References 3 A comparison of attitudes It is, indeed, instructive to compare the attitude of the people to imperialism in both these nation states during the final decade of the nineteenth century. Clearly, although there are surface similarities in the situation, the historical tradition of both countries respecting empire in fact determined to a great extent responses to imperialism. It was possible to speak of imperialism and the empire with pride in Britain. The United States denied its empire and its imperial ambitions. When 2.7 Conclusion Having asked you to think about these perspectives on religion and approaches to its study, I must again emphasize that this is a very crude way of characterizing a very complex area of research. These perspectives are not watertight compartments into which all study of religion fits – life is not that simple! Some religious standpoints are themselves reductionist: for example, Anglicans in the ‘Sea of Faith ’movement regard themselves as Christians, while considering belief in the supe 2.6.1 The phenomenological perspective The term ‘phenomenology’ is a good example of polysemy, as it has different meanings according to the academic context in which it is found. There are scientific phenomenology and philosophical phenomenology, for example, and the sociologists Ken Thompson and Kath Woodward describe phenomenology as, ‘The development in sociology of a philosophical approach which focuses on people’s consciousness of their experiences and how they interpret the world; the meaning it has for them’ (Tho 2.4.1 The theological persepective If we are thinking about individual perspectives on religion, there are three very common and useful terms we can employ: theism, atheism and agnosticism. In everyday parlance, ‘theism’ denotes a belief in God (or, more broadly, a belief in divine or spiritual realities); ‘atheism’ denotes a conviction that there is no God (or divine or spiritual realities); and ‘agnosticism’ indicates a lack of certainty or knowledge (gnosis) one way or the other. Very broadly speaking, these per 1.3 Representation Representation is a complex idea, or set of ideas, but it is extremely important in relation to studying religion. Representing religion might mean being an official delegate of a religion, or it might mean trying to explain a religion to someone unfamiliar with it. Representation in the religious context might mean the use of an image to portray a divine figure or religious ideas, or it could refer to how a religion is characterized by either insiders or outsiders. Therefore, the sorts of qu Introduction This OpenLearn course examines the nature of social marketing and how the adoption of marketing concepts, frameworks and techniques developed for commercial marketers can be applied to the solution of social problems. Primarily, social marketing aims to effect behavioural change in the pursuit of social goals and objectives, as opposed to financial or other objectives. This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University course How teams work Corporate responsibility for industrial incidents 5 Conclusion Knowledge technologies, as software systems, embody formal models of how the world works: for example, networks between people, what their roles are, how information should flow, rules about interdependences between variables, and how to index and categorise information. If well designed, such models relieve people of mundane activities, allowing them to focus on what they do best: communication, negotiation, creative problem solving: that is, the construction of new shared meaning. At their 4.18.1 Data mining Data mining refers to techniques for analysing databases or information systems to try to identify hidden but significant patterns that are not possible to detect by standard querying of the database. Moxon defines data mining as follows: Data mining is a set of techniques used in an automated approach to exhaustively explore and bring to the surface complex relationships in very large datasets … most likely im 2.4.1 From Heidegger to knowledge technologies Because each transformation from one ‘knowledge state’ to another (Figure 2) is an act of interpretation, there is no such thing as objective knowledge representation, or indeed objective classification or codification of any sort (in software or any other medium): there is always a viewpoint. This leads to the view that information and communication systems cannot be thought of as neutral; in their formal structures and operations they embody the goals and perspectives of their developer Introduction Knowledge technologies embody formal models of how the world works. If well designed, these models can relieve people of mundane activities and free them up to concentrate on what they do best. At their best, knowledge technologies can detect patterns in information which are too complex for humans to detect, or which they do not have time to detect, and can deliver this information to the right people, at the right time, in the right form for interpretation. This unit looks at the cor 2.2 Objectives of financial reporting The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has a conceptual framework that aims to set out publicly which qualities should be in the forefront of the standard-setters' minds when making accounting rules. The IASB explains that ‘the objective of financial statements is to provide information about the financial position, performance and changes in the financial position of an entity that is useful to a wide range of users in making economic decisions’ (IASC, 1989, paragraph 12). ( 1.1 Policy delivery The question of policy delivery seems to be growing in importance. So, for example, the Blair governments in the UK were, from the outset, preoccupied with ‘delivery, delivery, delivery’ as ministers and prime minister grew increasingly frustrated with what was often viewed as the intransigence of public service professionals. The constant cycle of change, in which new policies and initiatives were introduced in rapid succession, producing what critics described as ‘policy overload’ o 4.2 Bureaucracy Bureaucracy as a concept has had an interesting career: it begins in France in the eighteenth century. By the nineteenth century, the German state constructed by its first Chancellor, Bismarck, was a model bureaucracy in both its armed forces and civil administration. Weber (1978) realised that the creation of the modern state of Germany had only been possible because of the development of a disciplined state bureaucracy and a bureaucratised standing army – innovations pioneered in Prussia Introduction This unit looks at the management of local knowledge-generating practices. You will explore the processes that link practices to global contexts and learn to identify the key dimensions of globalisation and explore the implications for knowing how to ‘do things’ in a variety of contexts. You will go on to compare the approaches to managing and organising, based on universally applicable principles, with context-specific rationalities and look at how viable interpretations of reality might 4.4 Marks and Spencer: a case study The following case study examines a company coming to terms with market orientation. Marks & Spencer is the latest UK retailer to turn to the web to revive its fortunes. In the week that the company announced a halvin 3.3 Implications of market orientation An organisation that develops and performs its production and marketing activities with the aim of satisfying the needs of its customers is market oriented. However, using market-led ideas in the non-profit sector requires a fundamental shift in organisational philosophy. Identifying those people who add value to the service means renaming some users ‘customers’. It also means that you have to establish what they want before you begin the planning processes and you have to concede Acknowledgements Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce materia
This free course, How teams work, provides an introduction to working in virtual project teams by explaining terms and concepts related to teams and to projects. The complexity of the interaction of people and technology is highlighted. First published on Tue, 15 Mar 2011 as Author(s):
This free course explores the law on corporate responsibility for industrial incidents looking at the UK law, impact of globalisation and exploring Bhopal as a case study. First published on Wed, 09 Mar 2016 as Corporate responsibility f
Case study 1 M&S goes online to reverse crisis