The business of water Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 1

The business of water - Essay Example According to Carroll (1983), corporate social responsibility (CSR) considers few activities of a business, which helps in increasing its profit and in doing so the company should also abide by the rules and regulations that are associated with law and ethics. In order to become socially responsible, a company has to obey laws and conditions that define company’s ethics. The author has organized the different corporate social responsibilities under four layers, which are provided in a pyramid and it is named as pyramid of responsibilities (Visser, 2005). According to the pyramid the four responsibilities are legal, economical, ethical and philanthropic. Carroll and Buchhotlz (2003) have explained that the pyramid should be considered as a whole and the layers are not separated as it does not make any sense. Economic responsibilities: The economic responsibilities indicate the methods that are employed for minimizing the cost and maximizing the sales or even devise strategic decisions, which will generate profit. The economic responsibilities are very important for the society and the company has to take these decisions very carefully (Carroll, 1979). The companies have to fulfil the demand of the shareholders for increased returns on their investment. The companies should employ those employees, who want fair paid jobs and they are also responsible for providing good quality products to the customers at a reasonable rate (Barth and Wolff, 2009). Hence, the primary responsibility of a business is to form a proper functioning unit and operate their business. Therefore, this is the base of the pyramid to which all the layers are connected (Dudovskiy, 2012). Legal responsibilities: The companies are predicted to abide by rules and regulations that are levied by the higher authorities. This norm reflects the strictness of the society towards operation of a business.

Meaning of Good Taste in Fashion

Meaning of Good Taste in Fashion Generally speaking, taste is an abstract and subtle word. What is taste? The word taste literally means people`s degustation on everything include food, art, life and so on (Aronson, 1946). However, such a degustation is not finished by tongue, but by heart and mind. For example, when observing a tree without leafs in autumn, someone may feel the bleak and chilly sense instead of only one bare tree. People`s tastes are different. Someone have good tastes while the others have bad tastes. The different attitudes and feelings on life, art and culture embody the grade of individual taste. This essay will analyze the taste from the perspective of fashion. What good tastes mean and how to evaluate taste will be discussed in this essay. In addition, how some tastes are constructed as socially legitimate will discussed. Education plays an important role in the process of constructing social legitimate tastes in fashion. This essay will discuss the effect of good tastes in fashion. What does it mean to have good taste? As mentioned above, taste is people`s feeling on the external things. Its abstract meaning is the quality, interest, culture and sentiment. For example, when drinking tea, someone swallow it quickly. He even does not know the flavor of the tea, lets alone the taste. However, some others may be seated in their study room with sunshine and beautiful plants and taste the tea with the beautiful classic music (Frank, 1923). He could taste the life from the tea. This is the abstract taste. Taste has different grade. With good taste, people`s lives are graceful and exquisite, full of aspirations and pleasure (Burke, 1987). With bad taste, people`s lives are full of depression and nonsense. What`s more, they usually consider themselves always right, which really make fun of themselves. Taste is the understanding and appreciating ability of people. To have a good taste means one has a comprehensive and correct understanding about things around him. Sometimes people mistake famous brand for good taste. For example, someone with luxurious coats, expensive watch and cars usually regards himself with good tastes. However, if he does not know well about these commodities or use these items improperly, he does not have good tastes in fact. Without a comprehensive and correct understanding of things, all these expensive things just show one`s ignorance. Some other ones regard good taste as one extremely abstract thing. They usually attribute all the unaccountable things to taste. Sometimes they believe taste is something which only could be experienced by heart and mind, while cannot be put into word clearly. However, tastes are not extremely abstract in fact. It could be described clearly daily behavior. It is based on the understanding of concrete things. If one knows well about some famous brand, his purchase of commodity in that brand is the pursuit of good taste. For example, businessmen`s purchase of business suit is the pursuit of taste, because they know the background knowledge of the suit and know the suit is fit for their statuses. In fact, different tastes classified the whole society to some extent. The tastes determined the difference social position and class of people. people`s social position could change, which is caused by the change of one`s tastes. People could improve their social classes by improve their tastes. The author believes only money and authority cannot change one`s social class, even they could make people feel false pride. Improving tastes is the necessary procedure of improving social position (Kaufmann,2002). Why do people usually believe wealthy people have good tastes? The reason is wealthy people have more chances to learn and understand things around them than the poor. Therefore, they usually have better tastes than the poor. That`s why many nobles are called as gentlemen in history. However, the wealth really does not mean good tastes. The effect of wealth is helping people learn more in order to have good tastes. How some tastes are constructed as socially legitimate in fashion? What is the criterions of people`s social class? In modern times, it is hard to answer this question, with the improvement of people`s living condition and social concept. Nowadays the criterions are usually not your occupation, house, manner or money. It is recognized that a series of tiny traits of one`s behaviors reflects which class he is in. And such a tiny traits of one`s behaviors could be summarized in a word taste. Some tastes are called as good tastes by most people, while some tastes are called as bad tastes. The good tastes are usually regarded as socially legitimate. How are these tastes set as socially legitimate in fashion? The answer is education, which means cultivating and training. Taste is a kind of culture to some extent. Compared with police and economy, the relationship between culture and education is closer. The basic mission of education is to inherit culture. In the process of history, peoples form and accumulate their own custom, which embodies the value, ethics, behavior model and habits of the people. These value ethics or behavior model could be describe as fashion of that time. The custom permeates in the daily life in every aspect, which restricts the social development with a strong invisible force. Education, as the inheriting carrier of culture, plays an important role in the construction of main stream taste of fashion. How does education construct the main stream tastes of fashion of one society? There are some main approaches as following. Firstly, education selects tastes through selecting cultivating objectives, such as values and cultures. The objective of education is cultivating human resources which are needed by the society. In order to producing human resources needed by society, educators should select proper world value and moral outlook which are fit for the development of society as contents of education. Therefore, it could be said that the source of good tastes is from the social value and moral outlook of the society. In addition, physical training is another carrier of taste and culture. The selection of way of exercising is also the selection of culture. Different countries and peoples have different traditional sports, which also embodies the mainstream value or tastes of the society. Lastly, in the education of art and beauty, not only aethestic standard but also the knowledge and technique of art, is the process of selection of cultures and tastes (Howard,1956, Karl,1934, Lawrence, 1917). Therefore, it seems the objective of education is to teach the technique and knowledge social needed, but the essence of education is the selection of culture and tastes. In the process of education, the main stream tastes are constructed and set as socially legitimate. Secondly, education selects tastes through selecting courses and teaching materials. After selecting proper culture and tastes, education transforms the abstract culture and tastes into concrete courses and teaching materials, which is the carrier of culture and tastes. The designing and selecting of courses should be based on the main stream culture or tastes. That means the courses and teaching materials should have temporal spirit, reflecting the trend of main stream culture. Firstly, in history, the courses and teaching materials are always changing with culture of that day. In middle ages, the main courses of college include grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, geometry, music, theology, law and so on. In all these courses, theology took the most important role, which reflects the social main stream culture and the developing level of western cultural development of that time. With the development of science and technique, the importance of science had been acknowledged in the form of technology revolution. After 19th century, the course of science and technique replace the key role of theology in education. In 1950s, the monopoly of science and technique was broken, because people found the balance between the humanities and science was very important. And then, more and more courses of humanities were designed. Secondly, in different countries of the same age, the different emphasis embodies the value variance of different culture. It is very obvious in the courses of humanities. These courses usually embody thick values and mainstream tastes of their societies. For example, in Germany, philosophy takes the most important role in universities for German respect to rationality. Practical courses are welcomed in American universities for America focuses no techniques. And humanities are popular in some old universities of Britain for the respect for humanism and classicisms in England. Thirdly, teachers play a key role in the education of main stream tastes and culture. In the process of constructing main stream tastes and cultures, the role of teachers is embodied in three aspects. First of all, teacher is the participant of selecting main stream tastes and culture. Teachers have great liberty in the selection of contents and method of education. When the teacher is the proposer of mainstream culture and value, the function of selecting and cultivating main stream tastes of education could be realized. Secondly, teacher is the carrier of the established culture and tastes. The moral ideas, knowledge structure, life style and teaching style of teacher directly influence the effectiveness of education. Only when teacher master and approve the main stream cultures or tastes, the main stream tastes could be constructed. Therefore, to some extent, the selection of teacher is the selection of main stream tastes. Fourthly, the atmosphere of campus could help selecting tastes. Compared with common social environment, the atmosphere of campus has many unique characters. The atmosphere of campus is the condensate of the knowledge and values of teachers and students of many generations. It reflects the requirements of social development and campus culture and value. It is both the method and consequence of culture selection. And its influence is usually invisible but huge. Concretely, the establishment of school spirit, style of study, and regulations is the process of selecting main stream values. The atmosphere plays an invisible role and remedies the defects of education in class. In a word, education plays an important role in the construction of some tastes of fashion as socially legitimate through the selection of mainstream culture, courses, teachers and campus atmosphere. The effect of some tastes as socially legitimate in fashion This section will discuss the effect of social mainstream tastes from the perspective of fashion. As we all know, without good taste, people cannot be fashionable. If one pretend to have good taste, he is just making fun of himself. What is fashion? Disney, Madonna, Jackson, Hip Hop, Harry Potter, all these popular things are fashion. Each of us hopes to accept the attention and admiration of others, live a high-quality life, have graceful behaviors and become the focus of people`s eyes. Fashion could help people reach these goals. How do we join in these fashions? The answer is good taste. If someone wants to follow or guide the trend of fashion, he has to own the better feeling of beauty good taste. Nowadays, people have many ways to know what is fashionable. However, to be fashionable is not so easy as to know fashionable things. Many details could destroy the pretending fashion of one without good taste. Once upon a time, there was a couple who suddenly became wealthy. They were not satisfied that others regarded them vulgar. One day, they took part in a culture salon and dre ssed bejeweled clothes to show their wealth, which is not fit for the graceful art atmosphere. Therefore, fashion does not mean the rich matters, but means the fit things. Vulgar people cannot buy fashion even he is very rich. Fashion is the product of good taste, not money (Blumer,1969). According to the famous star of America Sarah Jessica Parker, the taste determines what kind of people you are, including your social position and social image. Good taste exerts great influence on people`s different aspects of life, such as selecting a book, CD, occupation and partner (Eysenck ,1983). Fashion is subjective and taste is objective. The slogan of Chanel is: fashion is fickle, while style lasts forever. Chanel used her taste to guide fashion. In her lives, she forecasted and mastered the changing trend of fashion twice. Therefore, good taste could produce fashion. According to Fielding, the graceful taste is always accompanying the outstanding mind. Therefore, good taste origins from internal mind. In Hollywood, famous stars pay special attention on their dressing in public. However, their differences are very obvious. Some stars, like Nicole Kidman, know well what dressing means and which dressing is fit for them. This is the first class. Those usually consult for their stylists obviously do not have their own decisions on what is fit for them. This class is inferior to the first class. Britney Spears belongs to the third class. Even she dresses the same clothes with the second class, the way of collocation usually makes her embarrass. She has a professional team of image designer. However, as we found, she usually was classified as the ones who were dressed worst. Therefore, good taste comes from internal mind, from the understanding of fashion and self. Genevieve Antoine Dariaux, one of the greatest experts in the field of fashion of France, had explained fashion in her book A Guide to Elegance as following: there are two kinds of fashions. One is genius fashion while the other is transitory fashion. If you could not dress skirt, just drop it. There will be one kind of coat which is not only fashionable but also fit for you. Therefore, you could dress the skirts when they are fit for you. The attitude of Dariaux is just dressing what fit for you, because you should present your individual style instead of clothes. The fashionable clothes is used to help you to present your style. If they do not help, just drop them and find out proper ones. Therefore, good taste is the base of fashion. Fashion is appearance while taste is the temperament (Bourdieu, 1984). Clothes, watches, bags, shoes and red wines are all worldly possessions. Taste means the genius understanding and test of these matters, which is from bildung of internal mind. How to have good tastes As mentioned above, education is very important in the cultivation of good tastes. Therefore, learning is very important if someone wants to improve his tastes and then improve his social class. What should people learn if they want to improve their tastes. The answer is the genius understanding of around things and the way of understanding things. Both the method and consequences of understanding are important. Sometimes the ideas of the majority are not always right. Therefore, people should learn how to understand things dialectically and critically in order to avoid becoming vulgar in the misguiding of the masses. Independent thinking is the necessary way of having good tastes. Conclusion In a word, taste means people`s degustation on everything around himself, include food, art, life and so on. Someone have good tastes while the others have bad tastes. The different attitudes and feelings on life, art and culture embody the grade of individual taste. To have a good taste means one has a comprehensive and correct understanding about things around him. Tastes are not extremely abstract in fact. It could be described clearly daily behavior. Different tastes classified the whole society to some extent. The tastes determined the difference social position and class of people. Improving tastes is the necessary procedure of improving social position. Wealth really does not mean good tastes, but it could help one to have good tastes, for wealthy people have more chances to learn and understand things around them than the poor. Education, which means cultivating and training, is the main way of constructing socially legitimate tastes. Education selects tastes through selectin g cultivating objectives, courses, teachers and campus atmosphere. Without good taste, people cannot be fashionable. Good taste comes from internal mind, from the understanding of fashion and self. And Good taste could produce and guide fashion. Both the method and consequences of understanding are important to improve tastes. Independent thinking is the necessary way of having good tastes and avoiding becoming vulgar in the misguiding of the masses. In summary, taste is something both abstract and concrete, because it means both the understanding and the ways of understanding of around things. Having a good taste could help people have a good social position and forecast or guide fashion.

Perception in Director Spike Jonzes Adaptation Essay examples -- Fi

Perception in Director Spike Jonze's "Adaptation" The film begins with the voice of Nicholas Cage as Charlie Kaufman berating himself for the image he perceives himself to be, namely, a â€Å"fat-ass†, while at the same time, he knows what he needs to be: â€Å"Just be real, confident, that’s what women like.† Throughout the film, Charlie struggles with two conflicting views of himself: the poised, confident man he could be and the bumbling, awkward man he sees himself to be. Through the narrative technique of inner monologue, the audience has access to all of Charlie’s thoughts and insecurities. Charlie’s opinion of himself dictates how he functions in the world. He is an extremely talented screenwriter and an extraordinary individual yet he is unable to believe in himself. On the other hand, his twin brother, Donald, captures the essence of everything Charlie wants and fails to be. Donald finishes his script while Charlie is agonizing over the few words he manages to squeeze out. Donald b egins a relationship with an attractive makeup artist while Charlie cannot bring himself to ...

Compare and contrast between persepolis war and vietnam war Essay

Graphic Novels showing conflict of war can be described in different ways. These ways are determined by the target audience and the authors decision of mood.The imagery in Persepolis and the vietnam story are affected by these choices made by the author. There are differences in the style of this book in which the reader uses to show emotion such as the target age group, the emotional aspect as well as the realism of the story. The imagery which detail is displayed in a complex or simple way can both give the reader insight while portraying a different perspective at the same time. Persepolis and the vietnam imagery both use a black and white graphic weight creating a dark feeling shown by the subjective style. They use detailing in the background like the shadowed soldiers in the Vietnam images or bright flashes of gunshot in Persepolis, thus giving the reader a different perspective. The vietnam images provides a more in depth style that provides in order to show the author’ s message. However, the simple imagery used in persepolis is to get a point across using symbolic images and a straightforward style rather than in the vietnam images the sketched lines and detailing brings out a specific emotion. The target audience in which the author and/or illustrator wants to reach out to affects the type of imagery and message they want to send out,such as a story about the conflict of war to children can be subtle rather than show a harsh reality yet can both depict a mood of conflict and struggle. These two graphic styles can both get across the subjective opinion of war being undesirable by the emanata of struggle seen with the characters to the reader. They both compare the harsh reality without being too gruesome. Persepolis uses a more cartooned illustration to portray a childlike perspective thus having a target audience of young readers. In contrast, the Vietnam imagery’s perspective differs in the point of view. This shows the difference in fighting in the war rather than suffering the consequences, demonstrating an adult understanding. War can convey many emotions depending on the authors/illustrators mood they want to convey to the readers by using simple and/or complex emanata and graphic weight in similar and different ways. Persepolis and the vietnam both inflict a sympathetic emotions by showing  the struggles shown by their stressed emotions and facial styles. As well as their similar use of contrast between light and darkshows a emotional aspect of the conflict of war. To contrast the Vietnam images uses shading and shadows to add more tension and grit displaying a impactful emotion. The Persepolis imagery uses thick heavy blacks and whites without any shading making the images simple and the emotions it portrays to the reader shallow and not as complex. In conclusion these two works of graphic reading can be contrasted and compared by only three categories of realism, target age groups, and emotions. These both shared the struggles of the conflict of war as well as portraying different views and perspectives. As well as displaying an obvious age target. Even though they are similar they are both different in showing the conflict of what goes on in a war.

Analysis of how both companies meet their financial objectives and aims Essay

In this report I have decided to concentrate on two companies, Woolworth’s plc and WHSmith plc, I will be analysing and comparing the two companies on their objectives (what they say their objectives are, and how they meet those objectives set) and their performances (if they have made profit or loss). I will research all these from their annual report, which is provided on the Internet. An introduction of both companies Woolworth’s is known to be one of Britain’s leading general merchandise retailers, with great brands, strong market position and a powerful presence in home entertainment. The company has one of the highest customer shopper’s performances of all UK retailers’ and today known to be the largest non-food retail chains. WHSmith is also one of the UK’s leading retail groups incorporating market-leading companies in retailing publishing and news distributing. WHSmith has 1,464 stores world-wide; all these locate in place like the UK high street, airport, stations and countries outside of the United Kingdom such as North America and Asia The performance of the companies Last year was an eventful and challenging year for the Woolworth; the first half of the year when they were still part of Kingfisher’s plc was a moment of uncertainty as the future of the company was being decided. The company detached themselves from Kingfisher plc on 28 August 2001, leaving them with 200 million of debt, over ? 100 million of excess stock, loss marking new format and e-business. Woolworth’s formats are designed to appeal to the value-conscious consumer. Woolworth’s is a mass-market retailer with a leading brand and broad product offering at competitive prices. Their mission is â€Å"to be at the heart of the community and the best loved retailer for kids, home and family leisure†. The company’s brand is known to be one of the best-recognised retail brands in the UK and proving this is on average, 6. 5 million customer transactions are made on tills per week. Woolworth’s business operates in the UK general merchandising market, which is both large and highly fragmented, with participants of varying sizes and covering different category mixes.