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Conformity
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What is Conformity?

Conformity refers to the process by which individuals adjust their beliefs, behaviors, or attitudes to align with the expectations of a group or broader society. It appears across multiple academic disciplines, including social psychology, sociology, and literature, making it a versatile subject for coursework at both introductory and advanced levels. What makes conformity academically compelling is the tension it creates between the individual and the collective — a tension that touches on questions of identity, autonomy, and social control. Works like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and philosophical traditions such as Transcendentalism engage directly with this conflict, giving students rich textual material alongside empirical frameworks drawn from social psychology and social influence research.

Student papers on this topic approach conformity from several distinct angles. Some take a social-psychological perspective, examining how group dynamics and social influence shape individual actions. Others use literary analysis, exploring how characters in fiction are shaped or constrained by societal pressure. A smaller set applies the concept to specific cultural contexts, such as the use of steroids in baseball, treating conformity as a lens for understanding behavior within competitive environments. Papers also consider age as a variable affecting conformity, suggesting quantitative and observational methodologies appear alongside more qualitative approaches.

A strong essay on conformity requires a clearly scoped thesis that moves beyond simply defining the concept. Effective papers identify a specific context — a social setting, a literary work, or a documented case — and use it to argue something particular about why individuals conform or resist conformity. Evidence drawn from observable behavior, psychological theory, or textual analysis tends to carry the most weight. The most common pitfall is treating conformity as inherently negative; a nuanced essay acknowledges that conforming can serve legitimate social functions while still examining its costs to individual agency.

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Essay Doctorate
Exporting to Kenya vs. Vietnam: Trade Policies Compared
Kenya is the largest economy in East Africa making her a regional transportation and financial hub. The growth of the country originates from the fact that Kenya has promoted rapid economic growth since independence.
Essay Doctorate
Liebeck v. McDonald's: The Hot Coffee Case Analyzed
In 1994, Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurant, also referred to as the "McDonald coffee case", was a popular case in the U.S. because it was considered frivolous. The case centers around a woman by the name of Stella Liebeck, who spilled hot coffee on her lap which she purchased from McDonald's.
Paper Undergraduate
Identity in Exile: Grapes of Wrath, Jasmine, and China Men
Identity in Exile: The Grapes of Wrath, Jasmine and China Men
Research Paper Doctorate
African-American Pregnancy, Delivery, and Neonatal Rituals
The paper describes how African-Americans adapt to the stimuli of pregnancy, labor, delivery and the neonatal period. It discusses practices, rituals and beliefs common to the culture and how they have adapted to meet…
Paper Undergraduate
Jazz and Syncopation in Jack Kerouac's On the Road
As perhaps the only true American musical artform, jazz was created mainly by African-Americans in the early years of the 20th century through an amalgamation of elements drawn from European-American and tribal African…
Paper Doctorate
EU Immigration Policy, Family Reunification, and Migrant Women's Rights
¶ … Submitted to the Faculty of the Division of the International Relations and Diplomacy
Paper Undergraduate
Strategic Compensation: History, Design, and Global Practice
¶ … historic process by which strategic compensation arose.
Essay Doctorate
IFRS vs. U.S. GAAP: Standards, Auditing, and Company Comparisons
International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)
Paper Undergraduate
E-CRM: Social Networks, Web Analytics, and Database Marketing
The disruptive nature of social networks and their effects on marketing are revolutionizing every aspect customer relationships, including the re-ordering of marketing sales and services strategies. In aggregate social networks are bringing an entirely new level of insight and intelligence into how permission marketing, information acquisition and e-commerce strategies can be accomplished. The highest-performing marketing and sales organizations have successfully integrated the intelligence and insight gained from social networks via analytics and customer listening systems to better tailor selling, product and services strategies (Bampo, Ewing, Mather, Stewart, Wallace, 2008). Social networks have emerged as one of the most important and powerful platforms for aligning permission marketing to customer interest, segment and needs than any other development of the last decade. The insights gained from social networks in these areas are also completely revamping e-commerce strategies with much higher levels of personalization and more adept and agile multichannel marketing and selling strategies as well. The intent of this analysis is to analyze and evaluate how social networks are completely re-ordering the nature of customer relationships. The nascent yet very rapid growth of Social Customer Relationship Management (SCRM), which is the combining of social networking-based prospect and customer information with the more structured and mature traditional CRM platforms is serving as the basis for many company's strategies in permission marketing, information acquisition and e-commerce strategies (Cooke, Buckley, 2008). The mercurial nature of social networks however has made it difficult for companies to gain greater insights into their customer bases. The reliance on advanced analytics in SCRM and CRM systems has made the task of completing permission marketing achievable. Social networking has however changed the entire dynamic of relationships with prospects, customers and the general public, infusing a much greater level of transparency and authenticity into the process. Ironically the majority of marketers aren't using social networks to listen and respond to customers, creating more effective relationships in the process. Instead the majority of marketers are relying on social networks and their many channels they represent to communicate un-directionally, going so far as to spam prospects and customers alike. What's needed for marketers to drive greater value from social networks is the ability to listen, create trust and sustain strong communication with prospects, customers and stakeholders throughout their spheres of influence. Marketers from both Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Consumer (B2C) companies have the potential to completely revolutionize their marketing, selling, service and long-term profitability by concentrating on these fundamentals (Doyle, 2007). The best practices of creating a very open, transparent and responsive level of communication throughout social media channels and across social networks permeate the companies getting the best results from these strategies. Consequently, their efforts at permission marketing, customer information acquisition and broader e-commerce strategies are significantly more successful (Harris, Rae, 2009). Companies excelling in this dimension of unifying social networks, permission marketing and customer information acquisition then driving effective e-commerce strategies include Amazon.com, Dell, Southwest Airlines and others who all have integrated social networks into their broader CRM platforms and strategies. Each of these companies have entire staffs dedicated to supporting their social CRM efforts and strategies, while also integrating unique customer data, managing ongoing marketing campaigns and responding to customer service requests that are initiated over social media channels. The net effect of this approach has been to galvanize the effectiveness of these social media channels for these companies (Jones, 2002). The best practices shown by Amazon.com, Dell, Southwest Airlines and others in this area of social networking is also showing that social networks can become a main part of any global, multichannel management selling and service strategy.
Essay Doctorate
Organizational Culture, Change, and Cross-Cultural Communication
An increasingly globalized marketplace and multicultural society demand a solid understanding of others' cultures, particularly with regards to interpersonal communications. These issues are especially important in the…