Therapeutic Hypothermia for Cardiac Arrest Patients

Therapeutic Hypothermia for Cardiac Arrest Jaime Bromley Jefferson College of Health Sciences Hypothermia is a decrease in the core temperature below 35 degrees Celsius or 95 degrees Fahrenheit. There are various medical uses for hypothermia. Therapeutic hypothermia is the only proven effective treatment for post cardiac arrest patients. Hypothermia decreases the amount of cerebral oxygen needed and also lessens the inflammatory response post cardiac arrest. This prevents brain damage and death in patients.There were two major studies done on this topic. One in Europe and one in Australia; they showed very positive outcomes for the patients who were treated with therapeutic hypothermia. More of the patients who received the hypothermic treatment survived compared to those who did not; also patients treated with hypothermia had less brain damage upon hospital discharge. Sudden cardiac arrest is a major health concern in the United States; there are more than 400,000 incidents annually (AHA, 2011).Only five to thirty percent of patients survive hospitalization and make it to hospital discharge (AHA, 2011). Doctors are now discovering the highly effective treatment of doctor induced hypothermia for cardiac arrest patients. Hypothermia is defined as a decrease in the core body temperature below 35 degrees Celsius or 95 degrees Fahrenheit (Ward, 2011). It is then characterized by whether it occurred accidentally or if it was induced purposefully. There are multiple uses for medically induced hypothermia.Doctor induced hypothermia is the most effective therapeutic treatment for out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrest. Cardiac arrest patients suffer from ischemic brain injury leading to poor neurologic outcomes and death. Doctors will begin to cool patients as soon as recirculation begins. Therapeutic hypothermia works by decreasing the cerebral oxygen consumption. During cardiac arrest circulation does not occur, therefor the vital organs are not adequately perfused. W hen resuscitation happens circulation resumes and reperfusion occurs.Reperfusion is associates with free radical formation (AHA, 2011). Mild hypothermia blocks intracellular effects from high calcium concentrations and lessens the inflammatory response after cardiac arrest (Ward, 2011). In 2002 the results of two randomized trials were published that compared mild hypothermia with normothermia in comatose survivors of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. One study was done in five European countries; the other was conducted in four hospitals in Australia (University of Chicago, 2008).In the European study the patients were cooled to the target range of 32 to 34 degrees Celsius (University of Chicago, 2008). They were kept at that temperature for 24 hours, and then passive warming would begin (University of Chicago, 2008). Six months after cardiac arrest 75 of the 137 hypothermic patients had positive results; and were able to live independently and able to work (University of Chicago, 20 08). Whereas with the normothermia patients only 54 of the 137 patients survived six months after their cardiac arrest (University of Chicago, 2008).With the Australian study the patients were cooled to 33 degrees Celsius, kept at that temperature for 18 then active rewarming would begin (University of Chicago, 2008). The results of the Australian study, 21 of the 43 patients treated with hypothermia had good neurological function at discharge compared to nine of 34 patients who were normothermic post cardiac arrest (University of Chicago, 2008). There are various techniques used to cool patients; currently there is not one technique that stands out over the rest in ease of use and high efficiency.Before the cooling procedure can begin the patient is given a sedative and a neuromuscular blocker to prevent shivering. There are multiple external techniques such as cooling blankets, ice packs, wet towels, and a cooling helmet; however all of these are slow to cool core temperature (Uni versity of Chicago, 2008). An intravascular heat exchange device has recently become available; this machine enables rapid cooling and precise temperature control (University of Chicago, 2008).During the whole cooling and rewarming process the patient is closely monitored and their temperature is taken regularly. Not every person who has sudden cardiac arrest is able to receive hypothermic therapy. There are multiple restrictions, and each hospital has its own protocol to follow. Some of the common exclusions are pregnancy, core temperature of less than 30 degrees Celsius post arrest, and known clotting disorders (AHA, 2011).In order to receive hypothermic treatment the patient must be at least 18 years of age, female patients must have a documented negative pregnancy test, cardiac arrest with return of spontaneous circulation, and the blood pressure can be maintained at 90mmHg (AHA, 2011). With the use of therapeutic hypothermia treatment many people have been given a second chance at life. Doctors and scientists are making great strides in refining the technique needed to successfully treat patients with hypothermic therapy. Ward, J. 2011). Therapeutic hypothermia for victims of cardiopulmonary arrest. AARC Times. 35 (10), 36-46. American Heart Association. (2011). Therapeutic hypothermia after cardiac arrest. Retrieved April 15, 2011 from http://circ. ahajournals. org/content/108/1/118. full#sec-9 University of Chicago CPR committee. (2008). Therapeutic hypothermia after cardiac arrest. Retrieved April 14, 2011 from http://www. med. upenn. edu/resuscitation/hypothermia/documents/Hypothermia%20Protocol%20Univ%20of%20Chicago%202008. pdf

Kant and Descartes Essay

â€Å"Idealism is the assertion there are none but thinking thing beings. All other things, which we believe are perceived in intuitions, are nothing but presentations in the thinking things, to which no object external to them in fact corresponds. Everything we see is just a construction of the mind. † (Prolegomena). Idealism maintains that there are no objects in the world, only minds. According to idealism, the existence of outer objects is uncertain and ambiguous. Idealism is the group of philosophies asserting that actuality is fundamentally mental, or otherwise intangible. Kant holds the belief that objects only exist as perceptions is fundamentally idealist. The argument begins by making the point: our senses never enable us to experience things in themselves, but only know their appearances. This idea depicts space and time as empty forums to determine how things appear. Kant discusses how math consists of synthetic a priori cognitions, or the ability to provide new information that is necessarily true, and its relation to geometry. Kant believes there is some form of pure intuition innate within us. This innate intuition is what allows us to identify different notions without reference to sense experience. In the opinion of Kant, the possibility of mathematics rests upon the possibility of â€Å"synthetic propositions a priori†. (Prolegomena). There is a priori certainty of geometry. A priori knowledge or justification is independent of all experience. A priori judgments are based upon reason alone, independently of all sensory experience, and therefore are applicable with universality. According to Kant, â€Å"Geometry is based upon the pure intuition of space. † (Prolegomena). We cannot have any perceptions of objects if not in space and time. Kant declares, â€Å"it must first exhibit its concepts in intuition, and do so a priori, in an intuition that is not empirical, but pure. † (Prolegomena). Geometry, as the innate intuition of space, derives from the sequential moments of our innate intuition of time. If space were not built into of our innate composition, two things with all of the same properties would be in every way identical. Space and time are not properties of the objects in things themselves, but rather, qualities of our knowledge of the things. Space and time are referred by Kant as the â€Å"modes of representation†, or â€Å"forms of sensibility†, of objects. (Prolegomena). Kant believes inner experience is all that we can be certain of and that the e? ects can only conclude the existence of the external world has on us. If space and time are subjective, then everything in space and time are subjective. If space and time were things in themselves that we could only understand by reference to experience, geometry and math would not have the a priori certainty that makes them reliable. If space and time do not belong to the things themselves, and we cannot know anything in space and time, then we don’t know the things in themselves. As a result of this, Kant says that appearances are â€Å"That is pure space is not at all a quality of things in themselves but a form of our sensuous faculty of representation, and that furthermore all objects in space are mere appearances†. (Prolegomena). This declaration regarding things being tangible reveals Kant’s view of transcendental idealism, faces the issue of things existing at all, directly. Immanuel Kant’s most influential contribution to philosophy is transcendental idealism. Transcendental idealism is fundamentally a doctrine about space and time. The idea is we cannot perceive things in and of themselves directly; what we perceive must first be interpreted by our senses, then by our sensibility and understanding. Though Kant has argued that we cannot perceive things in themselves, but only appearances of things, Kant believes intuition, and the senses control our perception. And anything, which we may perceive, is made up entirely of appearances. Kant argues, subsequently, things themselves in some way cause these appearances. Kant maintains that things in themselves, independent of our perception, exist, and that they are the source of what we do perceive. All other things, which we think are perceived in intuition, being nothing but representations in the thinking beings, to which no object external to them corresponds in fact. Representations of our sensibility can be said to be reflections of our mind. Kant makes this claim stating, â€Å"The understanding intuits nothing but only reflects. † (Prolegomena). This proposes the question regarding idealism, because something cannot be fully understood, does it still exist? Unlike Idealism, which generally manifests skepticism, the existence of things is crucial to Kant’s philosophy. However, Kant insists we cannot know anything about these things purely through their appearance. Kant asserts: â€Å"which is unknown to us but is not therefore less real. † (Prolegomena). Kant is claiming this ideal is contrary to idealism. Descartes decided that he could throw all things into doubt except that he was thinking and doubting. This supports the concept of idealism because it emphasizes the centrality or importance of the mind. Descartes, like Plato and Augustine divided his world into two areas. For Descartes the two areas were the cogito and the Deity. Rationalists, like Descartes, aim to escape the confines of the mind by constructing knowledge of the external world, the self, the soul, God, ethics, and science out of the simplest, indubitable ideas possessed innately by the mind. Descartes argued that knowledge came from the mind, or idealism. It was Descartes’s idealism that would force him to his separation of the mind and body. Descartes believes in the ability to deny the existence of the physical world. Kant’s major disagreement with Descartes would be in postulating an existential reality outside of the mind. An object does not depend on a mind perceiving it for it to exist though the mind does depend on the transcendental categories to perceive of those objects in a meaningful way. â€Å".. Desire this idealism of mine to be called critical. But if it be really an objectionable idealism to convert actual things into mere representations†. (Prolegomena) Kant expresses his impulse to change transcendental idealism to critical idealism at the end of this section.

Building Therapeutics Relationships in Forensic Psychology

Building Therapeutics Relationships in Forensic Psychology What interpersonal qualities should a forensic psychologist have that help build therapeutic relationships? Forensic psychology is a branch of criminological psychology; it refers to the knowledge of the understanding, prediction and nature of crime or criminal behaviour (Bull, Davies Colman, 1995). In recent years, some state institutions have tried to prohibit females from working within all male prisons in America, as they argue that it is too dangerous for females (Arrigo & Shipley, 2005), meaning that although there have been major developments for equality of sexes, there is still some prejudice of females being the weaker gender, both physically and psychologically, within this line of work. This shows us that forensic psychology is a fairly recent phenomenon, with establishments, such as the British Psychological Association (BPS) recently creating a division devoted to criminal psychology (Buskist, Carlson & Martin, 2000). This may mean, that although we have some understa nding of the professionalism needed within legal and psychological situations, we may not be fully aware of specific requirements needed of individuals due to the fact that forensic psychology is still in its adolescent stages of development. Some questions posed to forensic psychologists help us gain an insight into what qualities are needed to give an accurate report and to fully express themselves within legal situations. These include, and are not limited to: if they are fit to stand trial, if the testimony is genuine, if the individual has any learning difficulties and if they are malingering (Colman, 1995). This would mean that not only are forensic psychologists required to have a respectful understanding of all parties involved, it is also key that they show qualities of insight, to understand the strengths and limitations of the individual and the tests conducted. Other qualities include an empathetic personality to any personality or learning disorders, tolerance of indivi duals with uncooperative personalities and an unprejudiced outwardly view of an individual, regardless of their past.

Supply chain management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Supply chain management - Essay Example A push system however can meet the requirements of a system which needs large inventory which would be difficult for a pull system to manage. Therefore push systems are good for demand that doesn’t depend on conditions that is, it is ‘independent’ and thus they are dependable sources especially when uncertainty exists in the environment. (Hirano, 2009) Just in time inventory (JIT) is one of the models of inventory and it follows the pull system that can react quickly to demand changes. It is a production strategy which aims to improve business models by increasing their return on investment (ROI) by reducing the time and costs associated with inventory. The process is built around the importance of signals which exist between processes and which will signal the production process when to produce the next part. The signals also called ‘Kanban’ are simply visual and they show shelf space etc. JIT inventory management can lead to improvement in the organ ization of manufacturers and enhances quality, efficiency and investment. The focuses are on the quality, flow of products and the employees. The process is such that depletion in stock will signal personnel to order in new stock and overall inventory reduction is achieved which is the main purpose of this style of management. (Dennis, 2002) This will lead to lower costs of warehousing; however JIT has other elements involved such as the fact that it is not independent of the other proponents of the system. Manufacturers have tried to better this process over the years by forecasting better such as using methods such as trailing. JIT seems to be an appropriate plan for companies...A push system however can meet the requirements of a system which needs large inventory which would be difficult for a pull system to manage. Just in time inventory (JIT) is one of the models of inventory and it follows the pull system that can react quickly to demand changes. Good information system Manufacturing resource planning (MRP) is a push method of inventory management. MRP and JIT compared Since JIT doesn’t allow for pushing of products visibility in JIT is less than in MRP system where forecasting allows for visibility. MRP process also protects each part of the process of operations from being disrupted and therefore it is a more proactive process as compared to JIT approach. The main sacrifice a firm has to make in JIT management system is the inventory and capacity. However in MRP system the stock of extra products allows the system to be continuous and work all the time including when it is not needed. JIT is also a more decentralized approach to operations management which isn’t the case with MRP system or any other system for that matter. A hybrid system Firms were using MRP push model initially and then they started looking towards pull systems like JIT.

Does the electronic cigarattes a good replacement of the traditional Essay

Does the electronic cigarattes a good replacement of the traditional cigarettes - Essay Example There has been a recent surge in the use of e-cigs promising to actually help smokers replace the old habit of smoking the much dangerous and potentially life threatening traditional cigarettes. However, a debate remains as to whether the e-cigs are good alternative replacements of the traditional cigarettes or not. One of the key reasons as to why the traditional cigarettes are being opposed by various organizations is the potential health impacts of the smoke on the overall health of the smokers. Traditional cigarettes tend to cause cancer, asthma and other related diseases. It however, is still unclear as to whether the e-Cigs have any demonstrated health advantages negating the harms of smoking traditional cigerrates. The World Health Organization issued warnings in terms of informing the users no to use the e-Cigs until their benefits or use is being endorsed by any of the leading health regulatory authority at the national as well as international level. It has also been suggested that e-Cigs are relatively safer however they may not be entirely safe to smoke. Though the related side effects of them are still need to be determined however, it has been suggested that their use may not be as safe as it may be perceived. The safety benefits are however, relatively larger as compared to the traditional cigarettes as the nicotine burning rate is relatively slower as compared to the traditional sources of nicotine. As a result of this the release of nicotine in bloodstream is slowed down and as such these are considered as safer as compared to the traditional sources. (FDA para. 12) Since the leading regulatory bodies still have not allowed the regulatory approvals to the e-Cigs therefore there is still a lack of manufacturing oversight on these e-Cigs. As a result of this lack of oversight, it is often argued that their manufacturing may have faults which can cause greater health concerns once such health hazards are identified. Some of the studies on

Analyze Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 2

Analyze - Essay Example So, let us see the meaning of text interpretation evidenced from the article â€Å"Learning to Read† by Malcolm X. For the beginning it must be said that any author by his work intends to reach a particular purpose using for this different writing techniques. Just so Malcolm X takes advantage of every possible element for the effect on the issue of people’s perception of black-white relationship both by the black man who has to be literate for improvement of his oppressed state and by the white man who needs to realize his tyrant treatment of non-white men. Being led by such a view Malcolm X has chosen a good form of his idea presentation, that is, he has shown on his own example the whole significance of reading ability and serious reading itself for the benefit of non-white people (as a tool for their empowering in the fight against their humiliation), which suffer from white men’s dictatorship for more than four hundred years: this is the argument. Herein the realization of the purpose finds its reflection in a primary non-complex sentence structure easy for understanding by his followers, imagery providing readers with visualization of the sharp question (it is introduced through Malcolm’s descriptions of his own images from life of black population presented in the read books). In addition, author’s extremely expressive narration gives numerous details and emotions from his mastering of reading and writing, as well as his feelings about blacks’ position. As a result, rhetorical mode of pictorial description alongside with conscious tone of the author’s narration makes him to be represented as a willful concerned active defender of non-white peoples’ rights, who spends every minute of his time for resisting the white man. It seems to be that the author’s direct purpose is actualization of non-white treatment by white men and necessity of reading ability for access to

Learning experiences Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

Learning experiences - Essay Example Bexley Public School, consisting of 320 and located in Sydney’s southern suburbs, is a middle-sized school perfect for this unit. This school has students from diverse backgrounds and cultures. The school takes pride in its diversity; 87.9% of students are from language backgrounds other than English (there are 34 different spoken languages in the school). The school provides a range of programs for children, such as joining the National Partnership for the students’ literacy to be enhanced. The school celebrate holidays such as Harmony Day, Mothers Day, Fathers Day, and Christmas. This unit is suitable for stage 1, year 2, as it teaches them about the different celebrations in their community. More specifically, it teaches them to accept and value the way other people celebrate the same celebrations but in different ways. For instance, there are different ways to celebrate a birthday. As there is a wide range of cultures, it is important for the students to understand the different types of celebrations and how they are celebrated so they can learn how to accept and tolerate people of other cultures. The students will be engaged in researching and participating in different celebrations, as well as talking to guest speakers to understand the unit of celebrations and differences between them. Also, the students must bring their own party decorations to see how each student celebrates. Students will need typing skills; hence, knowledge of Microsoft Word will be necessary. Students will be aware of the activities they will be doing in class. Each of the learning experiences involves hands-on activities that implements cooperative learning. Also, each learning experience commences with a discussion to check the children’s knowledge and whether they learnt anything from previous lessons. Hence, this will allow a discussion to be formed in which the students can make their own contributions to the topic. Hence, through this unit there will be a wide

'Systematic' approach Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

'Systematic' approach - Essay Example An organizations success depends on qualities of the employees working in that organization. For achieving the goals of the organization, the organization required right quantity and quality of employees. By understanding the learning need the organization can improve the capabilities of the employees. By providing learning opportunities to the employees helps to achieve personnel and carrier goal and able to increase the employees engagement. This helps to improve the productivity of the organization. Learning â€Å"is acquiring new knowledge behaviors, skills, values, preferences or understanding, and may involve synthesizing different types of information. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines. Progress over time tends to follow learning curves.Human learning may occur as part of education, personal development, or training. It may be goal-oriented and may be aided by motivation. The study of how learning occurs is part of neuropsychology, educational psychology, learning theory, and pedagogy.† (Learning, 2010). An organization’s ability to learn and translate that learning into action is the ultimate competitive advantage. In each and every organization using learning process learning is mainly using for the purpose train the employees it is a continuous process and it is a step by step process it is a systematic approach. Learning is the process by which people select organize or interpret attach meaning to the event happening the environment. Learning and developments involves the continual improvement of companies in the organization. The learning source may including workers ideas, consumers input, research and development (R&D) and best practice sharing and benchmarking. The learning result give more satisfaction and versatile of employees. In each and every organization have there on approaches they must realize that by continuously developing and training their employees

Management focused study and professional development plan (PDP) Essay

Management focused study and professional development plan (PDP) - Essay Example The importance of good leadership cannot be stressed enough with the number organizations and business entities that folded to the failure of its leadership. Leadership coupled with the tools of management, intends to reach or achieve the vision of an organization with its available resource in information, technology, materials, organization and personnel. In today’s very competitive business arena, leadership can spell the difference of an organization’s success or failure. Leadership is a critical element in ensuring the sustainability of an organization. Research in the field of leadership has never been saturated with theoretical and conceptual quests for leadership styles that work with any situation and followers’ condition. (Jamaludin, et al, 2011, pg. 73). One of the important attributes of leaders that attract the interest of many researchers is their leadership styles (Adeyemi-Bello 2001). Leaders lead through a combination of logical decision making a nd feeling. Depending upon the situation, it may require more emotional intelligence and less logical decision making or vice versa (Mayer & Caruso, 2002). ... Consistent with this observation, Al-Mailam (2004) argued that high-quality leadership is regarded as vital in bringing success to any group activity. One of the more recent and prevalent discussion about leadership is the emotional aspect of it as â€Å"leadership has been described as an â€Å"emotionladen process† (George, 2000, p. 1046), with the skillful management of followers’ feelings representing a critical leadership function (Humphrey, 2002, 2008). The ability to address underlying feelings and emotions is essential to effective leadership (Mayer & Caruso, 2002). This brings to the fore the relationship and emotional aspect of leadership which has been the subject of inquiry of many management theorist – emotional intelligence. This is quite interesting because the emotional aspect of human resource was used to be thought of as insignificant and irrelevant in the production line that management theorists relegated it as being trivial and unimportant. When science in management was first introduced in an organization and production line, the emotion of the people in the bureaucracy was never considered (Taylor, 1911). Organization then was viewed more of cohesive machine that works efficiently rather an structure that composes of people of different background, interest, predisposition and motivation. Recent management theorists however are looking at it at a different perspective. Mayer and Salovey (1997) elaborated the idea and defined emotional intelligence as "the ability to monitor one's own and others' feelings, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one's thinking and action" (Grewal & Salovey, 2005 p. 332). Interpersonal

Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Research Paper Example It is also my job to become familiar with its structure and the steps necessary in forming a for-profit facility within a community of approximately 75,000 residents. My primary purpose is to define, develop, and to show how this facility can be set up to meet government regulations and requirements and to maximize profitability. One first needs to understand what exactly a primary care facility is and what are their functions. Primary care is a term used for health care services that play a major role in the local community. The term refers to work of health care professions who act as the first and primary point of consultation for its patients. The primary physician who comes in direct contact with the patients is usually a general practitioner or family physician. This is determined by location. In some instances the patient may opt to seek other means to self-determine the seriousness of their situation. Other health care professionals would be a pharmacist or maybe a nurse; thi s is more prevalent in the UK. The advantages to seeing these health care professionals are evident; they provide an immediate access and do not require an appointment. However, in some areas you would need to make an appointment to see a Nurse Practitioner. They would then make an assessment of the ailment or injury and refer the patient to a primary care physician or other care. Primary care in the existing facility involves a large range of health care. This includes all ages of patients, patients from all economic backgrounds as well as geographic origins. This could also include patients who want to maintain their own optimal health, mental health, social health, chronic physical ailments, acute chronic diseases, and including multiple chronic illnesses. Therefore, it is essential that a primary care physician possess a wide range of knowledge in many areas. The physician will also maintain continuity. This is the key to the success of a primary care facility and its staff. Man y of its patients prefer to consult the same primary care doctor for routine check-ups, and many like to see the same doctor for new complaints as well. Many physicians also prefer to collaborate with other primary care providers. Therefore, continuity and collaboration are two of the primary care facilities’ characteristics. The existing primary care/urgency care facility sees all types of patients from children to old adults. It’s located in a small town of 75,000 people and the residents consist of many backgrounds. The facility is located in a median income area; therefore, the patients vary from high income, mid income and low income patients. The current primary care facility see patients with common chronic illnesses; these include hypertension, heart failure and angina, diabetes, asthma and COPD, depression and anxiety, back pain, arthritis, and thyroid dysfunction. The prime care patients also include injuries of all types, broken bones, sprains, burns, cuts, abrasions, and other injuries that need an immediate assessment. This urgent care facility as well as others owned by Norvant specializes in treating serious conditions that may or may not be life threatening. According to the National Association for Ambulatory Care, â€Å"urgent care facilities are ideal for minor injuries like broken bones, small burns, muscle sprains and ear infections.† But like any organization, they also suggest that you go to a Hospital

Existentialism Essay Essay Example for Free

Existentialism Essay Essay Ever wonder why we have the term â€Å"free will† or where it originated? People believe that an individual can discover themselves as a person and choose how to live by the decisions they make; well this is where the word existentialism comes into play. Existentialism has been around since the early nineteenth century with Soren Kierkegaard’s philosophical and theological writings which, in the twentieth century, would be recognized as existentialism. The term was first coined by Gabriel Marcel, the French philosopher and later adopted by Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche and other philosophers for whom human existence were key philosophical topics; but Kierkegaard is known as the â€Å"Father of Existentialism†. Existentialism proposes that man is full of anxiety and despair with no meaning in his life, simply existing, until he made a decisive choice about the future. That is the way to achieve dignity as a human being. Existentialists felt that adopting a social or political cause was one way of giving purpose to life. Since then, existentialism has been used by writers such as Hamlet, Voltaire, Henry David Thoreau, in Buddha’s teachings, and more. Throughout the years, existentialism has been viewed from various lenses to express different ideas, emotions, as well as to expand the thought process of readers, movie go’ers, and theater lovers everywhere and has been excessively used in Kurt Vonnegut’s anti-war novel Slaughterhouse Five, Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot, and in the movie Inception. Existentialism is a concept that became popular during the Second World War in France, and just after it. French playwrights have often used the stage to express their views about anything going on in the world. There were hidden meanings that were common throughout the period so that plays would be able to pass without being banned or censored. One who wrote best-selling novels, plays and widely read journalism as well as theoretical texts during this period was Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre had been imprisoned in Germany in 1940 but managed to escape and become one of the leaders of the Existential movement in France. Sartre dealt with existentialist themes in his 1938 novel Nausea and the short stories in his 1939 collection The Wall, and had published his treatise on existentialism, Being and Nothingness in 1943, but it was in the two years following the liberation of Paris from the German occupying forces that he and his close associate became internationally famous as the leading figures of a movement known as existentialism. A major theme throughout his writings was freedom and responsibility. One other extremely popular writer and playwright during the same time as Sartre, as well as a close friend, was Albert Camus. In a short amount of time, Camus and Sartre became the leading public intellectuals of post-war France achieving, by the end of 1945, a fame that reached across all audiences. (Existential Primer: Albert Camus) Camus rejected the existentialist label and considered his works to be concerned with facing the absurd. In the Titular book, Camus uses the analogy of the Greek myth of Sisyphus to demonstrate the futility of existence. In the myth, Sisyphus is condemned for eternity by the gods to roll a rock up a hill; when he reaches the summit, the rock will roll to the bottom again. Camus believes that this existence is pointless yet Sisyphus ultimately finds meaning and purpose in his task, simply by continually applying himself to it. For Camus, this related heavily to everyday life, and he saw Sisyphus an absurd hero, with a pointless existence. Camus felt that it was necessary to wonder what the meaning of life was and that the human being longed for some sense of clarity in the world, since if the world were clear, art would not exist. (Existential Primer: Albert Camus) The Myth of Sisyphus became a prototype for existentialism in the theatre and eventually inspired Beckett to write Waiting for Godot. In Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, existentialism manifests itself in a few ways; the frustration of trying to understand the meaning in life, the continued repetition seen throughout the play, and the inability to act. What remains archetypal in Waiting for Godot, concerning the absurdist metaphor is the way in which each character relies on the other for comfort, support, and most of all, meaning. Vladimir and Estragon desperately need one another in order to avoid living a lonely and meaningless life. The two together functions as a metaphor for survival, like the characters that proceed and follow them, they feel compelled to leave one another, but at the same time compelled to stay together. They consider parting, but, in the end, never actually part. Andrew Kennedy explains these rituals of parting saying, each is like a rehearsed ceremony, acted out to lessen the distance between time present and the ending of the relationship, which is both dreaded and desired(57). Therefore, Vladimir and Estragons inability to leave each other is just another example of the uncertainty and frustration they feel as they wait for an explanation of their existence. One of the most prevalent themes in Waiting for Godot is Estragon and Vladimir’s inability to act. When Estragon says â€Å"Let’s go†, Vladimir says â€Å"We can’t†¦ We’re waiting for Godot† (page 7). They are not even sure that Godot will come, or that they are waiting at the right place. Even if he doesn’t come, they plan to wait indefinitely. Even if he doesn’t come, they plan to wait indefinitely. After witnessing Pozzo’s cruelty to Lucky, Vladimir and Estragon are outraged. Yet they are still unable to do anything to improve Lucky’s situation. Pozzo lets Estragon and Vladimir know that they do not have control over their immediate future or even their distant future. When talking about the mysterious twilight, Estragon and Vladimir relate to waiting for Godot. So long as they know what to expect, waiting is their only course of action. Since Estragon and Vladimir can never make a decisive choice about what they want to do or about their future, their life seems to have no meaning.

Coffee and Starbucks Essay Example for Free

Coffee and Starbucks Essay ?Introduction Starbucks Corporation is an international coffee company and coffee house chain headquartered in Seattle, Washingston. Starbucks was founded in 1971, when three academicians, began a specialty coffee store called Starbucks Coffee, Tea and Spice in Seattle (Starbucks Corporation, 2009). In 1996, Starbucks operated its first international store expansion in Tokyo, Japan. With current approximately 19,500 stores in 58 countries (Location xcelerated, 2012), Starbucks is quickly becoming one of the best known brands and the largest specialty coffeehouse company in the world. The Market Demand of Coffee The demand of coffee in the United States has rose 2 percent in 2011(Perez, 2011). Americans drank 77. 4 billion cups of coffee during a year (Perez, 2011). A statistics showed that â€Å"the average consumption among coffee drinkers in the United States is 3. 1 cups of coffee per day† (E-Imports, 2012). With gathering the information and statistics, it has proved the demand of coffee market in the US is extremely high. Also, the coffee market is the potential market for rivals entering into. Hence, Starbucks has to attain strong competitive advantages and market demand with its resources and capabilities. Starbucks’s Resources and Capabilities An organization has the ability to identifying and determining the competitive power of their resources and capabilities to create competitive advantage. Business resources are the productive input or competitive asset that is owned or controlled by the organization (Thompson, 2012). In the case of Starbucks, the resources and capabilities are coffee bean, store ambience, employee culture, and brands and reputations. Coffee Beans Coffee beans are the natural resources of Starbucks. They are one of the most valuable resources for coffee industry. Starbucks was a purveyor of specialty coffee – it has seemed top-notch coffee beans to produce high quality of coffee. High quality of coffee beans was usually sourced directly from coffee-producing countries, for instance Kenya, Guatemala and Indonesia. Starbucks was usually acquired the coffee bean at a premium price for suppliers who suited the Starbucks’ standards, socially and environmentally responsible farming. Starbucks has committed the long term contracts with the supplier in order to protect both party with the price and quality of coffee beans. The Starbucks’s coffee beans provided a sustainable competitive advantage in the face of active competition. It is due to the high quality and premium coffee beans sourced from other country were uncommon and costly to imitate for competitors. Store Design and Ambience Starbucks was positioned as a â€Å"third place† between beyond home and work with the store design and relaxing ambience. The design of store is provided a comfort and relaxing environment for its costumer. Each detail of likes the style of fixtures, the edges of countertops and the texture of slate floors was examined to enhance the unique ambience and mood of the Starbucks store. With blended the colorful banners and artworks, the merchandise displays, the music and the aromas, Starbucks has created an attractive, consistent and stimulating environment that provided comfort of a home for customer, excellent customer service and quality products as the concept of â€Å"third place theme† (Moon Queich, 2003) cited by (Harveywallbanger, 2012). These elements made the Starbucks experience key in retaining its customers with the competitive advantage and capture new markets. The store design is valuable by providing a third place theme, a relaxing and conform atmosphere. Besides, it was rare design in United States as Starbucks is the first mover to replicate the Italian style coffee store. Competitors are difficult and costly to imitate as the Starbucks has an exclusive In-House architects and designers to ensure the right image and character for each store. Employee Culture A vital dynamic in Starbucks’s growth was the human resources, its employee. Starbucks has provided a great work environment around its employees, one of its most important resources and sources of sustainable competitive advantage (Gates et al. , 2011). Schultz believed that a plentiful employee benefits package was a key competitive advantage. Starbucks was the first company to offer all employees, even part-timer, were qualified to get healthcare benefits, participate in the Bean Stock program for stock option grants. Besides that, Starbucks has offered an extensive training program to each employee that includes a commitment to customer service experience and the knowledge of products (Balaban et al. , n. d). All employees of Starbucks were trained to have good customer experiences for retaining customers. For example, they were trained â€Å"just say yes† to customer requests. Starbucks’ approach towards employees benefited to company has maintained the turnover rate at 60-65 percent, while the other national industry turnover is about 150-400 percent a year. The plentiful employee benefit package provides a sustainable competitive advantage to Starbucks. It is added value to Starbucks because employees will have the better job performance due to the motivation and courage. It was rare as the Starbucks was the first company provided healthcare benefits and stock option plan. And also, it is costly to imitate for Starbucks’s competitors. Brand and Reputation Brand recognition and reputational are essential resources and capabilities to Starbucks’s competition advantage. According to Starbucks Strategy Fortune, â€Å"Starbucks store traffic has risen between 6 percent and 8 percent a year even in a down economy†. Starbucks reputation was growing mostly by word of mouth rather than spending on advertising. Schultz believed that opening numerous stores helped to build the brand to Starbucks by increasing awareness of the brand. On the other hand, Starbucks also strengthened its brand and reputation with Fair Trade Certified coffee and corporate social responsibility (CSR). The company collaborated with CARE and Conservation International to encourage environment responsible methods of growing coffee. These activities would be created the attention and attraction of its customers on the brand of Starbucks. Due with the strength of brand and reputation, Starbucks was achieved sustainable competitive advantages in the specialty coffee segment. Michael Porter’s Five Forces Model One of the powerful and widely assessment tools of an organizations industry’s competitive forces is the five forces model, created by Michael Porter. This model embraces that the competitive forces affecting industry success go beyond rivalry among competing sellers and include four coexisting sources (Thompson, 2012). The Michael Porter’s five forces are the threat of entry, the threat of substitutes, the bargaining power of buyers, the bargaining power of supply and rivalry among competing sellers. I will identify the competitive environment of Starbucks in coffee industry by using Michael Porter’s Five Forces Model. 1) Industry Rivalry The industry competition among the existing firms is positioned at the center of Porter five forces model. Rivalry is gradually growing against Starbucks each year as the growing of industry. The growth of industry rivalry has increased due to introduce the new products into the market and differentiate products based on quality, service and selection (Gamble Thompson, Jr. , 2011) cited by (Brown, 2011). With this point, Starbucks has introduced a new way of having premium coffee and new product of Frappuccino, was greatly differentiated from the competitors. Starbucks also served coffee with the highest freshness standards with FlavorLock bags. Starbucks compete to against two strong orgationation in the fast food industry who have operated coffee beverages and stepped into coffee market, McDonalds and Dunkin’ Donuts. The competitive threat distributed by McDonalds to Starbucks was referring to the Consumer Reports magazine in 2008 , which rated that the McDonalds the quality of coffee is better and the price is cheaper as compared to Starbucks. The industry’s growing has slowed down while the industry competition is increasing among existing firms. In short, the force of industry rivalry formed by the competition among coffees industry is characterized very strong. 2) The Threat of New Entrance The second competitive force of Porter’s model has significant differenced in the late of 80s and the recent competitive environment of Starbucks, is no barriers to entry. According to Porter (2008), barriers of entry are low in the specialty coffee industry. The coffee houses in the United States were about 585 in 1987 and 25000 in 2007. It showed that the new entrants of specialty coffee market was increasing speedily in 20 years. Besides that, the specialty coffee market had grown from $11. 5billion (2005) to $12. 27 billion (2006) in the United States. Due to the market demand growing rapidly, it was attracted a number of fast-food retailers, such company as McDonald and Dunkin’ Donuts. In addition, the product differentiation (included coffee selection, roasting and brewing) is considered weak. With these elements, it can be established that the threat of new entrants in coffee industry is moderate. However, Starbucks has a strong competitive advantage with a well-known brand and image, the quality service and diversity products, and a strong market in the segmentation. 3) The Threat of Substitutes Another competitive force of Porter’s model is the threat of substitutes. The force of substitutes is significant decreased in the coffee market. This is because, there are only little of substitutes product, such substitute as soft drinks, energy drinks and fruit juices. The principal substitution of products has posed a slight threat to coffee industry were carbonated soft drinks which introduced by the Pepsi and Coca-Cola company. In the past few years, studies have done that coffee has increasingly obtained the preference of consumer more than carbonated soft drinks. This is probably concentrated the healthy related with carbonated soft drinks, and evidenced that coffee is a relatively healthy preference. (Harding, 2000) cited by (Larson. , 2008) Based on the information and evidence, the threat of competitive substitute products is considered to be weak for Starbucks Corporation. 4) The Bargaining Power of Suppliers The bargaining power of supplier has changed in several ways through the widely growing in the coffee industry. Starbucks was purchased it premium coffee beans from the farmers that were numerous, small and unconnected during the late 1980s. In the recently years, coffee beans suppliers were joint by Fair Trade Certified coffee and acted like a large entity. Specialty coffee companies were making the coffee beans suppliers gradually important by seeking greater quality of coffee to compete the competitors in the market. The coffee beans suppliers today are more power, with increased joint and increased importance upon high quality coffee beans. Starbucks has work out with the coffee beans suppliers into continuing fixed-price commitments in order to ensure an adequate supply, which decreased the supplier bargaining power. (Larson, 2008) 5) The Bargaining Power of buyers The last element of five forces model is the bargaining power of buyers. The force of the buyer’s bargaining power is defined to the buyer’s capability to force down prices, and seek for higher-quality products and services (Porter, 1998, p. 24) cited by (Larson, 2008). The bargaining power of buyer in specialty coffee segment is considered high, since two strong competitor of Starbucks, McDonalds and Dunkin’s Donuts have offered the lower prices. However, Starbucks has introduced the several new products and high quality of coffee, highly differentiated to maintain consumers satisfied and away from competitors in the coffee market. Thus, the buyer bargaining power has offset and became moderate. The Summary of Michael Porter’s Five Factor In summary, the coffee market faces very strong forces from the industry rivals but it obtains weak forces from the threat of substitutes. Besides, the other three forces are considered as moderate. Generally, the impact of the five forces is moderate in the specialty coffee industry. Therefore, Starbucks is able to obtain the ideal revenues in the coffee market with operated effectively and efficiently. Starbucks’ Generic Strategy. There are three successful generic competitive strategies that organizations can apply to achieve their competitive strategies, included overall cost leadership, differentiation and focus, defined by Michael Porter. Overall cost leadership strategy implies an organization to apply lower overall costs to attract consumers. The differentiation generic strategy contains the creation of service and product as being valuable and unique for the industry. Focus is the last generic strategy, which aims a certain market of a product line (Porter, 1998, p. 38) cited by (Larson, 2008). However, Starbucks are suitable the broad differentiation strategy of the five generic competitive strategies nowadays. This strategy allows Starbucks to serve a broader customer base with the differentiation of product and service (Grant, 2009) cited by (Brown, 2011). This approaches to retain and attract as many consumer with the generally product mix. Starbucks had the unique skills, products and services reputation with the distribution segment of specialty coffee industry. For instance, Starbucks was developed an icy-blend of dark-roasted coffee and milk, named Frappuccino. This drink was a hit with $54 million sales in the first year on the national market. In addition, the high-quality standards and strong employee culture of Starbucks were known well in the specialty coffee industry. The high-quality coffee beans are purchased from Fair Trade Certified, considered a differentiation product to other competitors. The employees of Starbucks were also trained to have strong customer experience. In the differentiation strategies, Starbucks have strengthened the brand and reputation for quality and creative flair. Starbucks’ Strategy Options. Starbucks is able to create three strategic options for sustaining competitive advantage and further growing the business by having evaluated its forces. The three strategic options for Starbucks are that diversification, expansion and merger. 1) Diversification The diversification of a business is that introducing new products and offering new services to the industry. There are two way of diversification for business, be related or unrelated. Starbucks is suited to attempt related diversification, reflecting more association with the specialty coffee industry. Schultz believed that the company has lacked on blockbuster products, only the variations of products. Starbucks has a successful product diversification in the history with launched coffee and tea beverages, brewing and serving equipment, roasted coffee beans, music and gifts. The introduction of savory products such as cake, donut and muffin is a successful diversification as it can be combined with the existing product and core product, coffee. The diversification strategy is a good option for enhancing Starbucks’ growth and competitive advantage. 2) Expansion The expansion of an organization can be within a country and into an overseas market. Starbucks should reduce their expansion efforts in the United States and focus to expand its business into new countries to further internationalize it. The Economist stated, â€Å"While Starbucks has expanded so have its rivals. The firm’s home market seems to have reached saturation point. † With the rapid expansion, Starbucks is oversaturated in the United States. Therefore, this strategy option is suitable for Starbucks as the United States coffee market is reaching saturation point. If Starbucks has to go further growing and expanding, the international expansion is one of the best strategies for Starbucks. 3) Merger and Acquisition According to Investopedia, it defined as â€Å"a merger is an alliance of two organizations while an acquisition is the attaining of one organization by another. † The strategy of merger and acquisition sets out to accomplish the same goal, by increased broad customer base, market share and corporate strength of business. In the history, Starbucks has merged with Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream to develop super premium ice cream and acquired a premium tea company, Tazo LLC. In the case study of Starbucks, there states that there were about 25000 coffee houses in the United States in 2007. The merger and acquisition of small specialty coffee retailers will enhances the market position, market share and competitive advantage of Starbucks. This is a strategy that will exploit opportunities whilst avoiding threats to further growing and expansion of Starbucks. Recommendations The first and most important process which Starbucks should take is to diminish the efforts expansion in the United States. According to Starbucks’ strategy Fortune, a new store will often cannibalize about 30% of the sales of a nearby Starbucks. The continuing aggressive of expansion in the United States by opening as many new stores of the same area is an act to cannibalize store sales. The reason why Starbucks should diminish their expansion plan is the coffee market has reached the saturation in the US. The overcapacity of expansion plans in a location will be met with failure to an organization. On the basis of all the evaluation and evidence referred for the strategy options, the recommendation is to further expand internationally. Starbucks can convey the remained investment into international development plans by reducing the expansion plans in United States. The expansion of international market offers a supreme target with three fundamental objectives. The first reason is the lack of awareness of coffee market in many countries which represent the prospective market share. For instance, Starbucks currently opens approximately 20,000 stores with 13,000 in the US and 7000 in foreign countries. The total coffee consumption per person in the US has lowered much than many countries, such country as Finland and Italy. With gathering the information, this proves that expand internationally, there is a massive coffee drinking population and potential market share to be selected. (Starbucks Corporation, 2008) cited by (Larson, 2008). Another reason that international expansion offers an ideal prospect is that the expansion of product innovation. For example, Starbucks has announced their Tazo tea brand into the Japanese market. And, Tazo was brought into the United States market as it was a successful trial in Japan. Tazo green tea has brought a success to Starbucks as it was a national drinks and showed that the power of brand in North America. Starbucks could have to evade the risk of brand reputation as more innovative products should run a trial in international markets. Since the markets have yet visible to Starbucks for a period time, it is possible to avoid a great risk with affecting the brand reputation. Therefore, Starbucks has great competitive advantage in the markets with expand intentionally. The last reason of international expansion is to increase the brand reputation. Building brand image is key factor to an organization as the brand will affects an organization’s sales and position in the market. For example, in case of Starbucks, the company has increased revenue from $7. 8 billion in 2006 to $9. 4 in 2007, along with an increase in brand value. In order to recover the exclusivity of Starbucks brand, Schultz would focus the expansion of international countries and slow down the expansion of the United States. Therefore, the international aggressive expansion will help to strengthen its brand image and regain a strong competitive advantage for Starbucks. In a nut shell, I am highly recommended a strategy decision to Starbucks is that expanding into international markets. International countries have represented the ideal potential market shares with the high demand of specialty coffee. By applying this strategy, Starbucks will continue to be the leader in the specialty coffee industry and further regain and strengthen its competitive advantage. Furthermore, it also gains the customer satisfaction in the international markets. International expansion is the way to move forward. Reference Balaban, S. et al. (n. d) â€Å"Management 600† Starbucks Coffee Company. http://cobweb2. louisville. edu/faculty/regbruce/bruce/cases/starbucks/starbucks. htm [Accessed on 7 April 2012]. Brown, H. (2011) â€Å"External Environmental Analysis of Starbucks and the Coffee Industry† Strategic Management MGMT 4340 http://www2. uhv. edu/chapao/MGMT4340/Samples/Project%20Sample%203. pdf [Accessed on 9 April 2012] E-Imports (2012) â€Å"Coffee Statistics† Espresso Business Solutions. http://www. e-importz. com/Support/specialty_coffee. htm [Accessed on 5 April 2012]. Gates, R. et al. (2011) â€Å"Strategy Analysis MGMT 562† http://freedownload. is/pdf/strategy-analysis-mgmt-562-2925711. html [Accessed on 6 April 2012]. Harveywallbanger. (2012) â€Å"Starbucks’ Customer Retention Strategies 89† HubPages. http://harveywallbanger. hubpages. com/hub/Starbucks-Customer-Retention-Strategies [Accessed on 6 April 2012]. Heavey, J. (2012) â€Å"Starbucks a Strategic Report†Scribd. http://www. scribd. com/doc/27614539/Starbucks-a-Strategic-Report-by-James-Heavey [Accessed on 8 April 2012]. Larson, R. (2008) â€Å"Starbucks a Strategic Analysis† Past Decisions and Future Options http://coe. brown. edu/documents/StarbucksaStrategicAnalysis_R. Larson_honors_2008. pdf [Accessed on 8 April 2012]. Location Excelerated (2012) â€Å"How many Starbucks are they? † Location Excelerated. http://loxcel. com/sbux-faq. html,

Research on Job Sites for Graduates

Research on Job Sites for Graduates DATE: March 28th 2017 TO: Wally Kowal FROM: Mohamed Abdi SUBJECT: WHAT IS THE RECOMMENDED JOB SITE FOR RYERSON BUSINESS GRADUATES? In this report, I will be discussing about three major job sites that are available in Canada that can help find a job for Ryerson business graduates. In this report, I will also include an analysis on the major features, the comprehensiveness and ease of use of each job site. By the end I will give you my recommendation on which job site is best option for a Ryerson business graduate to visit in order to find employment. Findings The three major job sites that can help Ryerson business graduates in finding employment are Indeed, LinkedIn, and Glassdoor. For each job site, I will be discussing these topics about them: Major Features Ease of use Indeed According to Jarapa (2016), Indeed.com: is one of the worlds biggest and largest job sites on the internet, with over 150 million unique visitors on a monthly basis from over 50 different countries. This companys slogan, One search, all jobs, perfectly encapsulates their unique take on what a job search site should be. Indeed.com differentiates itself from other in the field by only listings job posted on their own site but also jobs posted on countless other sources as well. Major Features Indeed, contains several features that assist this job site in being recognized as being one of, if not the best job site in the world. One of major features that Indeed has is it salary calculator. Indeed.com salary calculator allows to view the average salary for any particular job position you are looking for (Jarapa, 2016). Another feature that Indeed has is it intuitive keyword tool (Jarapa, 2016). Indeed, has the best keyword search tools for job searching because it can effectively customize how the search is carried out, which is far more intuitive than just ticking off a number of criteria boxes (Jarapa, 2016). Another feature is the search engine on Indeed. Indeed searches for jobs that are listed on job boards, newspaper sites and also niche sites (Boswell, 2017). Through these searches which Indeed conduct it is then posted on to their website. Indeeds search engine collects numerous jobs that are listed and they are all from different industries. Here is a table I created based off of Indeeds latest employment trends from February 2017: (Indeed, 2017) Based off this table, the industries of accounting, information technology, financial services and banking, real estate, human resources, retail, and hospitality accumulate a total of 128,704 number of job postings. With this total of job postings Ryerson business graduates have a variety of jobs to choose to from. Another feature is Where are the jobs feature. This feature is very special because it can take you to a map of Canada that shows you the many job postings in Canada(Boswell, 2017). Indeeds interactive map allows users to zoom into there area of choice to get a closer look of where there of employment could possibly be as well as whether that environment is best use for them. Ease of Use Although Indeed.com has a large database of job postings from numerous sources, obtaining the information that you need is easy (Jarapa, 2016). To start off, indeeds homepage is similar to Googles or Bings homepage where users simply search for the position that they are looking for. The layout of the homepage brings ease to users eyes as well as comprehending this job site doesnt take too much time or effort to learn. Thanks to Indeeds simplistic display users, and specifically Ryerson business graduates can find any job they are looking for with ease. LinkedIn According to Duffy (2015), LinkedIn is the most important cross-industry professional network around. LinkedIn is recognized as the number one social network for developing a professional network for your career (Duffy, 2015). Thanks to that anyone that is 20 years old and plus with career goals in mind should have a LinkedIn account, and if not they should make one. Major Features LinkedIn allows users to create free accounts to build a professional profile. LinkedIn is a social networking site like Facebook and Twitter. However, LinkedIn works to help its user build a professional network. Creating a professional profile, can help Ryerson business graduates gain the attention of employers because employers will be able to see their profiles and visit them. Users can connect with colleagues (Duffy, 2015). By connecting with colleagues through LinkedIn, business graduates can expand their network, and hope to get a job. Connecting with colleagues is an innovative way to connect with the industries, the bosses of your colleagues, and with colleagues associates. By expanding your network from connecting to yours colleagues your chances of finding employment increase further. LinkedIn also has networking feature. Just as Reviews (2016) stated, networking is LinkedIns core competency, and their superb execution on that feature trumps shortcomings in other traditional features you might find in other job sites. Thanks to its excellent networking feature users can develop a strong network to HR representatives (Reviews, 2016). By searching for any HR manager from different companies, users can reach out to them and build and good relationship which could benefit that user to find employment. Ease of use As I stated before, LinkedIn is a social networking site like Facebook or Twitter. Well this relates to how Ryerson business graduates will find ease when using LinkedIn to find jobs. Ryerson business graduates will find ease and will be able to comprehend LinkedIn fast because it works similarly like social network applications. This generation of business graduates are probably users of other social network application, such as Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. Although each of these applications are used for different purpose, they are share a common goal for their consumers. That is that they are there to help users interact and socialize with people and LinkedIn is the exact same. LinkedIn is there to help users build a profile where they can interact with other and build a strong network of colleagues. Glassdoor Glassdoor is the final job search sites that I will be discussing in this report. Glassdoor is a distinctly different kind of job site because it has an innovative inside look at companies hiring practices and culture which sets them apart from both LinkedIn and Indeed (Review, 2016). For job seekers, Glassdoor is a useful tool when you want to narrow down the job you are looking for. Nevertheless, it is still a very useful job site for anyone looking for employment. Major Features Glassdoor has an inside scope on job positions and the company, (Reviews, 2016). Employees and former employees of numerous companies give anonymous ratings and reviews about the companies they have worked or are working for. These reviews are divided into categories which based on companies culture and values, work-life balance, compensation and benefits, senior management and career opportunities (Reviews, 2016). Glassdoor also has an interview questions section. These interview questions were collected from numerous companies, and are an aid for potential new hires to help them nail the interview. The interview questions section is a goldmine of information for job seekers (Doyle, 2016). They also include sample answers to questions to assist interviewees to gain confidence and a bit of understanding of what the employer is looking for. Glassdoor has a top-notch salary and compensation information. Glassdoors salary information ensures that not only employers know much the job pays. Thanks to employees posting salary information about different positions in various companies this tool is very beneficial to younger workers. Ryerson business graduates want to get paid a good amount for their hard work when studying and also, they can possibly negotiate salary cap when the interview time comes too. Ease of Use Using Glassdoors website is pretty simple to comprehend. A majority of Ryerson business graduates have visited job search sites before so using Glassdoor will be easy. From the homepage, you are greeted by a search bar, which lets you search for jobs, companies, reviews, salaries, and interview questions (Jarapa, 2016). When the search results come, you refine the results by using the filter on the site to find the current jobs available and review of them (Jarapa, 2016). Conclusion/Recommendations Therefore, I believe that the best chose for Ryerson business graduates to use to find a job is Indeed. Indeed, is most appropriate and effective option to find employment is because Indeed offers a large landscape of job opportunities for people, specifically university graduates. University students, regardless of them being graduates do not know what they want be completely. Indeed, offers a variety of business jobs for Ryerson business graduates to choose from. I recommend Indeed.com as the best site for Ryerson business graduates. References Boswell, W. (2017, March 6). Find a Job with Indeed. Lifewire. Retrieved March 24, 2017, from https://www.lifewire.com/use-indeed-to-search-jobs-3482016 Doyle, A. (2016, October 19.). Glassdoor.com Salaries, Reviews and Jobs. Retrieved March 25, 2017, from https://www.thebalance.com/glassdoor-com-salaries-reviews-and-jobs-2060040 Duffy, J. (2015, December 16.) LinkedIn. PC Magazine. Retrieved March 24, 2017 from http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2120736,00.asp Glassdoor Reviews. (2015, November 16.) Reviews.com. Retrieved March 24, 2017, from www.reviews.com/job-sites/glassdoor/ Indeed. (2017, February). CA Industry Employment Trends. Indeed. Retrieved March 25, 2017, from https://ca.indeed.com/jobtrends/industry Indeed.com Reviews. (2016, December 6.) Reviews.com Retrieved March 26, 2017, from http://www.reviews.com/job-sites/indeedcom/ Indeed. (2017, February). CA Industry Employment Trends. Retrieved March 25, 2017, from https://ca.indeed.com/jobtrends/industry Jarapa, J. (2016, August 8). Glassdoor Review 2016 | Pros, Cons More. Comparakeet.com. Retrieved March 25, 2017, from https://www.comparakeet.com/best-job-search-sites/glassdoor-review/ Jarapa, J. (2016, August 10.) Indeed.com Review 2016 | Pros, Cons More. Comparakeet.com Retrieved March 25, 2017, from http://www.comparakeet.com/best-job-search-sites/indeed-com-review/ LinkedIn Reviews. (2015, November 15.) Reviews.com Retrieved March 26, 2017, from http://www.reviews.com/job-sites/linkedin/

Cultural Adjustment :: essays papers

Cultural Adjustment "An analysis of cultural shocks" Coming to America was one of my dreams, so I started working on it and after completing collage, I received the visa for the States and bought the ticket to come to America. I was a little bit confused because I had been hearing about America since my childhood. There is a huge cultural difference between my society and the modern society of the States, and because of these differences, my friends and I faced some problems after coming here. These problems are commonly called cultural shocks. By analyzing the differences between America and my own country of Pakistan, in the areas of gender roles, family, marriage and celebrations, one can see how cultural shocks occur. Since my birth, I have been living in a society where the men and women are not all to interact with each other as over here. It is one of the biggest differences in my culture and the culture here. There are usually separate classes for girls and boys in my society, but over here, there is no concept of this. In addition, I know you will surprise to earn that having a boyfriend for a girl or a girlfriend for a boy is a difficult achievement. In my society there is a joint family system, the children live together with their parents whether they are under 18 or not. Over here, there is a concept of "individualism". Every one has an individual life, making their own decisions for every thing. Here, a person over 18 living with his parents is considered an immature person. In my culture, a person not living with his parents doesn't have a respectable place in the society, because it is our social and religious custom to take care of our parents. Divorce is common here, but in my society it's not good to even think about it. People are divorced, but not as commonly as over here. For example, among every 100 married people, perhaps just one is divorced, but over here out of hundred, about fifty are divorced or separated. Also, some couples live together without a legal marriage. One day, I went to a wedding ceremony with my uncle .It was one of his friends' weddings. I just sat there, wondering when the people would sing songs and when the lunch would start, but after kissing each other, my uncle's friend and his wife went on a long drive in their car with a poster on the back saying, "Just got married". It was really surprising for me to attend a wedding like this, because in my culture,

The Effect of High Frequency Trading Systems on Financial Markets Essay

Whilst liquidity plays a central role in the functioning of financial markets, it is volatility that can be truly detrimental. Despite almost universal agreement among academics that HFT improves prices for investors and dampens volatility in equity markets, since the 6th of May 2010 the sector has come under intense scrutiny from regulators. On a day described as the ‘Flash Crash’, the U.S stock market experienced one of the most severe price drops in its history. In the matter of five minutes, the Dow Jones Industrial Index declined by 900 points, and then recouped the balk of those losses within the next 15 minutes. This unprecedented and unexplained volatility has fired public debate ever since. In the aftermath of the US ‘Flash Crash’, regulators were quick to pin blame on HFT. Within a week the chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission determined there was evidence that â€Å"professional liquidity providers† pulled out of the market when shares started declining exacerbating the fall. Perhaps irrationally, policymakers without any significant evidence believe HFTs pull out of markets at signs of stress, contributing to a sudden loss of liquidity and promoting volatility (Grant, 2011).Moreover, Andrew Haldane points to the ‘flash crash’ whens he determines that the ever increasing speed of trading is amplifying volatility. In my opinion, in the aftermath of the financial crisis when regulators received so much criticism, I believe they feel they must act immediately, even if they don’t know the true problem. I consider this evident from calls for increased HFT regulation from US Senator Charles Schumer, who bases his opinion on recent news reports (Zerohedge. 2010), rather than academic research or scientific re... ...ttp://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2009/12/08/volcker-praises-the-atm-blasts-finance-execs-experts/. Last accessed 04/12/11. Jones, R. (2010). Institutional Investor: Flash Crash and CyberWar. Available: http://hftsecurityrisk.com/category/flash-crash-specific/. Last accessed 04/12/11. Pagnotta, E & Philippon, T. (2010). The Welfare Effects of Financial Innovation: High Frequency Trading in Equity Markets. Available: https://editorialexpress.com/cgi-bin/conference/download.cgi?db_name=SED2011&paper_id=1246. Last accessed 04/12/11. Mackenzie, M & Demos, T. (2011). Fears linger of new ‘flash crash’. Available: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d18f3d28-7735-11e0-aed6-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1fPJAVyJm. Last accessed 04/12/11. Geithner, T. (2007). Liquidity and Financial Markets. Available: http://www.newyorkfed.org/newsevents/speeches/2007/gei070228.html. Last accessed 05/12/11.

The Passing of the Crown by Shakespeares Henries Essay -- Henry IV He

The Passing of the Crown by Shakespeare's Henries      Ã‚  Ã‚   In his histories from Richard II through Henry V to Richard III, Shakespeare depicts the English monarchy as a game between family and friends of vying for a gold ring -- the crown. Shakespeare gives his reader a central metaphor through which to see this equation in King Henry IV part one. The prank Prince Hal, later King Henry V, and his friend, Poins, play on their friends, particularly Falstaff, parallels the plot's focal passing of the crown.    In the first act, Poins outlines his plan to play a prank on Falstaff and their other friends to Prince Hal, "They [Falstaff and others] will adventure upon the exploit [of stealing money from travelers] themselves, which they shall have no sooner achieved but we'll set upon them" (I.ii.169-71). This exactly represents the larger action that takes place in this same piece. King Henry IV, previously Bolingbroke, usurped the crown from King Richard II in Shakespeare's play of that title, and now, in this King Henry Hotspur is trying to take from "Bolingbroke," the name he contemptuously insists on using for the king, the crown which the king 'rightfully' stole already. Hal's prank can, in fact, be seen as the summarizing play within the play so popular in Elizabethan drama. Not only does Hal's light-hearted game sum up the events of this history, it also works as a microcosm of the events in King Richard III, a tragedy wherein Richard steals the throne from his brothers, Ed ward and George, who, in turn, stole it from Henry VI. The metaphor becomes even more obviously applicable when we hear Falstaff's self-defense for giving up the stolen money so easily, "Was it for me to kill the heir apparent?"... ...taining the position and participating in its ceremonies is a game. However, I don't think this means that the role is an impossible one to actually possess, that it's always simply an unreachable construct that everyone pretends at. I think it just means that Shakespeare sees the crown as not being as serious a thing to possess as is commonly thought. It's a joke, a gag, a prank, always a gold ring made of cardboard. Where there's "a kingdom for a stage," so too can there be 'a stage for a kingdom' (Henry V, prologue line 3). Being King means playing.    Works Cited Shakespeare, William. Henry IV: part one. Ed. P. H. Davison, New York: Penguin Books, 1996. Shakespeare, William. Henry IV: part two. Ed. P. H. Davison, New York: Penguin Books, 1997. Shakespeare, William. Henry V. Ed. A. R. Humphreys, New York: Penguin Books, 1996.   

Confessions of a Shopaholic

Existential consumption and irrational desire Richard Elliott University of Oxford, Oxford, UK If marketing is truly the â€Å"ultimate social practice of postmodern consumer culture† (Firat, 1993) then it carries the heavy burden of â€Å"determining the conditions and meanings of life for the future† (Firat and Venkatesh, 1993). Certainly, social theory is now focusing on consumption as playing a central role in the way the social world is constructed, and it can be argued that marketing is too important just to be left to marketers as it plays a â€Å"key role in giving meaning to life through consumption† (van Raaij, 1993).Marketing has been criticized from within as being a â€Å"technique† without moral regard for the consequences of its actions, and there is no shortage of critics of its most public face: advertising. This paper aims at identifying some of the issues raised by postmodern and poststructuralist accounts of consumption. In particular, it is argued that consumption can be conceptualized from cultural, social and psychological perspectives as being a prime site for the negotiation of conflicting themes of freedom and control.It is proposed here that in postmodernity the consumption of symbolic meaning, particularly through the use of advertising as a cultural commodity, provides the individual with the opportunity to construct, maintain and communicate identity and social meanings. This use of consumption as a resource for meaning creation and social transactions is a process that involves the making of choices that are sufficiently important to be considered as existential.This is not an attempt at rehabilitating the practice of marketing, but is intended to demonstrate that the consumer is far from being a passive victim but is an active agent in the construction of meaning. In part this can be seen as a response to Olander’s call for â€Å"consumer research for the consumer’s sake† (Olander, 1993), but also as providing theoretical underpinning for concepts such as â€Å"advertising literacy† (Ritson and Elliott, 1995a) which attempt to build new socially located and meaning-based-models of advertising.Exploring some consumption dialectics As a heuristic device to help unpack some of the complexity of the consumption experience, five dialectics will be explored and their (sometimes polar) tensions used as analytical frames for reviewing competing discourses on the meanings of consumption: My thanks to Geoff Easton and Rolland Munro for discussions which improved the ideas in this paper, some of which have been explored in Elliott and Ritson (1995). Existential consumption and irrational desire 285 European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 1 No. 3/4, 1997, pp. 285-296.  © MCB University Press, 0309-0566 European Journal of Marketing 31,3/4 286 (1) the material versus the symbolic; (2) the social versus the self; (3) desire versus satisfaction; (4) rationality versus irrationality; and (5) creativity versus constraint. It is acknowledged that binary oppositions are essentially structuralist and thus in danger of betraying the complexity of the poststructuralist accounts they are being used to elucidate here, and that they are inevitably reductionist.However, postmodernism is riven with contradictions, even Baudrillard’s account of postmodernity is itself a totalizing â€Å"meta-narrative† (Hebdige, 1989), so we must learn to participate in the â€Å"tolerance of incompatible alternatives† (Lyotard, 1984) and â€Å"the juxtaposition of opposites and contradictions† (Foster, 1983) called for by postmodern theorists in the hope that it can develop our understanding(s) of the meaning(s) of these complex ideas.As a heuristic device, these bipolar oppositions should not be read as posited structures but merely as aids to coming to grips with the sometimes mind-numbing interrelations between what are often incommensurable co ncepts. The binary opposition is false and should, of course, be allowed to â€Å"melt into air† (Berman, 1983). The material versus the symbolic As soon as a product’s ability to satisfy mere physical need is transcended, then we enter the realm of the symbolic and it is symbolic meaning that is used in the search for the meaning of existence (Fromm, 1976).Central to postmodern theories of consumption is the proposition that consumers no longer consume products for their material utilities but consume the symbolic meaning of those products as portrayed in their images; products in fact become commodity signs (Baudrillard, 1981). â€Å"The real consumer becomes a consumer of illusions† (Debord, 1977) and â€Å"the ad-dict buys images not things† (Taylor and Saarinen, 1994). This semiotic perspective of products as symbols raises difficult questions about the location of cultural meaning.The term symbol itself can relate to the product that carries meaning or to the meaning it carries, and the interpretation of meaning is a complex product of what is contained in the representation and what the individual brings to the representation (LeVine, 1984). Symbolism can be analysed semiotically by examination of the system of signs and what they signify. It has been realized, however, that this leads to an infinite regress as one sign leads to another without there ever being anything â€Å"real† outside the system.All meaning is socially constructed and there is no essential external reference point, so ultimately â€Å"There is nothing outside the text† (Derrida, 1977). To complicate matters further, symbolic interpretation is essentially non-rational improvisation that does not obey the codes of language but operates at the unconscious level (Sperber, 1975). A Jungian analysis goes even further and suggests that the full significance of a symbol cannot be Existential grasped in purely intellectual terms, if it becomes fully definable in rational consumption and terms it is no longer a true symbol (Storr, 1973). rrational desire But even for the sign-dependent human being things are never purely material nor purely meaningful, there is always a mediated relation between matter and meaning. This mediated process operates through the materiality 287 of language as a dynamic force in the transformation of an indeterminate range of human possibilities into a restricted moral economy of meaning, in which we are simultaneously authors of and authored by the language with which we try to communicate (Pfohl, 1992).This relationship is partly a function of the individual’s ability to understand and control the interaction between the material and the symbolic, and material objects themselves are always in transit and their meaning is likewise on a trajectory (Appadurai, 1986). The social versus the self The functions of the symbolic meanings of products operate in two directions, outward in constructing the social world – social-symbolism – and inward towards constructing our self-identity: self-symbolism (Elliott, 1995).Consumption of the symbolic meaning of products is a social process that helps make visible and stable the basic categories of a culture which are under constant change, and consumption choices â€Å"become a vital source of the culture of the moment† (Douglas and Isherwood, 1978). The meanings of consumer goods are grounded in their social context and the demand for goods derives more from their role in cultural practices rather than from the satisfaction of simple human needs (Douglas and Isherwood, 1978). Consumer goods, then, are more than just objects of economic exchange, â€Å"they are goods to think with, goods to speak with† (Fiske, 1989).Consumption as a cultural practice is one way of participating in social life and may be an important element in cementing social relationships, while the whole system of consumption is an unco nscious expression of the existing social structure through a seductive process which pushes the purchasing impulse until it reaches the â€Å"limits of economic potential† (Baudrillard, 1988). It is within this social context that the individual uses consumer goods and the consumption process as the materials with which to construct and maintain an identity, form relationships and frame psychological events (Lunt and Livingstone, 1992).The self-symbolic role of material goods is long established in social anthropology and the individual’s attachment to objects may be a culturally universal function which symbolizes security, expresses the self-concept and signifies connection to society (Wallendorf and Arnould, 1988). Consumer goods are not only used to construct our self-identity but are also used by others to make inferences about us that guide their behaviour towards us (Dittmar, 1992). But now in postmodernity we are able to use consumer products to become any of our â€Å"possible selves† (Markus and Nurius, 1986) inEuropean Journal of Marketing 31,3/4 288 which we utilize consumer goods to construct pastiches of others we have been exposed to via the media or more directly. â€Å"In cyberspace, I can change myself as easily as I change my clothes† (Taylor and Saarinen, 1994). But the choices as to which self to construct and present are attended by the possibility of social consequences which may be very negative for example, a failure of a young person to utilize symbolic capital in the form of knowledge of the appropriate meaning of advertising can lead to rejection by the peer group (O’Donohoe, 1994).Desire versus satisfaction The symbolic gratification promised by advertising manages to recode a commodity as a desirable psycho-ideological sign (Wernick, 1991), and the operation of advertising at the unconscious level is driven by the search for an imaginary self which motivates the individual with desire for cohere nce and meaning (Lacan, 1977).Advertising feeds the desire to achieve the unobtainable unity of the self with destabilized meanings (Featherstone, 1991), images which separate commodities from their original use and offer the possibility to reconstruct the self by purchasing the symbolic meaning of goods and constructing a â€Å"DIY self† (Bauman, 1991). For as Williamson (1978) points out, â€Å"The conscious chosen meaning in most people’s lives comes from what they consume†, and this is energized by the attachment of bodily desire to symbolic meaning where the inchoate needs of the pre-linguistic self are channelled into language.Central to Lacanian theory is the mirror-phase, where the child recognizes itself in a mirror and assumes an image through a transformation from the imaginary to the symbolic. The symbolic for Lacan is linked with absence, in that symbols represent a world of people and things that are not there. The â€Å"real† can only be ap proached through the symbolic medium of language, yet language itself contains the contradictions and fragmentations of gender, power and meaning (Kristeva, 1980).The symbolic focus of much promotional activity in postmodernity is desire, and for Lacan desire exists in the gap between language and the unconscious. â€Å"Desire does not desire satisfaction. To the contrary desire desires desire. The reason images are so desirable is that they never satisfy† (Taylor and Saarinen, 1994). Postmodern consumption is inextricably linked with aspects of sexuality, both conscious and unconscious, as it promises the satisfaction of previously taboo desires through imagery and representations (Mort, 1988).These desires are constructed through the symbolic linkage between consumption and the human body (Kellner, 1992), and operate in large part through the consumption imagery with which we are surrounded and which makes even mundane consumer actions, such as looking in shop windows, high ly significant in our psychic lives (Bocock, 1993). Thus meaning is created through a search for links between identity (the social) and the self and the pursuit of sexual satisfaction through consumption, both of which are doomed to failure.Rationality versus irrationality Existential This postmodern fragmentation of the experience of self has been termed the consumption and condition of â€Å"multiphrenia† by Gergen (1991), who points out that the new irrational desire opportunities for exercise of choice are almost unlimited and so bring with them a â€Å"vertigo of the valued† where the expansion of â€Å"wants† reduces our choice to â€Å"want not†, a multiplicity of competing values and beliefs which make â€Å"the very 289 idea of rational choice become meaningless†.The mass media, and advertising in particular, are responsible for an â€Å"expansion of inadequacy† which is encouraged by a barrage of new criteria for self-evaluation. Cushman (1990) argues that we are in an era of the â€Å"empty self† in which alienation and loss of community can be solved by the â€Å"lifestyle† solution in which the consumer constructs a â€Å"self † by purchasing and â€Å"ingesting† products featured in advertising, a behaviour which can be construed as, at best, of limited rationality.In the Lacanian perspective there is a stress on the individual subject as being fragmented and incoherent, and this leads to the framing of the consumer as simultaneously both rational and irrational, able to both consume and reject what is being consumed, to desire and yet consume without satisfaction (Nava, 1991). â€Å"Identity becomes infinitely plastic in a play of images that knows no end. Consistency is no longer a virtue but becomes a vice; integration is limitation† (Taylor and Saarinen, 1994).The consumption of meaning, even the meaning of supposedly unambiguous television soap operas, is always am bivalent and contradictory (Ang, 1985), and the modes of rationality which operate in the space between the unconscious world of the imaginary and the symbolic world of language are little understood as they are constrained by the â€Å"despotic signifying semiologies† which limit the possibilities for other forms of semiotic systems and other forms of rationality (Deleuze and Guattari, 1983).The conceptualization of other modes of (ir)rationality is paralleled by the recent development in social cognition of the theory of motivated choice, which emphasizes the role of emotion in decision processes (Forgas, 1992; Kunda, 1990). Motivated choice is where judgement is driven by an emotional desire to arrive at a particular conclusion, where biased information search and reasoning processes are used â€Å"to arrive at those conclusions they want to arrive at† (Kunda, 1990).From these perspectives, cool, rational, informationprocessing choice is at least uncommon, and may i n fact be very rare, for â€Å"the real, the really real, is irrational, that reason builds upon irrationalities† (de Unamuno, 1962). Creativity versus constraint The dialectic between freedom and control in the consumption domain is typified by the influence of advertising. The ability of consumers to resist the influence of advertising and thereby exercise freedom has been minimized by the Marxist analysis of its central role in the maintenance of capitalism (Leiss etEuropean Journal of Marketing 31,3/4 290 al. , 1990) which operates through the creation of â€Å"ideological hegemony† (Goldman, 1992). Marxists have also portrayed advertising as a â€Å"magic system† (Williams, 1980) of magical inducements and satisfactions which validates consumption, if only in fantasy, by association with social and personal meanings and thus transforms goods which had rational use-value into irrational symbols.This focus on the power of the symbolic is further developed by Williamson (1986) who argues that advertisements function at an unconscious level at which the consumer is unable to resist latent meaning transfer. More recent post-Marxist analyses have weakened their deterministic stance and recognized that â€Å"the meanings and uses of products cannot be entirely controlled† (Williamson, 1986).However, hegemony still exists, but now depends on affective gratifications provided by mass-mediated popular culture where â€Å"everyday life in amusement society proceeds within a dialectic of enfeeblement and empowerment† (Langman, 1992). From a post-structuralist perspective limited freedom is allowed to the individual through consumption choices: â€Å"for most members of contemporary society individual freedom, if available at all, comes in the form of consumer freedom† through which the individual must take responsibility to invent and consciously create a self-identity (Bauman, 1988).Through the â€Å"new existentialism† (Laermans, 1993) consumers can exercise the freedom to create new meanings for goods through their own idiosyncratic performance of everyday life (de Certeau, 1984). This freedom can be used for collective and individual resistance against the imposed meanings of the dominant cultural categories, particularly through the choice of style and the use of bricolage tactics (Fiske, 1987; Hebdige, 1979).A sustained argument for the active exercise of freedom through consumption is developed by Willis (1990), who characterizes the consumption choices of the young as the behaviour of â€Å"practical existentialists†. The young are seen as exercising choice through consumption-related symbolic creativity which operates via the concept of â€Å"grounded aesthetics†, a process which builds higher-level symbolic meaning structures from the mundane concrete experiences of everyday life.This allows the young a small creative space for making the received social world, to some ext ent, controllable by them. This process is very similar to the marginal â€Å"tactics† (de Certeau, 1984) by which the powerless make sense of consumption, and in relation to advertising would allow them some control over the meaning of a text, but not control over the agenda within which the text is constructed (Morley and Silverstone, 1990).This is a limited freedom where we â€Å"make our own spaces within the place of the other† (Fiske, 1989) but yet it is potentially liberating in that to escape from dominant meanings is to construct our own subjectivity (Condit, 1989), and can therefore be conceptualized as â€Å"authentic† existential choice, rejecting the â€Å"bad faith† of accepting the dominant consumption meanings as inevitable or unproblematic (Sartre, 1969). Advertisements can be seen as cultural products in their own right, and Existential young people consume them independently of the products and have a creative consumption and symbolic r elationship with them.Although Willis (1990) sees advertising as irrational desire manipulative to some extent, he emphasises the scope for individual choice and creativity in meaning and identity construction, as individuals use advertising images as personal and social resources. These are invested with specific 291 meanings anchored in everyday life, via the process of grounded aesthetics, which are then used to construct or maintain personal and social identities. These creative practices are particularly prevalent amongst young people of â€Å"Generation X† (O’Donohoe, 1994; Ritson and Elliott, 1995b).The construction of social identity through â€Å"styles of consumption† is referred to in terms of lifestyle membership of â€Å"neo-tribes† by Bauman (1990), where one may join the tribe by buying and displaying tribe-specific paraphernalia. The neo-tribe is informal, without authority and only requires acceptance of the obligation to take on the iden tity-symbols of the tribe. The consumer may thus exercise the freedom to choose social groupings through existential consumption.The exercise of choice through consumption now flows across national boundaries in a global cultural economy through the operation of advertising â€Å"mediascapes† which are image-centred strips of reality which offer the consumer a series of elements â€Å"out of which scripts can be formed of imagined lives, their own as well as those of others living in other places† (Appaduri, 1990). If aspects of advertising imagery can be appropriated at will by â€Å"practical existentialists† then they may, as Baudrillard (1983) suggests, â€Å"live everywhere already in an ‘aesthetic’ hallucination of reality†, in which the real and the simulated are indistinguishable.However, the extent to which, in a â€Å"mediacratic† age, advertising reflects reality or actually creates it is problematic. Are the â€Å"practica l existentialists† using advertising or is it really using them? Schudson (1984) suggests that advertising is â€Å"capitalist realist art† and that although it does not have a monopoly of the symbolic marketplace, different social groups are differentially vulnerable especially during transitional states of their lives. This form of art idealizes the consumer and portrays as normative, special moments of satisfaction.It â€Å"reminds us of beautiful moments in our own lives or it pictures magical moments we would like to experience† (Schudson, 1984). This suggests that young people in particular, who are at a transitional state in their lives, may be subject to excessive influence by â€Å"buying-in† to advertising’s depiction of a false reality. In contrast, young people may be exercising (limited) freedom in their use of advertising as a cultural commodity for â€Å"even as the market makes its profits, it supplies some of the materials for alte rnative or oppositional symbolic work† (Willis, 1990).This dichotomy between creativity and constraint (Moores, 1993) in the context of advertising is represented by the problematic of hegemony, which sets parameters on the freedom to construct meaning (Ang, 1990). Hegemony European Journal of Marketing 31,3/4 292 does not dominate from outside but is a â€Å"thick texture† which interlaces resistance and submission, opposition and complicity (Martin-Barbero, 1988) and which therefore poses difficult problems for ethnographic analysis to unpack.Structuration theory (Giddens, 1984) offers a solution to the dualism of structure versus agency, by positing that the â€Å"structural properties of social systems are both medium and outcome of the practices they recursively organise†. Thus the consumption of advertising can be both an active and creative practice yet is carried out within constraints imposed by material situation and ideological hegemony. Desire, irrati onality and choice Desire develops from physical need through a growing awareness of the existential choice between a desire to have and a desire to be, desire being defined by absence or lack of being (Sartre, 1969).Lacan’s identification of language as the symbolic order which develops from the pre-verbal imaginary order accompanied by increasing anxiety about the self has been reframed by Kristeva (1980) as the two orders of the semiotic and the symbolic. The imaginary/semiotic order is unconscious whilst the symbolic order is rational, but there is potential for â€Å"slippage† between the two orders of meaning, with a regression to the unconscious and irrational order of the imaginary where desire for the unattainable comfort of the perfect mother holds sway.The gap between the fantasy world of consumption day-dreams of perfect pleasure and the disappointments of reality is the basic motivation for Campbell’s (1987) â€Å"autonomous imaginative hedonismâ⠂¬  which results in limitless wants and a permanent state of frustration. The limited resources of the individual consumer must therefore require choices to be made, choices of which desire to feed and which to deny, which meanings to consume and which to reject or avoid. This vital act of consumer choice may not be to choose that which is most pleasing, but to reject that which is most distasteful.Bourdieu (1984) suggests tastes that â€Å"when they have to be justified, they are asserted purely negatively, by the refusal of other tastes†. We may define ourselves not by what we like, but by what we dislike, and it is strong negative emotional reactions to the consumption practices of others that may structure our social categories. This â€Å"refusal of tastes† seems to operate at the level of the imaginary/semiotic and be driven by pre-verbal inchoate emotion. While consumption may often operate at the level of the imaginary/semiotic or day-dream, it can also have â€Å"real† effects in facilitating the construction of self-identity (Falk, 1994).Phenomenological descriptions of the everyday consumer experiences of women (Thompson et al. , 1990) have surfaced a dominant theme of being in control/being out of control which reflected an anxiety about not buying in the â€Å"right† way, so that women felt guilty when they perceived themselves as not making rational purchase decisions. However, they nevertheless admitted to making purchases in a â€Å"dreamlike† way when they were â€Å"captivated† by a product. In this situation, to act in a self-perceived rrational fashion, to surrender to the symbolic, is itself an authentic existential Existential act of creating meaning through choice, the choice to be irrational. consumption and But to what extent is existential consumption the conscious exercise of irrational desire freedom through choice as idealized by existentialism? Certainly there are severe limits to the fr eedom contained in consumption choices due to individuals having unequal access to the necessary resources, so existential 293 consumption may only exist for some people in some societies.However, the lived experience described by consumers (Elliott and Ritson, 1995; Thompson et al. , 1990) conveys a strong sense of Sartre’s â€Å"engagement† even if not at the level of decisional seriousness discussed by Kierkegaard (Macquarrie, 1972). Marxists may dismiss an individual’s claim to be making conscious choices about consumption as â€Å"false consciousness† but this is to deny the â€Å"situated meaningfulness of everyday consumer experiences† (Thompson et al. , 1990). The freedom of practical existentialism is authentic, even if it is constrained by inequalities in the economic system and by ideological hegemony.The emotion-laden experiences of the consumer – irrational, incoherent and driven by unconscious desires; constrained by the market economy yet obtaining limited freedom through existential consumption and symbolic creativity; able to build a DIY self through consumption yet suffering an expansion of inadequacy through advertising – this constructs the subjectivity of the postmodern consumer with whom postmodern marketing (Brown, 1995) must deal. References Ang, I. (1985), Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination, Methuen, London. 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