profits without necessarily increasing production costs since it’s the same product that is sold to different target markets, Target pricing is generally common in the mobile phone industry where the same gadgets with minor modification are actually sold to different target markets at different prices Costing Methods Marginal costing This method also known as the direct coasting method has the main characteristic of charging all the manufacturing or product costs to the product irrespective of whether the costs are variable or fixed. Lucey, 1993) This method is useful in pricing decisions that are short term in nature in determining the least price that can be charged to a product below which losses will occur. The implication here is that marginal or direct costing as a traditional costing method suffers from the major drawback of oversimplification because it tends to employ only the volume of the product. Job costing is the method of costing where the coast of a product or service is determined by allocating costs ton a particular unit, a batch or even to a lot of the product or service. It is more or less the same as batch costing. Precisely, job costing method is applicable where good and services are produced as a result of a series of continuous operations. It is thus considered a product costing technique in which case emphasis is laid on the determination of the cost of a unit product. (Sobngwi, 2007) Absorption costing It has been the practice of many firms to charge manufacturing overheads on the basis of direct costs like direct labour. The technique used tended to differ in terms of details as well as allocation bases. Some systems employ a single base like total direct cost while others use several bases like direct labour and raw materials. Absorption costing as a method of costing allocates all the costs to the objects of the cost. This usually happen based on direct costs or even physical output measures. Marginal cost allocations are important for many managerial decisions like the valuation of stock as well as calculation of profits. (Sobngwi, 2007) The method may however not be very appropriate for product range decisions since the net profit figure from this technique tends to be unsatisfactory base for product range decisions. Allocation of expenses between two departments may be difficult. One department may for example have a fully developed product which could require only a little development resources while the other department could be in need of full development. In such a case dividing the costs will thus be inaccurate. This has the implication that there is uncertainty as to whether dropping one product line would lead to a reduction of the total expenses allocated to that product. (Bjornlund Rossini 2005). Activity Based Costing (ABC) The activity based costing (ABC) was developed as a reaction to the shortcomings of the marginal and absorption costing methods. This method gives a description of the activity in overhead departments which can be recognized by both the departmental managers as well being driven by cost factors. The cost factors are usually the characteristics of the products s well as other cost objects. ABC is usually a two step process. First, the costs of similar activities in various overhead centers are collected. In this case the total direct cost of each department is then charged to each activity based on its use of total capacity as well as the total of all the costs of all activities collected from all the departments in activity cost pools. Seonen, 2006) Second, the cost drives of each cost pool are identified after which cost drivers are quantified and the allocations to product costs derived. (Seonen, 2006) There are usually many varieties of cost drivers to choose from in an attempt to explain the costs of an object. The bottom line however is that they have to be capable of being quantified in terms of both the cost pool as well as the cost objects. Conclusion There is always need for consistency as well as standardization of the methods of financial pricing and costing methods have been recognized. Adam et el,2003) This has led to the innovations of many sets of guidelines for both economic evaluations and costs. In the final analysis therefore, variations in cost methods that are usually used in business organizations have raised many questions resulting into the inability to compare the results of various costing as well as pricing methods. However in order to achieve both the transferability as well be able to generalize results there is need to apply uniform cost pricing and estimation methods in order to minimize any chances of variations.
Saturday, September 21, 2019
Advantages and disadvantages of increasing interdependence and interconnectedness
Advantages and disadvantages of increasing interdependence and interconnectedness Since the 1970s the globalisation of finance has made the economic fortunes of states increasingly interdependent. Until relatively recently international finance was still considered principally to be an adjunct to trade (McGrew, 2007), a necessary mechanism that enabled the exchange of goods and services at the international level. Its phenomenal growth over the past few decades has shattered this perception. Today the global economy is characterised by the sheer volume and velocity of international financial transactions. Average daily turnover on traditional foreign exchange markets increased from $15bn in 1973 (Gilpin, 2001) to $3.2tr in April 2007 (BIS, Sep 2007). While the successes of financial liberalisation include lifting millions out of poverty in China, East Asia, and elsewhere, and improving the developing worlds access to markets, its failures have also been stark. Various crises of the 1990s showed that problems in one country or even a particular industry can fast become global. The recent financial crisis of 2007 has again generated discussion at the normative and theoretical level about the contemporary global financial architecture, its widely perceived benefits, and its increasingly evident costs. The increasing significance of the global financial system over the past two decades has been mirrored by a surge of interest from the academic field of international political economy. Its effects are now so far-reaching that commentators have drawn connections between international financial integration and such diverse developments as social turbulence in East Asia, monetary union in Europe, and failed development strategies in Latin America (Pauly, 2005). Most of this literature, however, tends to focus on specific aspects of financial globalisation, such as its implications for national economic policy or the power of transnational corporations (TNCs). This essay intends to broaden the debate, to demonstrate the apparent paradox of international financial integration while it has made states, economies, firms and individuals more intimately interconnected than ever before, it is an inherently divergent process. It will argue that the international financial system is increasingly producing a global dichotomy. The benefits of financial integration, in the main, accrue to capital-rich states and the owners of capital, those free to move their resources around the world to seek the highest returns. Developing states, and those without control of capital resources, while receiving less of the advantages of integration, are more adversely affected by its disadvantages, such as contagion and capital flight. The first section will discuss the evolution of the contemporary global financial system, and how it came to be in its current form. I will argue that advanced industrial states, following a neo-liberal paradigm of liberalisation, facilitated the deregulation and increased interdependence of the financial system through political actions. However, it has been technological and market innovation that has accelerated and expanded this interconnectedness to an unprecedented level. These origins are key to understanding why capital-rich entities are better equipped to reap the benefits of financial integration. The next two sections will put forward the principle advantages and disadvantages of this integration. The following section will provide an analysis of these, contending that the capital-poor gain less of the former, and are more exposed to the latter. The concluding section will summarise this argument and touch on its implications for the future of the global economy while glo balisation promises universal benefits, these cannot be realised under the current system, which precipitates a global dichotomy between the capital-rich and the capital-poor. Origins of the contemporary global financial system As Benjamin Cohen (1996) suggests, little consensus exists concerning the causes of financial globalisation, and many scholars have attempted to apply their own structure to the study. The critical contribution to the debate comes from Eric Helleiner (1994), who persuasively argues that the globalisation of finance was advanced by the political decisions of major states. Helleiner also, however, neglects the exponential effect that technological and market innovations have had on the financial system, a factor considered key by others such as Cerny (1993) and Strange (1998). Political actions by leading states have enabled the globalisation of finance since the 1970s. By far the most significant was the abolition of capital controls, firstly by the USA and the UK, and then other major economies. As Goodman and Pauly (2000) suggest, liberalisation became and continues to be a competitive practice, and other countries had to react to prevent mobile domestic capital and financial business from migrating abroad. By the 1990s an almost fully liberal pattern of financial relations had emerged and today market actors experience freedom in cross-border activity unparalleled since the 1920s (Helleiner, 2007). International capital mobility is the most significant, and defining, characteristic of the global financial system. It has created many of the advantages and disadvantages associated with integration, and has also been instrumental in creating and sustaining the global dichotomy. The embracing of a new neo-liberal economic ideology among the major economic powers in the 1980s was key for the international financial system, which was given a large boost by plans to remove the state from the economy and allow the market mechanism to work (Soros, 1998). This theory was less sympathetic to the Bretton Woods ideal that national policy autonomy had to be protected, and was content to let the markets impose an external discipline on governments pursuing not sound policies (Helleiner, 2007). Financial liberalisation has been successfully institutionalised as a component of several multilateral agreements (Eichengreen, 2003). As early as 1976 the USA successfully lobbied for a change to the International Monetary Funds Articles of Agreement so that the new official goal of the Fund was to preside over a regime that facilitated the free exchange of capital between countries (Watson, 2007). This regime, however, has been deepened and broadened to an unprecedented extent by technological and market innovations. The volatility of prices and exchange rates in the 1970s led to phenomenal growth in the derivatives market, particularly after the emergence of an over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market in the 1990s. In 1990 OTC contracts totalled $3.45bn, which had risen to $18tr in 1995 and $24tr by 1996 (Strange, 1998). These new financial instruments involved an initial outlay only a fraction of the notional value of the contract, giving banks and other TNCs the means at relatively low cost to hedge themselves against losses from unpredicted changes in exchange rates, interest rates, and commodities. Huge advances in computing and telecommunications over the last thirty years have been central to the huge volume and velocity of international financial flows (Held et al., 1999). Before the 1990s only data could be exchanged instantly between corporate offices and banks. The rise of the Internet meant opinions and rumours could also be traded, contributing to dangerous fluctuations but increasing interdependency. International banks and firms transfer huge amounts of money quickly and safely due to automatic clearing systems. In 1995 the USAs Clearing House Interbank Payment System (CHIPS) became the largest international clearing system processing some 200,000 transactions a day (Strange, 1998). Today CHIPS, and its state-run competitor Fedwire, clear an average daily value of $1.5tr (CHIPS, 2010) and $2.5tr (Fedwire, 2009) respectively. The root causes of the globalisation of finance are crucial to the understanding of its advantages and disadvantages, as it is evident that major states initiated the process because of the benefits it promised to them and to the rest of the world. It is also clear that innovation in both technology and markets has accelerated the process, making the benefits more pronounced for those involved, while also increasing the potential costs. The advantages of integration The advantages of increased interdependence and the expansion of the global financial system are often championed by international institutions, politicians and international business leaders. At a fundamental level, the benefits cited are backed up by economic theory, that which is at the heart of the neo-liberal paradigm of international finance advocated by many of the worlds economies. It holds that markets allocate resources in socially desirable ways. Flows from capital-abundant to capital-scarce countries, on the assumption that the marginal product of capital is higher in the latter than the former, increase welfare on both sides (Eichengreen Mussa, 1998). International financial transactions allow economies experiencing business-cycle disturbances to smooth the time profile of consumption and investment. Free capital movements thus facilitate a more efficient global allocation of savings and resources to their most productive uses. An advantage of the expansion of the financial system advocated by the global financial institutions is the convergence of national policies. The neo-liberal programme holds as desirable the homogenisation of national policy across state boundaries. The freedom of capital is said to have enabled the European Unions single currency, tax harmonisation across national borders and the international convergence of macroeconomic policy (Frieden, 1991). This, the argument goes, is good for eradicating instability in the global financial system. The incentive for resources to evade controls and regulations is lessened if national regulations are homogenised. The problem with this argument, however, is that capital mobility breeds a competitive environment between emerging economies for investment, which will be discussed below. Some international firms now command more resources than many states (OBrien, 2005). For these firms, the development of the contemporary global financial system has brought two huge distinct advantages: higher returns on their investments, and the ability to diversify risk internationally. Higher returns have been produced by two factors the inherent volatility of the system, and the greater opportunity to exploit it. Firstly, the inherent volatility and uncertainty of the financial system leads to higher returns for investors. Firms are able to trade on the volatile prices of currencies and commodities. With vast capital resources huge sums can be made very quickly with even small fluctuations on international capital markets. The best example of how capitalists gain from this volatility is the benefit that many manage to take from the systems crises. Currency trader George Soros is alleged to have made  £1bn from the devaluation of the British Sterling in 1992. Private companies are also said to have benefitted from the Asian financial crisis of 1997. Stiglitz (2002) argues that the intervention of the IMF, a Western-backed institution, ensured that Western firms were paid back their loans, while numerous national firms in Asia were left to collapse. Most of the $ 55bn the Mexican government owed following its 1994 crisis was to private creditors (OBrien Williams, 2007). The nature of the financial system means that investors can pull money out of a currency virtually instantaneously, and move back in after a collapse making a handsome profit. This leads to self-fulfilling prophecies of currency speculation, discussed below, but the investors are protected from most of the risk involved, whereas the economies concerned can suffer decline for years. Secondly, with the opening of countries capital markets, the opportunity for investment has increased substantially. Banks, hedge funds, and international manufacturing firms have all benefitted from having a much larger global market to do business in. With the ease of transferring financial resources to emerging markets and new host states, TNCs have access to a mass global pool of cheap labour. This capital mobility means governments all over the world have to provide more attractive conditions for companies, from low capital gains tax to relaxed financial and labour regulation (Frieden, 1991). Emerging economies, deemed to be high risk, must offer attractive interest rates to attract investment. There is constant competition between economies for foreign direct investment with which to finance development, meaning better and better business environments for investors. The key advantage for the capital-rich entities is that while gaining from the volatility and uncertainty of the system, they can also protect themselves against it. Modern financial markets operate to allow risks to be packaged and redistributed so that actors can hedge against specific risks like exchange rate fluctuations (Held et al., 1999). High-risk investments yield high returns, but if these investments do not yield, investors are protected by the profits from investments elsewhere. Market innovations such as options, futures and swaps even help protect investors from future fluctuations. There are also huge advantages associated with the development of the global financial system for less-developed countries (LDCs). The economies of East Asia, China, India and others have shown what can be achieved utilising international investment. Millions have been lifted out of poverty, economies transformed to industrial powers, and their national firms compete at the global level. These developments have been enabled by the crucial advantage of interdependence to smaller economies, access to financial markets. The opening of financial markets, as Jeffrey Frieden (1991) suggests, has strengthened labour-intensive industries, in which developing economies have a distinct advantage, through increased investment. The ease of transferring capital across national borders has increased the use of outsourcing and facilitated an explosion of FDI in the 1990s to areas like East Asia and Latin America, providing a huge boost to industries in the recipient countries. Access to financial markets also means that the governments of smaller economies can borrow to fund their development. Borrowing allows such economies to hold their currencies at preferred rates to suppress inflation and keep up debt repayments without inflicting a huge recession at home (Green, 2003). The remarkable development of the East Asian economies would not have been possible without huge inflows of capital, both in FDI and government borrowing to fund economic development strategies. The disadvantages of integration While the advantages of greater financial integration mentioned above have helped many less-developed countries expand their industries and grow their economies, their progress has been beset by financial crises, most notably in the 1990s. These crises were notable because they happened in very similar circumstances in completely different parts of the world, and spread across national boundaries and even to different regions. Contagion of financial crises is the most serious disadvantage of increased interdependence. This effect was most obviously witnessed in the late 1990s, where integration turned a currency crisis in Thailand into the Asian crisis, and turned the Asian crisis into a global recession. Thailands devaluation made Thai exports very cheap, meaning other economies selling very similar exports to the same markets were forced to devalue in order to protect demand. The crash in Asia precipitated crashes in Russia, Brazil and Argentina. As Jones (2000) explains, the contagious effects of Asia were threefold: psychological upon investors, the collapse of regional markets for Southeast Asian exports, and upon other world markets as demand collapsed. This demonstrates a key point, that due to the nature of their economies, developing countries bear much more of the cost of crises because of capital flight. As crisis spreads, investors begin to question the wisdom of their investments in, and the reliability of, other emerging market economies. Due to the Asian crisis capital was withdrawn en masse as traders sold the currencies of Russia, Brazil and Argentina for safer currencies in Western Europe, and the dollar. Capital flight also devastated the Mexican economy in 1994-5. From 1990 to 1993 $91bn flowed into Mexico, a fifth of all capital going to developing states (OBrien Williams, 2007). Higher interest rates in the USA, combined with a rebellion in Chiapas and the assassination of a presidential candidate, caused investors to doubt that Mexico could keep its peso fixed to the dollar. In December 1994 investors sold the peso in such large quantities that the dollar link was abandoned. Living standards were cut in half (OBrie n Williams, 2007), the poor suffered, and the middle class faced skyrocketing interest rates and diminished savings due to the devaluation. Some claim that these disadvantages, and their specific effect on LDCs, are not given proper consideration by advanced states and their neo-liberal programme of reform. As Barry Eichengreen (2003) attests, LDCs have specific financial problems. Their monetary and fiscal institutions lack credibility. Their regulators lack administrative capacity. Their financial markets are shallow, and they cannot borrow abroad in the domestic currency. Stiglitz (2002) protested against the liberalisation agenda being pushed too quickly on smaller states lacking proper financial institutions and banking systems, countries like Mexico and Argentina, which saw precipitous and blanket financial liberalisation (Phillips, 2005). It is now widely accepted that reform was too rapid, and the result of neo-liberal reform in Latin America has been a pattern of poor economic performance and increasing political tension. This lends weight to the argument that capital-rich states have much more to gain from the growth of the global financial system. What is important for the conclusions of this essay, however, is that it cannot simply be said that the advantages accrue to rich states and the disadvantages to the poor, as rich states, and their firms and individuals, suffer disadvantages from integration also. Advanced states, of course, also suffer from the effects of crisis and contagion. This has been evident from the fallout of the 2007 global crisis, but due to integration it is now increasingly difficult for all economies to insulate themselves against the effects of recession. Crisis in one area of the global economy means falling demand for goods and services in others, and with the scope of international firms, and the vast number of countries in which single firms do business means that collapses have far-reaching consequences. However, the biggest disadvantage in terms of advanced states is felt by their national industries and firms, those unable to shift production to areas of cheaper labour and production costs. National firms are becoming increasingly unable to compete with firms either in countries with such conditions, or international firms able to conduct business there. This is bad news for the industrial workers of advanced economies, who today can be easily replaced by cheaper counterparts around the globe. Implications the emerging global dichotomy These advantages and disadvantages show that there is a global dichotomy emerging. The principle beneficiaries of the integration brought about by the globalisation of finance are the controllers of capital, those able to move their resources freely around the global economy for the highest return and security. The principle losers are the capital-poor, whether labour or those with assets tied within national boundaries. While China has been one of the biggest beneficiaries economically from financial globalisation, its rising inequality shows that its poorest people, like many others around the world, remain subject to, rather than participants in, the global economy. The advantages and disadvantages discussed above demonstrate two critical characteristics of the global financial system. First, as internationally mobile capital has become more powerful, so have the holders of it in relation to other groups. The argument that capital now holds a structural power within the system has been advanced by scholars such as Gill and Law (1989), and Thomas and Sinclair (2002). The latter study argues that today the expectations of the resource-rich are anticipated by the resource-poor. In the modern system knowledge workers are fortunate, as they can move to wherever they command the highest salary. Others are manufacturing workers facing fierce competition from counterparts in numerous countries, and still others are subsistence workers trying to survive in a system moving towards broader commercialisation in areas like agriculture. This effect has been compounded by the tertiarisation of global economic activity (Phillips, 2005) brought about by financia l globalisation. There is a growing movement towards production and trade of services rather than goods, which produces a divergence between entities that can compete in the service sector and those that cannot. Second, the leadership role of the most economically powerful states, and the nature of the financial system they have created, has rendered alternative policies imprudent. Susan Stranges (1986) casino has many reluctant players. Capital mobility means sustainable macroeconomic policy options available to states are systematically circumscribed (Andrews, 1994); integration has raised the costs of pursuing policies that diverge from regional or international trends. The fact, as discussed, that there is so much to gain for investors means there is the same amount to lose for countries following policies detrimental to their profits, such as running budget deficits to fund welfare policies. The global financial system has been directed by an ideology of liberalisation since the 1970s, and the benefits for the capital-rich, the majority of those that lead the modern system, are too great for the direction to change. This could be the reason for the difference between the development of global trade and finance. Financial liberalisation has incredible advantages for capital-rich states, while with open trade LDCs have the advantages of cheap labour and export-led strategies. Advanced states have continued to protect their national industries with degrees of protectionism. While it is an extreme claim that rich states preserve the system because of the dichotomy this essay presents, the evidence is certainly that the major economies still believe whole-heartedly in the theory of globalisation, that its benefits justify this cost. The recent financial crisis has demonstrated that major states, particularly the USA and the UK, are willing to prop up a system that has shown significant disadvantages in contagion and volatility. This has been a stark example of the asymmetry between the capital-rich and the capital-poor in the event of crisis traders and investors regroup and take their capital to the safest location in order to resume the pursuit of high returns, while taxpayers and workers face austerity measures and unemployment as investment decreases. While the benefits for the developing world have been massive, these benefits are only received by integrating into a system whose disadvantages effect it in a disproportionate way, and which produces a dichotomy, the wrong side of which many of its people will remain. The economic theory behind globalisation still favours trickle-down development rather than bottom-up. The benefits cited by its chief proponents, such as the growth of LDC economies and global economic stability, are no doubt desirable, but they will require a truly global system with truly global markets, neither of which has yet been achieved. In the decades it will take for the global economy to become truly global and precipitate universal benefits, the gap between the capital-rich and capital-poor will continue to grow. Conclusions The global financial system has been heading in a single direction since the 1970s, towards liberalisation and the greater interdependence and interconnectedness of economies, firms and individuals around the globe. This direction was facilitated by the advanced industrial nations through political actions to free international capital, and expand and open global financial markets. Innovations in computing and telecommunications, as well as market innovations, have contributed heavily to the volume and velocity of international capital flows exploiting the volatility and uncertainty of the system. The emerging strategic interests of the USA, the UK, and later Japan, led them to promote a more open international financial order (Helleiner, 1994). The major economies interests still lie in this order, and thus they promote its advantages and push its neo-liberal agenda through international financial institutions and multilateral agreements. This enthusiasm is an indication that the advanced states, and the capital-rich firms and individuals that call them home, have much to gain from financial globalisation, but they also believe in the benefits the neo-liberal programme promises to all. The problem is that the universal benefits of financial globalisation will only fully materialise under the conditions of a truly global economy, with many more participants than there are currently. It is possible that as markets continue to expand to become truly global, more universal benefits will be seen, but the global dichotomy is likely to grow faster than financial markets and access to them. The challenge for the world economy as it moves forward is how to deal with the social aspect of this expansion.
Friday, September 20, 2019
Cervical Cancer Major Public Health Issue Health And Social Care Essay
Cervical Cancer Major Public Health Issue Health And Social Care Essay Introduction Cervical cancer is a major public health issue; it is the second most common cancer among women in the world, and one of leading cause of death by gynaecologic malignant tumour in developing countries. (I. Shahramian and colleagues 2011) Besides, cervical cancer is one of the most preventable and curable cancer when it is detected early, and this is due to its slow progression, since it take several years to grow from a detectable precursor lesion. This key feature provides a large window of about ten years or more for effective early detection of the precancerous lesion, and preventing its progression to invasive cancer. From this perspective, well organised prevention approaches have been applied by high income countries over the past 50 years, and have resulted in a remarkable decline in morbidity and mortality from this invasive disease. The screening program is a successful example for effective prevention from cervical cancer, it has been used in the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Sweden); this program was examined by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in 1960s and it was found that the mortality rate in these countries fell by about three- fourth, The most drastic decrease was marked in Iceland by 84 % and this was due to the wide target age range for screening in this country.(whomb people) However, over the same period, developing countries have failed through using the same program to reduce the burden of the disease, and cervical cancer continues to menace the lives of thousands of women, this may be due to the lack of an effective prevention strategy. We will try in this paper to review the determinants of cervical cancer screening among Algerian women, to elucidate the salient barriers regarding screening and to highlight the principal factors influencing the individual health behaviour, for this study, we will use the Health Belief Model as a conceptual framework, we will explain the structure of the Health Belief Model (Becker) and how the different constructs of the model could predict the womens health behaviour regarding cervical neoplasm screening , finally the application of this model as a guiding framework to ground behavioural interventions and to improve attitude of women regarding cancer screening will be discussed. Epidemiology of cervical cancer/ global burden of the disease Global overview Worldwide, cervical cancer is the second most common cause of death among women (ACCP2004) with an estimate of 493,000 new cases, and 274,000 deaths occurring every year according to the statistics of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (GLOBOCAN, 2002) In 2008, 530000 new cases were diagnosed, more than 85% of the global burden were registered in developing countries (where it remains the most common cancer seen in women and it accounts for 13% of all female cancers), In the same year, the cervical cancer was responsible for 275000 deaths, about 88% of which occurred in developing countries 53000 cases in Africa, 31700 in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 159000 cases in Asia. (GLOBOCAN 2008) The figure below shows incidence of cervical cancer by country, it should be noted that data from developing countries might be underestimated as the official statistics in these countries are not reliable. http://globocan.iarc.fr/factsheets/cancers/cervix-bar.png Regional overview Algeria is a large North African country, extended from the Mediterranean Sea down to the Sahara, with about 37 million inhabitants. Algeria has a population of 11,51millions of women whose ages are 15 years and older, (WHO/ICO2010) which means that about the third of the Algerian population is at risk of developing cervical cancer. Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer among Algerian women after the breast cancer, Current estimates indicate that every year 1398 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer and 797 die from the disease (WHO/ICO2010) About 10, 5% of Algerian women are estimated harbour cervical HPV, and about 77, 1% of cervical cancers in Algeria are related to HPV 16 or 18. (WHO/ICO 2010) But we should note that even these statistics might be underestimated, The economic impact of cervical cancer is significantly heavy for the state. The treatment of a single patient returns to about 2.5 million dinars (à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬ 20,000), with this cost we we can achieve 2000 smears (smear test cost 20 à ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬) and vaccinate 30 women. Natural history of cervical cancer Understanding the process of developing cervical cancer is a crucial step to design an effective program of prevention. More than 99% cases of cervical cancer are attributed to cervical HPV infection, which is a sexually transmitted disease (STD), the virus is acquired by both men and women through sexual activity, the infection is usually asymptomatic and transient. HPV is the most common STD in the world; it affects about 50% to 80% of sexually active women at least once in their lifetime ( ACCP 2004), they contract it in their teen, 20 or early 30s. There are more than 100 genotypes of HPV that have been identified, and which are numbered by order of their discovery, about 13 types can lead to invasive cervical cancer and they are known as high oncogenic risk ( 16,18,31,33,35,39,45,51,52,56,58,59,66) (WHO 2007) The two most common are 16 and 18 causing approximately 70% of all invasive cervical carcinoma (60% related to HPV 16 and 10% to HPV 18) the whom people The others types of HPV are known as low risk and they usually associated with genital warts (especially 6 and 11) which can grow in the genital part in both men and women (cervix, anus, vulva, vagina, penis, and scrotum) and they cause a significant morbidity.( WHO2007), They are very rarely associated with cervical cancer, but can lead to low grade changes in cervical cells which are very similar to those caused by high risk types. These low lesions are asymptomatic and temporary, however, in some circumstances can evolve and lead to high lesion or invasive cancer. Table: summarizes the different stages leading to cervical cancer ( ACCP2004) HPV infection Low-grade lesions High-grade lesions Invasive cancer HPV infection is extremely common among women of reproductive age. The infection can persist, lead to cervical abnormalities, or resolve on its own. Low-grade lesions are usually temporary and disappear over time. Some cases, however, progress to high-grade lesions. High-grade lesions, the precursor to cervical cancer, are significantly less common than low-grade lesions. High- grade lesions can develop from low-grade ones or directly from persistent HPV infection. Invasive cancer develops over the course of several years and is most common among women in their 50s and 60s. Source: Adapted from PATH 2000. HPV is a necessary cause but not sufficient to progress from HPV infection to invasive cervical cancer, there are other lifestyle factors that increase the probability to develop the cancer including high parity, young age at first delivery, being in polygamous marriage, women with husbands extramarital sexual relationship (D. Hammouda and colleagues 2004, 2011), long term use of oral contraception, tobacco smoking, certain dietary deficiencies, poor sanitation, multiple sex partner, low socio economic status, and living in a rural environment. In addition, co-infection with HIV, Chlamydia Trachomatis, and Herpes Simplex Virus type 2 (HSV 2)., ( whomb people) HPV was incriminated in many other anogenital cancer (anus, vulva, vagina, and penis) and cancers of the head and neck. Understanding that HPV is the primary underlying cause of cervical cancer has focused attention on the potential of early detection of the infection through the cervical screening. Screening for cervical cancer is based on the use of the Papanicolaou cytology technic (Pap smear test) in which physicians or nurses expose the cervix by speculum and remove cells from the squamous epithelium and transformation zone to detect abnormal precancerous cells. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology suggest that women should receive the first screening test 3 years after the first sexual intercourse They also recommend that women should continue receiving cytology screening yearly until the age of 30, from than they can receive it every 3 years. According to the same college, menopausal women have a lower chance to develop abnormal cervical cells; however, there is no upper age limit to stop the screening. ( Whom people) Primary prevention have focused on hygiene and reducing risks factor by reducing the number of sexual partners and encouraging the use of barrier contraceptive especially condoms,( ACCP2004) Recently a new vaccine which has the potential to protect against certain type of HPV infection (16 and 18) has been licensed to underpin the preventive program against cervical cancer. The vaccine has been used in many developed countries and shown great results in reducing the burden of the disease, but it has not been introduced in Algeria yet Pap smear as a cervical cancer screening test Algeria is one of the developing countries where cervical cancer remains a major health public issue. although the application of screening program, a large population remain under screened, the outcome are very modest and the incidence of cervical cancer is always high and this could be contributed to the lack of awareness about screening test among women and some specific cultural health beliefs barriers, not surprisingly that large proportion of the patients are diagnosed with advanced stage of the invasive cervical cancer, interestingly, even most of the health care providers have never had a pap smear.( ref risk factor ). Studies show that comprehensive cervical cancer screening is modest in low resources countries; hence a low participation in Pap smear and a low follow up when it is done the first time. It has been stated that screening program in these countries and even among minorities and aboriginal women faced many obstacles; lack of sufficient laboratory infrastructure, high cost of health care, inadequate trained health care providers, absence of providers recommendation and a lack of appropriate educational programs in these countries that indicate the risk factors of this disease, the importance of screening at early stage, and the power of the Pap smear test to detect the disease in its premalignant stage and so the possibility of full cure and prevention. (S.T. Tavafian 2012) In addition to these funds and human resources deficiencies that can hindrance an effective and organised screening intervention, there is also the lack of knowledge from the patients regarding preventable cervical cancer as well as the socio-cultural status barriers , such as embarrassment from pelvic examination that have been argued as one of leading obstacle to not receiving screening test,(S.T. Tavafian 2012) another factor is the fear of subject and the entrenched belief that cancer cannot be cured , the lack of optimal knowledge about screening practices ; this extreme fatalistic attitude about cancer among different countries lead women to consider diagnosis as a death sentence and so the avoidance of the test,(V.Thomas and colleagues 2005) there is also projects identified religious beliefs, the limited language ability as another major perceived barrier, the lack of social support, the low socio economic status and the inadequate functional health literacy. There is a study that has been conducted in Spanish among low income Latinas, that found that women with inadequate functional health literacy are 16 times less likely to receive a Pap smear test (S.T. Tavafian 2012) It has been illustrated that Individuals beliefs, ethnic background, knowledge about a particular illness are significantly interconnected with the healthcare seeking and health promotional behaviour, Al-Neggar and his colleagues concluded that some misconceptions and wrong beliefs may conduct to the poor practice of cervical cancer screening among women, despite the adequate knowledge regarding the risk factors (Al-Neggar and colleague (2010). One of theoretical models that could be used to identify the determinant of cancer screening and assess the influence of peoples beliefs on their decisions to take up cancer screening is the health belief model. According to the concepts of this model, individuals are more likely to take up screening if they are motivated enough about their health, and they regard themselves as susceptible to develop cancer, believe that effective intervention would be beneficial to reduce the susceptibility and the severity of the condition. Health belief model as a theoretical framework for predicting behaviour The health belief model is one of the theory the most commonly used in health promotion and health education, (chapter 4) it was developed in the early 1950s by a group of social psychologists to explain the widespread failure of people to adopt the disease preventive programs suggested and screening test recommended to detect and prevent the disease at its asymptomatic stage, Later it was applied to study the response of patients to diagnosed disease and their compliance with prescribed medical regimens.(Nancy and colleagues 1984) This model aims to explain the patients thoughts process behind his preventive attitude rather than his behaviour after getting the illness. The underlying concept of the model is that health behaviour and willingness of people to engage in a preventive program or to take up a screening test are determined by personal beliefs and perception of the disease in addition to the different resources available to prevent its occurrence, (chapter 4) The model provides guidelines to develop strategies for effective intervention and implementation by allowing planners to understand the reasons for not compliance with the recommended suggested preventive systems. This model assumes that individuals health behaviour is determined by five psychological factors: perceived susceptibility, perceived seriousness, ref perceived benefits and perceived barriers to effective compliance; cues to put into action, recently, there are others constructs that have been added to the model called modifying or motivating factors such as mass media initiatives, campaign, personal materials, social support, health professional and self-efficacy.(V.Thomas and collegues 2005) Copier le tableau Articulation of cervical cancer screening behaviour to the HBM framework In this section; I will try through the constructs of the Health Belief Model to explain the relationship between womens belief and health behaviour in Algeria Perceived susceptibility: personal risk or susceptibility is referred to the personal belief about the likelihood of contracting a disease (S.T. Tavafian 2012), it is one of the most powerful factor that influence people to adopt a healthy behaviour, the greater the perceived risk, the greater the likelihood of engaging in behaviours to decrease the risk( chapter4). For screening program, woman will be interested to take up a smear test if she is aware enough of the possibility to get cervical cancer by contracting HPV infection, and that she is exposed to this risk as long as she is sexually active. The HBM predicts that women are more likely to comply with cervical cancer screening recommendation if they believe that they have risk factor of cervical cancer (Glanz et and colleagues 2008), and vice versa, the belief of not being at risk for cervical cancer or HPV infection preclude (deter, empeche) women to engage in such program, And this is why most virgin women in Algeria underestimate the necessity( believe the futility) of smear test as they think they are protected from the risk of HPV infection because they are not married. Or in other words , because there is no sexual intercourse, virgin woman does not perceive her vulnerability to cervical cancer, although studies show that HPV has been found in some female virgins, which means that the virus does not always need penetrating sex to be transmitted, And that it may be spread through non penetrating sexual contact; and even within married women, the concept that HPV infection is related to multiple sex partner make them b elieve they are safe from the risk since they have one partner, ignoring the husband sexual behaviour, as many men in Algeria have extramarital sexual relationship underground that the wife unawares, and so she doesnt see herself as susceptible to the risk. Another worrying factor is that youngest women consider cancer to be an elderly disease, while older women according to cervical screening age limit might think that they are no longer at risk ref( V.Thomas 2005), and so there is a wrong perceive of susceptibility. Perceived severity: refers to the seriousness of the disease as assessed by the patient, it is usually based on medical information or personal knowledge from television, radio or leaflets, or it may come from the belief of a person about the consequences that would create a particular disease whatever clinical such as death, disability, or social like family life and social relations (chapter4), (S.T. Tavafian 2012), For screening test, if women believe that cervical neoplasm is a severe disease that would lead to serious difficulties for her and her family, she will view prevention as a priority and so she is more likely to receive a Pap smear test. Also having knowledge about Pap smear test and its importance to detect the invasive disease at early stage will motivate her to receive one, because many women realise the severity of cervical cancer but lack knowledge of screening program, and available service. Despite the recognition that cervical cancer is a serious issue, most of women in Algeria believe that there is no treatment, which make them see screening test as futile and this perhaps reflects the religious beliefs and the cultural background that may influence their attitude, Algeria population as most of Muslims agree that illness, recovery and death are all determined from God, so The majority believe that screening would not prolong their lives and when the time of death comes no one can push it away( K,Salman2011) Another point is that the fear from possibility of identification abnormal cells would necessarily lead to other investigations often influence the willingness of the women to attend, especially when there is no one to watch the children during the screening and the lack of significant support. (chapter4) In Algeria, as in many other Arabic countries, cancer screening is usually recommended for diagnostic purposes rather than being used as a tool for secondary prevention ( K,Salman2011) most of women consider the absence of visible symptoms as a sign of good health hence they do not seek health care unless the disease manifests itself and starts to disable her daily activities, and so the cancer is often diagnosed at its advanced stage. Perceived benefits is about the persons opinion on how much may new behaviour decrease the risk of a particular disease, the HBM predicts that most people have tendency to adopt new behaviour which is seen as a healthy behaviour when they believe the capability of this new behaviour to decrease their risk of developing a disease (Glanz and Colleagues 2008) Perceived benefits play a major role in the adoption of secondary preventive interventions such as screening, for example, if women believe that Pap smear is important for early detection of the precancerous lesions and prevention of cancer that will motivate them to participate in secondary prevention practice by seeking checks up and periodic screening. Therefore women are not expected to engage in any screening program unless they perceive that this program is potentially beneficial to reduce the risk, and so health care providers should explain to the patient the ability of screening test to detect changes in cervix before they develop to cancer, which make treatment easier and prevention effective. Perceived barriers: relate to the individuals vision of the obstacles he will face if he decides to adopt a new behaviour. In order to undertake a recommended behaviour, a person needs to believe that the benefits expected from it outweigh the outcomes of his old behaviour; this enables him to overcome the perceived barriers and to adopt the new behaviour (chapter4) For example, if woman believes that benefits of undergoing a screening test outweigh the obstacles that she may face, she is more likely to obtain Pap test. Previous studies have showed that women who perceived the Pap smear testing as a painful and embarrassing process were less likely to obtain cervical cancer screening, in the same studies women reported many cause that deter them to take the action, such as a negative previous experience, included pain, bleeding, or being faced with inexperienced practitioner who didnt explain the procedure to them during taking the sample, language difficulties was another barrier due the perceive that she will be unable to communicate properly with the health care provider, and to build a trusting relationship. Even those who appreciated the necessity of the screening, the fear of the test process was a great obstacle for them, as most of women find it uncomfortable, and perceive the metal speculum as a painful instrument. (Abdullah 2009) Shyness is another major hindrance that may deter screening process, and It is very common for women to refuse to reveal her body parts to undergo a physical exam or a medical procedures especially when the health provider is a man, and even the discussion about a sensitive health issue like marital relationship, sexual activity and reproductively is regarded as very private, and shouldnt be disclosed to other people , especially men, and even husband may sometimes not be involved in his wifes health issue if it is related to her reproductive organs.( K,Salman2011) Cues to action: are the ensemble of events, things, people that motivate a person to change his behaviour, and this can be mass media such as television, radio, advice from a family or friends, leaflets, information brochure, campaigns, recommendation from health provider,(chapter4) Women are more likely to take up a pap test if she receives enough information about the benefits of the test from her GP or Gynaecologist, if she receives advice from another woman who had the test, if she is encouraged by a member of her family especially the husband or if she knows someone in her entourage with a history of cancer, all those factors are susceptible to reduce the perceived barriers to cancer screening. Perceived self-efficacy: it refers to the belief of the person in his own ability to adopt the behaviour required, because people generally dont engage in doing something unless they believe they are able to achieve it. (Chapter 4) Modifying factors: in addition to what it has been already said, There are other factors that seem to influence the willingness of women to take up the test such as inadequate knowledge about the screening, lack of trusting relationship with the health provide , lack of confidence in the importance of the test, high cost of the test, fear of the result of the test and superstition that talking about cancer would bring it, some stigmata imposed by the community and even sometimes the family that cervical cancer is related to promiscuity, Perception of the Pap smear as a threat for the womans virginity, some fatalistic attitude that illness, recovery and death are relating to gods will and that screening test is futile, Low socioeconomic status, lack of social support, poverty, lack of health insurance (J.Hatcher and colleagues 2011), childhood sexual abuse, obesity, low levels of education, child care, lack of transportation. Cervical cancer screening- promotion interventions based on HBM Today, the HBM is used by many researchers to guideline the development of strategies for effective health intervention, In this section, I will try to summarise some finding from the different interventions based HBM that push me to suggest this model to improve womens behaviour in Algeria. The health belief model has been used by several study, alone or combined with other health promotion models to and to improve belief and behaviours among women regarding the screening program, an example of this study, has been conducted in Iran, in 2010, this study showed that the HBM has formed the basis for an interventional program to improve behaviour among Iranian women,(S.Tavafian2012),The study was conducted with 70 volunteers- aged between 16 and 54 years, and they had never received Pap test, the participants were divided into many small groups, and each group underwent a session of 2 hour training. For the data collection tool, a self-administered multi-choice questionnaire was developed based on the concepts of the HBM. The personal belief and health practice of all the women were assessed pre intervention and four months later, the findings reported that health education based on HBM construct was effective, and could promote the participants knowledge and improve the d ifferent components of the model (perceived susceptibility, severity, benefits, and barriers).The training program that has been used enhanced the willingness of women to practice the screening test significantly. The study concluded to the fact that education program based on HBM constructs can change womens health beliefs, enhance their knowledge about the cervical cancer and the screening test, and motivate them to adopt a new behaviours. (S.Tavafian2012) Another study in Somali was about an educational programme about the purpose of the screening test, to encourage Somalis to undertake the test. The participants praised the initiative and suggested that such information should be provided in a community setting, because it would help women to perceive the value of the test, and to overcome the different fatalistic barriers to screening. further, Participants suggested improving the awareness of screening among women via mass media: TV, radio, video, DVDs, CDs and audiotapes (Abdullahi , 2009), Health promotion (ACCP 2004)( review the title) There is a lack of information regarding health promotion models that have been used to influence health behaviour among women in Algeria, and even there is no description how the intervention methods were selected, Alliance for Cervical Cancer Prevention (ACCP) consists of five international health organizations who share all the same goal to prevent cervical cancer in limited-resource countries.it aims through its projects to implement an effective prevention strategies to minimise the burden of the cervical cancer .unfortunately ,Algeria has not been included in this initiative, through my review of this manual , I would suggest it as an approach to improve womens health is Algeria and to promote health service delivery. Many method of diagnostic, screening and treatment are currently used. And each of them has strengths and limitations, this method should be reviewed to pick up the most appropriate for the patient, for the screening for example the Pap smear test is the most commonly used, this test requires multiple and regular visit from the client, which can be a barrier for the woman to attend it, The ACCP suggest some alternative approach with better sensitivity and specificity such as Human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA testing, or visual screening, a low cost method with an immediate result. As a health care facility, they suggest to combine the treatment of precancerous lesions to the screening process, and propose some effective and safe methods that should be performed by physician and not physician. These treatment methods allow cure and histological verification at the same time, it has been shown that this initiative was praised by women and providers as well, and it has a great result to lower rate morbidity. The combination of both effective screening approach and treatment would overcome the limitation. Facility womens access to precancer treatment services, through selecting a program to link screening services to precancer treatment services. This would increase the effectiveness and encourage woman to follow up. Achieving widespread screening coverage of the target population by selection of well-organised prevention approach. And this may include the policymakers and authorities who should encourage the investment in cervical cancer prevention Planning an effective prevention intervention: Planning a prevention program requires a coordination between a multidisciplinary management team, that include clinical, administrative, and training specialists. To achieve the programs objective, the team members should follow a participatory process which includes also the perspective of lay people who are concerned by the outcome of this program, and this will allow achieving a high screening coverage with satisfactory result. Improving health services and laboratory infrastructures: delivery services should be accessible, acceptable, affordable, and reliable to satisfy the client and ensure a high coverage of the population target Training: Ensuring Performance to Standard Ensure to qualify a competent staff and health provider, to attract client to use the facilities available and this would happen by training session that enable provider to confidently offer reliable services Providing Information and Counselling to Address Community and Client Needs Women target group should be informed enough the benefits of screening and availability of prevention services to increase the effectiveness of the program, and this could happen by direct contact between woman and health worker or through mass media and campaign, Social network interventions, mailed invitation letter for screening and reminders, information brochure which are very popular to spread information about health topics. It has been stated that direct provider contact is more effective to increase the use of prevention services as the individual counselling will address concerns and emotional need and should be more convincing Overview of screening, treatment and Palliative Care services of cervical cancer Cervical cancer screening services, cervical cancer treatment, and palliative care services should be continuously linked to ensure the effectiveness of the program
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