Philippines still divided on RH Bill Essay

Philippine society remains divided on the reproductive health (RH) bill, as it is being opposed by concerned citizens, especially the pro-life, pro-family and pro-God groups, regardless of creed or religion. Pro-life groups, and many professionals in the medical and nursing fields, believe that physicians and policy makers should understand and respect the beliefs of patients who consider human life to be present and valuable from the moment of fertilization. Other aspects of the bill being contested by concerned citizens include the classification of family planning supplies as essential medicines when their safety profile and legal permissibility are questionable. Very pertinent to the debate about reproduction rights is the right to life. The Philippine Constitution says that the State shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception, if artificial contraceptives are medically proven to induce abortion as one of their mechanisms of action, then procurement and distribution of such family planning supplies are unconstitutional and illegal. Harapan†, a debate sought to clarify issues about the bill now pending in Congress, amid vitriol spilled by both sides on social media, the pulpit, on the streets, and elsewhere, aired by ABS-CBN and ANC on Sunday night. Key proponents of movements either supporting or rejecting the RH bill took part in the discussion, which was hosted by Julius Babao and Karen Davila. House Minority Leader Edcel Lagman, one of the proponents of the measure now called Responsible Parenthood-Reproductive Health Bill, cited United Nations data showing that 11 women in the country die every day due to complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. He also mentioned surveys made by Social Weather Stations and Pulse Asia showing that a majority of Filipinos support the RH bill. â€Å"Ang RH bill ay hindi tungkol sa religion. Ito ay tungkol sa karapatan, kalusugan, at kaunlaran,† he said. Lagman added that it is not only about contraceptives but also maternal health, abortion prevention, HIV-AIDS management prevention, and efforts to stamp out violence against women. Paranaque Rep. Roilo Golez, who is opposing the bill, took the opposite road and said he and the other guests would not be present at the debate if their mothers followed family planning. He also claimed that contraceptives raise breast cancer rates and do not prevent HIV infections, citing Thailand. Golez also said the Philippines’ population growth rate is going down. â€Å"Di na kailangan ng RH para bumaba. † The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines’ Fr. Melvin Castro said that tubal ligation, a popular medical method involving the cutting women’s Fallopian tubes to prevent them from becoming pregnant again, is considered as a sin by the church. Pro-life activist George Balagtas and Dr. Sylvia Estrada Claudio, director of the University of the Philippines’ center for women’s studies also presented their arguments either rejecting or supporting the RH bill. Claudio focused her attention on the Catholic Church’s influence on the debate and said that Catholic leaders in the country should respect diversity of religion and opinion. â€Å"I’m not a Catholic. Hindi totoo na lahat ng Pilipino ay Katoliko. That is not society,† she added. Castro, meanwhile, insisted that the RH bill is against God’s laws. â€Å"We are opposing God’s will to procreate. † Other personalities from the 2 sides of the fence also crossed swords over sensitive issues such as sex education and abortion. UST’s Dr. Aguirre, meanwhile, used another angle in attacking the RH bill. She said sex education has been around for years and cited a study stating that 9 of 10 Filipino youths are not sexually active. Akbayan’s Risa Hontiveros, on the other hand, believes that sex education must begin in the fifth grade, when changes occur in the bodies of boys and girls. Even the results of the SMS and online polls held during the show failed to end arguments on key issues. In the SMS poll, 69. 58% of votes cast reject the RH bill while 30. 42% support it, while in the separate online poll held on the Harapan micro site that live streamed the debate, 63. 91% support the RH bill while 36. 09% oppose it.

Activating Communities for Hunger Relief Efforts

The San Francisco-Marin Food Bank on Behalf of App Users By abashedly Activating Communities for Hunger Relief Efforts, foodstuffs(TM) Donates to The San Franciscans Food Bank on Behalf of App Users 1 888 parallelism Free Mobile App Promotes Healthier Communities by Providing Weight Management Tools while Fighting Hunger Through Food Bank Donations.Oklahoma City, K footwear's is a free app that combines weight management with feeding the hung ray by donating to food banks such as the San Francisco Marin Food Bank In San Francisco, CA. Joining a nationwide network of footwear's affiliated food banks, the San Franciscans Food Bank continues Its work to build healthier communities while engaging locals through technology to sup port a cause. In order for the the San Francisco Marin Food Bank to receive donations from footwear's, a user must report â€Å"tweezing† (cutting calories from their food) to the app.Once footwear's race elves the number of calories that a weight consciou s consumer has chosen to eliminate from their food, the food bank will receive a donation in that amount. An equal number of nutritious calories will then b e distributed to hungry families in the area. â€Å"The SF Marin Food Bank is pleased to begin our partnership with footwear's to enable con summer to support our work to end hunger In our community,† said Blain Johnson, Food Bank m Edie relations manager. It is important to us that footwear's aligns with our goal to promote healthy com unities. Support from footwear's will allow us to provide healthy food to families in need. † As a food bank that distributes 105,000 meals worth of food every day, the San Franca compare Food Bank is a partnering food bank that supports many struggling members of the communities I s serves. The 46 million pounds it distributes each year can now be supported by weight conscious, cause conscious, consumers who appreciate the impact foodstuffs will have on their neighbors. Towhees make s it possible for consumers to be â€Å"heroes† who serve their comma entitles at no cost of time make the process of donating to their community even easier, footwear's allows users to post a â€Å"tweak† on Faceable or Twitter which doubles or triples each donation. The approach consists of footwear's users simply telling the app what food they ar e thinking of buying, eating or preparing.The app instantly displays images of suggested â€Å"tweets† that re move enough calories to make a positive difference but not in a way that changes the taste or leaves users hungry. To provide users with this simple tool, footwear's maintains a corkscrewed picture e database of more than 44,000 small changes that show users how to â€Å"tweak† everything from a particular ar brand of cheeseburger at a national restaurant chain to grocery store purchases, and homemade e dishes of every kind. s proud and excited to support the San Francisco Marin Food Bank,† said Elise Shannon, footwear's Executive Vice President of Partnership Development. â€Å"The San Francis Marin Food Bank is a highly committed and respected organization that provides outstanding service to of dimensioned members of our community. † footwear's is rapidly expanding its partner base to food banks all across the nation, with more Joining each week, said Ms. Shannon, herself a former food bank executive. Food banks that wish to affiliate with footwear's may contact Ms.Shannon by email at Elise ( @ ) foodstuffs dot com dot Jay Walker, the inventor of footwear's, is also the chairman of Patent Properties and curator of TEEMED, the health and medicine edition of the famous TED conference. A noted entrepreneur r, Mr.. Walker has founded three companies that serve more than 50 million customers. He is best know n as the creator of Principle, which brought a new level of value to the travel industry. Http:// www. foodstuffs. Com HTTPS://www. Faceable. Com/Foodstuffs HTTPS ://twitter. Com/Foodstuffs HTTPS://foodstuffs. Tumbler. Com

Building Trust Within a Group

Building Trust within a Group Mgt/521 When working in teams I have found that team members have to earn trust from one another. It helps that everyone in the group has the same goal and in the end wants to achieve the same things. Trust is built when everyone is engaged and there is plenty of communication and involvement from each team member. There has to be a lot of give and take. Trust is built starting from small assignments and each individual doing their part. Trust can easy be lost right away if someone in the group is not participating to achieve the end goal. It is important to keep trust among team members by staying involved, communicating, and working together. The weight of the team projects must be evenly dispersed throughout team members. If one team member is going more than others, trust can be lost. Trust is very complex and has multiple layers. Although trust is a major factor in interpersonal relationships, there has been relatively little research done on the topic. Trust emerges and changes in situations that are difficult to observe and study, such as in â€Å"strain test† situations (Holmes, 1981). Strain test situations are when on individual’s outcomes is dependent on his or her partner, but the actions that would promote the individual’s own interests differ than what would benefit the partner. I think this goes back to the give and take scenario and doing what is best for the group, not just one individual. References Holmes, J. G. (1981). The exchange process in close relationships: Micro behavior and macro motives. In M. J. Lerner & S. C. Lerner (Eds. ), the justice motive in social behavior (pp. 261–284). New York: Plenum. Current Directions in Psychological Science, (2007, Oct 01); 16(5); p264 5p.

Consumer protection can best be achieved through competition Essay - 1

Consumer protection can best be achieved through competition regulation ensuring a functioning competitive market. Discuss - Essay Example Thus, to understand how competition regulation benefits the consumer, it is critical to also first appreciate how competition regulation is related to the consumer protection regime2. This paper will begin my discussing the major completion regulations in the UK, before discussing the effect of competition regulation on the functioning of a competitive market. This will lead on to a discussion on how competition regulation’s effect on market functioning strengthens the consumer protection regulatory regime. Competition regulation policy in the UK, as well as the EU, is based on four fundamental pillars. The first pillar involves cartels and anti-trust, including the elimination of agreements that act to restrict competition, such as price-fixing by dominant market players3. The second pillar involves market liberalization that seeks to introduce renewed competition in sectors enjoying monopolistic tendencies, including postal services, energy supply, aviation, and telecommunications. A third pillar is state aid control, through which competition regulation policy analyses measures of state aid to ensure they do not distort market competition. The final pillar is merger control, through which governments investigate take-overs and mergers to avoid domination of the market by large business groups. UK competition regulation is anchored in legislation and there have been sustained attempts to enhance competition regulation since 1948. The Monopolies and Restrictive Practices Act 1948 was the UK government’s first legislative attempt to regulate competitive practices, specifically by setting up the Competition Commission to block mergers that would threaten public interest4. The Monopolies and Mergers Act 1965, in turn, empowered this commission to investigate possible and actual mergers, especially where there was a risk of increased monopoly power. In the meantime, the UK government got the

New Public Management (NPM) as a framework for the comparative Article

New Public Management (NPM) as a framework for the comparative analysis of public administration - Article Example Having said this the study will now move on to summarise Pollitt (2001). Pollitt (2001) begins by stating that the thesis that there is an inevitable and global convergence towards a particular, new style of public management. He notes that despite the evolving literature in support of diversity, some politicians, academics and civil servants continue to preach convergence. He suggests that to better understand this controversial issue, it is necessary to tackle the problem from different perspectives. He states a series of angles that can be compared to see if there is convergence. They include debate, reform decisions, actual practice or results. Pollitt (2001) begins his introduction by reviewing some literature on the convergence towards the "New Public Management"/"Reinventing government" styles of public management reform. According to Pollitt (2001) most of the studies are in favour of divergence and not convergence. These studies include (Flynn and Strehl, 1996; Kickert 1997; Olsen and Peters, 1996; Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2000; Pollitt and Summa 1997; Premfors 1998; Wollman, 1997). This implies that the Orsbone and Gaebler thesis that global pressures are producing an inevitable and inexorable global convergence on what they term "entrepreneurial government" is now being open to criticisms by many academicians. Pollitt (2001) however, also identifies studies that continue to be in favour of this thesis. They include (Halligan, 1996; Kettl, 2000). The main aim of Pollitt (2001) was to develop a concept of convergence that will enable us understand why many commentators continue to invoke convergence in spite of the evidence in support of divergence. Pollitt (2001) asserts that the strategy should be to consider whether the very idea of convergence has value of its own. Pollitt (2001) relates the convergence myth of public administration to the creation myth in art and religion, which has served so many purposes irrespective of whether it is true or false. He identifies four main steps to the argument as follows: The convergence process can be divorced from ideas of global and functional imperatives by summarizing the still developing critique which has been articulated by comparativist scholars. The notion of institutional isomorphism can be used to see that convergence, in the sense of replication of rhetoric forms and practices across the world, may have more to do with government fashions, symbolism and the propagation of norms than with the grim dictates of the global economy or the functional necessity for increased government efficiency. The third adopted by Pollitt involves the acknowledgement that words and concepts can develop lives of their own. According to Pollitt (2001) in the fourth and final step, an analysis of who benefits from a situation of where convergence is more a matter of talk, symbolism and pronouncement that of the day-to-day practices. Pollitt (2001) then goes on to discuss two disclaimers namely that the line of argument advanced his work is not intended to seem Macchiavellien. The second disclaimer is that a partial rehabilitation of the idea of convergence is not in any way to deny the diversity of national regimes and

Intro to law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Intro to law - Essay Example platform when two men ran in to catch the train the second man carried luggage and appeared to be falling when the train employees or guards who were standing by moved in to help him by pushing him into the train. In the course of the entry, the luggage of the second man fell down (it had fireworks), so it exploded hitting the tracks (Prosser, 1953). The impact on the tracks initiated the scales on the other end of the train to fall thereby injuring the plaintiff Mrs. Helen Palsgraf. The plaintiff sued the railroad claiming she was injured due to the negligence of the employees of the railroad company. Judgment: the bench by way of majority dismissed the application of the plaintiff and instead arguing that the actions of the accused employee were too indirectly linked to the injury caused to the plaintiff. In principle, there was no way he could have known what the passenger and owner of the luggage had carried. Thus, the case was dismissed with

Stop kiss Movie Review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Stop kiss - Movie Review Example Live performances allow the audience to see how the actors undergo a sustained three-dimensional experience. In addition, the audience get to touch reality as presented by the actors and identify with some creativity in the artwork. This paper is a response to a performance of the â€Å"Stop Kiss† play. The play is about little triumphs of ordinary people in relationships. Diana Son who put the writings on the page reveals the secrets that befall a contemporary urban life of the mighty and politicians, who have to face a sour aftermath of their hate actions. The Garage Theatre made all this happen on the third Saturday of April 2012 at eight pm. You could read the excitement as the long waited moment of raising the curtains arrived. Garage theatre was celebrating ten years since its inception, which explained the big audience of the day. Callie and Sarah have recently met via a friend after Sarah has joined New York City. They realise that they share many commonalities in that they are in the process of self rediscovery after the diverse lives that are part of their past now. It is a tragedy that the two had a first kiss, which takes their friendship to another level and appears more of a love relationship. A late night walk in the park ends it all after their sight catches a vicious thug who beats Sarah into a coma. The performance was perfect with the audience laughing their hearts out all through the play. The audience encouraged the actors to do it better by laughing it off loudly in moments of humour. Great suspense rocked the audience as Bush and Beth Meticulously made their moves to deliver Diana’s message. Their voices were audible to every corner of the theatre, their movements good utilizing every part of the stage, and they acted professionally. As the play began I thought that the theme was on heterosexual behaviours of our society only to get a different meaning at the climax of the play.

Environmental Importance of Concentrating on Renewable Energy Sources Research Paper

Environmental Importance of Concentrating on Renewable Energy Sources - Research Paper Example Nonconventional sources include solar thermal power, biogas wind energy, solar photovoltaic and tidal energy. Most of these sources are cheaper and renewable as compared to conventional sources. However, in most of the countries, these sources have not yet been fully developed and commercially exploited. The overall limitations and scarcity of fossils have given a rose to the urgent need for developing and exploiting these alternate energy sources. In addition, considering the cost of transportation of energy to far-flung and rural areas, local available non-conventional and renewable energy sources become more important for meeting localized rural energy needs. The sources of energy are divided into three categories: Renewable Sources, Non-Renewable Sources, and Nuclear Sources. In Nonrenewable sources comes the fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas, and petroleum. The renewable energy sources are solar, wind, hydroelectric, biomass, and geothermal power. The nuclear-powered sources are fission and fusion. The advantages of Renewable energy is that they are sustainable energy sources and are replaced by nature after use, unlike fossil fuels and petroleum which take millions of years and special conditions for their formation and are in limited supply. Among renewable energy sources Sunlight, wind, water, and biomass are mostly used all over the world. Sunlight can be transformed into electricity using photovoltaic panels. This electricity can be used to drive a multitude of electrical appliances. In addition, light, heat, and ultraviolet composure of the sun's energy can also be converted into heat using solar thermal panels. The heat can be used to heat water or air for residential, commercial and industrial use. Electricity is also produced by flowing water and Wind in large scale in man parts of the world.

Segmentation and Targeting Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Segmentation and Targeting - Research Paper Example Starbucks coffee and Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee company are used as the bases of reference. Target markets for Starbucks coffee and Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee Starbucks coffee targets a general local market. Its initial target market was young college students, neighborhoods and social classes that would spend time with friends at their stores and gladly accept the idea of buying a $3 a cup of coffee. The initial focus included small towns, ethnic neighborhoods, highway rest shops, rural communities and even towns saturated with coffee shops. As a result of rapid growth, this target market has expanded quickly to include local buyers of all ages. On the other hand, the Jamaica Blue Mountain focuses on the export market. Its main target market is Japan though it wants to expand to include Canada. How the choice of target market influences the company's promotion and pricing A company has to consider the buying power of its market. Miller (2006) explains that customers have differe nt disposable income and this means they are different in terms of their sensitivity to prices. Market segmentation is therefore important in determining if a company can raise its prices or not. If the company has to raise its prices, the type of target market will determine the level to which the company will raise its average prices. If the target market is very sensitive to prices, then a company could consider dropping its prices slightly so as to gain an extra market share. If it is insensitive to prices, then a slight increase for purposes of increasing profits margins will benefit since the increase will be indiscernible. According to Aaker et al (2000), the type of target market also determines promotion methods used. A company has to choose the promotion methods that will enable it to reach its target market quickly and adequately. Alternative methods include the TV, radio, billboards, direct marketing mail shot or the Internet. At the same time, the company has to conside r how competitors do their promotions. They should then evaluate the efficiency of these methods and compare with those they use or intend to use. The type of target market also determines the frequency of these promotions. For example, markets that are highly competitive require frequent promotions in order to retain customer loyalty. Effects of introducing a new target market on consumer perceptions A company can introduce a new target market in a market that is already captured by its competitor. For example, Starbucks coffee can start producing brands for export to Japan, a market segment that is already captured by Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee. According to Kotler (2003) the perception here will be that the company has performed well in terms of pricing and its expansion is a sign that it is now focusing on the quality of its products and expansion of its image. As a result of this, customers will tend to associate more with the company products so as to enjoy the anticipated h igh quality products and form part of this international or wide region market. The influenced of economic changes on purchase trends of customers The customers will not be influenced by changes in the economy because they will have already formed a perception that the company is already working on the quality of its products. This means that at fair prices, they will be enjoying more quality products and variety as well. This situation is reinforced by the

Work, Culture, and Society In Industrializing America 1815- 1919 Essay Example for Free

Work, Culture, and Society In Industrializing America 1815- 1919 Essay It is historian Herbert G. Gutmans thesis that the conflicts between the working class and the non working class resulted in a departure from its values and principles. The working class did not want this departure to happen; it was only the inevitable result of the growing industrialization. The conflicts between the rest of society and the working class resulted in the disappearance of its principles. During the beginning of the 19th century, the United States had remained a pre-industrial society and there were few workers and factories because at the time, it was dominated by a farming, skilled workers, and agricultural culture. However, after 1843, the industry developed radically through the civil war and was followed by a new nature industrial society that appeared in 1893. During this development, both skilled women and men were forced to modernize. Just as Sidney Pollard had described, a society of peasants, craftsmen, and versatile labourers became a society of modern industrial workers. This process was difficult because it required a task of industrializing whole cultures. Nevertheless, the process was achieved as the nation gathered and worked to transform themselves and new groups from the pre-industry to the new. This progression was continually altered by immigration, social conflicts, and through various other elements. These women and men sold their labor to an employer to join this new changing factory working condition. Work habits in comparison remained the same from the native culture and to the immigrants. Also, the working pattern also parallels one of that of the European patterns in pre-modern development. There were also tensions between culture, work, and society. Work habits of men and women in the new factory and labor life attributed to the diverse pre-modern cultures. During the early 19th century, many Americans were newly introduced to a more efficient process of production called the factory. At this period of time, most work was done by man, not machines. Conversely, as time developed, more and more factories, beginning with textiles and cotton industry used unskilled labor to work in mass producing products. Drinking was common in this time even while working, it caused unproductive labor and often be inclined to have more accidents and deaths. Reform movements began and to solve this there was a temperance movement although it was short lived it served its process. Also, managers began to fine and deduct from wages if there was unproductiveness, for instance, drinking liquor. And at places where unskilled factory workers could easily be replaced, they took this as an advantage and often fired those who did become drunk. The effect was better working habits to society. These work habits were not just common to pre modern America but also later generations of factory workers. And by 1920, two thirds of workers in the twenty-one major mining and manufacturing industries came from either Southern or Eastern Europe or were American blacks. Many of these cultures and factory workers had numerous of the pre-industrial work habits. Assorted patterns of working class behavior accompanied the industrialization of the United States. Forms of protest occurred throughout the periods and development of industrialization in America. This followed the ever changing behavior and diversity of the cultures that were in the working class. Another form of culture was included in street gangs that were believed to hold artisan and lower class workers and were organized by ethnicity. Others, people often had food riots against the monopolies and the rising food prices. Similar behaviors in riots even decades apart for instance, the 1837 food riot wasnt much different from one from 1902. For instance, women became organized and were led by a woman butcher and these people protested the rising price of kosher meat and a disloyalty among the members in not boycotting it. Like the previous disorders and riots, these women battered shops and carried the meat like flags although they did not steal at all. The development of the industrial age was a process where many progressed and left their previous values behind, although there was some resistance to this new modernization.

Co Evolution Of Humans And Disease Organisms

Co Evolution Of Humans And Disease Organisms Co-evolution is a situation where two or more species influence each others evolution reciprocally by applying selective pressures on each other. Genetically speaking, co-evolution is the change in genetic composition of one species in response to the genetic change in another. This can lead to evolutionary arms races, a classic example being the interaction between plants and insects. The development of a gene for chemical defences that is harmful to the insect by the plant will put a pressure on the population growth of the insect, and the insect will try to overcome this by evolving something to detoxify them, the plant will in turn evolve a stronger defence and so on, without either side winning (Ridley 2004). There are different types of interactions between organisms (Maynard Smith 1998). Among some are: Competition, where 2 species compete for a limited amount of a common essential resource and one or the other will be eliminated. For example, lions and cheetahs both feed on similar prey, so they are negatively affected by each other because they will have to compete for food. Mutualism, where the presence of one species stimulates the growth of another, and both sides benefit from the relationship, such as animals like cow and bacteria within their intestines. Cows benefit from cellulase produced by bacteria to help digestion while bacteria benefit from having nutrients supply from the cows. Parasitism, host-pathogen co-evolution, interaction between humans and disease organisms is an example of this, where a parasite benefit from its host at the cost of the host. In the mid-nineteenth century, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace determined the mechanism of evolution as natural selection. Species and population do not remain fixed, but they change over time. Individuals of a same species show differences in phenotype, such as difference in height, colour, or defences against enemies. These can be passed on through generations. In a community, members of the same species will need to struggle for limited resources and avoid predators for survival. Those with an advantage in phenotype will survive better and therefore be able to reproduce more successfully. One way to recognize natural selection in a population is by using the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium to measure the allele frequencies and genotype frequencies, on the assumption that it is an ideal population with large population size and random mating, lack of mutation and migration. There are three main types of selection: Directional selection, where the phenotype at one end of the distribution is selected for and the other end selected against. Stabilizing selection, where the intermediate phenotype is selected for while those at both extremes are selected against. Disruptive selection, where the phenotypes at both extremes are favoured simultaneously. In addition to natural selection, other factors that could alter allele frequencies are like mutation, migration or genetic drift that might eventually lead to speciation, which is the formation of new species (Klug, Spencer et al. 2007). Disease organisms are called pathogens, causing diseases by infecting or infesting another organism. They are often described as parasite, because they benefit from living in or on a host, at the cost of the host and can be anything from microorganisms such as bacteria and viruses to parasitic worms like tapeworms. To discuss the interaction between humans and disease organisms, we first have to look at how humans protect themselves against infection. The first line of defence of humans against pathogens is physical barriers. The intact skin of humans serves as an impenetrable barrier to pathogens and the acidity of sweat also hinders growth of bacteria. However, pathogens can still get inside the human body and this is where the immune system comes into play. There are two mechanisms of the immune system, namely the innate immunity and the adaptive immunity. Innate immunity is the inborn ability to defend ourselves without prior learning experience and this includes phagocytes such as monocytes and neutrophils where they can eat up the pathogens, and inflammatory cells such as eosinophils and basophils that trigger local inflammation at the infection site. On the other hand, adaptive immunity is the immune response that needs to be acquired through experience and it has exquisite specificity and immunological memory. The cells working under adaptive immunity are like cytotoxic cells that kill infected cells and B cells that produce antibody to destroy pathogens. On the timeline of evolution, humans, or Homo sapiens have only been around for less than 2 million years, while worms have been around for about 750 million years. The complexity of the innate immunity in humans today is due to evolution as time passes and more species of pathogens appeared, because only the fittest individuals survived the infection to reproduce and pass on their genes to the next generation. Innate immunity provide immediate defence against infection but it only recognises prominent differences between own cells and the pathogens, therefore responding to pathogens in a generic way. Thus, innate immunity works closely together with adaptive immunity which can give long term specific immune response due to memory cells. For example, immunity for malarial parasite will not give immunity for bacteria that causes tuberculosis (Davey, Halliday et al. 2001). Exposure to a certain pathogen in varying degrees also has affect on the genetic evolution of the immune system. One example is a cluster of genes that plays an important role in the recognition and presentation of non-self antigens to the cells of the immune system called the HLA (human leucocyte antigen), also known as major histocompatability complex (MHC) has been found to have associations with diseases like leprosy and tubercolosis (May and Anderson 1983). In a human population exposed to more of the diseases shows a higher diversity on the HLA genes. Disease organisms have different generation times. For example, the bacterium Escherichia Coli can reproduce in just twenty minutes under ideal circumstances, while the HIV (Human Immunodificiency Virus) can generate 10 billion new virus particles in a day. So in the course of the humans life, these pathogens can go through hundreds and thousands of generation, evolving to become better adapted and acquiring counter-defence to the humans immune system. Some important features of the co-evolution of humans and disease organism arise from this huge difference of reproductive rates. Pathogens usually possess certain adaptations to resist humans from trying to remove them and they are very much dependant on humans as their hosts for essential resources to survive, grow and reproduce. They must be able to find a new host before their current one dies or make their transition by means of vector species. The activity of the pathogens will to some extend reduce the fitness of humans or even kill them. There is a varying degree of harm that a pathogen can cause to humans, and this property is called virulence. For the same species of pathogen, some individuals might be totally unaffected by it while some might get infection that could be mild to serious or even killed by it. Virulence of one pathogen can be measured as the percentage of infections that leads to death. The bacterium Vibrio cholera was one the most virulent human pathogens, with a virulence of 15 percent until the appearance of HIV, which has a virulence of over 90 percent, meaning that 90 percent of infected people die (Davey, Halliday et al. 2001). There are different phases in which a disease organism can adapt to its host. The first phase being accidental infection, that is the first contact of the pathogen with a new species of host. Many human diseases are caused by pathogens that infect animals such as rabies, SARS and bird flu. Host changes are promoted by frequent contact between humans and animals such as keeping a pet. The second phase is the evolution of virulence after the pathogen has successfully invaded a new host. In this phase evolution of virulence happens rapidly because the pathogen is not be well adapted to the new host and will try to overcome the immune response by the host. The third phase occurs the pathogen has been persisting in the new host for some time and tries to reach an optimal virulence. Virulence that is too high either kills the host too quickly resulting in less time to reproduce successfully , reduce the chances of the host interacting with other hosts therefore reducing transmission or ind uces an immune response that react too strongly, while mildly virulent strains will be cleared by the immune system too quickly (Stearns and Koella 2008). An example of co-evolution between the immune system of humans and disease organism is shown in flu virus. When a large proportion of the population has developed immunity to a certain strain of flu virus, the spread of the virus will be prevented until it has evolved by mutation or re-assortment. This is called antigenic drift, where a variety of strains are created until one can infect people who are immune to the pre-existing strains. If a virus is produced that has entirely new antigens, everyone will be susceptible thus causing a major pandemic. Possibly one of the best-known cases for co-evolution of humans and disease organisms is the evolution of humans for the sickle cell trait to protect against severe malaria. Sickle cell disease is caused by a change in shape of haemoglobin, causing red blood cells to be distorted and encounter problems when passing through blood capillaries. Homozygous individuals do not survive for long and rarely reproduce while heterozygous individuals produce sickle shaped red cells and normal ones but barely develop any symptoms of the disease. One would assume that the allele frequency of sickle cell would reduce in a population but this is not the case. It has been found that heterozygotes for sickle cell have an advantage over normal individuals because the sickle shaped red cells reduce the ability of the parasite Plasmodium to grow and multiply. Another example that can be given is the evolution of the bacterium such as Mycobacterium tubercolosis, which causes TB. Strains of the TB bacteriu m have evolved recently that is resistant to all drugs, namely the multi-drug resistant (MDR) strains. Depending on the changes in human population, the bacteria can change its virulence accordingly. Some pathogens are willing to trade-off virulence with transmission, keeping virulence low so that transmission between hosts can happen. However, if the host becomes abundant or the immune system is suppressed as in the case of AIDS, then the pathogen may evolve a higher virulence. Co-evolution simply means the evolution of one species in response to that of another species. However, co-evolution does not indicate dependence on one another. Humans are not dependant on parasites for survival, and the other way around. Co-evolution of humans and disease organisms has produced many fascinating variations, whether in humans or the disease organisms. The studies on this can aide us in gaining understanding of health and diseases as disease organisms remain a major cause of mortality, especially in the under-developed regions of the world.

Operations Management At New Belgium Brewing Business Essay

Operations Management At New Belgium Brewing Business Essay In 1991 after Jeff Lebesch was not able to get a loan from the bank he started a beer brewing company with his wife Kim Jordon is the basement of their home with only a small capital investment. They delivered their beer in their station wagon. With the profits they generated their company soon outgrew the besetment, and moved to another location in a railroad depot, and finally in 1995 they built a state of the art custom facility which cost $21.5 million. They spent $11.5 million on a 55,000 square foot building, and $10 million on new equipment. Until 2005 NBBs most effective form of advertising has been word of mouth. Indeed before New Belgium beers were widely distributed throughout Colorado, one liquor store owner in Telluride is purported to have offered people gas money if they would stop by and pick up New Belgium on their way through Ft. Collins. While NBBC has not deviated from its original principles, the methods and people who operate the brewery have become more formal and professional. Production managers and continuous-improvement experts from outside the craft-brewing community have been recruited. As they reshape the manufacturing practices and identify projects with the best returns and highest impact, theyre careful not to squelch staff involvement. By starting in there basement as a small company they were able to focus on the quality of the beer rather than the quantity of it. New Belgium ensures that quality at the plant is monitored closely. Through the process the quality of the inputs as they are transformed is examined. Quality assurance is a critical element of the operations management. However it is difficult and a challenge to maintain a consistent product. The quality of the product should never suffer as a result of the size of the company. When a company is large it is more important than ever that the quality of the product stays the same, because the product is sold to more people. At New Belgium the entire process form receiving the hops, to brewing, and bottling is monitored constantly, to insure that the product is at the highest quality. Even though the quality of the inputs change, the quality of the product should not change. They maximize productivity by fully utilizing their technology. New Belgium closel y monitors the quality at the plant. The new technology will continue to be efficient, high tech, and environmentally friendly. implementing a compassionate business model that aims to steward the resources of Earth and nourish its employees, New Belgium has also been successful in maintaining healthy financials. They like to say that they are profitable, not in spite of their social and environmental efforts, but because of them. Sustainable production is not merely a feel-good effort; its a pocketbook issue for NBBCs 350 workers: After one year of employment with the company, the employees become employee-owners. All employees are considered area leaders, and everyone is responsible for ensuring that the quality remains high. The employees of New Belgium own 43% of the company through their Employee Stock Ownership Plan or ESOP. While giving employees ownership in the company sets the foundation for an engaged workforce, the real connections occur beyond the Share Statements.  T he reason for New Belgiums success are the companies Purpose and Core Values Beliefs Coupled with the structure and support at the executive level, employee engagement is the key ingredient in High Involvement Culture.  With their employees connected to the key functions of the business, They solicit ideas from over 300 unique perspectives.  This helps the brewery to operate more intelligently while recognizing everyones unique gifts.  These are the practices they have used to build New Belgiums distinctive culture. New Belgium opens all of the books to it employs and provides financial training so people can understand the business of doing business.  At monthly All-Staff meetings they review the financials, and employees have the opportunities to ask questions and provide feedback.  Each employee makes decisions in his or her role that affects New Belgiums profitability, whether it is about a capital expansion project or leaving a faucet running while they wash their ha nds.  It all adds up.  When a employee is connected to the higher purpose of the company and educated on the financial outcomes of their actions, they are empowered to make decisions that benefit the business as a whole. Trusting each other with this level of detail also helps us to feel appreciated, empowered, and ultimately more fulfilled. These practices galvanize coworkers to be engaged in New Belgium, to claim the companys Core Values and Beliefs which call them to honor nature at every turn of the business as their own.   What is good for the environment is ultimately good for business. They dont want to leave the faucet running or the lights turned on because it costs money and natural resources.  Ã‚  In addition to the practices which promote High Involvement Culture, they also work to engage employees in environmental stewardship.   The first two beers that they produced were Fat Tire, and Abbey, which are still sold today. The new building will feature an automated, high-speed bottling line which will increase output to 700 bottles a minute compared to the 300 bottles a minute. The current production is at 400,000 barrels per year, with expansion that is expected to increase up to 800,000 barrels per year. Since 2008, they have opened up distribution in 7 new states:   Georgia, North Carolina, North Dakota, Indiana, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Tennessee.  Added to their existing states of distribution (Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Texas, Tennessee, Washington and Wyoming), New Belgium now sells beer in 26 states, but all of this beer is brewed in Fort Collins, Colorado. New Belgium receives numerous e-mails and phone calls everyday inquiring when it will be available elsewhere. In 1995 when the Philanthropy program was conceived, they began donating 1 dollar for every barrel of beer produced to non-profit organizations in the communities where they do business.  Since its inception, New Belgium Brewing has donated more than $2.5  million through our Philanthropy program. There coworkers have also donated many volunteer hours to non-profits organizations in the region. There coworkers are given one hour of (paid time off) for every two hours they volunteer with philanthropic organizations. Question 2 Why is it important to engage employees in ownership to enhance quality and efficiency? In todays economy, brewing fine ale and creating a valued trademark in the competitive brewing industry is a hard task to achieve. You need to ensure uniform quality in the countless bottles you produce, have dedicated and hardworking staff to ensure smooth and efficient operations, and always look for better methods of exceeding the consumers expectations. New Belgium Brewery understands this, and came up with a simple solution that would ensure all of these points are met. After one year employment at New Belgium, an employees status is upgraded to employee-owner and they are rewarded with company shares. New Belgium realized that the pros of making their employees into owners were countless. The promotion alone insures employees coming into work motivated to do their assigned duties to their full potential, and creates a more productive work environment with everyone focused on meeting the same goals. The incentive being that if the business does well, their pay increases. With this incentive, employees will ensure the quality of the beer is exceptional and will strive to exceed standards; this helps maintain the companys vision in creating higher quality brews. The employee-owner incentive program used at New Belgium not only gives the company a competitive edge with enhanced quality but also aids in employee retention which in turn reduces the costs of hiring and training employees. Now, not only does New Belgium have hard working, dedicated employees, they have a large workforce concentrated on how to improve the business. As part owners, an employee can bring up any idea on what could make the company sell more, produce more, or in some cases what needs to be fixed and how it could be done. It wouldnt matter what department you are in, if you had an innovative idea on how to help the company, you have the ability to voice your ideas to senior management. For example, if they produce new ale with a full smooth taste yet is somehow not selling as much as it should; the marketing team could have overlooked the fact that their ales label could be mistaken for a crude picture, employees who have no knowledge of marketing could set up a meeting and bring light to the marketing misstep as the probable cause for lack of sales. We believe there is still one additional reason why New Belgium has made this decision. A major problem companies have is creating an integrated workforce where the issues and concerns employees have may not be correctly handled. New Belgium has ensured the safety of the companys business and the happiness of employees by introducing employee-owners. It also thwarted the possibility of added costs from employees who would have to use walk-outs or union representation to be heard by their managers. The question most businesses ask is why should you give employees partial ownership? Yet New Belgium proves that it should be, why would you cripple your business by not? Question 3 What does alternatively empowered mean to you? After reviewing the information provided by the New Belgium Brewery website, I have come to view alternatively empowered as a means of giving back to the environment b y stressing conservation and including environmental responsibility in the strategic planning process. In todays modern industrial society, companies who grow bigger usually do so at the cost of the environment, because in most cases as companies grow the costs related to environmental stewardship increases as well. On the other hand New Belgium Breweries continues to expand at an impressive pace; their ranking in the US Beer industry has been getting better and better as they age, while their growth has been ahead by at least 1% in comparison to other craft brewing companies in the industry, all the while keeping their carbon footprint at a low. This is what being alternatively empowered means. Comment on what New Belgium Beliefs are related to being Environmental Stewards. The New Belgium Beliefs are eight guidelines that define what environmental stewardship means to the company. More specifically in terms of what New Belgium believes it has to do as a company to considered environmental stewards. These include caring for the environment. Minimizing waste, so that the minimum amounts of natural resources are wastefully used, and reducing dependence on non environmental friendly methods of electricity, through means of self generating power and purchasing clean wind power. Conservatively using the rocky mountain water resources. Maximize conservation and efficiency. Increase use of new technologies. To make environmentalism a fun way of doing things and not the hard or costly manner of doing things. New Belgium Brewery is working towards achieving these guidelines through there alternatively empowered efforts. They have nine efforts that incorporate these guidelines. These include increasing efficiency by using new technologies such as Steineckers Merlin, which reuses the energy from the last batch in the next in the form of heat. They try to minimize the use of lighting by taking advantage of three hundred and sixty days of sunlight and the cooling needs are satisfied through evaporative cooling rather than electricity guzzling compressors. They also use wastewater treatment to reduce load on environment and get by products. This process also provides them with a source of electricity. By making environmental decisions only with the consensus of the employees they ensure that nobody feels they are being forced to do something that they do not want to. (New Belgium Brewery, 2010) In the subsection entitled Alternatively Empowered Efforts, Choose two of the efforts and discuss how they fit into overall sustainability mandate of the company as outlined in the 2007 sustainability reports Letters from the Sustainability Director. One of the most important factors discussed in the directors letter is that though they claimed that the energy used by them is 100% wind generated it is instead less than half and this will change through their efforts. The two efforts most closely linked to this mandate are the following: On-Site Energy Production Any industry today requires a large amount of electricity to operate and it is next to impossible to get all of it from wind generated sources as they are not so readily available and costly. On-Site Energy production would reduce the demand for electricity from outside sources and thus enable the company to meet more of its energy requirements from wind powered sources. This method of energy production reduces electricity intake by 15%, thus bringing their level of wind powered sources to more than 50%, which with further improvements could go higher. Wind-Powered Electricity since 1999 An important factor is the agreement signed with the Colorado government in 1998, which meant the company would be supplied as much power as possible through wind generation even though the cost would be more. This agreement allowed the government to put up more wind turbines, thus increasing the power available through wind generated sources, which is another step towards the mandate provided by the director. (Orgolini, 2007) Question 4 Do you think New Belgiums focus on environmental responsibility and sustainability in its production process is a major cost or a benefit that enhances the profits of the company? The New Belgium brewery website states that they are profitable not in spite of our social and environmental efforts but because of them (New Belgium Brewery, 2010); the following paper aims to illustrate this statement by describing how their conservation efforts have enhanced the profits and brand image of the company. New Belgium is the third largest regional craft brewery with production steadily increasing since 2005; this success has been achieved while still keeping sustainability and environmental responsibility at the forefront of their strategic planning process. New Belgium has implemented a sustainability management system which brings a structured approach to environmental and conservation efforts. Through accurate gathering and representation of the negative impact there manufacturing process has on the environment New Belgium was able to target specific areas for improvement. New Belgium brewery puts this practice into action by investing in efficient equipment most notably there brew kettle the Steinecker Merlin; which heats thin sheets of wort rather than the whole kettle and stores steam and vapor thats allows the wort to heat at a quickened pace reducing the amount of primary energy used. New Belgiums energy conservation efforts dont stop there; their site claims that the most sust ainable watt is the watt never used (New Belgium Brewery, 2010) and theyve introduced various initiatives that stress conservation including; taking advantage of natural light with light tubes and light shelves, and switching to HVAC evaporative coolers that use much less energy. By designing with conservation in mind new Belgium has increased its efficiency and reduced the energy input needed in their manufacturing process; this ultimately translates to a positive increase to their profits and public image. New Belgium also uses a closed loop system by pumping methane gas generated from their waste treatment facility to a 292Kw co-gen engine that produces up to 15% of their energy needs. Though the system had malfunctioned in the past a partnership with Woodward led to the installation of new controls that have led to even greater efficiency. This illustrates another aspect of New Belgiums commitment to environmental reasonability; by actively seeking out support to optimize their equipment theyve reduced their environmental impact and built lasting and useful relations with various business and government sponsored conservation programs. This can also be seen in New Belgiums appointment of outside consultants when developing there SMS system. In 2010 new Belgium commissioned the construction of a solar array on the top of the packaging hall, at the time it was the largest private solar array in Colorado and displays New Belgiums innovative attempts to harness sustainable energy. The solar array currently provides over 3% of new Belgiums energy needs and will continue to far into the future. In 1999 the New Belgium employee-owners voted unanimously to switch their purchased energy entirely to wind power. Though this included a 2.5cent premium on every watt produced; effectively reducing the employee-owners bonus pool the unanimous vote showed that New Belgiums efforts to reduce their carbon foot print had supported from everyone in the company. Even though th e switch to wind power reduced profits in the short run the unifying vote and positive effects to employee morale ( employees are happier when they feel they have a voice in their workplace) may eventually offset the loss with increased efficiency and employee retention. New Belgiums switch to wind power also had a ripple effect through derived demand; allowing Fort Collins Utilities to become the first utilities company in Colorado to offer wind power. In conclusion New Belgiums continued efforts to reduce their carbon foot print and deep commitment to sustainable production has been an overall benefit to the company by decreasing inputs to their manufacturing process and improving brand image.

Teachers Understanding of the Pledge of Allegiance :: Patriotism Pledge of Allegiance Essays

Teachers' Understanding of the Pledge of Allegiance Introduction Current social context demands that we see people either as flag-waving patriots or traitorous war protesters. American social institutions have supported this dichotomy by fostering a haven from the complexity of the world situation since 9/11: come in, they seem to say, and say a prayer for our country, sing the national anthem, recite the Pledge. These institutions know that familiar words act as aural blankets. We wrap ourselves with vocabulary and cadences that soothe our souls, repeating words without thought. Although the custom had fallen off prior to 9/11, a great many American public schools begin the school day by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. The recitation of a promise to support the flag and the country it represents constitutes an oath that is said by almost every student and teacher daily. We are concerned that the recitation of the pledge has gone unexamined by both teacher and student. While it may be acceptable for religious institutions to demand oath without analysis, public schools should be and are held to a different standard. Fostering the critical analysis of the documents that have supported our country is part of the rights and responsibilities of the American school system and those whom it employs. In this paper, we will begin the process of exploring what actually happens to the recitation and analysis of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools. Our primary question for this initial work is: What do teachers think about the Pledge as it is used in their classroom? Background Research on the Pledge of Allegiance. In the last thirty years, there has been surprisingly little study of this particular ritual in democratic participation. The majority of this work tends to focus on the legal issues concerning refusal to say the Pledge (Knowles, 1992; Urofsky, 1995). This work effectively summarizes the current legal understanding of the relationship between state law and local school governance, that while states have a compelling interest to encourage democratic education in schools, their ability to mandate such participation is effectively limited by the Constitutional obligation to protect freedom of religion (Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 1940; Urofsky, 1995). In addition, there was a small cluster of studies that occurred around the U.S. centennial examining how the Pledge was being used in the context of democratic education (c.

Interpretation of A Feminist View on Pornography Essay -- Critique Reb

Interpretation of A Feminist View on Pornography The article that I will be breaking down in the following paper is â€Å"Pornography, Civil Rights, and Speech† by Catherine A. MacKinnon. I believe the best area to start is to briefly describe MacKinnon and her article. MacKinnon is a professor of law at the University of Michigan. The article deals with the affects of pornography on society. MacKinnon feels that some pornography should be illegal. Her reason for this view is not that she finds it offensive, but rather that she considers it as a form of sexual discrimination. There are many different views on pornography ranging from the belief that it is harmless fantasy all the way to it being a prime factor of the deterioration for society. MacKinnon says that pornography subordinates women and institutionalizes male supremacy. She even goes so far as to say that it is a political practice. Advocates of pornography claim its ultimate end to be pleasure, but MacKinnon says that the actual end is power. The article will att empt to prove a correlation between pornography and the violence taken against women, as well as their social and economic inequality. I feel that the article itself is poorly written, but will attempt to make her points a little easier to understand. I feel the necessity to state that the feelings of the paper are that of my views on MacKinnon’s article. They are not my views and may in fact be, misinterpretations of her views. To spare us the confusion, I will rebut it with my views that pornography is harmless, at the end of the paper. The article starts with a brief passage on sexual equality in society. Her presentation of the argument is to explain it as if she agreed with it, only to refute it by say... ...hy. It is a genre in which men are completely subordinate, and women have all the power. Her article is so weak because it does not take that into account. I know that is only one case, but we have stated time and again that philosophy must be consistent. If she cannot/does not take dominatrix into account, then her philosophy is inconsistent. To fully explain this article and pornography would require a lengthy paper that exceeds the requirements and purpose of this prà ©cis. I will end my paper by saying that I believe everyone has a right to free speech and equality, and I appreciate the article for what it was worth, but I do not feel it is justifiable or relevant to society. She bases her entire argument on an improvable correlation of pornography and sexual discrimination. Not to mention the fact that women also buy pornography. But that is a whole other prà ©cis.

General Motors Corporation General Motors Corporation

â€Å"General Motors is one of three leading automotive manufacturing companies in the United States. â€Å"General Motors merupakan salah satu dari tiga perusahaan manufaktur otomotif terkemuka di Amerika Serikat. Based in Michigan in 1903 by Henry ford and grew to reach revenue of $150 billion and more than 370,000 employees by 1996. Berbasis di Michigan pada tahun 1903 oleh Henry ford dan tumbuh untuk mencapai pendapatan sebesar $ 150 miliar dan lebih dari 370. 00 karyawan pada tahun 1996. In the 1970's, the automobile market for the major auto makers – General Motors (GM), Ford, and Chrysler- was crunched by competition from foreign manufactures such as Toyota and Honda. Pada 1970-an, pasar mobil untuk para pembuat mobil utama – General Motors (GM), Ford, dan Chrysler-adalah berderak oleh persaingan dari luar negeri manufaktur seperti Toyota dan Honda.In 1999, Ford acquired the Swedish Volvo model in an attempt to compete in the foreign market and expand to other regions. † Pada tahun 1999, model Ford mengakuisisi Volvo Swedia dalam upaya untuk bersaing di pasar asing dan memperluas ke daerah lain. † General Motors needs to use the business process reengineering for the information systems infrastructure to cut redundancies and requiring information process and the link among Ford centre in world wide.General Motors perlu menggunakan rekayasa ulang proses bisnis untuk infrastruktur sistem informasi untuk memotong redundancies dan memproses informasi membutuhkan dan link di antara pusat Ford di seluruh dunia. â€Å"General Motors implemented a 3-year plan to consolidate their multiple desktop systems into one. â€Å"General Motors mengimplementasikan rencana 3 tahun untuk mengkonsolidasikan beberapa sistem desktop mereka menjadi satu. This new process involved replacing the numerous brands of desktop systems, network Proses baru ini melibatkan berbagai merek menggantikan sistem

Hamlet Love for Ophelia

Hamlets Love For Ophelia Although the play Hamlet was written nearly 450 years ago by William Shakespeare, scholars still pose the question, â€Å"Did Hamlet really love Ophelia? † I believe Hamlet had feelings for Ophelia, but he never demonstrated true love for her. Several times in the play Hamlet denies his love for Ophelia. If he truly loved her, he would not want to hurt her. When Hamlet accidently killed Polonius, he did not try to console Ophelia. If he truly loved her, he would have been at her side to provide comfort in her time of grief.Even at Ophelia’s funeral, he did not profess his love for Ophelia. If he truly loved her, he would have proclaimed his love for her to those present at the funeral. Hamlet’s actions prove that he didn’t have true love for Ophelia. The first time Hamlet denies his love for Ophelia is in Act III Scene I. Hamlet declares â€Å"I did love you once† after Ophelia has broken up with him. Ophelia replies â€Å" Indeed my lord you made me believe so. † Hamlet then pronounces, â€Å"You should not have believed me. † This demonstrates that Hamlet really did not love Ophelia.He continues on to express his lack of feelings for her, â€Å"I give you this plague of dowry; be thou chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shall not escape calumny. † He tells her to go away or he will destroy her good name. Although he might just be spewing words of bitterness because Ophelia has ended their relationship, if he really cared for her he would not want to slander her reputation. His lack concern for her virtuous character supports the argument that he does not truly love Ophelia.In Act III Scene IV Hamlet accidently slays Polonius. After doing so he feels no remorse and announces, â€Å"Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell. I took thee for thy better. † He believes Polonius got what he deserved. His lack of remorse for killing Ophelia’s father show he is not conc erned with her feelings. Rather than feeling saddened by this unfortunate event, Hamlet takes delight in the fact that he has killed an eavesdropper who should not have been in the room listening to a private conversation.Not only is he pleased with the fact he has killed Polonius, but he also hides the body so there can be no proper burial for Polonius. If he truly loved Ophelia, he would want to express sorrow for her loss and support her through her grief. The death of Ophelia’s father causes her to go mad and she never recovers from the loss. Ultimately, she drowns in the brook, possibly committing suicide. Hamlet never goes to Ophelia to comfort her even though her actions indicate she is loosing her sanity.He leaves for England, at the urging of Claudius, rather than stay in Denmark where he could have monitored the health of Ophelia. If Hamlet truly loved Ophelia, he would have been there for her in her time of need. In the final act Hamlet is at the graveyard when he learns of Ophelia’s death. He is speaking with a gravedigger when Claudius enters with Gertrude, Laertes, a priest, mourners and a coffin. Hamlet hears Laertes voice and realizes he is speaking of Ophelia and it is her funeral. Hamlet enters the scene and jumps into Ophelia’s grave.Laertes proclaims’ â€Å"The devil take thy soul,† and he grapples with Hamlet. It is at this point Hamlet declares his love for Ophelia. â€Å"I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers could not with all their quantity of love make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her? † Hamlet only expresses his love for Ophelia after fighting with Laertes. He is trying to out do Laertes with his show of emotion. Even his mother is not convinced of his true love. She states, â€Å"This is mere madness. † In other words she is saying this too shall pass.Hamlet will get over Ophelia’s death. If he truly loved Ophelia, he would have grieved longer over her death. His display of emotion at the graveyard was only in response to the grief of Laertes and not a true love for Ophelia. If Hamlet had truly loved Ophelia, his actions would have demonstrated his true feelings. Instead he only professed his love for Ophelia when it was convenient for him. He used her for his gains and did not really show compassion for her. Even in her death he did not express genuine love for her.

Work Stress and Coping Among Professionals in Asia

CHAPTER EIGHT WORK STRESS, WORK SATISFACTION AND COPING AMONG LIFE INSURANCE AGENTS Chan Kwok-Bun The life insurance industry began in England as early as 1756, yet agents as an occupation to sell insurance directly to the public did not appear until 1840, and mostly in the United States (Kessler, 1985, p. 14; Leigh-Bennett, 1936, p. 59). The industry in the United States expanded considerably in the late nineteenth century due to rapid economic growth, urbanisation and popular education; one saw keen competition among companies and agents for the client dollar.Some agents resorted to unfair and sometimes illegal sales tactics that resulted in further public hostility, rejection and distrust of life insurance agents. Such public stigmatisation was recorded in the United States as early as 1870. Zelizer (1983, p. 146) wrote, ‘Illegitimate practices were abolished, codes of ethics were published, professional associations organised and agents better trained. Yet the stigma endure d. ’ Since its spread to Singapore in 1908 (Neo, 1996, p. 7), the life insurance industry has relied on agents to ‘negotiate the cultural resistance to discussing the proposition of death and its implications, especially among the Chinese’ (Lee, 1994, p. 6; Leong, 1985, p. 178; Neo, 1996, p. 37). Han (1979, p. 44) wrote that ‘everyone needs life assurance, but very few people do anything on their own to buy it’. The agent was thus invented to deal with the public’s rejection of life insurance as a concept and as a commodity. In doing this work, agents were given a share of the pro? t: commissions (Chua, 1971, p. 42; Neo, 1996, p. 8). Hundreds of workers were lured into the life insurance industry by the attractive prospect of self-employment and its promise of work autonomy and potentially high monetary rewards—a sort of ? ight away from the wage-earning class. To say that the work of a life insurance agent is stressful is perhaps an un derstatement. The fact was well documented in a 1990 survey of six groups of 2,589 workers in Singapore, life insurance 126 chan kwok-bun agents included (see Chapter 10). The survey found two major sources of work stress. One source was performance pressure.The professional workers may have internalised a strong need for job achievement and maintenance of professional standards, which are values often held high by many formal organisations as well as the government. The stress of performance pressure may also be a result of Singapore’s economic growth. As Hing (1991, 1992) suggests in Chapter 3, globalisation of the Singapore economy has driven workers to strive for personal and company success—which may bring considerable stress to the workers. Another important source of work stress was workfamily con? icts—a ? ding consistent with those of recent overseas studies (Coverman, 1989; Lai, 1995; Simon, 1992; Thoits, 1986). This essay attempts to identify and anal yse stressors associated with the work of life insurance agents, as well as coping strategies adopted by the life insurance industry in general and the agents in particular. The study on which this essay is based analysed transcripts of in-depth interviews conducted in 1990 with 15 life insurance agents and subsequently in 1998–1999 with 15 agents and informants. Each interview lasted between one and a half and two hours.The respondents ranged from 23 to 42 years in age; 17 men, 13 women. Only ? ve of the 30 respondents were university graduates or diploma holders; the rest were graduates of secondary schools, except for three who had completed ‘0’ or ‘A’ Level. Slightly more than half (18) were married. Drafts of this chapter were given to ? ve other life insurance agents (one retired) to read. One agent provided the researchers with extensive written comments; each of the other four was interviewed twice for feedback on the essay’s various d rafts. This research strategy, though laborious and time-consuming, posed critical and re? ctive questions that required the analysts to periodically confront their qualitative data in the form of ‘reality-testing’—indeed a useful step in an interpretive study like ours. As a methodological device, this triangulation of respondents/informants, researchers and ‘critics’, when intentionally built into the research process, forces the researcher(s) to be doubly re? ective. A step is thus institutionalised that requires the researcher to come to terms with biases or blind spots about which others within the triangle are in a legitimate position to ‘complain’. There are two ways to de? ne stress.One denotes external demands which require the individual to readjust his or her usual behaviour patterns (Holmes and Rahe 1967). In this chapter, these demands work stress among life insurance agents 127 are called ‘stressors’ or ‘ stressor factors’, and the readjustment is referred to as ‘coping’. The other way of conceptualising stress is to view it as a state of physiological or emotional arousal that results from one’s appraisal of the relationship between the person and the environment ‘as taxing or exceeding his or her resources and endangering his or her well-being’ (Chan, 1977; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984, p. 1; Selye, 1974; Thoits, 1995). In this chapter, when the term ‘stress’ is used, it is meant in the second sense, to be distinguished from the other two terms, ‘stressor’ and ‘coping’. Work Stressors The life insurance agents believe that Singapore society in general does not have a favourable image of them. Agents are subjected to such derogatory stereotypes as nagging, dishonest, intent on making money fast, manipulative and unethical—basically, people society would like to reject and to shun.In Singapore, life insu rance agents are often seen as among occupants of the lowest stratum in the sales business, possibly below the car salespersons and at best slightly better than a sales clerk in a departmental store. Agents are seen as a category of persons out there selling life insurance policies to ‘eat up people’s money’, sometimes unscrupulously. Victimised by stereotypes, an agent is deprived of an opportunity to defend his or her self as a person—an individual making a living like everybody else: As you know, ‘life insurance’ is not a nice word to utter.We get a lot of rejections, ‘brush-o? s’, and nasty looks by people—all these can cause us to have a very low self-image. . . . When I was very new, and when I was still doing a lot of selling, I got a lot of rejections. You notice that you have reached a dead-end because you have tried so hard to reach your sales target but you simply cannot. (1)1 These personal experiences with reje ctions by clients are frequent enough to have become part and parcel of the job itself; they must be among the more deleterious work stressors for the agents.To some if not all agents, rejections—taking such forms as not listening, not returning telephone calls, failing to keep an appointment or 1 The number in the bracket identi? es the respondents of our study. See Table 1 for their personal characteristics. 128 chan kwok-bun Table 1: Personal Characteristics of Respondents (N = 30) Education Secondary School Graduate = S ‘A’ Level = ‘A’ ‘0’ = ‘0’ Age University or Diploma = U or D Marital Status Sex (Married = M; (Male = M; Number Single = S) Female = F) 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 M S M M S M S S M S M S M M S M M M M S M M S S M M S S M M M F M M M F M F M M M M M M F M M M F F F M M M M F F F M M 28 28 29 29 33 35 30 31 33 29 23 32 32 28 24 25 38 30 27 28 36 35 30 42 2 7 30 28 31 38 26 ‘A’ S S ‘0’ S S S U D S S S S ‘A’ S S S S S S U S S S U D U S S S simply not giving one, or deciding at the last minute not to purchase a policy—invariably provide an evidential and experiential validation of society’s low image as well as disrespect of the occupation of life insurance agents.Agents reported childhood friends and relatives avoiding and labelling them as ‘pests’ and ‘man-eaters’. Some made speci? c requests work stress among life insurance agents 129 that no talk about life insurance be allowed in friendly social gatherings lest they risk discontinuation of friendships and relationships. Beginners in life insurance sales typically approach these same people within their own close personal networks to meet their quota in the ? rst one or two years, usually quite successfully. Yet, over-reliance on this personal network quickly exhausts its inherently limited potential.On th e dark side, rejections by those who are socio-emotionally close, and are therefore supposedly ‘obliged’ to help out because of friendship or family and kin membership, are often experienced by the beginning agents as particularly traumatic. Some agents thus feel let down, betrayed and cheated—these feelings sometimes result in agents slowly divorcing themselves from others socially and emotionally close to them, thus breeding personal isolation and alienation. Parents, relatives and friends are often upset when a young university graduate chooses to be a life insurance agent.Without a basic monthly salary to fall back on, the agents’ income comes entirely from sales commissions, which are often seen by parents as unreliable and risky. Parents expect a university degree, itself a considerable achievement in the Singapore society, to lead to a reasonably attractive salary from a stable, secure, respected job. The idea of an agent going for months without pa y for not being able to sell a single policy is either foreign or unacceptable to parents of an earlier generation.This e? ectively makes the agents outsiders to their close personal networks. The very nature of the life insurance agents’ job lies in dealing with people and prospective clients, many of whom they meet for the ? rst time as strangers in probably the most unlikely places and hours (often subjected to the desires and whims of the clients). Much of the stress and strain experienced by the agents thus lies in their transactions and negotiations with strangers—with the unknown, unfamiliar and unpredictable.Yet, the probability is quite high that these same strangers will hold an unfavourable stereotypical image of agents as a category, thus sometimes mistreating and denigrating them. The agents, in their encounters with strangers, have to manage an instant spoiled identity, a stigma, externally and coercively imposed on them by society at large. Agents often start on a wrong foot in the door, so to speak. Agents do not interact with their clients as equals. The balance of power in agent-client transactions is often tilted in favour of the clients.This status inequality, a source of intense discomfort, anxiety 130 chan kwok-bun and sometimes alienation for many agents, is often exploited, if not abused, by the clients. The agents, when asked to recall a speci? c experience or situation at work when they felt depressed or frustrated, would quite freely describe what constitutes a ‘bad’ client: Some clients are quite unreasonable, and they a? ect our morale considerably. What is being unreasonable? They try every possible means to reject you.They will tell you they are busy and ask you to come another day, or they will ask you for an appointment but when you show up they will say they are busy and ask you to come on yet another day! (10) Yet, agents are trained and often reminded by their supervisors and senior colleagues not to try to get back at their clients simply because of their ‘bad’ or ‘unreasonable’ conduct. In an important sense, agents are not allowed tension release ‘to get even’ with the ‘other’, thus further aggravating the built-in status inequality of the agentclient relations.This inability of agents to express the feelings of frustration, anger and displeasure that are generated by unpleasant encounters with ‘bad’ clients may prove to be doubly degrading to some agents. It perpetuates the status imbalance and is of considerable psychological costs to the agents. While much of work stress among a wide range of professional groups is often attributed to sheer work overload, some life insurance agents reported having too much time on their hands at work as a stressor. As one agent put it, ‘When I am most free, I am most stressed. Having plenty of time means one is not being productive— ideally, one should be kept busy. Having little or no work for weeks or even months generates anxiety, for insurance work relies exclusively on commissions from selling policies. Largely unstructured, insurance work gives the agents much personal freedom and autonomy; yet this same job characteristic requires skills to structure and use time to one’s advantage. Given the unstructured and unde? ned nature of an agent’s work, di? culties experienced in dealing with either plenty of time or little time were often reported by the agents as stressors.One important way the agents de? ne stress is in terms of sustained pressure to produce, to meet the yearly quota of sales, which is invariably enacted by their bosses’ ‘nagging’: Once in a while, my boss will remind us to pull up our socks. (6) work stress among life insurance agents 131 A ‘bad’ boss, as seen by the agents, is someone solely interested in pushing for a certain level of sales productivity in a given year, yet not showing enough care and support. It was reported that one insurance company regularly sends ‘gentle reminders’ to those agents not doing well, thus adding to the pressure.As a way to increase agents’ productivity and to sustain a motivational level, the life insurance industry has institutionalised the practice of publishing regular bulletins which, among other things, rank the ‘top super achievers’ by detailing their total volumes of sales by month and year. One agent reported that her company sends each agent every month a progress report which is seen by the agents as one form of assessment and feedback from the administration. Every quarter of the year, the unit manager and the agent will meet to review the latter’s sales performance.As the agent herself put it, ‘Such meetings can make me feel good when sales meet the set quota, or the experience will be quite embarrassing if I don’t do well. ’ It was reported by another agent that the leader of her agency organises the agents into several work groups and gives out awards to the topachieving group every now and then, especially at the end of the year, to foster ‘healthy’ inter-group competition and, thus supposedly, sales productivity. Singapore has experienced in the past twenty years a rapid growth in the insurance industry, as measured both by the actual number of insurance companies and y the number of full-time and parttime life insurance agents. These agents are competing with each other for more or less the same client market, which by and large still views the concept of life insurance with disinterest. The net result of this rapid growth in the industry is increased competitiveness and rivalry between companies. Theoretically, the client market is an open one, often seen by some relatively successful agents as unlimited—‘the sky is the limit’, so to speak. Yet, in actual day-to-day practice, it wa s reported by agents that they often ran into direct competition with each other.Reports were made about unethical practices of agents who resorted to substantially reduced insurance rates to ‘undercut’ competitors. Yet others, in order to maintain a certain level of yearly sales productivity, were forced to pay out of their own pockets premiums not paid up by their clients, thus sometimes getting themselves into considerable debts. Acute competitiveness and rivalry between agents/colleagues thus possibly engenders a general feeling of distrust, tension and 132 chan kwok-bun strain in interpersonal relations among peers. Competition and con? ct generate barriers of communication, undermine collegiality and, if left unmanaged, breed individualism and self-isolation. The more successful agents arouse jealousy from others and are thus shunned. The not so successful ones ? nd others critical and condescending, and would thus choose not to con? de in them. The competitivenes s of the client market demands considerable work commitment, e? ort and mental concentration of the life insurance agents which, in reality, may or may not translate themselves into actual sales, especially for the beginners just initiated into the industry.Agents complained about having to work long, irregular hours, sometimes late in the evenings or over weekends, prospecting strangers or going for appointments with clients: If a client calls you at night and insists on seeing you, you have little option but to go. You may not be that free since many people own chunks of your time. You are beholden to many people, all your clients, real or imagined, unlike in a regular job where you have relatively predictable hours, and usually one person (your boss) can demand of your time. As an agent, your time is not yours, but your clients’, everybody’s. 20) Many perhaps choose to be a life insurance agent thinking the job approximates self-employment and thus o? ers the capaci ty to control one’s use of time to serve one’s interest. Yet, paradoxically, having escaped the tyranny of control by a boss who has legitimate rights to his time, the agent soon realises he has lost his control of time to many other bosses: all his clients, real and prospective. If professional autonomy is partially measured by one’s control over time, an agent may soon be in a shock of his life. A worker who cannot claim ownership of time is a stressed agent.Much of an agent’s work is done outside his or her own o? ce, travelling on the road between appointments, in client’s o? ces or any other place clients deem appropriate or convenient to themselves. This seemingly perpetual mobility of the ‘on-the-road agenttraveller’, in a substantial way, makes the work of a life insurance agent an essentially lonely one. The agent becomes a lone ranger exploiting the frontier and eking out a daily routine of negotiating with strangers, much of the time facing a social world of unfriendly, if not hostile and aggressive forces.The very nature of an agent’s work in terms of long, irregular hours as well as an ‘unsocial’ work routine necessarily casts him or her out of the mainstream society. work stress among life insurance agents 133 An agent’s life is largely out of sync with the normal tempo of his or her family, relatives and friends. This temporal and spatial disparity between the agent and his or her social world has over time become a potent source of strain manifested in various forms of interpersonal con? icts. These tensions in interpersonal relations are particularly taxing among two groups of agents: ? st, the beginners, who strive to maintain some resemblance of order with their family, their boyfriends or girlfriends; second, married women, who try to juggle their multiple roles of wife, mother and full-time agent. Women agents are sometimes seen by their male colleagues as perhaps a bit too aggressive, or too driven, working too hard, putting in too many long hours while competing with other male agents in an already tight market. One single woman spoke about how the long, irregular hours she has been keeping for almost two years led to con? icts and ? ghts with her boyfriend and the eventual break-up of a close relationship.Parents worry about their young daughters’ safety and well-being; they are concerned that young single women meeting with total strangers for business, in unlikely places at inappropriate hours. Other parents do not like the thought that their daughters are so preoccupied with work that they do not have time to look for or see boyfriends. A married woman, determined to become a unit manager in three years, spoke about the di? culties encountered in e? ectively discharging her role as a mother to two young children, sometimes feeling remorseful over releasing her work frustrations on them. Another single woman, ? ding the Singapore m arket too competitive, resorted to concentrating her e? orts in Indonesia; and she spoke about societal pressures on single women in terms of work, career and achievement. Two agents had become, over the years, increasingly aware that they had been pursuing their work goals almost at the total expense of their family, often to the extent of coming home so tensed up that they were incapable of communicating with their family members. Worried and preoccupied with work, they were increasingly non-communicative and were drifting further and further into a world of their own making.In the course of time, these agents, while selfdivorcing and self-isolating from their family, have engineered and completed their own disengagement from their social world, which itself may breed various forms of marital as well as familial con? icts. As a result, work stress and family stress become intertwined, each feeding into the other—up to a point when the agent is at a loss 134 chan kwok-bun as to which is the ‘cause’ and which is the ‘e? ect’. Yet, ironically, the agent continues to believe in the uniqueness of his or her own work problems, so much so that only the worker himself or herself can solve them.Work problems have thus become a personal problem that requires a personal solution—a perception that inevitably leads to the self-isolation of the agent. One of the possible consequences of this non-communication with and self-enforced isolation from one’s social environment, be it one’s work colleagues or one’s family members and friends, is this tendency, in solitude, to blame oneself, to blame one’s personal weaknesses, failings or incompetence for not having been able to secure an appointment, to close a policy or to meet the yearly sales quota.A self-blaming, self-denigrating agent who takes all the blame upon oneself is a stressed agent. Coping During our interviews, in describing their ways of coping w ith work stress, life insurance agents often underlined the importance of three personal qualities: self-reliance, motivation and discipline. A largely unstructured work life demands self-discipline in terms of an ability to e? ectively manage and use time in a context where there is either plenty of time and little productivity, or little time and a heavy workload.The fact that an agent does not, in a real sense, have a boss during much of the agent’s work life often means that one needs to rely on one’s own ‘internal’ resources to motivate and initiate oneself. During their training, agents learn from their trainers’ exhortations about the critical signi? cance of cultivating the personal habit of being able to motivate and discipline oneself. One agent, determined to become a manager in the shortest possible time, a? xed to the wall of her o? ce facing her desk ‘power’ messages stressing discipline and self-reliance—messages w hich served as a daily reminder to her.Her cabinet along another wall was ? lled with layers of ‘inspirational’ and ‘how-to’ books and cassette tapes dealing with such subjects as time management, self-improvement and stress control. She actually reported during an interview that one of those books ‘totally’ changed her life; she recommended anyone aspiring to become successful in life to read it, many times over. Another young male manager grumbled about his o? ce having only limited space while work stress among life insurance agents 135 almost one entire wall was taken up by shelves ? led with motivational and inspirational cassette tapes from America. He remarked that there is a real demand for such materials among the young executive sta? in the Singapore business world. Insurance companies routinely mount in-house training workshops or courses o? ering agents opportunities to ‘refresh’ their ideas on motivation and self disci pline. Trainers or consultants from within the industry, the universities and overseas are also brought in regularly to speak on such subjects at professional meetings and industry conventions or congresses.Occasionally, successful sports coaches or athletes are brought to annual life insurance conventions to share with agents and managers their experiences in motivating and disciplining themselves, thus drawing an analogy between excelling in sports and selling life insurance. One agency, reputed to be among the top four in the mother company, publishes and distributes a monthly bulletin as well as a regular newsletter. In one of the issues, the agency leader shared in her front page message a book she had recently read: The Successful System that Never Fails (1962), by Clement Stone.The same issue carried another article showing a woman agent as a ‘goal getter’, stating, ‘She has a very disciplined system to monitor her daily and weekly activities. ’ And her advice to the new agents was: 1. KNOW what you want. 2. SET GOALS to achieve it. 3. DO THE BASICS everyday (prospecting, telephone calls, meeting customers, servicing). The article ended with another ‘motivational’ message: ‘Time and tide wait for no man. Plan and do it now. ’ On the second to last page of the bulletin, among the agenda items for a forthcoming agency meeting, it listed a discussion of a book, Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill (1996).Agents also share a strong belief in personal control. Personal control is understood here as values, abilities and behaviours to manage and master oneself e? ectively, including one’s time, habits, perceptions, thought processes, feelings and emotions, or, to put it brie? y, self-mastery. The ability to cope with stress depends a lot on your personality and your own psychological state of mind. Sometimes people amplify the stress situation and make themselves even more stressed. If we are able to control our mind, it’s very much better. (12) Our problem is our mind.If we ourselves are negative, that is our end. We need to think on the positive. We work to help pick up those who are ‘down’. (11) 136 chan kwok-bun In another monthly bulletin, an entire poem, ‘A Note of Motivation’, from a speaker during one of the regular agency meetings, was reprinted. The poem ended with these lines: ‘Life battles don’t always go to the stronger or faster man, but sooner or later the man who wins is the man WHO THINKS HE CAN! ’ Associated with this belief in personal control is the value of hard work, the belief that hard work will bring results, that there is a connection between e? rts and results and, most importantly, the ability to ‘take hard work’, to put up with long, hard, irregular work hours. Two agents actually singled out hard work as an e? ective strategy to cope with work stress. In this context, work, rather th an relaxations or rest, is prescribed as an antidote, a remedy or solution to stress or so-called ‘mental and physical a? ictions’. Such a work ethic also seems to suggest a certain degree of mental and emotional toughness, an attitude of determination toward work and life, a readiness to ‘tough it out’.One agent spoke about the importance of being able ‘to pick oneself up, put the broken pieces together and move on with life’ as a way to get out of a ‘sales slump’. The emphasis is thus on one’s resilience and hardiness, or belief in personal control over work as well as one’s ability to bounce back and recover quickly from ‘the hidden injuries of life’: After a while, I sit back and evaluate my own performance. I’ve learned to think this way: ‘You are not considered a failure if you can pick yourself up and carry on with what you are doing. (1) To the agents, strategies of coping also includ e a sample of various psychological defence mechanisms; there is evidence from the indepth interview data that they are quite frequently used. Agents are taught during training to handle rejections by controlling their own mind. They are taught to think aloud to themselves that the clients are not rejecting them, but rather, may well be rejecting themselves and their families and, consequently, leaving their lives unprotected.The objective here is to externalise, not internalise; hence to lay blame on others, not on themselves: Before, I took rejections quite personally. I felt that he said ‘no’ to me because of something in me that he cannot accept. But now, I realise that he said ‘no’ not to me, but to his family. He is not being responsible to himself and his family. The problem lies in him, not me! I have done my best and I’ll keep on trying to convince him. But for cases that give me direct rejection, I’ll throw them away because there is no point keeping them on my mind.It’ll be very stressful (laugh). (14) work stress among life insurance agents 137 Agents are also trained to accept rejections as a predictable, builtin part of a life insurance agent’s work. With experience, most agents would have learned to develop an attitude of acceptance: We took a course in psychology. From there we learned how to accept things as they come along. Basically, I’m a happy-go-lucky person. I’ll always ? nd a way out for myself. I don’t normally reproach myself unnecessarily. (12) Agents are trained to accept rejections as an inextricable part of their work.In fact, they are literally told that ‘they are paid to take rejections’, and that ‘the more rejections they encounter, the better results will be. ’ So rejections are good things and agents should indeed be happy about them: My boss always tells me that insurance is very di? cult work, but it is for the same reason w e are paid back such high dividends. If it was any easier, the money would not be that good, so the agent is talked (or, talking himself ) into seeing rejections as a good thing. He said, ‘If your prospect were to say yes readily, someone else would have sold the policy to him long, long ago? It is all very logical. (22) To most agents, coping is meant to refer to accessing and using psychological resources within oneself. These so-called personal or internal resources include self-discipline, mental control, rationalisations and the ability to self-motivate, accept, shift blame away from self to others, work hard, manage time and problem-solve. The emphasis here is on learning through training and experience to acquire the appropriate resources, skills and values so that, once they are internalised, they become part of the person and can be used in day-to-day coping.It is essentially a skill-oriented, person-focussed approach, where the onus is on the person as an active agen t ‘using the person’, using one’s self, one’s resources and skills. Such a personfocussed, skill-oriented concept of coping is accentuated by a general disinclination on the part of most agents (except a few) to seek and use help, support and care from the family for problem-solving or emotional support: It is very di? cult to get help from my family. (10) There is nothing much they can do about it. They won’t understand. (5) My family would not understand my work. So I would not go to them for help or support. 19) We are told to present a positive and optimistic front to everyone at all times, including our family. (19) 138 chan kwok-bun The married male agents were quite speci? c about keeping work and family life separate, not wanting work problems and frustrations to spill over into the domestic domain, thus not confounding their relationships with their spouse, children and kin members. They said they would strive to ‘arrange’ thei r work and familial aspects of their lives such that weekdays and occasional week evenings and Saturdays are for work while Sundays are reserved for the family.Some reported that, in general, they do not bother to communicate with their spouses about problems and frustrations experienced at work; they cite reasons such as ‘not wanting to give them headaches’, ‘spouse not understanding my work problems’ or ‘no use to talk about problems since they would not be able to solve them for me anyway. ’ One agent attributed his disinclination to involve his wife in his work problems to ‘the Asian nature and culture’. Another agent rationalised to himself that the important thing to do ‘to keep the right balance in life’ is to maintain ‘quality time’ with his wife and children.Two managers described their agencies as warm, cohesive places, almost like a surrogate family, bound by social, economic and emotional ties to problem-solving as well as to provide support for the individual agents. The agency was described as a place where agents are encouraged to return for care and guidance: How do you go about making yourself feel better? There are many ways. Over here, our company policy is that when you are feeling low or lost, the best thing to do is to come back to the agency and ? nd a colleague for a chit-chat.Is this method e? ective? It is nice that peers encourage and support each other. In general, you would want to discuss with the more experienced peers—they will give you a few ideas—point to a ‘road for you to walk on’, give you a guideline, help you to solve a particular problem, or simply go out with you for a walk to release your pent-up emotions or depressed feelings. That way, you will feel much better. (10) When I am stressed or frustrated, I immediately go to other agents (here in the agency). They are always willing to help.Four of them are very close to me. When problems come up, we talk about them among ourselves. While talking, we often come to realise that they are not my problem only—they become more normal, less serious. I always look to my more experienced colleagues—they are more likely and able to help. (15) To help create and sustain the notion of the agency as a ‘large family’, agency bulletins regularly print greetings to welcome newcomers as well as birthday messages to agency members. The intent is work stress among life insurance agents 139 o impress upon the agents that they should strive to reach their individual goals by cooperating with, supporting and caring for each other. Nonetheless, though seemingly encouraged and promoted by the management, agents only partially used social support at the agency as a way of coping with stress. Rivalry and competition between agents within the same agency or company would undermine any possible feelings of fellowship among colleagues. While some agents reported actually turning to their managers or supervisors for ‘problem-solving’ guidance and advice, they also exercised onsiderable caution in such interaction for fear of unwittingly revealing personal weaknesses, inadequacies and vulnerabilities. In practice, there are two inter-related parts to the relationship between the agent and his or her agency/company represented by a supervisor-manager: supervision and training. The agent receives supervision of varying degrees from the manager, who negotiates the kind of continuous training required to either maintain the status quo or to improve one’s sales volume. This often means customising a training programme to ? the needs of an agent in a particular stage of career development, which invariably change relative to their clients and their needs. As the life insurance industry continues to innovate by creating and introducing new products and new services, the agent ? nds it obligatory to learn new skill s—both in the ‘software’ (e. g. , new ways to motivate self and client) and in the ‘hardware’ (e. g. , legal and administrative aspects of a new product). The agent needs training, and the industry ? nds ways to encourage and support it.Thus an ethos of continuous upgrading exists. Indeed, it is a norm shared by peers in the industry, part and parcel of a collectivised coping strategy. All except one or two of the agents seemed quite clear about not seeking social support from their family for their work problems. Most tended to believe that a clear-cut separation between work and family would be an e? ective way to manage stress at work. Family relations thus become a distraction, a welcome diversion from work, where the worker learns ‘to put things aside, to forget work problems, to shut o? emporarily’. For at least two agents, the mere knowledge that their spouses will be supportive when their help and care are needed was enough witho ut the agents actually involving them in their work problems. When it comes to using social support of colleagues or supervisors at the workplace, the agents have also learned to be selective and discretionary in deciding who is to 140 chan kwok-bun be approached for what problems and towards what ends. The ‘culture’ of the support system at the workplace is thus accessed and used by the agents with iscretion, and in his or her best interests. The life insurance industry thus provides a rather appropriate context for what we call ‘the sociology of coping’, which is focused on how groups or communities, not individuals, come to terms with and deal with their stressors. To ‘contextualise’ the coping of life insurance agents, one is required to understand how, for example, an individual’s social embedment in the larger ‘system’ and ‘culture’ of the industry would make a di? erence in one’s coping process and strategy. The more socially embedded, the more e? ctive in coping—partly because one is now receiving social support and partly because one has learned ‘the tricks of the trade’ through one’s socialisation ‘into’ the group or community. The life insurance industry in Singapore is unique in that it puts into practice a certain belief in continuous on-the-job training (or what Singaporeans commonly call ‘upgrading’), learning and self-renewal. Indeed, this belief or ideology is operationalised and institutionalised in a well-worked-out system of seminars, workshops, conferences, small-group discussions, feedback sessions, etc.These are founded upon a central premise: an individual agent must be continuously skilled and re-skilled by the system and its knowledge to cope with oneself and a hostile social world—thus the constant reference to the social sciences, particularly psychology and social psychology, for insights, inspi ration and intervention. For better or for worse, the life insurance industry in Singapore has become an active user of social science knowledge and the myriad interventions derived from it. The individual very rarely copes alone and is very rarely left alone by the life insurance ‘family’.When socially embedded in this ‘family’, the individual obtains his or her support, expressively (it is nice to know how to deal with one’s depression or mood swings) as well as instrumentally (it is useful to know how to handle a hostile client). The ‘social fund’ is there for one to tap into; when used, this fund produces an ‘economic fund’ for the system and the individual. Work Satisfaction While the life insurance agents no doubt faced a wide range of stressors in their daily work, many of which demanded various modes work stress among life insurance agents 41 of coping and adaptation, they also reported a considerably high level of w ork satisfaction. Formerly construction engineers, computer programmers, factory supervisors or teachers prior to joining the life insurance business, none of the thirty agents we interviewed reported having feelings of regret over their present work; neither did they anticipate any further job change in the immediate future. All said the job was right for them, though a few did report that there were indeed lingering thoughts of quitting insurance work during the ? st two years of initiation. Several agents in fact seemed to have derived so much satisfaction from their work that they reported that their job had long become their hobby; work and hobby were indistinguishable and had in fact become one. Several agents took pains in our interviews to emphasise that everything they did in their hobbies and in life was somewhat related to their work, and vice versa. On the basis of the interview data, one would attribute the agents’ high level of work satisfaction to a combination of factors.One important factor has to do with agents’ perceived sense of control over their work as a result of the freedom, autonomy and independence an agent’s work provides. In a signi? cant way, an agent is essentially his or her own boss, answerable and accountable mainly to oneself (thus largely dependent on one’s own personal resources such as initiative, self-discipline, self-reliance and motivation). An agent is self-employed, and his or her work has the potential of developing into an entrepreneur’s business where, at least in one’s mind, the results are a direct function of e? rt and hard work. Moreover, one derives much satisfaction from being able to generate pro? t for oneself, rather than for a company as is the case for salaried employees. Indeed, several agents reported that they had quit their former job and joined the life insurance business precisely because it o? ers the potential attraction of self-employment and entrepreneu rship: I had this wish to do my own work and be my own boss. It just happened that insurance o? ered me the opportunity to realise my wish. So, naturally, I became an agent. (10)Another factor associated with agents’ work satisfaction is their relatively high income in view of the fact that many entered the profession with educational quali? cations no higher than ‘0’ Levels, with one year of training and having passed a certifying examination considered by many as easy. The agents we interviewed made an average of three to four thousand Singapore dollars per month, while 142 chan kwok-bun several agent-managers with about ten years of experience in the business reported an average annual income of S$240,000.One agency supervisor, herself making S$70,000 per year after seven years, reported that her 42-year-old manager was getting an annual income of S$800,000 or, as she emphasised, admiringly, ‘close to a million’. With money comes fame. The agency regularly publishes sales ? gures of top agents, the so-called ‘top high achievers’ in their company-wide bulletins. In an attempt to raise work morale and motivation, the industry periodically hands out awards and medals during conventions and congresses. One agent considered the wide publicity and recognition a successful agent received as a potent source of work satisfaction.When successful (as indicated by insurance sales ? gures and the subsequent recognition and appreciation received from colleagues, company and friends), an agent has ? nally come around: he or she, through personal success, has managed to achieve the kind of social status and respect that society seems so reluctant to give to this profession. In a sense, personality and achievement elicit both material and non-material rewards that are due. Insurance agents spoke about the grati? cation they derived from having sold a policy where the ? ancial rewards are tangible and immediate; one can literally calculate the precise amount of commission one makes from having completed a successful transaction. Another agent actually reported that he sometimes felt guilty for having been receiving such a sizeable income for all these years in the insurance business; his friends of the same cohort in the banking sector, better educated and more intensively trained, were making less than he did. In his mind, life insurance sales work, for those who can cope and become successful at it, o? rs good pay, a clear and well-de? ned prospect of promotion (from agent through trainer and unit supervisor to, eventually, agent-cum-manager) and a distinct probability of self-employment. For many, the prospect of a quick transition from an agent to an entrepreneur within a span of ten to ? fteen years excites and motivates many a high achiever. In the process of plodding through one’s career path, the individual gets his or her own rewards in accordance with ‘the goals set and e? ort exerted ’. And so it seems. work stress among life insurance agents Conclusion 43 Singapore society rejects the idea as well as the product of life insurance, which is the ‘? rst movement’ of the dialectic of encounters between a life insurance agent and society (Neo, 1996). Society thus rejects the role of being an agent, not necessarily the person in that role, though the person is very likely to internalise the rejections through self-blame and self-criticism. It is thus not so much what is wrong with the product, but what is wrong with me—a process that entails considerable psychological costs to the individual agents.Nevertheless, the life insurance industry employs agents and trains them to di? use such societal rejections, oftentimes striving to turn such hostility around. As it happens, the agents are assigned a stigma by society, a Go? manian spoiled identity; agents are keenly aware of the intentional social distance, the chasm, that separates them and s ociety. Agents are to be shunned by all, strangers and close social others. This is the ‘second movement’ of the Hegelian dialectic.Note that such an analysis posits that societal rejection of life insurance as an idea and the stigma attached to life insurance agents are as much structural givens as they are historical conditions, or what the Durkheimian sociologist calls ‘social facts’ which the individual agents cannot easily ‘wish away’. The ‘third movement’ begins when the life insurance industry in general, and the agents in particular, attempt to cope with the stigma by developing an institutional culture over time; an ideological complex of values and beliefs—or, ‘tricks of the trade’, if you like.The life insurance industry is among the few industries that are fully aware of the structural and historical causes of the myriad ‘assaults on the self ’ that happen during the daily routine of the work life of an agent. Their counter-attack is ongoing training and educational upgrading of the profession, from bottom up. A structural problem requires at the least a collective solution. Through seminars, workshops, conventions and pep-talks, the industry instils in the individual agents a ‘bag of tricks’. These include values and beliefs such as hard work, self-e? acy, self-reliance and discipline; work habits (keeping accounts and making regular cold calls); procedures for dealing with prospective clients; and a battery of coping strategies and defence mechanisms such as positive thinking (the cup is half full, not half empty), cognitive alteration or conversion (it is your loss, not mine, for not buying insurance from me), hiding and 144 chan kwok-bun compartmentalising (I make sure my family doesn’t know anything about my work problems), talking oneself into believing ‘doing good for others’ (everyone needs an insurance policy; it never rain s but pours), accepting the inevitable, and so on.Our analyses have indicated the in? ltration of academic psychology into the articulation and justi? cation of such an ideological complex. To illustrate, Seligman’s learned optimism concept (1990), Kobasa’s idea of psychological hardiness (Kobasa & Pucetti 1983) and many other psychological concepts such as resilience, personal control, competence, self-esteem and pragmatism, have found their ways into the everyday life language of the life insurance agents. It is perhaps a case of applied psychology, of the industry turning to social science for guidance and ideological justi? ation. Of course, never for a moment in the three movements of this dialectic is the individual agent a passive voice. Most signi? cantly, for example, the agent interacts with the industry culture to develop an ideological complex of his own to fend o? the ‘slings and arrows’ of his work life, which some have apparently done more s uccessfully than others, thus enjoying considerable work satisfaction. There are good reasons to believe that the transmission of the institutional culture is often met y resistance on the part of the individual agent, especially when the culture does not allow for tension release on the one hand and demands considerable commodi? cation of emotions on the other hand. Agents are exhorted to do emotion work—to ‘never get back at bad clients’ and to ‘act nice, think positive’. In a sense, this personal ideology grounded in a larger institutional culture serves three functions. First, in a deep psychological sense, it bestows on the agent a social identity that he uses to cope with the stress of his work life.Second, existentially, it provides the agent with a self-justi? cation of his own existence, partly because it has an altruistic dimension to it: the insurance agent is in the business of ‘doing good’, in that the family is looked after by an insurance policy should something disastrous happen to the bread-winner. Third, it also gives the agent a bag of tricks, something useful and practical in his daily encounters with society. Our interview data show rather clearly that our agents reported a considerably high level of work satisfaction.They liked their work, had few regrets about their vocational choice and had rarely thought of quitting life insurance work except during their beginning years in the industry. Some even merged their work with their life—work and hobby became one. work stress among life insurance agents 145 One ? nds at the core of this ideological complex several rather attractive things on o? er: handsome monetary rewards; a ? ight from the tyranny of the working-class condition; and a promise for freedom, occupational autonomy and self-determination in use of time— all of which are embodied in the lure of self-employment and entrepreneurship.To some workers in a credential society , these promises prove irresistible because the ful? lment of the Singaporean dream is the deliverance of one’s great expectations. To perhaps many others, these promises are just that: promises. Freedom, free will and self-determination (in use of time according to one’s desire) are an illusion. An agent does not e? ectually own his time, nor does he dispose of it according to his own accord. The chasm between proletariat and bourgeoisie remains real and forever self-expanding.Still others learn that this entrepreneurial dream, even when realised, has its dark side. A self-employed person never for a moment stops ‘using his own person’, his personality or everything he owns and can rightfully call his—his time, his charm, his tolerance, his love. Having escaped from the tyranny of control by others, he now engages in the ultimate form of exploitation: exploitation of self. The chasm that separates the capitalist from the proletariat is a structural one which is bridgeable by only a few with the right strategic internal and external resources, but which remains a chasm to many.The Singaporean dream is just that—a dream. Many agents will be caught in this black-hole-like chasm, between reality and myth, yet never fail to blame themselves for their personal failures. The moment of the ultimate nightmare will come when the life insurance industry has found ways to make direct sales to the public, e. g. , through the Internet, or when the public goes direct to the industry, as in the case of medical, house or automobile insurance (Neo, 1996). The existence of the agent is thus rendered obsolete because it has lost its value. CHAPTER NINEINSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT AND STRESS APPRAISAL AMONG LIFE INSURANCE AGENTS Gina Lai, Chan Kwok-bun and Ko Yiu-chung Work stress as a social phenomenon and social issue has been of considerable concern to scholars and laypersons alike because of its myriad costs to individual workers a? ected and to companies that experience low productivity, absenteeism and turnover (Beehr, 1995; Sutherland & Cooper, 1988). For decades, conventional research on work stress has generally perceived individuals as passive actors, making personal adaptations to structural constraints imposed by organisations.Work stress is often seen as a result of an individual’s failure in making adjustments to the work environment (e. g. , Beehr, 1995; Loscocco & Roschelle, 1991; Lowe & Northcott, 1988; Sutherland & Cooper, 1988). While studies adopting this view usually examine work stress by identifying the unique sources of stress experienced by particular occupational groups, they tend to overlook the relationship between the institutionalised arrangements of a profession and work stress. The regulative and normative systems of an industry and profession may well a? ct how an individual worker perceives, appraises and responds to work situations—subsequently in? uencing the level of stress the individual will experience. The present chapter aims to study how the institutionalised arrangements of the life insurance profession and industry in Singapore relate to the types and extent of work stress experienced by its workers. Insurance agents represent a unique group of workers who are both paid employees and entrepreneurs. Data from in-depth interviews with 11 agents working for di? erent life insurance companies provided background information on the norms and rules of the industry.Insurance agents’ experiences with work stress were analysed using survey data. The information obtained from the interviews, which were conducted prior to the sample survey, enabled our understanding of the industry and guided our questionnaire construction. 148 gina lai et al. Definition of Work Stress The term ‘stress’ has been de? ned in various ways: it has been used to refer to demands that require the individual to re-adjust his or her usual behavioural patterns ( Holmes & Rahe, 1967), or to the state of physiological or emotional arousal that results from the perception of demands (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; Selye, 1974; Thoits, 1995).In this chapter, ‘stress’ refers to the latter while the former is termed ‘stressor’. In the current research literature (Thoits, 1995), this distinction between stress and stressor is espoused. Stressors manifest themselves in episodic events or situations and are classi? ed in the literature into life events, chronic strains and daily hassles (Thoits, 1995). For an event or situation to be perceived as stressful, two appraisal processes are involved (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). First, the individual appraises the event or situation as threatening to his or her well-being.Events or situations that individuals ? nd threatening often entail potential danger or alteration to one’s personal identity, social relations, routine behavior, and/or normal physical state. Examples include los s of a loved one from whom one derives great personal a? rmation and emotional comfort or a serious illness that causes debilitation. Second, the individual feels a need for action. He/she appraises the available resources for requisite action but is uncertain about the su? ciency or e? ectiveness of resources to successfully carry out the action.When appraising an event or a situation as threatening, the individual, believing that action is needed and feeling that the outcome is uncertain, would experience an emotional reaction called stress (Locke & Taylor, 1990). Based on this conceptualisation of stress, ‘work stress’ refers to the emotional response to work-related events and situations. Researchers have suggested that stress may be manifested psychologically and physically, as well as behaviorally, and that such manifestations may vary across social groups de? ed by, for example, gender and social class (Pearlin, 1999). The present chapter focuses on the psycholog ical aspect of work stress, an emphasis particularly relevant to the study of work stress among insurance agents. Insurance work is indeed emotional work. Selling insurance often assaults one’s self due to stigmatisation and rejection by society; agents whether individually or collectively are constantly forced to make psychological adjustments to and/or manipulations of their hostile work environment. Thus, it institutional context among life insurance agents 49 would be meaningful to investigate how job incumbents in the insurance industry appraise various aspects of their work and evaluate the impacts of such appraisal on their psychological well-being. Adopting a sociological perspective, the present chapter emphasises the social-structural organisation of the industry and its link to individuals’ experience (Aneshensel, 1992; Pearlin, 1989, 1999; Thoits, 1995). The appraisal of and response to work-related events and situations are thus argued to be related to the meaning attached to work, which is in? enced by the regulative and normative systems of a profession and industry. The Political Economy of the Life Insurance Industry The most important attractions o? ered by insurance work are its promises of autonomy, potentially high monetary rewards and the prospect of self-employment. Insurance agents are usually given a certain sales target to meet within a period of time if they intend to stay in the company. However, they themselves have to decide on their sales target, set their own work tempo and get their work done wherever and whenever deemed appropriate and e? ctive. To further solicit workers’ compliance with industry goals, agents are given a share of the industry’s pro? t—commissions (Chua, 1971; Neo, 1996). Work is remunerated on the basis of sales; and commissions increase as one progresses along a clear and well-de? ned career path. The pace of advancement along the career path is selfdetermined: the individ ual decides how fast he or she wants to move along the career ladder. Individual job performance, in terms of sales volume and ability to keep policies ‘alive’, is a requisite for career advancement.Insurance agents thus take on a dual identity. On the one hand, they are employees who follow directives set by the company and work toward organisational goals. On the other hand, they are entrepreneurs who can determine their own career goals—which more often than not coincide with organisational interests—as well as experiment freely with various modes to achieve these goals. There is, however, a down side to the agents’ work. While the agents enjoy work autonomy and ? exibility, they also experience sustained pressure to produce (Chan & Ko, 1991).Further, life insurance has been and still is a taboo subject for many Singaporeans (Chan & Ko, 1991), partly due to the stigma attached to death and 150 gina lai et al. disabilities. Moreover, life insuranc e is generally perceived as a highrisk investment because of the need for considerable long-term ? nancial commitment to an unforeseeable future. Coupled with negative stereotypes of insurance work, agents often face rejections by strangers as well as family members and close friends, subsequently breeding personal isolation and alienation.Even worse, agents do not interact with their clients as equals. The balance of power in agent-client transactions is often tilted in favor of the clients. When faced with ‘unreasonable’ clients, agents are trained and often reminded by their supervisors not to get even for ‘bad’ client conduct, thus further perpetuating the status imbalance. Paradoxically, having escaped from the control of a boss who has legitimate rights to one’s time and labour, one now ? nds himself or herself subject to the control of many other bosses: all his real and prospective clients.Further, the rapid growth in the insurance industry i n Singapore has induced acute competitiveness and rivalry between companies as well as among agents, engendering a general feeling of distrust, tension and strain in interpersonal relations among peers. Jealousy from colleagues and interpersonal con? icts further reinforce individualism and self-isolation. Keen competition also makes it necessary for agents to intensify their labour—to self-exploit. Operating in such a hostile environment, the life insurance industry has to put up moral and social bu? rs to cushion itself against myriad adverse impacts—thus the emergence of an institutional ethos and culture as defense mechanisms. As a way to increase agents’ productivity and to sustain a certain motivational level, the industry periodically gives out awards and medals during conventions and congresses to raise workers’ morale and motivation (Chan & Ko, 1991). A culture of internal cohesiveness and mutual support is encouraged within individual life insur ance companies as well as the industry as a whole.These values not only help the industry achieve its goal of pro? t-making, but also facilitate the ability of agents to cope with mental and physical a? ictions caused by their work. Description of the Survey The analysis was based on three non-random samples, which yielded a total sample of 400 life insurance workers. First, 500 questionnaires were distributed to the agents by the managers of six major institutional context among life insurance agents 151 life insurance companies in Singapore.Of these, 212 completed and returned their questionnaires, giving a response rate of 42. 4%. Second, with the help of the Secretary of the Singapore Life Underwriters Association, questionnaires were disseminated to 400 agents via managers who attended a series of four talks organised by the Association. This channel saw a return of 137 questionnaires, yielding a response rate of 34. 3%. Third, the Secretary distributed 100 questionnaires to in surance managers whom he knew, who in turn handed them out to their own agents.A total of 51 questionnaires were returned this way. The overall response rate for the study was 40%. The non-random nature of the samples and relatively low response rates inevitably lead to a concern about the representativeness of our selected respondents. The relatively low response rate was probably due to the way we sampled our respondents and distributed questionnaires. We distributed the questionnaires to potential respondents through intermediaries (managers of major life insurance companies and the Secretary of the Singapore Life Underwriters Associatio