Benefits of Organizational Reflection

Benefits of Organizational Reflection A successful organization can be described as thinking and seeing organization. Such organizations are characterized by high levels of information flow and awareness among all its members. The availability of information improves the awareness and understanding of organizational weaknesses, strengths, threats and opportunities (Reynolds and Vince 2004). The organization members are also able to understand the history and strategic future plans for their organization as well as full awareness of the resources within the organization and the changing competitor environment. On the other hand, a thinking organization is an understanding organization that has a well stipulated vision, mission, objectives and the business environment that are well understood by all the stakeholders. Many organizational businesses collapse because they lack both foresight and hind sight necessary for understanding the current position of the organization. In ensuring an organization adopts the thinking and seeing style, reflection must become a part of the organizational practices and culture. Reflection must be integrated in all the organizational activities because generation of organizational knowledge can be done by any member of the organization irrespective of the level or the location in which s/he operates. Reflection is therefore a process that involves spending critical time away from the normal work routine in which individuals or groups think and interpret both personal or organization issues with the aim of getting previous experiences and lessons that may benefit a present situation (Boud, Cressey and Docherty 2006). At the corporate level, organizations set retreat days for its staff as well as reflection sessions so that staff can reflect on what their have achieved, the way they have performed, their compliance with the organization strategies, the challenges and threats they have faced as well as the experiences weaknesses and registered strengths. Reflection allows organization present ideas and previous experiences into usable knowledge and actions. Reflection can be necessitated by personal experiences as well as organizational performance especially if the organization isnt meeting its set goals and objectives. Reflection process is very dependent on knowledge management because it deals with intangible assets that need to be created and shared both inside and outside the organization to create a database of important information and knowledge that can be utilized later to handle challenges in the organization. Reflection starts with raw experiences which are analyzed to information then associated with relevant skills and values to become knowledge which is main focus of many organizations. Just like knowledge management, reflection involves capture and identification of ideas, information or knowledge then distributing it to appropriate individual within the organization leading to its application in a particular situation in the organization. The sole purpose of reflection is to create important knowledge that any organization will need in its present or future performance. Reflection is also part of organizational learning that is a knowledge management facet intended to equip staff wit h important knowledge and skills that will improve the operations and performance of the organization. Greenwood (2000), notes that the success and growth of organizations is highly depended on learning and knowledge generation (p. 126). Learning in an organizational setting is not only limited to individual knowledge acquisition but also involves the combined learning abilities of all staff in that organization. Notably, individual learning is a subset and component of organization and without it, organizational learning wont exist. Organizational learning is a result of challenges that face employees in their working activities thus initiation of learning and advancement in knowledge to solve such challenges. Though, challenges do not guarantee learning to occur, they combine with experiences to provide data and information which form the basis for learning. Generation of actions and problem solving are the key components of reflection at the workplace. Organizational reflection has presented required environment for self directed learning, action learning, problem and challenge based learning and to a greater extend the organizational learning (Reynolds and Vince 2004). Managers have noticed the necessity of reflection in their organization and they acknowledge that failure to reflect in the organization is equal to inviting the collapse of the operation of the organization. However, organizations have failed in implementing reflection strategies such that execution processes that go beyond individual mandate and involve groups of members or the whole organization are not usually implemented thus compromising the use of organizational experience and limit implementation of expected actions. The application of reflection in organizational operations has received considerable attention in the last few decades. Organizations have created independent departments with adequate resources to enable reflection process to occur and to work on the results of the reflection processes. The increased attention to reflection has been triggered by recognition of learning and generation of knowledge as components of organizational productivity and performance. Though learning and generation of knowledge may not be the only factors that can contribute to organizational change and performance, they play an all-round function in ensuring that all other resources in the organization are well coordinated to realize organizational goals. Reflection is therefore an important human process that involves reviewing and understanding past experiences then drawing lessons from them. Reflection is less known in work places and managers have little knowledge concerning its role and importance in the organization of activities and improving performance (Boud, Cressey and Docherty 2006). There have been fewer opportunities for the practice of reflection at work particularly because many organizations have not yet established the role that can be played by real and guided reflection. However, the 21st century has witnessed increasing concern and appreciation of the role that organizational reflection can play in fostering work results as well as improving employee learning. The recognition of reflection as an integral part of organizational management has triggered different kind of organizational learning and education that are in line with the traditional processes of organizational learning. Boud, Cressey and Docherty (2006) point out that productive organizational reflection is an adoption of the general individual reflection that is focused much on the use of past experience to generate important solution to present and future problems as well as promoting organizational training and learning (p. 12). Productive organizational reflection has several important elements that combine to provide a structured system to guide generation and analysis of actions from experiences. Organizational intent and collective orientation element tries to create a distinction and a point of convergence between individual and organizational reflection. While previous reflections have focused on individual experience and generation of knowledge, productive organizational reflection is focused on collaborative review of experiences that lead to taking appropriate actions with and for other participants with an aim of benefiting the organization as well as the whole group involved in the ref lective activity. Such reflection is done in a situation of the organization and must be incorporated and address the target of the organization. Collective reflection may be done at different levels of the organization depending on the organization management structure. Reflection may take place at the top management, middle management level, and low level or at the small working groups and this may happen internal or external to the organization. However, collective reflection always starts at individual level after which separate reflections are combined and actions drawn from them. This element of organizational reflection ensures the interests of the individual members, the workgroup and the organization are taken into consideration. The other element of organizational reflection is its importance in integrating knowledge, learning and work. Productive organizational reflection can occur in any location, but its always confined to the working activities and any reflections outside it wont be considered a practice of organizational reflection. Reflection is therefore triggered by work activities though there might be selected cases where importance and valuable reflection occur outside the context of working environment. Organizational reflection operates in the space that is created between the connections of work activities, the process of learning and generating knowledge. It therefore provides the link between knowledge acquisition and its production. Therefore, a productive organizational reflection will always seek to strike a balance between learning from past experiences to generate appropriate knowledge that will help in improving the work activities. The relationship between the individual and organizational development is another controversial element of productive organizational reflection. Reflection in organization fosters both organizational and individual development. Organizational reflection has a developmental value to the organization and the staff because it has become part of the main organizational practices that are relied upon in designing solutions to present and future organizational problems while placing the staff at better positions to deal with organizational and individual challenges that may pose a thereat in future. Thus distinguishing individual from organizational reflection may be a challenge in cases where staff does not get special time to reflect on the organizational operations. Furthermore, organizational reflection is open, dynamic but unpredictable process because it can happen at anytime when organizations do not have procedures to guide the process of reflection. Just like other form of reflect ion, results of organizational reflection cannot be wholly predicated. In many instances, it doesnt yield the expected results but unintended consequences which may be used to address another organizational issue. This type of reflection is very dynamic in that a present successful refection may create an organizational barrier in future. Therefore, organizations rely on past experience to modify the future thinking and behavior of the organization through the ability to reflect on its previous operations by identifying past performances and activities (Kazi 2005). Organizational reflection is manifested though inquiry and evaluation that involves establishing problems, determining their meaning and developing appropriate solutions. According to (Kazi 2005) organization reflection is a wide process that involves conversion of explicit knowledge to tacit knowledge that produces interpretive knowledge necessary for enhancement of individual knowledge through revisiting common issues and problems (p. 121). Reflective practice isnt an individual process but an organizational procedure that requires individual members of an organization to learn and modify their actions that are vital for organizational progress and performance. Reflection in organization is very important because of its contribution to individual learning which translates to organizational learning. Combination and sharing of individual learning is crucial to realization of organizational learning because individual learning may not present enough experience needed to tackle identified challenges facing an organization. However, some organization do not have appropriate standards that can facilitate sharing of knowledge and experiences especially when mechanisms for such sharing dont exist or the regulation of the organizations do not allow sharing or possibly if the staff do not know how to share such knowledge and experiences. Organizational management and particularly, the reflective manager must device and develop appropriate methods that can facilitate acquisition and sharing of organizational knowledge and experiences. The reflective manager in an organization is responsible for all processes and procedures involved in integrating and transfer of new knowledge, experiences, behavior and skills within and outside the organization. As such, the manager must prove to the employees that reflection is an important activity that is all round and should involve every member of the organization. The manager must ensure that employees learn from previous mistakes, that they know what they think and feel as well as device procedures that will ensure that the employees understand and manage the barriers and challenges that face the organization and then develop strategies for future use through applying learned knowledge and skills. Reflective manager therefore provides appropriate environment for employees to focus on their past experiences as well as current activities that may help in generating required knowledge for use in the current organizational situation. As such, a reflective manager in an organiza tion plays an important role in ensuring generation of knowledge and ideas from past experiences, repackaging of such experiences and ideas for the future use by the organization. Though many organizations have realized the value of reflection in their operations and the many stimuli that encourage reflection, there are equal detractors that hinder reflective practice. The most common challenge that faces organization in trying to use reflection in the management of their operation is the little time allocated for reflection and analysis. The lack of importance that may accrue from informed reflection is the main reason why many managers dont allocate sufficient time for employees to reflect on their experiences and establishes their failures. Organizations allocate very little or no time for their employees to reflect on their accomplishments and performance through individual thinking or group thinking. Many organizations spend most of the time making decisions, building strategies, training and orientations. Such activities must be accompanied by required information and knowledge so that expected results may be achieved. Reflection will therefore help in p rior understanding of a particular task before such task is accomplished so that preparations can be made for anticipated challenges and problems. Organizational reflection as opposed to individual reflection is a very expensive process not only on time allocation but also physical resources. For reflections to be productive, reflecting members must be in an appropriate environment that is free from the normal activities. Creating such an environment is quite expensive and organizations dont usually agree to organize staff retreats to quiet and conducive places that can ensure good results from reflection process. However, managers who have realized the real importance of reflection in their business operations create time and allocate adequate resources for the process of reflection as well as following out the results of such reflection sessions Another significant challenge that face application of reflection in an organization include poor communication systems that an organization uses especially if an organizations uses top-down communication system. The relationship among the individuals with the organizations, the relationships among different workgroups as well as the relationship between the organization and others hinders the creation of openness that is needed in the reflection process. The power of fear for uncertainty may also derail the process of reflection. Additionally, the style of management that an organization uses may affect reflection especially if the organization uses authoritarian style of management where control, leadership and power is centralized to a single individual or group in the organization. Conclusion Reflection is a complex and new organizational process that involves contemplation of tacit knowledge, explicit knowledge and experiences to create new information, knowledge and ideas that can be used to address a challenge within the organization. Through the reflection of the experiences and knowledge, learning capabilities of the staff are enhanced thus dealing with challenges and threats becomes easy for the organization because it has well informed and knowledgeable staff. Therefore, reflection improves the organizational visualization of unexpected realities and results and how to react to them. Organizational reflection is currently gaining attention in many organizations as opposed to ancient times when it was considered to be of no value to the operations and performance of the organizations. Though there are more challenges facing application and implementation of reflection strategies in organizations, positive progress in available which is indicated by the value that or ganizations attach to information and knowledge in accomplishing business activities and solving organizational challenges and problems.

Write an essay about how Owens poetry describes the plight of the

Write an essay about how Owen's poetry describes the plight of the soldiers. In many of Wilfred Owen's poems, he describes the suffering and the agony of the common soldier during war, not only on the battlefront, but he also describes the after-effects of war and its cruelty. Owen's poetry is inclined towards and elegiac nature with the function to arouse grief and to stimulate remembrance. Owen is usually best when the emotion of grief predominates over disgust in his poems and when tribute is paid to the men who died "as cattle" rather than when criticism is directly made to the perpetrators of war. Owen refers to his poems as elegies, but they offer no consolation to the readers, serving instead to warn them of the true nature of war. To create his 'moral lesson', Owen recalls certain incidents in which he analyses the suffering of particular soldiers lacking identity: "bones without number". Owen, having been a soldier of high rank, and having had a troop under his hands often brings out the feeling of guilt and shame in his poems: the guilt of having led hi...

Christopher Nolan

No one has had as impressive of a career as Christopher Jonathan James Nolan. His films have earned $3. 3 billion at the global box office, and the total is still growing. This British/American screenwriter, director and producer’s most popular films include The Dark Knight (2008), Inception (2010) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012). Remarkably, many critics have lined up as well, embracing both Nolan’s more offbeat productions, like Memento (2000) and The Prestige (2006), and his blockbusters (Price and Dawson, 2009). Nolan is now routinely considered one of the most accomplished living filmmakers.This essay will analyze the types of techniques he has used to create heart-stopping films, and will more specifically look at his methods used in creating Insomnia (2002), his first studio film. I will also be analyzing the defaults in some of him major productions, and how his films can be improved. Despite his blockbuster hits, many critics fiercely dislike his work. They re gard it as intellectually shallow, dramatically clumsy, and technically unskilled (Price and Dawson, 2009). As far as I can tell, no popular filmmaker’s work of recent years has received such harsh criticism as Nolan has.People seem to disapprove of his continuity errors and patchy plots, but this severe attack on his films are probably due to his elevated reputation. Personally, I admire some of Nolan’s films and see him as an innovative filmmaker although critics sometimes believe his techniques are weak. His film history gives us an occasion to look at some issues about creativity and innovation in popular motion pictures. There are four main ways that a filmmaker can be innovative; by subject matter, themes, formal strategies and level of style (WordPress, 2011).Out of all four innovation techniques, Nolan seems to be lacking a level of style the most. This evidence can be found in Insomnia (2002), his first studio film; A Los Angeles detective and his partner come to an Alaskan town to investigate the murder of a teenage girl. While chasing a suspect in the fog, Dormer shoots his partner Hap and then lies about it, trying to pin the killing on the suspect. But the suspect who is a famous author who did kill the girl, knows what really happened. He pressures Dormer to cover for both of them by framing the girl’s boyfriend.Meanwhile, Dormer is undergoing scrutiny by Ellie, a young officer who idolizes him but who must investigate Hap’s death. And throughout it all, Dormer becomes bleary and disoriented because, the twenty-four-hour daylight won’t let him sleep. Nolan said at the time that what interested him in the script was the prospect of character subjectivity, â€Å"A big part of my interest in filmmaking is an interest in showing the audience a story through a character’s point of view. It’s interesting to try and do that and maintain a relatively natural look. This is because he wanted to keep the aud ience in Dormer’s head. Having already done that to an extent in Memento, he saw it as a logical way of presenting Dormer’s slow breakdown. But Nolan wanted to keep his work subjective and as a result chose to break up scenes with fragmentary flashes of the crime and of clues—painted nails, a necklace. Early in the film, Dormer is studying Kay Connell’s corpse, and we get flashes of the murder and its aftermath, the killer sprucing up the corpse. At first it seems that Dormer feels what happened by noticing clues on Kay’s body.But the film’s credits started with similar glimpses of the killing, as if from the killer’s point of view, and there’s an ambiguity about whether the images later are Dormer’s imaginative reconstruction, or reminders of the killer’s vision—establishing that uneasy link of cop and crook. Similarly, sudden cutting is used to introduce images that get clarified in the course of the film . At the start, we see blood seeping through threads, and then shots of hands carefully depositing blood on a fabric. Then we see shots of Dormer flying in to the crime scene.We learn in the course of the film that these are flashbacks to Dormer’s framing of another suspect back in Los Angeles. Once again, these images are more or less subjective, and they echo the killer’s patient tidying up. Nolan’s style seems to tie into rapid cutting passages. For example, Insomnia has over 3400 shots in its 111 minutes, making the average shot just under two seconds long (WordPress). This type of fast editing can suit bursts of mental imagery, but makes the dialogue hard to understand.In the scene in which Dormer and Hap arrive at the Alaskan police station as an example of the over-busy tempo that can come along with a style based in â€Å"intensified continuity. † In a seventy-second scene, there are 39 shots, so the average is about 1. 8 seconds—a pace typ ical of the film and of the intensified approach generally (Ressner, 2012). Apart from one exterior long-shot of the police station and four inserts of hands, the characters’ interplay is captured almost entirely in singles—that is, shots of only one actor.Out of the 34 shots of actors’ faces and upper bodies, 24 are singles (Ressner, 2012). Most of these serve to pick up individual lines of dialogue or characters’ reactions to other lines. Fast cutting scenes like this are not supposed to break up spatial orientation. In many of this movie’s scenes there are a couple of bumps in the eyeline-matching, but all in all the shot is continuous. As I watched the DVD commentary, Nolan explains that he tried to anchor the axis of action, around Dormer/Pacino, so the eyelines were consistent with his position.The scene’s development and the actors’ line readings are emphasized by the cutting. In contrast, the lighting and framing remain almost unchanged. The editing-driven approach to staging and shooting is clearly Nolan’s preference for many projects; he storyboards only the big action sequences. We can find this loose shooting and abrupt editing in most of Nolan’s films therefor they don’t seem to display innovative, or skilful visual style. I believe his chief areas of innovation are in theme and form. The thematic dimension is easy to see in his films.There’s the issue of uncertain identity, which becomes obvious in Memento and the Batman films. The lost-woman motif, from Leonard’s wife in Memento to Rachel in the two late Batman movies, gives Nolan’s films the recurring theme of vengeance. There is also the theme of the man doomed to solitude and unhappiness, always grieving. This obsessive circling around personal identity and the loss of a lover carries emotional conviction in most of Nolan’s current films and the success of these films owe a good deal to the perfo rmances of the actors such as Guy Pearce, Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, and Leonardo DiCaprio.It can be argued that these psychological themes aren’t very original, especially in mystery-based plots, but the Batman films offer something fresher. The Dark Knight trilogy has attracted attention for its search to find real world significance in comic-book material. Many have objected that Superman, who has the power to redirect rivers, prevent asteroid collisions, and expose political corruption, devotes too much of his time to thwarting bank robbers (Price and Dawson, 2009).Nolan and his colleagues have sought to reply to this cliche by adding in plots of heists, fights, chases, explosions, kidnappings, ticking bombs, and pistols with sociopolitical problems. The Dark Knight mainly raises ideas about terrorism, torture, surveillance, and the need to keep the public in the dark about its heroes. It is easy to see that Nolan and his colleagues are undoubtedly giving the superhero genre a new importance in the film industry. Nolan’s innovations seem strongest in the area of narrative form. He’s fascinated by unusual storytelling strategies.Those aren’t developed at full stretch in Insomnia or the Dark Knight trilogy, but other films put them on display. In the Batman trilogy, subjectivity is put on hold. Nolan’s first two films reconcile subjectivity in more unusual ways; instead of expanding our range of knowledge to many characters, nearly the whole film is confined to what happens to one protagonist. Likewise, Memento confines us to a single protagonist and skips between his memories and immediate experiences; one series of incidents is presented as moving chronologically while another is presented in reverse order.While ambitious filmmakers are competing to create cliche narratives and complex films, Nolan raises the stakes by bringing breath-taking cinematic storytelling to life. His movies, unlike any other living filmmaker, are motivated through dreams and modernized with a blend of science fiction, fantasy and action pictures. Above all, the dream motivation allowed him to create unforgettable stories that are now embedded in the minds of millions of viewers.

Internship Report on the Marketing Practice of Sandhani...

Internship Report On The MARKETING practice OF SANDHANI LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY – A CASE STUDY Submitted to: Mr. Ejaj Ahmed Asst. Professor Head of Department School of Business Prime Asia University 40, Kemal Ataturk Avenue Banani, Dhaka-1213 Submitted by: Md. Junaid Islam ID# 05436049 BBA, 4th Batch Date of Submission: August 10, 2010 Contents Letter of Transmittal i Acknowledgement ii Abstract iii CHAPTER ONE 1.2 Introduction 1.2.1 Objectives of the Study 1.2.2 Importance of the Study 1.2.3 Scope of the Study 1.2.4 Methodology 1.2.4.1 Secondary Sources 1.2.4.2 Primary Sources 1.2.5 Limitations CHAPTER TWO 2.1 Literature Review CHAPTER THREE: Sandhani Life Insurance Company: Their services and Marketing†¦show more content†¦In this regard I would like to thank from the core of my heart to the internship supervisor Mr. Ejaj Ahmed Assistant Professor Head, school of Business , Prime Asia University and Dr. Arun Kumar Roy, Associate Professor, School of Business, Prime Asia University, ,who helped me to in the completion of the report. We would like to express my gratitude to Mr. Asaduzzaman, Asst. General Manager and Arun Kumer Dus, Deputy Manager and, the policyholders and non policyholders of the Sandhani Life Insurance Company Ltd for providing me helpful information and to complete this project successfully. Abstract: This paper aims at identifying the marketing activities of Sandhani Life Insurance Company Ltd.; understanding their control and administration; evaluating their performance; To portray the customers’ reaction towards the marketing activities of Sandhani Life Insurance Company Ltd.; and To make policy prescriptions arising out of the study. Insurance, which is called unsought product in marketing, is defined as a co-operative device to spread the loss caused by a particular risk and life insurance is explained as the contract, whereby the insurer in consideration of a premium undertakes to pay a certain sum of money either on the death of the insured or on the expiry of a fixed period. On the other hand, marketing is managing profitable relationship with customers. The present paper has