Legal Awareness Is the Need of Hour Essay

Our country is a democratic country as well as a welfare state. â€Å"Rule of Law† is the edifice on which the democratic structure has been built on. â€Å"Rule of Law† means everybody is equal in the eyes of law. In spite of this solemn principle, every day we hear news about instances of atrocities committed against women and children, excesses by law enforcing agencies, harassment of citizens by officials, cheating by seller of goods, exploitation of the weak, stories of discriminations and deprivation in the society besides heinous crimes like rape, murder, looting, etc. In most of the cases the victims accept these suffering silently by ascribing them to fate or are afraid to protest on the grounds of further reprisals. The fact is that many times people are not aware of the law and the rights such laws confer for their protection. The Directive Principles of the constitution lays down the guidelines for the welfare of the socially and economically neglected section of the society. A number of laws have been enacted to contribute to the welfare of the socially and economically downtrodden population of the society. However, the benefits of these provisions are not reaped by them due to lack of awareness about the same. Every country has prescribed Rights and Duties for its Citizen. The Citizens need to be aware about their Rights, the related legal provisions and processes. Coupled with this knowledge, they are also required to know how to realize their rights and entitlements. On the reverse side, there are certain duties and prohibitions which are cast upon people and that need to be observed so that they do not transcend the barriers and get into trouble for the same. The lack of legal awareness is not, unfortunately, confined to illiterates. Even educated person are often not aware about their Rights and Duties. A country can progress only when all its citizens are well aware of their Rights and know to exercise their Rights. This empowers citizens to demand justice and seek remedies for wrong done to them. Such a position would bring greater harmony, accountability and transparency at all levels which is sine-qua-non for progress and development. The examples of Europe and USA are noteworthy in this respect. They present a picture of a more just society than many of the developing countries in the world. The Constitution of India has outlined the Fundamental Rights of Citizens under Part III of our Constitution. Similarly, the Duties of the Citizen have been enshrined therein. Any violation/deprivation of the same can be enforced through High Court/Supreme Court under Art 32 and Art 226 of the Constitution. Natural justice provides that no person can be coerced into giving evidence against him. It is in this background Supreme Court of India has ruled that ‘Narco Analysis’, ‘Brain Mapping’, ‘Polygraph Testing’ tantamount of self incrimination and violation of Section 20(3), in the case of Smt. Selvi and others v. State of Karnataka, AIR 2010 Educated and uneducated citizen are often not aware about the process relating to arrest by police. Before arresting somebody, police has to show the warrant, if the offence is bail able or not. Any person arrested has to produce before a magistrate within 24 hours. Before conducting a search in somebody’s house search warrant has to be given. In case relating to seizure of Passport of Maneka Gandhi, the court observed that such station Action cannot be arbitrary and the reasons of seizure need to be given to the concerned person. A host of laws have been enacted for the welfare and exercise of positive discrimination in favor of the neglected section of the society. For example-: Hindu Marriage Act, Untouchablity Act, Dowry Act, Engagement of Child Labor, Child Marriage Act, Domestic Violence Act, Consumer Protection Act. For expeditious disposal of the grievances of citizen’s, legal institutions like Lok Adalats, Family Courts, Mahila Courts, Consumer Courts, Ombudsman, District Legal Service Authority, etc have been created. These institutions have been established on the basis of dictum â€Å"Justice delayed is Justice denied† For the progress of the country where everybody lives in harmony with others, ensuring a just society there is an urgent need for spreading legal awareness amongst people. The idea behind spread of legal information is that people are empowered before the need to seek Legal Aid arises and if the need for legal aid does arise then at least the people armed with newly acquired legal information can use the information in the best possible way. In order to promote the legal awareness following step should be taken-: †¢Increase in the literacy rate in the country. In our own country also because of high literacy rates people from Kerala are more conscious about their legal rights than other states. †¢Societies like ‘SEWA’, ‘MARG’, ‘ICARE’, ‘CRY’, etc have been doing a pioneering work in creating legal awareness among people. Such work needs to be encouraged. If other governmental an non-governmental organizations come up with such ideas then making people aware of their rights and duties and delivering justice would not be a difficult task. †¢Legal classes can be held in schools and colleges, with the aim of training the student also in turn can spread the same to their parents and friends. Particularly, women and girls can be enlightened on various legal protections and procedures to approach Police Station and courts for protection of their rights and obtain remedy for their problems. †¢Along with the legal acts, people need to be sensitized about various welfare schemes of the Government, functioning of the Legal Service Authority, the enacted provisions regarding free legal aid and services. Legal reforms which are long overdue in our country should be expedited. This would enable the judicial system to cut away lot of practices and procedures which delay the process of administration of justice. Most of the laws in our country owe their origin to colonial days and need to be reframed and simplified. The mind set for formulation of laws couched in legal jargons, clauses, sub-clauses not easily understood by the citizens has to change. Laws outlined in simpler terms can be easily comprehended by common people and would contribute towards enhancing legal awareness among citizens. Economically, India is having a sustained growth. The country is on the threshold of a developed country, an elevation from the status of a developing economy. In this scenario, the need for legal awareness amongst the citizen is very much necessary. With citizens conversant with their rights and duties, the presence of justice and fair play in the society, transparency, accountability would enabl e the country to make bigger strides in this economic development. Being a democracy is an advantage in this regard.

Corporations as Moral Agents Essay

I chose to evaluate the second debate because I thought it was the most significant to the purpose of the class: to analyze the moral responsibility of business. The debaters were assigned to negate and affirm the following motion: Corporations are Moral Agents. In my opinion, this motion comes down to the decision to hold corporations responsible for their (corporations) decisions on a moral basis or just hold them responsible for their decisions on a legal basis. If a company were found to be a moral agent, then they would not only have a utilitarian obligation to who they are fiduciaries for, but also a moral obligation to society regardless of stakeholder or shareholder theory. On the other hand, if a company were not found to be a moral agent, then the phrase â€Å"it’s just business† would hold truth for corporations as a whole; as long as the company acted within the boundaries of the law and to maximize the utility of whom they represent as an agent, there would be no moral ground to criticize or opt for a change in practices. In this essay I will outline the arguments each side used to support their case, the additional arguments I believe should have been used, and an evaluation of who won the debate and reason why. The debate was composed of two teams, each of which had 4 members. They each had a 5-minute main speech to prove their arguments, and a 2-minute rebuttal speech to disprove that of their opposing counterparts. Although the speeches were given in an alternating fashion between both teams, I will layout all of the proposition’s arguments, then layout all of the oppositions arguments, and finally move on to chronologically stating the rebuttals. The first speaker of the proposition cleverly set the tone for the debate by defining important terms from the motion. Speaker 1 defined agents as something or someone that acts in behalf of another, and then went on to use the transitive property and identity thesis to state that corporations are moral agents but not moral entities. Yet, the law treats and defines corporations as entities. Just because people are needed to help make decisions does not mean that a corporation is not an entity. Speaker 1 then mentioned that individuals are moral agents, to confirm the fact that the transitive property makes corporations moral agents because they are built from such. Without the assumption that corporations are not entities, the transitive property makes less sense because a corporation would be defined as one single unit. Under law, people and corporations are considered legally equal entities The affirmative team had four main arguments that were divided amongst their four speakers. The first speaker stated that there is legal and social precedent that the corporation entity is a fiction, and that it is an association of shareholders for the gain of shareholders solely. Their second speaker said that morality is related to the law and the freedom of the individual to decide what he/she will do in regards to the law. The third speaker reiterated their definition for moral agents as an argument: the corporation is not an entity of itself because it cannot make decisions on its own;, yet is a moral agent because it is made of individual moral agents, thus it acts with moral imperative due to the transitive property (a leads to b leads to c). Finally, their fourth speaker used the CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey, to support his claim saying that a corporation is a moral agent because their decisions do not affect parts of the corporation but affect it as a whole. The first speaker not only defined the terms, but also spoke about the legal obligations and precedent that forces companies to maximize profits for shareholder within the confines of the law, without having to weigh in the morality of their decisions. She stated that it is management’s duty to safeguard the wealth of the corporation. Speaker 1 said that utilitarianism supports the motion because when the happiness of society in general is measured only individual happiness is aggregated with no regard for the happiness of corporations. Just because the theory of utilitarianism does not include corporations in their measure of happiness does not mean they are not entities. A dog is an entity, but is not included in this measure either. Moreover, mentioning that law does not require companies to weigh in morality of their decisions completely limits any argument the affirming side could say with the exception of the transitive property. According to that phrase, corporations are not moral agents under law. Also, they use the law here to support their argument, while in their definitions the argued against it to disprove corporations as entities. This double purpose use weakens the claims. The debate concluded by leaving the audience with an analogy that was to be used again later on in the debate: a corporation is a sports team: its an agent, comprised of constituents or players, that makes plays to win or lose a game; yet without the players, it does not exist. Transposed to the actual corporation, the corporation would be the team with the managers and employees as its players, and making or losing money as their wins or losses. The analogy is valid, with the exception of the last part, considering the existence of shell corporations or solely patent holding companies that do not require any employees. The second speaker of the proposition furthered his team’s original claim that individuals are moral agents. He proved that individuals are moral agents by using Kant and French’s arguments of identity and transitive property. He mentions that the autonomy of the will is the foundation of morality and that a sense of law is within everyman that can reason. Moreover, he goes on to talk about universal laws and Kant’s categorical imperative saying to â€Å"act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law. † These arguments do prove individuals as moral agents, but at no point in time was it linked to how this would prove corporations to be moral agents, other than the restatement of the transitive property. On the other hand, they could have tried to argue that corporations had autonomy of the will because different managers within the company exercise it to make a conglomerate of different decisions, thus giving the company a unique autonomy of the will and making it a moral agent according to Kant. The third speaker of the proposition starts by delineating the difference between an agent and a moral agent. He states that agents are something or someone that act on behalf of another, while moral agents are the same but with the ability to make decisions upon their own morality. He then goes into mentioning the transitive property again, but this time it is at least cleverly tied to the team’s first speaker’s point mentioning that corporations cannot be moral entities as there is a legal precedent that disproves this claim, thus supporting that fact that corporations have to be composed of individual entities. I find it hard to believe that legal precedents disprove this claim when corporations are legally defined as entities. Just the fact that the word legal is used weakens the argument, which should have only spoken about precedents trying to avoid any issue of legality. He then goes on to say that because people who are moral agents compose companies, companies act with a moral imperative due to the transitive property. This is valid, but repeated several times. It should have been built upon to create a stronger argument that legitimized corporations as moral decision-making agents on its own. The fact that a unique combination of moral agents (managers) make decisions in a company means that a corporation has a unique decision making ability different to that of any other moral agent in existence, thus making it a moral agent within itself. Lastly, the fourth speaker for the proposition brought it some new points. He used Mackey to support his argument saying that a corporation is a moral agent because any decision it makes does not only affect parts of the corporation, but the corporation as a whole. This means that any decision a manager makes (with morality in mind) affects the company as a whole, and then the company affects the community at large through a decision that was originally made by an individual that weighed in morality in his decision making process. He mentioned how Whole Foods acts as a moral agent because every decision made by individuals within the firm affects its customers, supplier, employees and several others of the company’s stakeholders. He now goes on to use the team/player analogy speaker 1 told the audience to keep in mind. He says that when a player makes a decision, which as an individual was based upon morality to such extent, it affects his entire team and the team then goes on to affect the community at large. This means that the morality that weighed into that player’s decision was carried on by the team, thus affecting the community it resides in. I find this to be stretching the transitive property to thin. I made the decision to buy a mac book air computer; this decision affected Apple, Foxconn, and all the suppliers and companies involved in the process of making and distributing a mac book air. Saying that my â€Å"moral† decision to buy a mac book air computer makes all of these companies moral agents I find impossible. Moving on to the negative team, it identified 5 arguments within their speeches. The first speaker of the opposition argued that corporations were legally and contractually set-up for one purpose, thus eliminating any possibility for morality in its decisions. Moreover, she also argued that a corporation is not independent to act by what we, as people, think is right or wrong. This really supports the transitive property the other team is arguing for because it supports the idea that companies need people to act. Afterwards, the second speaker of the team argued that the only thing that makes someone or something a moral agent is the intention to act and not consequences of his/hers/its actions, thus a corporation could not be deemed a moral agent upon the consequences of their actions. Yet corporations do have intentions when making decisions. When Apple decided to publically apologize for its ineffective new map application on the IPhone, its intention was to help disperse the bad press and consumers irritation. The third speaker then argued that the majority of managers see themselves as acting in a morally neutral environment, thus making all the decisions made within a corporation amoral. If individuals are not basing decisions upon morality, then the transitive property would make corporations amoral decision-makers as well. Lastly, the fourth speaker of the opposition juxtaposes the legally implied impossibility of a corporation being a moral agent with the societal views on the matter to further disprove the claim. Laws and beliefs are influenced and based on society as a whole. If society does not see corporations as moral agents, which it doesn’t, then they aren’t. The negative team began by redefining the terms in the motion. She said that a moral agent is a being able of acting with preference to being right or wrong. If you look carefully at the words used, you can notice that they used the word being instead of entity, thus inherently defining a corporation as unable to be a moral agent. She first argues that a corporation has a legally binding duty to its shareholders to maximize profit. She says that, through history, corporations have only come into existence for the benefit of its shareholders. This is all partially true, but in reality profit is not always the entire purpose. When entrepreneurs create companies, they have values and specific purposes they want to tackle within society. The need for more entertainment, or better treatment for patients with a particular disease the founder of the company might have had. Companies are founded to fulfill a purpose that is not always to make profit. Speaker 2 then moves on to say that corporations are not independent to act upon what is right or wrong. For a corporation to be a moral agent it has to be able to self-determine. She supports this claim by signaling that a legal structure that is a moral agent cannot be giving birth by communication between other moral agents (people). To further prove a corporation lack of independence in this regard, she poses the dilemma of double counting. When an individual within a corporation commits a crime, both the individual and the corporation are punished independent of each other. Although this helps disprove the transitive property, it also means corporations are found legally liable for its self-determining decisions made by the conglomeration of its management team. The second speakers from both teams based their arguments of the same readings from Kant and Peter French. Speaker 2 of the opposition argued that corporations do not really have any other intention other than to make profit, and that even though the consequences of its decisions can be judged through a moral lens, these cannot be used to prove the morality of such decision maker as morality lies within the intentions of the decision and not the consequences. Again, this is only true to some extent. Entrepreneurs create companies based on values and passions. To say that the only purpose for which companies are created is for profit is to say that entrepreneurs are passionless. She concludes by saying that Corporations do not have to consider the categorical imperative of morality when making a decision, because they do not have the capacity as an entity to evaluate the categorical imperative and have the universal law in mind. This does not consider the fact that all the decisions made by managers did consider the categorical imperative of morality, thus every decision made by the firm is a moral decision. The third speaker from the negative team referred to a phenomenon seen in many large corporations; the delegation of responsibilities for one’s own decisions. She stated that most managers actually see themselves as acting in a morally neutral environment. Yet the transitive property only needs one manager basing his/her decisions upon morality for the entire corporation to become a moral agent. Moreover, she went on to tie her teammates arguments together by using a soccer team analogy. She proposed a theoretical soccer team whose purpose is to win games (equivalent to a company’s legal binding to maximize shareholder profits), and stated that the players and managers are the moral agents leading the team to victory. This would mean that soccer teams do not consider morality while playing, which I believe to be false. I doubt an elementary soccer team coach will tell the children in his/her team that it does not matter how much they hurt the other team with fouls as long as they win the game. She used Moore’s purposes of encouraging excellence in business practices, encourage practice of the corporation itself, etc. to prove that these â€Å"purposes† alluded to the individual morality of each employee and not to that of a corporation. Yet Moore argues that the excellence of business practices transposes to the practice of the corporation itself. A company that makes soccer balls’ excellence in business practice would be to make the best soccer ball possible even if they cost a little more. Under Moore, as long as corporations can be self-sustaining, they are to offer the best product possible even though it does not directly maximize profits (in the short-run at least). Yes, his theory is to be applied by individuals, but for the purpose of the business practice of the corporation. There is a sense of morality in a corporation that creates the best product it can for its customers. Lastly, the last speaker of the opposition began by establishing the notion that corporations always have a value maximization purpose and its decision-making has to reflect it. Thus inherently mandating how decisions have to be made in, and removing the corporation’s morality. Yet this ignores the morality of establishing that value maximization purpose, and assumes that a company can only have one value-maximization purpose. A division of a company might have the sole purpose of maximizing customer satisfaction. Additionally, he says that morality’s constraint on a company’s decision making exists only when a company acts outside the law. This would mean anything done within the law is moral. He gave examples of how society evaluates a company to show that morality fails to form part of that evaluation process as conveyed by the continuous investments in companies (like Nike) whom are constantly found to be using sweatshops for value maximization purposes. It is true that at the end of the day investors look at the earnings, but customers might no be interested in wearing shoes that were made by hungry children, thus negatively affecting earnings. In this sense, society does judge corporations on a moral imperative. There were a total of 8 rebuttals speeches. The statement and analysis of the rebuttals is going to be done in the chronological order of relevant speeches, thus alternating between the affirming and negating teams. The first speaker of the proposition began the rebuttal arguments by trying to completely change the playing field. She said tried to invalidate the opposition’s claim that there is no legal avenue to measure morality by saying that the fact that there is no legal avenue to measure morality says we are analyzing this question within the instrumental sphere, yet we should be doing so within a normative sphere as morality lies on it. I would argue that the instrumental sphere is more useful for evaluation of the motion because it is defined by practice rather than pure theory. The motion deals with real physical corporations and the morality of these corporations should be evaluated through a criterion that can analyze decisions that affect the real world. The second rebuttal speaker quoted French and used the aggregate theory, frequently touched by the proposition to support their claims for corporations, to describe a mob. This argument equaled the moral state of a corporation to that of a mob, who French explicitly said was amoral, thus completely delegitimizing the foundation of the propositions case with the use of the affirmatives team’s own sources. He closed by saying, â€Å"To treat a corporation as an aggregate for any purposes is to fail to recognize the corporation as different from a mob. † I thought this to be the killing blow in the debate considering the third rebuttal speech basically just said that even if corporation does not need to act morally, they due consult to morality when making decisions. I think what should have been done is clarify that a mob is a disordered group of people, while a corporation has a hierarchal defined structure. The second negating rebuttal speech focused on tackling to the transitive property by trying to turn it against the affirmative team. She said both sides agreed that a corporation was a sum of moral agents, and went on to say that the moral agency of a corporation is the sum its managers. This means that morality lies within each individual and can be summed up as such because there is no morality of the corporation on its own that has to be added. This disproves the idea that a corporation has moral agency of its own. She used Enron as an example by mentioning that its managers were tried for immoral acts, and would otherwise not have been if Enron were actually a moral agent. Yet, the addition of morality through individual managers creates a unique moral identity that could be identified as that of the corporation’s. The sixth rebuttal from the negating team coupled the restatement of their definition of a moral agent with the team analogy mentioned at the beginning of the debate to show how outrageous the propositions use of the transitive property really was. She said, â€Å"Our definition of a moral agent is a being that is able to act upon moral tendencies. If the player acts immorally, it does not mean the team is a moral agent, or for that matter that the entire universe is one single moral agent’. This argued against the idea that if a player makes a moral decision that has an impact on its team this is carried on by the team onto the community, thus making the team a moral agent. Theoretically, according to the transitive property and through a moral sphere lens this would be the case, but the motion is being viewed through the instrumental sphere lens. Under this instrumental length, the transitive property loses a lot of its validity. The last speaker of the opposition made a last attempt to restate all three of his team’s arguments, but these had all already been disproved through the rebuttal and no extra supporting evidence was given to make them viable again. On the other hand, the last rebuttal speech of the negating team focused on further disproving the aggregate theory. She stated that the moral aspects of a corporation come directly from the individuals within the firm. Moreover, she said that Kant’s requisites, for morality, of freedom of will and autonomy cannot be applied to corporations because that freedom of will and autonomy lies within each individual employee. What is not considered is the unique will a corporation has as a consequence of the wills of all of its employees.

Monitoring Internal Training Load using perception based measures - Essay

Monitoring Internal Training Load using perception based measures - RPE's - Essay Example Training loads are always adjusted at various times during the cycle of training to either increase or decrease the levels of fatigue depending on the training phase. Fatigue is a phenomenon that is complex and multifaceted having several mechanisms that are possible. Monitoring the training load of individuals is seen by many people as an important factor in the determination of whether an individual is adapting to the program of training or not. It is also important to minimise having the risk of non-functional overreaching, illness and injury. Today, monitoring training load has become a common thing, and several reasons lie behind the practice. Inexperience and knowledge on the use of monitoring load techniques may lead to an inability to implement a sustainable and practical system and inability to interpreting the collected information. In order to gaining the knowledge and understanding of the training load and its general effect on an athlete, several markers are available for the coaches, scientists and athletes to use. Nonetheless, few of these markers do have scientific evidence that is strong in support of their usage, and there is yet to have a single one in practice (Viveiros et al. 2011). When monitoring training load, the units of the load are thought of as either internal or external. In the past, external training load was frequently used as the foundation of a several system of monitoring. Whereas the external load is important in knowing the completed work, capabilities, and the athletes capacities, the internal load forms the critical part in determine the training load and the after that adaptation. The training load is influenced in most cases by the volume and intensity of training. A precise knowledge of the training loads that is completed during training is beneficial to the coach as well as the athlete. The coach can use

Middle Ages Magic Activities from Religious Point of View Assignment

Middle Ages Magic Activities from Religious Point of View - Assignment Example The Church did not approve of theories that contradicted the official doctrine of the Church. This is because their view of human knowledge is based on a concept of an all-knowing God and a revelation of absolute truth through the scriptures and through the Pope and the senior leaders of the Church. There was no room for theories that were based on principles outside this rather strict set of rules. The whole issue of whether the earth is the center of the universe, for example, was seen as a theological dogma, not a theory or scientific view, and these issues have the potential to cause the whole foundation of Christian belief to crumble if they are challenged and found to be false. That is why the Church resisted any other views. There seems to have been in Medieval times quite a bit of experimentation with these forbidden arts, just as today people read horoscopes, go to see fortune tellers, and have lucky objects at the same time as holding broadly orthodox beliefs in one of the main religions. Old pagan beliefs linger on in symbolic ways, as for example in the Christmas trees, Harvest Thanksgiving services and Easter eggs that we have in Western culture, even though these are symbolic of pagan festivals (Jolly, 2000, p. 1). In this, there is not so much difference between medieval and modern society. The issue of predetermined events and the prediction of human behavior was a very thorny one because it goes to the heart of the Christian doctrine of salvation. It matters a lot, for example, whether a person has free will or not, and whether they freely choose to do good or evil deeds, or whether they are just puppets being manipulated by fate or some demon or other. Christians have a strong sense of being morally responsible for their actions, and relying on God alone, and so many other forces that get in between a man or woman and their god were seen as a bit threat.  

Reflection on the Cultural Geography of Thailand Essay

Reflection on the Cultural Geography of Thailand - Essay Example With the intention of understanding the geography and the culture of Thailand, I have done research searches through literature books and sources with the inclusion of the internet. From the reading sources, some of the aspects that emerge as the prominent definers of the geography and culture of the country are religion, architectural design, language and the social life of the people of the country. The rich social art of Thailand amalgamates art and healing that draws from the traditional aspect making the country a hub for culture and civilization. With the intention of learning about the people of Thailand, the learning outcome for the semester has provided me with adequate information to know that Thailand is a country that is composed of 67,741,401 people according to the national population estimate 2013. The natural population increase rate of the country is 35.4% with the birth rate being 11.26births /1000. The life expectancy rate of the country is 74.18 years and the infant mortality rate being 9.86/1000. In relation to the culture and way of life of the people of Thailand, the semester study has impacted me with information to realize that the country is composed of four major language groups. The language groups are the Aheu, Akeu, Akha, Ban Khor Sign, and Bisu. The country's national language is Thai, but there are other minor languages spoken in the country. The country has approximately 48 religions with Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism being the dominant religions. The country thus shares a lot of cultural and religious similarity to other Asian countries like China. The traditional form of architecture has changed paving way for the building of more modern and elegant housing and religious sanctuaries in the country thus representing an immense socio-cultural change in the country.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY - The ways it has been changed Essay

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY - The ways it has been changed - Essay Example There is tremendous reason to expect that the development of information technology will considerably affect the trade-offs intrinsic in various structures for organizing work, the theoretical basis for these changes remains badly understood. According to the website som.csudh.edu, in the age of information, technology is in the forefront in the way we work and communicate. Many companies must now conform to the needs of many to satisfy the few. No longer is money the only criteria for companies to survive. Challenges such as global competition, technological innovation and customer service persist more so today than any other era. In order for the companies to exist in the industry and preserve what they can, they have taken a bold step in reorienting themselves. One way of doing this is through the use of Information Technology (IT) which can be defined as "computer and telecommunications hardware and software that aid in the processing, collection, and transmission of text, voice, and pictorial information" (Lahti, 1994, p. 1). With this technology, I as an employee can do my work virtually anywhere and at anytime that IT allows. The fundamentals of technology allow me to explore many ways of providing accurate and ac cessible information. The organization must form an infrastructure that will be incorporated into the corporations for its survival. Technology has played a most important role in shaping an organizational structure and processes, and is one of the main catalysts for organizational change. Technological innovation in the factory and office has accelerated lately and foreign competitors have been adopting these innovations promptly and effectively. Unless, companies do the same, they will be at huge disadvantage. Many of the barriers to effective use of new technology are managerial and organizational, rather than technological. For instance in my work we are still semi-computerized, we are still using manual operation in some instances, because of that our report used in meetings or for decision making is not updated. This means that organizational structure is directly associated to the usefulness of technology. The terms, organizational structure and information technology, are subject to various interpretations. Management teams in the 1980's keenly anticipated that new technology would answer the organization problems. Information technology, a term broadly used, is seldom defined. Information refers to the use of two or more elements of data. Information is subject to broad interpretation. In most organizations, on the other hand, data and information are used interchangeability. Organization refers to a group of people working together towards a common goal or objective. Structure is the summary of the ways in which a firm's labor is directed and coordinated into tasks. This definition of organization leads to the supposition that there exists a division of labor. The classical organizational model, the Elite model, was constructed over 50 years ago. Some organizations still follow this model that stresses stability, centralization, division of labor, and command and control. Technology has also influenced the organizational structure. Organizations of the past had cultures that reflect the values of bigness, hierarchy, and rigidity, have little craving to upgrade their technological equipment. Because of these unyielding and inflexible hierarchical structures, U.S.

Ismlamic banking theory verses practice. Case study of Iran Pakistan Essay

Ismlamic banking theory verses practice. Case study of Iran Pakistan and UK - Essay Example Some of the Quranic verses (Yusuf Ali, 2000) regarding these aspects have been mentioned below to elaborate the need and intimidation towards the Islamic financial system. â€Å"To those of weak understanding make not over your property, which God hath made a means of support for you.†¦?† (Yusuf Ali, 4:5, 2000). Private ownership is affirmed, but also, viewed as a trust, â€Å"Believe in God and His Apostle, and spend (in charity) out of the substance whereof He has made you Heirs†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Yusuf Ali, 57:7, 2000). Islam encourages enterprise or efforts to create wealth, which is characterized as God’s bounty, â€Å"And when the Prayer is finished, then may ye disperse through the land and seek the Bounty of God†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Yusuf Ali, 62:10, 2000). Muslims are obligated to fulfill contracts and keep their promises, â€Å"O ye who believe! Fulfill all obligations....† (Yusuf Ali, 5:1, 2000). â€Å"†¦And fulfill (every) engagement, for (every) engagement will be enquired into (on the Day of Reckoning)†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Yusuf Ali, 17:34, 2000). All exchange should be made with the willing consent of the parties concerned, â€Å"O ye who believe! Eat up not your property among yourselves in vanities: but let there be amongst you traffic and trade by mutual good-will.†¦Ã¢â‚¬  (Yusuf Ali, 4:29, 2000). The use of wealth and the exercise of the freedom of enterprise are constrained by the obligation not to harm others, but this must also be seen in the perspective of the positive obligation to care for others and share with them (Siddiqi, pp. 11-19, 2001). This is symbolized by the well-known duty to pay the zakat or poor tax. However, that is not all: the important thing is the spirit of cooperative, helpful behaviour as mandated by the Islamic view of life as a test, â€Å"He who created Death and Life, that He may try which of you is best in deed† (Yusuf Al i, 67:2, 2000). These texts from the Quran (Yusuf Ali, pp. 1-576, 2000) are the major sources of guidance for all the systems that Muslims