Wednesday, January 29, 2020
Religious Ethic Essay Example for Free
Religious Ethic Essay Discuss the view that only a religious ethic can provide an acceptable basis for medical ethics. Medical ethics concerns many areas of ethical debate. Including such controversial issues such as euthanasia, abortion and human cloning, medical ethics sparks lively debates. The issue of abortion is a very relevant and controversial issue. There are opposition and supporters from both a religious ethical background and a non-religious ethical background. Those who come from a Christian ethical background tend to have a similar argument, that of the sanctity of life. Roman Catholics oppose abortion using the Christian ethical theory of Natural Law. Abortion would be going against natural law as it interferes with Gods will. Abortion is right in no circumstances, in other words it is intrinsically evil, as it involves the murder of an innocent life. Protestants do, in principle, oppose abortion on the ground that murder is wrong, as stated in the bible; Thou shalt not kill (Exodus) and as abortion is in effect murder, abortion must therefore also be wrong. However, some more liberal protestants allow abortion in certain circumstances, such as before the nervous system has developed (before the foetus can feel) if the mothers life or health is threatened or if the pregnancy is from an exceptional situation, such as the result of rape. There seems to be no reason however, as to why these two standpoints could not be from a non-religious ethic. The appreciation of life is not something that is exclusive to religion, and therefore the view that abortion is murder could stand with anyone who believes that the foetus is a person, and this need not be a religious standpoint. Equally the Liberal protestant view could again apply to anyone who believes that murder is wrong, yet as circumstances differ, the things to be considered also differ. This is a relativist situationist standpoint but again does not have to be religious. In fact many non-religious people do tend to be situationists as they judge decisions on their consequences and not on the action itself, as no action is considered intrinsically wrong, as it is not deemed by any higher being or book, as it is in religion. These arguments also apply in relation to euthanasia. Roman Catholics view murder as wrong and as euthanasia is essentially murder, it must also be wrong. It would also be considered as going against Natural Law as it interferes with Gods will, just as abortion does. Protestants would claim that the bible condemns euthanasia as it is murder, yet come more liberal Protestants again claim that all factors should be considered in order to make a decision relative to that persons individual situation. Many people would argue however that without a religious ethic there are no clear rules and boundaries. Deontological ethical theories, that are absolutist theories that apply in all situations, provide these boundaries as the answer will always be the same. Yet not all religious ethical theories are deontological, such as Fletchers Situation ethics, which is teleological. This means that religious ethics do not always provide a clear cut answer, just as non-religious ethics may not. Many religious fundamentalists would argue that atheists, for example, cannot have a similar appreciation of life as they do. Atheists do not believe in God, and some would argue that as they do not believe in anything, they cannot have the same appreciation of life. Yet it appears that without a belief in anything religious, life becomes even more precious. Without the promise of an afterlife, which is provided by Christianity, this current life becomes even more precious and amazing. As you only get one shot at life from an atheist perspective, the feeling to preserve it as much as possible, along with do the same for others would seem to be even stronger. Without the excuse that the person/foetus will go to Heaven, murder seems to be even more wrong, as it would take away the one life that that person has been offered. In conclusion I think that a religious ethic is by no means the only acceptable basis for medical ethics. Although some Christian ethics will provide a stable answer for every situation, an answer that will never change and therefore will have clear-cut boundaries, not every person in the world will ever be of the same religion, and therefore it cannot be universal. Therefore a non-religious ethic which everyone could agree on seems more acceptable, such as one that allows situations to be considered, because therefore a religious ethic could be used in certain circumstances if the people involved would like to do so, as that happens to be their own situation; similarly if someone does not want to apply a religious ethical theory then they are not obliged to do so, because again this option would apply to their situation. Therefore situationist ethics that are not based on religion can be made universal, allowing religious ethics to be applied or not according to the wishes of the people involved and this seems to me to be the only acceptable basis for medical ethics, an ethic that will allow for everyones personal beliefs.
Tuesday, January 21, 2020
Social Service Program :: essays research papers
OVERVIEW YPSS must develop a strategy to use the state-funded grant of $100,000. Three proposals for the use of these funds have been drafted. Each project is broken down by requirements, benefits, and costs. The information was gathered through research of community desires and evaluation of the feasibility of these desires. Programs of similar shelters were also examined to determine the approximate costs and benefits of each project. This report presents the details of the proposals along with looking at what the local community wishes to see implemented. The YPSS committee can use this report to determine which of these projects is in the best interests of YPSS and the youths that YPSS serves. CRISIS HOTLINE PROJECT YPSS has been considering this project for approximately 18 months. Until now, YPSS did not have the funding needed to implement such a project. The project costs a total of $78,000. Following is a breakdown of the total cost, along with the start-up costs ongoing funding will be required. Salaries               $36,000     Training/Recruitment                $ 8,000 Technical Services          $14,000     Miscellaneous                    $ 5,000 Promotional Campaign     $15,000     Total                         $78,000 The program involves the set-up of two toll-free telephone lines in a currently vacant backroom office in our main office. Training of three new part-time employees would be necessary. These new employees would be responsible for recruiting and training volunteers from the local community to operate the crisis lines. The hotline will be open 24 hours a day, and would be used primarily by teenagers across the state. Any person in any crisis (i.e. potential runaways, abuse victims, etc.) will have access to the hotline. Implementation of the project would take approximately 6 – 8 months. This time is what is needed for the project to get off the ground. This includes the hiring, training, recruitment of volunteers, etc. Any tangible results would most likely not be seen for 12 – 15 months, or longer. The project is a natural step beyond the two current runaway shelters and the addictions recovery program. These programs have been extremely successful thus far, and the hotline would add an additional side to YPSS that would benefit everyone. ADDITIONS TO RUNAWAY SHELTER #1 This is a project that has been proposed by the counseling staff at youth shelter #1 (called â€Å"Moore House†) within the last three months. The project costs about $95,000. Following is a breakdown of the total cost. In addition, the only continuing costs would be maintaining the salary of the full-time night counselor. Salaries/Training          $24,000     Miscellaneous                    $ 3,000
Monday, January 13, 2020
Functional Benchmarking: Learning from best practices to improve service quality in medium and small hotels
Despite the prevalent debate of organizational education, there is modest learned contribution on promoting learning through the realistic purpose of management apparatus. This is particularly correct in a complex domestic supply series milieu of an institute. Benchmarking is documented as a vital means for constant enhancement of quality. A large amount of publications by a variety of authors reveal the significance of this practice. Reviews of literature on benchmarking have been prepared in the past by a small number of authors. However, bearing in mind the contributions in the recent times, a more complete examination is attempted here.In this essay, the authors have reviewed benchmarking literature in a manner that would help researchers, academicians and practitioners to take a deeper look at the expansion, development and applicability of this method. The authors have examined a range of papers and have anticipated a diverse plan of categorization. In addition, certain gaps th at would present clues for extra study in benchmarking have been recognized. Study Questions A study of small hospitality businesses was undertaken in order to address the following research questions:1) How extensive is the formal and informal practice of benchmarking in small hospitality businesses? 2) What kinds of practices and approaches are more or less likely to be benchmarked in small hospitality businesses? 3) How is the corporate culture of firms in the small hospitality industry associated with their interest in benchmarking best practices? Principal Findings Comparing performance figures is the procedure in the benchmarking processes that seem to be accepted and applied by tourism managers rather than more complex procedures like analyzing or optimizing.However, there is a growing body of researchers assuming that benchmarking is not exclusively a comparison practice. Studying the business feat of a number of hospitality sectors (attractions, restaurants and caterings, m otels); Bergin et al. (2000) found that benchmarking is frequently confused with the practice of viable assessment studies. Terms such as benchmarking, interfirm comparisons and competitive comparison analysis are inaccurately interchanged. Benchmarking is thought to be a more potent tool than competitive comparison. Key WordsBenchmarking, competitive comparison, comparison analysis, interfirm comparisons, hospitality sectors. Introduction Benchmarking is concerned with obtaining information through relative study and applying it to develop internal procedures or practices (Smith, 1997). Whilst Business Week has described benchmarking as â€Å"a euphemism for legally ripping off someone else’s idea†(McGonagle and Fleming, 1998), meaningful analysis and successful implementation is shown to be a complex task. As McNary (1994) observes â€Å"what often gets copied in benchmarking are only the symptoms of success instead of the causes of success†.This review check s existing literature on benchmarking, particularly with respect to context, procedure, needs and benefits. The applicability to higher education is examined and results drawn. Decision makers are continuously on the look out for methods to make possible quality upgrading. Benchmarking is one such technique that has developed into a popular process in the recently. Benchmarking is one of many total quality management tools, which comprise problem solving, procedure reengineering and process improvement. According to DeToro (1995), benchmarking needs to be positioned within this larger context.From the strategic perspective, â€Å"benchmarking could only be a piece of the jigsaw of initiatives needed to achieve substantial improvements†(Smith, 1997). The challenge is to match the process with the optimal tool or technique (Keehley, 1997). Though benchmarking is not up-to-the-minute, it has now found more users, and takes up a major place, helping quality development. Quite re gularly, the benchmarking notion is understood to be an act of imitating or replicating. But in actuality this proves to be an idea that aids in originality rather than imitation, as stated by Thompson and Cox (1997).Many authors have contributed to the literature on benchmarking ensuing in more than 350 publications as of June 2002. Taking in the growth of publications, some efforts have been made in the past to review the literature. Despite the widespread discussion of both organizational learning and the learning organization (Yeo, 2005), there are few practical tools to promote learning within a supply chain context that also give implementation advice for practitioners (Garvin, 1993; Shipton, 2004). This paper, aside from providing a review of literature on benchmarking, envelops the following objectives:(1) Assembling the publications in a methodical way to allow easy and quick search; (2) Classification of literature; (3) Analysis of result of publications; and (4) Discover gaps plus presenting hints for further research. As benchmarking relevance is rising considerably in large organizations, they have, as yet, had restricted application among small hospitality businesses. Much interest has been paid to small businesses in current tourism and hospitality literature, but this has centered on savings, finance and the use of technology (e. g. Buhalis, 1993; Kwansa, 1994; Ozer, 1996).There has been little research to quantify performance points of small hospitality businesses either as singular organizations or as workings of tourist destinations. This paper argues that benchmarking offers benefits for small hospitality businesses and for the destinations where they are situated. This is mainly true of grading schemes, where most of the fee is sustained by grading organizations, not by the small business themselves. Awards or grades give customers self-assurance and at the same time present a yardstick of competitiveness within the location area.Literatur e review The literature review focuses on exploring the potential of benchmarking to facilitate learning. It signifies the critical performance areas in classification and grading schemes in small to medium hotels. In the following part it specifies how people benefit from the stated grading schemes and how benchmarking is a useful grading scheme for hotel managers. Tourist destinations: components of attractiveness Mill and Morrison (1992) make a note that tourist destinations are made of attractions, facilities, infrastructure, transportation and hospitality.Laws (1995) spots chief essentials contributing to the attractiveness of a tourist destination as being climate, ecology, culture and traditional architecture and less important rudiments specifically for tourist groups, e. g. hotels, catering, transport and entertainment. Goodall and Bergsma (1990) consider total cost a fifth constituent, in addition to attractions, facilities/services, accessibility and image. Destination ch oice, image and pleasure have all been the center of extensive tourism research(McLellan and Fousher, 1983; Pyo et al. , 1989;Selby and Morgan, 1996; Sirakaya et al. , 1996).The subsequent inventory demonstrates components of tourist destination attractiveness, amassed from these sources, which were literature reviews concerning tourist destination choice, image and tourist satisfaction. Attractions †¢ Scenery/natural resources; †¢ Climate; †¢ Culture; †¢ Food; †¢ History; †¢ Ethnicity; and †¢ Accessibility. Facilities and services †¢ Accommodation; †¢ Airports; †¢ bus/train stations; †¢ Sport facilities; †¢ Entertainment; †¢ Shopping centers; and †¢ Food and beverage facilities. Infrastructure †¢ Water systems; †¢ Communication networks; †¢ Health care; †¢ Power sources; †¢ Sewage/drainage areas;†¢ Streets/highways; and †¢ Security systems. Hospitality †¢ Friendliness; â₠¬ ¢ Helpfulness; and †¢ Responsiveness to complaints. Cost †¢ Value for money; †¢ Accommodation prices; †¢ Food and beverage prices; †¢ Transportation prices; and †¢ Shopping prices Directly or indirectly, small businesses participate in an dynamic role in granting roughly all the physical and intangible components of attractiveness acknowledged in the lists shown above. Thus, they contribute significantly to visitor satisfaction/dissatisfaction and to tourist opinion and images of destinations. Small hospitality businessesHotel firms provide products which include tangible and intangible elements that combine into an exclusive combination of production and service. While room provision is a pure service activity, food and beverage functions involve processing and retailing processes. This might signify that the actual delivery of hospitality services may diverge widely and that the benefits derived are associated with feelings or emotions. The repercus sions are that consumers use biased and contradictory frames of reference to judge the quality of services, presenting difficulties for the hotel operative in satisfying the customer.Customer prejudice is emphasized in Day and Peters comments that â€Å"Quality is rather like pornography in this respect. We may not be able to describe it easily, but we know it when we see it†. Its ambiguity is amplified because high quality service is often delivered by impulsive and since reacts by hotel staff which cannot simply be practiced or scripted, but are even so an important means of client satisfaction. In order to endure and be successful, a business has to make sure that it is producing the goods or services that the customer wants, that it gets its quality right, and that it brings on time.There is a growing body of evidence which suggests that are straight links with the satisfaction of the server and customer, repeat sales and profits. Heskettet al. implies that quality, repea t usage, profits and investment form a self-reinforcing rotation. As a result, despite the apparently indefinable nature of the hotel product, service improvement can represent an important source of competitive advantage because quality in service delivery can lead to more repeat custom and greater sales revenue.Augmented presentation may also benefit managers and staff whose tangible and intangible benefits include job satisfaction, profit sharing and esteem. Small businesses are imperative to the financial health of both developed and developing countries. Gavron et al. (1998) makes a note of the vitality of the hospitality and tourism sector in this regard, in which low barrier to access generally ensure a steady supply of new businesses; at the same time as unproductive or inefficient ones are going through difficulty. Quinn et al. (1992) remarks on the somewhat low capital investment required to start new small tourist businesses.Entry costs can be abridged even for relatively asset-intensive businesses such as hotels, through leasing or through mortgage/loan agreements. Welshand White (1981) describe as resource poverty the inclination of small hospitality businesses to be short of financial backing and management skill and Gavron et al. (1998) refer to this as the reason why 64 per cent of UK small businesses fall short within four years. In Germany, where an inspection is required before an industrialist can start up in business, the rate is 32 per cent.Specific tourism-related statistics are limited, but, for example, Chelland Pittaway (1997) report that almost 50 percent of restaurants did not endure the first two years in their study. The British Venture Capital Association (1996) makes a note that many small business managers are provoked by life style rather than economic and success issues. While this does not automatically mean that they function to insufficient professional standards, it does simply that they may not be motivated to endeavor f urther improvement in a business which already produces adequate profits.Eggers et al. (1994) note that businesses either look for stabilization or have an expansion orientation. They categorize a series of central business stages and comment that a business which is thriving at one stage may not have the knowledge crucial to uphold success in others. Thus, although small businesses have a vital part in creating tourist satisfaction, they are neither a homogeneous group, nor able to give constantly high service delivery.
Saturday, January 4, 2020
The Odyssey And The Apology - 1743 Words
A narrative of the self allows for the author to present a theme that is easily relatable to the reader. Through this the reader aligns themselves with the theme and is able to learn a lesson or change a way of thinking. The Odyssey and the Apology are works that have underlying themes, in which through critical reading the reader can identify and learn from. The Odyssey and the Apology do not have the same plot, but express similar themes. The texts express the theme of everyone has their flaws, but those flaws do not mean you have bad intentions. Also another underlying theme in the texts and in most narratives of the self, is to show growth as a character. The Odyssey is a story of Odysseus’s nostos. In the epic poem the reader follows Odysseus on his 20 year long voyage home. In the Odyssey, Odysseus is repeatedly referred to as noble, wise and heroic. Many times those qualities are based on his military escapades and kingly rule. The real personality of Odysseus is that of an arrogant liar and cheat. In terms of social mores, the undesirable traits are used to get Odysseus back home to the wife and kingdom he loves dearly. In his voyage back Odysseus has to face many powerful monsters that can kill him at will, and he has to outwit many of those monsters and seductresses to survive and continue his voyage. Through every new obstacle, Odysseus keeps his reunion with Penelope and his kingdom close to his heart. He tells Kalypso â€Å"what I want and all my days I pine forShow MoreRelated Comparing Two Heros - Beowulf and Odysseus Essays618 Words  | 3 PagesComparing Two Heros - Beowulf and Odysseus Reading through Beowulf I began to compare it to the last great epic I read, Homer’s Odyssey. While the Odyssey and Beowulf are each examples of both historic and modern ideas of heroism, the acts of Beowulf’s hero seem to fit better within its context. 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