Contemporary Employee Discipline Policies an Example of the Topic Business Essays by

Contemporary Employee Discipline Policies Introduction Organizations have been in the need for discipline in the business environment. Effective performance requires the maintenance of discipline (internally and externally imposed) by managerial and non-managerial personnel. Workplace regulations typically are rigid and detailed, raising their costs for business yet reducing their effectiveness at protecting workers. Policies to increase the supply of skilled workers are important but may not be sufficient unless jobs are available that utilize the enhanced skills. Skills alone may not lead to high wages, high productivity, or even interesting work. We need labor market policies to enhance the trend toward workplaces that rely on high levels of skill, lifelong learning, and continuous skill improvement. Need essay sample on "Contemporary Employee Discipline Policies" topic? We will write a custom essay sample specifically for you Proceed These workplaces typically are quite different from traditional ones. They have been transformed so as to give employees greater ability and the incentive to improve their workplaces. Workers' ability to generate good ideas is often strengthened by high levels of training and information sharing. Forms of worker empowerment vary widely but often include work teams and forms of representative participation such as elected committees of workers or union representatives. Incentive schemes vary as well but typically reward individuals for learning new skills, reward groups of workers for their collective success, and build cohesiveness and solidarity more than individualistic competition. Motivation is also supported when companies ensure that the efficiency gains achieved by implementing workers' suggestions do not end up costing them their jobs. Positive And Negative Discipline As can be seen from various practical definitions, discipline can be positive and activating, or it may be negative and restraining. In either case, it is the force which prompts an individual or group to observe policies, rules, regulations, and procedures that are deemed necessary to the attainment of objectives. The positive type provides workers with greater freedom of self-expression. It promotes emotional satisfaction instead of emotional conflict and results in coordination and cooperation with a minimum need for formal authority. It can be achieved best when group objectives and procedures are well known and are a basis for individual behavior. Negative discipline involves force or an outward influence. This type of discipline need not be extreme, and it is used best in industry only when the positive type fails. Force will often cause a person to change outwardly but not mentally and emotionally. In fact, it sometimes results in "malicious obedience," whereby an aggrieved employee does exactly what he is told to do, even if he knows the order is faulty and will result in getting things fouled up. (Kochan, 350-366) Regulations do not work well for managers, either. Although the total benefits of workplace regulation probably outweigh the costs, often the tens or perhaps even hundreds of billions of dollars spent on workplace regulations are not cost effective. Few regulations provide incentives for managers and workers to discover the most effective means to accomplish the regulations' goals. Similarly, laws and regulations often require regulators to use similar enforcement strategies for companies with very different compliance efforts and records. The result is harassment of "good" employers and a lack of focus on "bad" ones (Clinton 20-28). Regulatory agencies often create different definitions, inspection schedules, and paperwork requirements with no coherence to the system. Employers also resent laws that discourage employee involvement that might satisfy the goals of both workers and managers. Finally, regulations do not work well for the regulators. Rules are difficult to modify even decades after the regulators realize they are out of date. Inspections are rare, frustrating many regulators' desire to ensure safe, legal, and nondiscriminatory workplaces. Discipline Measurement of Worker and Workplace Skills Discipline is a state of good order, resulting from the fair and impartial establishment and enforcement of policies, procedures, rules, and regulations. Coordination is considered to be one of the first principles of organization. One cannot conceive of an orderly arrangement of group effort without some form of coordination to achieve a meshing of the jobs, individuals, authorities, and responsibilities. Yet, it is difficult to have coordination without orderly employee behavior. Consequently, orderly behavior which is based upon knowledge and performance of duties is essential to organization, and thus, to management. The necessary condition to obtain this orderly behavior has been called discipline. Here we see an inseparable relationship: discipline is essential to coordination and coordination is essential to organization. It would be nave and unnecessary to elaborate on the matter of importance of standard system of rules. By formulating a general policy for the governance of conduct which can be advanced upon its merits and uniformly applied, we can expect the optimum of cooperation from our personnel. As applied to modern personnel management, judicial due process involves establishing "laws," or rules which cannot be violated with impunity; setting specific penalties for infringements upon these rules, with progressive degrees in the severity of penalties; and imposing the penalties upon infractors only after determining the extent of guilt, and taking any mitigating circumstances into consideration. The due-process concept is based upon four assumptions which are usually upheld by arbitrators. These are: (1) the rules must be "reasonable"; (2) the employee must have a clear idea of what is expected of him; (3) the employer has a right to have a well-disciplined, cooperative work force; and (4) he has the authority to administer discipline when rules are violated. (Wollenberger, p. 27) Disciplinary Procedure To Be Followed Once the grounds for disciplinary action have been established, it becomes necessary for the manager to follow the correct procedure in taking any action against a subordinate. Adherence to established orderly procedures is the essence of the due process concept of discipline. As injustice thrives on privacy, the best guarantee of truth is the free exchange of views between the accused, his accuser, and their representatives in an open forum. No method assures this exchange as well as an orderly disciplinary procedure. In order to meet the test of judicial due process, discipline must be properly administered by the superior in accord with previously promulgated rules. Penalties should be based upon specific well-defined charges, with notices given to the employee and union, usually in advance of management's attempt to take correction action. Penalties Imposed After the grounds for action have been established and the proper procedure followed, it becomes necessary to impose the penalty. Types of penalties: First, there is the simple oral warning which is not placed on the employee's record but can be recalled as evidence later on. Actually, it is inadmissible as a basis of proof and is usually only intended as instructional. The next type is the oral warning that does go on the employee's record and helps avoid the charge of gathering evidence after the fact. The written reprimand, which is the third type, usually comes from a source higher than the immediate supervisor. It is more official and may be challenged by the employee. Suspension, the fourth type, is an even more serious penalty, which usually consists of a layoff lasting from a short period of days to a number of months. Management must be consistent in its use of suspension and equate the layoff to the seriousness of the offense. The ultimate in penalties is the discharge. This constitutes a break in service and wipes out the worker's seniority. Most arbitrators are reluctant to sustain a discharge, because it is the economic equivalent to capital punishment, especially since it affects a man's family as well as himself. (Duffy, 1) Some other penalties used are demotions, transfers, and withholding of benefits such as promotions, raises, or bonuses. Demotion or transfer is generally used only if the employee is still of value to the organization but is involved in a personality clash or is on a job which is above his ability. Incentives for Managers The personnel manager's view of this control function has switched from the traditional one of discipline as punishment to the modern approach of internal self-control, orderly behavior, and the judicial due process. Discipline is not merely punishment; it is also training which corrects and strengthens. Unions have played a major role in bringing about this change in philosophy. Their impact shows up not only in company policy but also in the supervisor's role, regardless of whether the firm is unionized or not. But no matter how much influence unions have had on the disciplinary process, the right to discipline is still a prerogative of management; the main change is that personnel managers must be sure they follow the due-process procedures. Conclusion It is proper to conclude from the information available that discipline is necessary for the success of management. This chapter has associated discipline with leadership, communication, and motivation, for regardless of the way an individual visualizes the term, there can be no denial that discipline plays an important role in holding an organization together. Employee discipline is a process of control. As such, it is a method for the maintenance of authority by management, and this authority is necessary to keep the enterprise going on a profitable basis. Works Cited Clinton, William J. "The New OSHA: Reinventing Worker Health". National Performance Review 10, 1995 no. 1:20-28 Duffy, Shannon P. "Casellas: EEOC Suffering Backlash". Legal Intelligencer (June 20, 1995): 1. Kochan, Thomas A. "Using the Dunlop Report to Achieve Mutual Gains". Industrial Relations 34, no. 3 (July 1995): 350-366 Wollenberger, Joseph B. "Acceptable Work Rules and Penalties, A Company Guide," Personnel, Vol. 40, No. 4 July, 1963, p. 27

How to Write a Coursework in Business Studies a Full Guide You Always Needed

How to Write a Coursework in Business Studies a Full Guide You Always Needed A coursework is a written project usually carried out over the duration of a term. It may take different forms and be of different sizes depending on the discipline, topic and the preferences of your professor, but its general nature remains mostly the same: it aims to teach a student how to perform independent research. Usually you have to choose the topic yourself (albeit within certain limits), which also serves to increase your level of independence – you have to define the direction of your work, not just follow the instructions of your supervisor. Business studies being a mostly practice-oriented discipline, you will most likely be expected to deal less with theory and more with how to improve a business’ profitability: finding better ways to sell products, predict trends, deal with customers and influence their behavior. Remember: your coursework will significantly contribute towards your overall grade for the course. In many situations, it is just as important as the grade you get for your exam. Make use of it, especially if you know yourself to break down under the pressure of time-limited exams. A coursework gives you an opportunity to show your full potential in a virtually stress-free environment – at least if you approach the task properly. How to Choose a Suitable Topic for Your Business Studies Coursework 1. Take Your Time You will not be asked to select a topic right away, so put the time you have to good use. Before you settle upon something, study the topic you are considering carefully. Check the following: Are there enough information sources covering it? Will you be able to access them? Is there any research that is identical or similar to what you intend to do? Is the scope of the topic feasible? Is it realistic to cover it in an assignment of this size? Is it too narrow or too broad? Is it relevant? Is there a point in doing this research? Is it likely to produce valuable results? If any of these points make you doubtful, better choose another topic or modify what you currently have. 2. Think of Something Genuinely Interesting You will spend an entire term writing this coursework. Whatever enthusiasm you have initially will dwindle away, especially if you hit some roadblocks. Therefore, try to choose something you are enthusiastic about in the first place, or this assignment will turn into torture. 3. Choose Something Measurable Business studies are primarily concerned with practical results. You cannot write about something that is based merely on your ideas or conjectures – you will have to work with measurable metrics and provide facts, statistics and reports as a foundation of your work. So think ahead and decide how you are going to measure your results. 4. Think of Something You Have Already Worked On If you have already done some research or investigative work on a subject that is of interest to you, see if you can think about something related to it so that you can leverage your existing knowledge and experience of working with the topic. Can you look at it from a new or unusual angle? Did you previously encounter some point or points that warranted additional research but weren’t directly related to the assignment you were doing at the time? For example, you’ve written an assignment on the effects of rotating employees between different departments and noticed an interesting relation between this practice as used in some companies and employee retention rates. You can write a more detailed coursework dedicated specifically to this relation. 5. Check the Allowed Topics Although you are mostly free to choose whatever you want, there are still limitations. You may have to stick to a particular general theme. Some topics may be specifically excluded (for example, if there is a later exam on them). 6. Ask for the Supervisor’s Opinion He/she is not supposed to define the direction of your research, but it is completely natural to ask him/her for advice. Prepare some rough drafts of a topic or topics and bounce them off your advisor – he/she will help you add some polish to it and make it more writable. Here are some examples of topics for you to see what you should be looking for: Regulating Workplace Diversity: Existing and Potentially Effective Practices; Cotton Industry in the United States: Its Role Historically and Today; Overqualification in American Industries: Causes, Effects and Potential Implications; The Future of Family-Owned Businesses in the United States; Bullying in the Workplace and Its Effects on Business Effectiveness in Modern America. Before You Start Writing Your Coursework: The Preparatory Phase Even if your coursework is humble in size and is little more than an extended essay, remember its role in your overall grade and treat it accordingly. You cannot just start writing one – this work requires preparation. 1. Prepare the Timeline Even if you are used to waiting until the last possible moment before starting to work on your essays, this approach will spell disaster if you try it on a coursework. It requires too much research to do it in a hurry. First, study the assignment requirements and check the deadlines. Usually there are at least two of them: namely, the dates when you should submit your first and final drafts. Try to estimate how much time you will need to do it, and set aside blocks of time to work on the paper regularly (either a little bit every day or for longer periods every few days) so that you can complete it with time to spare. Do not plan expecting to complete the assignment right before the deadline – delays will happen, so strive to complete the job some time before the final submission date. Do not rely on these deadlines too much – divide your work into parts and assign your own deadlines to them. 2. Gather Your Sources The main purpose of a coursework is to test and enhance your ability to do research, so treat the work with the sources as a crucial part of the assignment, not a formality. Your professor will evaluate the quality of your research as just as, if not more, important as the smoothness of the paper that results from it. The guidelines sometimes mention how many sources you need. If there is no such information, try to use at least three plus one for each page of your coursework. Beyond that number, use as many as you see fit, but remember that you actually have to use them and not just add them to the bibliography to bloat its size. Try to make this list diverse and use different types of sources: books, journal articles, newspaper publications, websites, etc. You can find your first set of sources by singling out keywords related to your research and running some searches using academic databases and search engines. Pay special attention to resources such as EconBiz, EconLit and NBER, as they contain plenty of business-related texts. However, multidisciplinary databases like Google Scholar and JSTOR can also be useful. Run your searches, study the texts that come up, then look through their bibliographies and see if there is more related literature there. 3. Study the Sources By now, you should see who the most important authorities on your chosen subject area – these are the writers with the most publications on it and with the most references in other sources. Start reading up on the subject, paying special attention to them. You do not have to read every word of every book you have gathered, but you should familiarize yourself with at least the most important sources. Make notes – you will have to use quotes in your coursework, so prepare them beforehand. 4. Prepare a Plan Although the structure of your coursework may differ according to the guidelines, usually it is an extended essay and contains the same parts: introduction, thesis statement, body paragraphs and conclusion. Note down what you are going to write and where: how to introduce the main topic, how to phrase your thesis statement, in what order to mention the main points and how to connect them to each other, what to pay attention to in the conclusion. You should not be thinking about it as you write – by then, you should simply write up what you have already decided. Writing a Business Coursework: Assignment Structure 1. Introduction By definition, there is no single approved way of writing an introduction – if you find somebody suggesting one and try to follow it, it will make the first lines of your coursework (the most important for general impression) look stilted, artificial and formulaic. Instead, focus not on form but on function. Do everything relevant to lead up to the main point of your argument and grasp the reader’s attention with the first couple of sentences. For example: Start with introducing the main subject and explaining why your research is important; Refer to an authority on the subject; Start with a quote; Offer an unusual or unpopular point of view; Define any ambiguous terms or expressions. E.g., ‘Henry Ford believed that the business success is based on the best quality goods, lowest possible costs and highest possible wages. However†¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ Your introduction should take about 10-15 percent of the entire paper. 2. Thesis Statement It may or may not be a part of introduction. Either way, its nature remains the same – it is a short expression of the main point of your work. Make sure you do not mix it up with your topic. A topic is what your coursework is about, e.g., ‘Effects of Deregulation on Business Development and Growth’. A thesis statement is a statement on this subject that you make and back up in your paper, e.g., ‘Deregulation has both immediate effect on business’ efficiency and long-term positive consequences for its growth’. A thesis statement should be: Specific. It should express a single point or, at most, two very closely related ones; Short. No more than two sentences – if you cannot boil it down to this, it most likely indicates that your thesis is not specific enough; Clear. There is no place for any ambiguity. 3. Body The main part of your coursework, it should constitute about 70-75 percent of its word count. Depending on the guidelines, it may consist of either body paragraphs or a few sections with subheadings. Either way, the principle remains the same: you should introduce one point per paragraph and accompany it with supporting facts. Add transition words or phrases at the end and the beginning of each paragraph, e.g., ‘therefore’, ‘thus’, ‘so’, ‘consequently’, etc. 4. Conclusion Conclusion should be about 10-15 percent of the entire coursework, and its main role is to recount everything you have said up to this moment and indicate what results your research brought. Have you proved your original point? What findings have you made? What is its importance for the field? What warrants additional research? What are the limitations of your work? Post-Writing Check: Bringing Your Business Coursework to Perfection If you heeded our advice and strictly followed your timeline, you finished writing at least a few days before the deadline and have plenty of time to do further work on your paper. Here is what you have to do before submitting it if you want a good grade. 1. Logic Check While you are writing, you only see one fragment of your coursework at a time. Now you should carefully read the entire paper and see if it makes sense. As you write (especially if it takes a long time) you may forget what you said before and start contradicting yourself, making logic leaps and repeating what you have already said. For example, when speaking about overqualification, you may cite it as a cause of both over- and underemployment in different parts of your work. See if anything of this is true for your text. Double-check everything you doubt. Ask somebody else to read the paper and say if its logic is sound. 2. Word Count Check Guidelines usually limit the length of a coursework, so check again if you exceeded it. Make sure the guidelines directly say if the bibliography is included in the word count – if you misunderstood it earlier, you may have to either cut some parts of your paper or make additions. 3. Proofreading You may use an online tool like Scribens to check your text for grammar, syntax and spelling errors, but do not trust the results too much – it is safer to hire a professional proofreader. Also, do not trust your own ability to notice mistakes – you know your paper too well and are likely to miss something. 4. Formatting Check Check if you followed the instructions of the formatting style assigned to your paper consistently. 5. Bibliography See if it complies with the format. If you use sources of different types, check if you have written all of them correctly – for example, books, journal articles and web publications are cited differently in most styles. Also, see if you have included all the sources used in the paper. A coursework may not be as complex as a thesis or dissertation, but it is likely to be the first piece of independent research you encounter in your life. We hope that this guide answers all your questions.

Vomiting Reflex Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Vomiting Reflex - Essay Example This means that it can receive direct emetogenic stimulation from the cerebrospinal fluid and blood. The CTZ sends impulses to the vomiting impulses to the vomiting centre. The process of vomiting includes the retching and the expulsive phase. In the retching phase, the vomiting centre transmits motor efferent impulses to the abdominal muscles and the diaphragm resulting in increased intra-abdominal pressure. It also results in anti-peristalsis forces that can go all the way to the duodenum and ileum. Gastric content accumulates in the stomach resulting in relaxation of the lower esophageal sphincter (John, 2010). This is accompanied by hypersalivation, increased heart rate and sweating through the parasympathetic outflow. The hyoid bone and the larynx are elevated so as to open the upper esophageal sphincter. This is followed by the closure of the glottis. The increased intra-abdominal pressure and anti-peristalsis forces results in the expulsion of the abdominal contents. The following is a flow chart demonstrating the vomiting reflex. The contents and color of the vomitus may be used to diagnosis the cause of vomiting. Bleeding from the esophagus is showed by the presence of fresh blood in the vomitus. When the blood originates from the stomach, for example, perforated peptic ulcer, the vomitus has coffee ground appearance. This is because the acid found in the stomach reacts with the iron found in hemoglobin. Presence of bile in the vomitus indicates that the pyloric valve is open. This means that there is massive contraction of the duodenum leading to expulsion of bile (John, 2010). Fecal content in the vomitus indicates a gastrocolic fistula or intestinal obstruction. In case of intestinal obstruction, the vomiting relieves the associated abdominal pain and distension. These features are used to determine the origin of pathology in the gastrointestinal