The Crucible is both timeless and universal discuss Essay Example for Free

The Crucible is both timeless and universal discuss Essay The Crucible, first written and performed in 1953 as the work of Arthur Miller, was written through the perspective of a man living in an era of radical social and economical traumas. Miller wrote his play at a time when America was only just beginning to make its way past the suffering of the Great Depression and during the McCarthy Hysteria of the 1950s. His work is not merely heavily influenced by these outside affectations but it becomes evident to one observing the social and political climates of Millers time that these are in fact the inspiration for his creation. What Miller wrote was an artists answer to human suffering, not only through the hard times of the depression but also through the politics and in particular the ideological war on communism (and indeed all left-wing views), which was taking place. Such a war, Miller noticed, was comparable to the war which Puritan society waged on the Devil during the Salem with trials of 1962 and indeed such wars are equally comparable to Hitlers vendetta against the Jews during WW2. Such wars, such prejudices and long term states of disagreement, have been recorded since biblical times which described the Egyptians forcing the Jews into slavery. The fact exists that war is an unfortunate symptom of the human condition it is an inescapable side effects of what it means to be human. A central focus within the play is hysteria: The whole countrys talkin witchcraft Word of Betty and Ruths mysterious states spreads so rapidly throughout the village because the matter is one which is of concern to everyone in the village. People tell each other because it is a universal matter, not necessarily one shared by people today, but certainly one shared by Salems people at the time to a great extent: The whole worlds gone daft with this nonsense The reason that people react so severely to the situation is because they fear witchcraft in the same way that the society in which Miller was writing in, in 1952 feared communism. The hysteria surrounding the McCarthy incident is easily comparable to the Salem witch trials, because although the fear has changed with time and location the human nature remains the same and the human instinct to protect itself invokes a mass of people grouping together for protection against what is seen as a threatening group. In 2003 this can be seen even more clearly in the aftermath of the September the 11th incident when The Times printed the article: Is Arab a dirty word? Discussing how many people in America associated all those of Arabic descent with acts of terrorism. Once again this paranoia is invoked by a deep fear which has become integrated into the minds of the people in that society. Intricately linked to this are the ideas of good and evil within the play: Its Gods work we do Throughout the play many people, from Proctor not confessing to a lie, to Cheever taking the accused to what he knows may be their deaths, justify their actions through religion claiming that what they do, they do in Gods will and that is a healthy thing to strike out against those opposed: Let you strike out against the Devil Very similarly capitalist Americans in Millers era believed that they were doing good for the world in seeking out communists, who are portrayed by American society as being evil because they oppose capitalism in making the world a better place. In such a situation the commonly viewed good is capitalism where as its antithesis evil can be supposed to be communism. In 2003 the ordinary people of America view themselves as good people who do no great wrong, and yet are being attacked by terrorists. They see terrorism, or more generally the east and those of Arabic descent, as the evil of the world, because the moral framework imposed by society is not accepting of the taking of an innocent life. However, the girls know that those they are accusing are in fact innocent: Lies, lies It is also possible to suggest that later Danforth realises this but becomes part of the conspiracy in order to protect himself and his position: You know in all your black hearts that this be fraud Very similarly at the time of Millers writing senator Joseph McCarthy was accusing people within the government and authoritarian positions of being communists or sympathizers, and encouraging them to confess and name others. This is very much like the situation within the crucible when the girls knowingly blame innocent people because it is, again, in order to protect themselves. In 2003 corruption can be seen within the British and American governments who justified their invasion of Iraq by claiming that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. However since that time, none have been found and many propose that none exist, but leading figures in the movement such as Tony Blair still knowingly untruly claim that Saddam possessed such items in order to protect their own reputations and positions. Show preview only The above preview is unformatted text This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our GCSE Arthur Miller section.

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Coach Nestled along the Massachusetts shore, lined with oaks that may have seen the arrival of the first Americans, there is a quaint baseball park, bordered only in the outfield by a thatched wooden fence and some pines. The Pawtucket Pawsox of the Cape Cod League call this unique sanctuary home. Today is a Friday evening. The sun slowly pulls the last traces of orange from the sky, and the skyscraping light towers illuminate a 6 foot 4 inch right-hander, made only taller by the Georgia clay mound. Like most in the minor leagues he is a fighter and a worker. He is far from home and at the climax of a magical journey of a career.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Reaching local stardom at an early age, Aaron Knieper pitched in all of the big games. He pitched in all of the not-so-big games too. People could see the potential that this lanky kid from Saginaw, Michigan possessed. As he piled up innings in his youth, they only contributed to more to his experience but were slowly taking their toll on his meal ticket, his arm. Aaron was still careful about his health, but youth often disguises ignorance. As his body matured, it ceased to stretch in ways it had before, and his workload drastically increased upon being drafted by the Boston Red Sox out of college. Now he was playing for a job. Then, one fateful day everything changed. It was his elbow. And there it all ended.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Most young athletes dream of becoming professionals, but those dreams almost always end at or before the college level. It is a major disappointment for those who are told that they are not good enough to play anymore, yet Aaron was. He had almost reached the show and it killed him inside. He wasn’t ready to let anyone tell him that his career in baseball was over. His stubborn pursuit of a dream, which had carried him this far, would now have to change with no hope of returning to professional baseball. He went back home and spent some much missed time with his mom and sister, for his father had passed away when he was young. Most of time was spent relaxing in front of the television pondering what to do next. Aaron had never had a â€Å"real† job and did not even finish college. It was then that he decided to follow his passion, baseball.

Nokia Case Study Essay

Introduction: As a former global leader in the cell phone industry, Nokia have a history of great ability to adapt new markets with a solid strategy. Formed in 1865, Nokia started out as a lumber mill and moved on to the production of electricity and rubber. In 1992, Nokia decided to focus solely on the cell phones industry and rapidly obtained great market share, and later became pioneers of the wireless revolution which derived the smartphones. Despite this impressive past and former position in the cell phone industry, it is obvious from the case study that Nokia have several problems causing the crucial recession of its market share the past years. One of the problems is the slow decision making which halts the possibility of innovative activities. Despite a staggering cost of 40 billion dollars on Research and Development, none of Nokia’s cell phones reached the market due to the bad decision making and internal rivalries. In the cell phone industry, it is crucial that you act fast or else you will be outrun by the competitors, which is exactly what happened with Nokia. Rothaermel, Hess (2010, p. 13) states that consistent innovation is the factor that drives the worlds successfully companies and explains that innovation is a crucial competitive advantage for companies in a harsh economic time as it allows them to change the market in their favour and hopefully become market leader. Without any changes in the decision making process and in the innovative culture, Nokia will keep declining, as their competitors such as Apple and HTC Corporation will keep being in front and control the market. This paper will argue that, in order to achieve a bigger market share and a better competitive advantage, Nokia needs to speed up their decision making and change their innovative culture and the linkage between these activities. Relevant theory will be discussed as well as recommendations for future activities will be provided, in order to get Nokia back on track. Analysis and Argument The decision making process from the management of a company is a crucial process in both internal and external perspectives. It determines the current situation and the future of the company, and has to remain continuous due to the constant interactions from the environment. The decision making process determines whether the company succeed or fail when launching a new product on the market, and that is why the company has to know whether the market is ready for their product or not. Baum, J.R. and Wally, S. (2003) states that a fast pace of the decision making is crucial when competitive advantage is desired in a market, as the new product you are launching will be adopted in an early stage and enter the market quicker than your competitors. This argument is supported by Eisenhardt (1989; as cited in Zehir, C., Mehtap, Ãâ€". 2008 p. 1) who has conducted a study of eight high-tech firms and concluded that the most profitable of these eight firms, were the ones with the fastest decision making process. A more superior study was completed by Judge and Miller (1991; as cited in Zehir, C., Mehtap, Ãâ€". 2008 p. 1) who stated that there is no linkage between the speed of decision making process and the performance of a company only with the exception of fast-moving environments, such as the cell phone industry, where it was discovered that these participating companies had higher performance and fast decision making processes. The cell phone industry is a fast-moving environment due to the development of new technology and constant changes, and it is in this industry that Nokia is located. Finally, Zehir, C., Mehtap, Ãâ€". (2008) argues in the light of the above evidence and personal studies, that a strategy with fast decision making will lead to competitive advantage. The importance of a fast decision making strategy is supported by the fortune of Nokia from the case study. With a very slow decision making and the sacking of several products, followed up by internal disagreements, the competitors in the fast-moving external environment suddenly started to outrun Nokia, which didn’t manage to address their internal abilities, such as the innovativeness. According to Andersen, T.J. (2001; as cited in Zehir, C., Mehtap, Ãâ€". 2008 p. 4), especially this innovativeness reflects the company’s capability to be the first in their environment to launch a product or system, and create competitive advantage and corporate performance. Han, J.K., Kim, N., Srivastava, R.K. (1998) supports this theory and believes that the innovativeness serves the purpose of being a mediator between the company’s market orientation, and the company’s performance. Nokia have used a huge amount of expenses to obtain this market orientation, so one could argue that more efficient innovation is the key to reach better performance. This precise opinion is what Blundell, R., Griffith, R., Van Reenen, J. (1999) states, as they also links the innovation of a company, with the achievement of greater market share and market stock value. From the above mentioned theories of faster decision making strategy and an efficient innovation performance and the associating arguments of these theories, you can argue that a relationship and cooperation between them is crucial and inevitable. This theory is supported by Zehir, C., Mehtap, Ãâ€". (2008) who defines that the fast decision making combined with innovative performance will lead to better corporate performance. This relationship might be the key to get Nokia back on track and back at the top of the cell phone industry. Recommendation It is recommended that Nokia change their decision making strategy immediately and become more aware of the changes in the external environment. Nokia ought to design its decision making strategy around Eisenhardt, K. M. (1999) four keys to decision making strategy. First, Nokia needs to establish collective intuition by hosting regular meetings and realistic cases for the management department, which will develop their ability to discover threats and opportunities in an early stage and more precisely. Second, they must assemble diverse teams and challenge them through heuristic and stressing situations with numerous alternatives, so the teams will improve their decision making ability under pressure. Third, Nokia needs to discipline the timing of the decision making through paced time schedules, prototyping and consensus in the teams to maintain the momentum in the strategic choices. Lastly, emphasize a common goal and a clear set of rules, and remember to have fun. These tactics avoid that the decision makers are getting into interpersonal conflicts and waste the time on politics, which Nokia already have used incredible amounts of time doing without any luck. The execution of these four keys leads towards a more effective strategy, making the decision making process a cornerstone of the strategy. These four keys with the team based approach that is striving to create a common goal and keeping the process fun are to be transferred to the innovation department in order to optimize this as well. Teams of innovation and development are to be established, instead of letting the employees fight an internal battle for the right to keep their jobs. This battle creates disorder in the internal community, and is discouraging the employees and affects their efficiency. Instead, it is crucial that the innovative department works towards a common goal and is continuously challenged in order for them to keep the momentum and keep improving, while they are having fun doing it. Conclusion From the arguments presented in this paper, it is apparent that in order for Nokia to return to the top of the cell phone industry and reconquer the lost market share, they need to change the decision making strategy entirely, and develop a much faster and efficient one. This will allow them to launch new products to the market more frequently and increase the opportunity for successful products. These frequent products will promote the innovative performance and make the company more adaptable to the many changes in the environment, and allow them to affect the market themselves. It is not possible to choose which argument that is the most suitable, as they relate to each other because a faster decision making process leads to more efficient innovative performance, which leads to better corporate performance and more market share. The snowball effect will emerge, but Nokia has to start rolling the ball. With this in mind, these changes will not do it alone. Several corporate changes in the entire organization must be performed in order for this to succeed, but the history of Nokia will help them in this challenge, as they have faced great organizational changes before and know what it takes. References: Rothaermel, F.T & Hess, M (2010), ’Innovation Strategies Combined’, MIT Sloan Management Review, Vol. 51, No. 3, pp. 13-15, viewed 20 April 2013, ProQuest Research Library, Eisenhardt, K.M (1989), ‘Making fast strategic decisions in high-velocity environments’, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 32 No. 3, pp. 543-76 Judge, W.Q & Miller, A (1991), ‘Antecedents and outcomes of decision speed in different environmental contexts’, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 34 No. 2, pp. 449-63 Baum, J.R & Wally, S (2003), ‘Strategic decision speed and firm performance’, Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 24 No. 11, pp. 1107-29 Zehir, C & Mehtap, Ãâ€" (2008), ‘A field research on the relationship between strategic decision-making speed and innovation performance in the case of Turkish large-scale firms’, Management Decision, Vol. 46, No. 5, pp. 709-724, viewed 20 April 2013, ProQuest Research Library, DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/00251740810873473 Han, J.K, Kim, N & Srivastava, R.K (1998), ‘Market orientation and organizational performance: Is innovation a missing link?’, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 62, No. 4, pp. 30-45, viewed 20 April 2013, ProQuest Research Library, Andersen, T.J (2001), ‘Information technology, strategic decision-making approaches and organizational performance in different industrial settings’, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Vol. 10, pp. 101-19 Blundell, R, Griffith, R & Van Reenen, J. (1999), ‘Market share, market value and innovation in a panel of British manufacturing firms’, The Review of Economic Studies, Vol. 66, No. 228, pp. 529-554, viewed 21 April 2013, ProQuest Research Library, Eisenhardt, K. M (1999) ‘Strategy as strategic decision making‘, Sloan Management Review, Vol. 40, No. 3, pp. 65-72, viewed 21 April 2013, ProQuest Research Library,

Core Elements Of A Traditional Business - 2417 Words

This report will present a number of core elements of a traditional business plan (Spinelli Adams 2016) for the creation of a new business venture. The venture to be created to address a gap in the market, is an end-to-end design and residential, building renovation business. The proposed new venture, unlike many others in the market, will be strongly business focused on robust scalable systems and processes. It will also have a carefully considered growth and marketing strategy to build a strong brand that will provide high growth potential without compromising customer experience and delivery of consistent outcomes. The report outlines the current market and then moves on to detail the new venture opportunity, entry, positioning and†¦show more content†¦The fragmented market is made up of a large number of small scale renovators competing for the same business, with a heavy reliance on subcontractor labour to deliver projects (HIA Renovation roundup). Market research reveals (reference needed) that the market is filled with a large number of small businesses, generally owned and operated by a tradesman; the majority of these businesses lack a coherent strategy around how they engage with the market and deliver a consistent customer-focused outcome. 3. The new venture 3.1 The opportunity Through extensive market knowledge and research of the home building market in Australia gained as Marketing Director of New Fab Co., Michael Mowat has identified an exciting opportunity in the housing renovation sector of the residential building market. There is an opportunity in the heavily fragmented market (citation) for a new approach - a renovation business with a business model focused on marketing, solid systems and processes to create a business platform that will deliver a long-term competitive advantage. Given the size of the renovation market in Australia (x$), the potential upside to creating a full service (design-to-build), business-focused, renovation business is significant. While a number of