Women and Men Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Women and Men - Essay Example institution of marriage, women seized the right to self-assertion.   Reacting to oppression women revolted against the implementation of feminine gender roles.† (Thomas, Deborah) To be able to function in her role as wife and mother, a woman needs love, understanding and support. This work is an effort to throw off the shackles that bind women in many ways because of her gender. Christopher Marlowe’s poem The Passionate Shepherd to His Love, deals with a shepherd who only wants his woman to come and live with him. But hidden in those loving words is an ulterior motive, quite practical in nature, although it is couched in the terms of true love, namely his â€Å"passionate need to possess the woman.† (The Passionate Shepherd to His Love / Critical Essay on â€Å"The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.†). He is not in need of her love, but usefulness. The critic, Metzger, is of the opinion that she is â€Å"reduced to a caricature ridiculously clothed in floral tributes.† She does not have even a name, an identity or a voice but â€Å"exists only in the shepherd’s plea.† In short, if you are a woman, you are simply a nonentity. John Steinbeck’s masterly work The Chrysanthemum carries this idea further but in a different vein. Like the object of Marlowe’s lover, Elisa the central character of this story, also exists solely to play up to the male’s vanity. To function as a mother and wife, a woman needs support, appreciation and understanding, which she hardly seems to receive. The literary critic, Ernest W. Sullivan II, looks at the story from the perspective of Elisa responding as a dog. Elisa obeys her inner instincts and is submissive to the male characters in the story as a mongrel would to a male that exudes superiority. Here also the relationships are lopsided as in the foregoing works. Elisa is a lesser being because of the dictates of her gender. Thomas Hardy’s poem The Workbox is more morbid in its implications than the rest of the stories

Critically assess the impact of Taylor and Ford on organizations today Essay

Critically assess the impact of Taylor and Ford on organizations today - Essay Example The scientific approach had been quite significant during the industrialization era. However, in today’s organizations it is facing a decreasing impact owing to the knowledge of experienced managers that all situations and people should not be handled the same way. The emergence of numerous variables and environmental uncertainties has led many organizations to use the contingency approach. Scientific management aims to determine one best way for a job to be accomplished. Fredrick Taylor is a significant contributor to the development of this theory. His work at Midvale and Bethlehem Steel Industries stimulated the interest in him to improving efficiency. Taylor defined four principles of management which he sought would create mental revolution among the managers and workers (Cobley, 2009). His principles involved the development of a true science of management, scientific selection of workers, scientific education and development of workers and intimate friendly relationship between the workers and employers. Heames (2010) explains how using these principles enabled Taylor to define one best way for doing each job and achieve improvements in productivity, which was consistent in the range of 200 percent. He affirmed the role of workers to perform as they were instructed while the manager’s roles were to plan and control. The mass production model which bears the name of its pioneer, Ford, dates back to the first moving assembly lines creation that were put into action at Ford’s Model T plant. The labour productivity increased tenfold permitting stunning price cuts. This ensured mass manufacturing at a price low enough that a common man could afford to buy (Daft, 2010:97). Fordism production involved an intensified division of labour and increased coordination and mechanization of large-scale manufacturing to achieve a steady production flow. They also used less skilled labour to perform tasks that were least specified by the management. T he control over the pace and intensity of work owing to the potential for heightened capitalist were inclusive to Fordism (Wagner, 2009). According to Frey (2008), separation of thinking and working is one of the impacts that resulted in the essence of Taylorism where managers had to decide what the workers should do. The worker would have got used to their action when they had thought of it and tried to improve on it (Down, 2012). The relationship between the worker and the manager known as social-technical relation has different demands in that the planning department wanted efficiency in the production process but the workers wanted to have commensurate payment. Although it improved efficiency and profitability to organizations while making the management’s systematic workers felt differently in terms of satisfaction and motivation (Frey, 2008:185). Workers and employer relation’s importance was recognized by Ford. He introduced an eight-hour workday and offered hig her wages. This impacted on employee motivation, and thus job satisfaction. This, in turn, made workers to improve on their skills, quality of life and enhance job satisfaction (Pacharapha, 2012). In Fordism the management was considerably hierarchical, and the power of the company was only vested in the top management. Application of scientific principles on machines to