Kylene Beers' approach to helping struggling readers in secondary schools
This paper contains journal entries, summaries and reflections of Kylene Beers' book "When Kids Can't Read." It examines each chapter assigned in a syllabus, and provides the reader's thoughts on the Beers' arguments, assessments, suggestions, and overall ideas. Beers' book is a helpful tool for teachers striving to help their students overcome dependent reading.
Russell Wasendorf Sr. and the MF Global brokerage fraud scandal
The paper focuses on the example of Wasendorf, whose 20-year fraudulent activities were finally brought to light by a suicide note. Points considered include whether similar future activities can be prevented, what caused the fraud to be possible, and whether the punishment fit the crime. It is concluded that Wasendorf should indeed pay the price for his actions, but that regulatory authorities should also be under investigation.
Socrates' conception of the philosopher's vocation in Plato's Apology
The vocation of the philosopher, as represented by Socrates' in his apology to the jury, is to seek and speak the trust. One danger of that vocation is that, in seeking the truth, the philosopher reveals that many…
Core principles of high performance work systems in organizations
The most valuable and mercurial asset any enterprise has is the knowledge, insight and intelligence of its employees including the immense amount of tacit and implicit knowledge each has gained over decades of experience. A high performance work system (HPWS) seeks to synchronize the many work structures, systems, processes, implementation decisions and frameworks around a common series of strategic priorities and initiatives (Boxall, 2012). Galvanizing together the many components of a HPWS are the Human Resource Management (HRM) systems, both manual and automated, in addition to the most critical areas of governance that serve as a stabilizing force in organizational cultures (Wood, de Menezes, 2011). Making these many components stay synchronized and focused on a series of strategic objectives is difficult, and made even more challenging when industry and market turbulence is introduced (Preuss, 2003). An HPWS must be agile enough then to react to the turbulence in economic terms yet stable enough to provide a foundation for cross-cultural growth and profitable operations of an enterprise (Mittal, 2011). Any architectural framework then for an HPWS must have elements necessary to ensure a very high degree of agility and shared value creation from the standpoint of collaboration and communication (Boxall, 2012). It must also be designed to enable a very high degree of shared information and knowledge development, as the best-performing HPWS systems are actually knowledge-sharing ecosystems (Hartog, Verburg, 2004). With all of these aspects of an HPWS needing to stay in synchronization as the people, processes, systems, external competitive environment and internal culture of a company change, anchoring these systems in core principles is critical to their stability, scalability and long-term value in any enterprise (Varma, Beatty, Schneier, Ulrich, 1999). It is the intent of this paper to analyze the fundamental principles that have proven invaluable in keeping HPWS agile in turbulent times. These for principles include shared information, knowledge development, performance-reward linkage, and egalitarianism (Varma, Beatty, Schneier, Ulrich, 1999).