Claudius of Shakespeares Hamlet Essay -- Essays on Shakespeare Hamlet

Claudius of Hamlet  Ã‚        Ã‚  Ã‚   A close second in nobility to the protagonist in Shakespeare’s Hamlet is the incredible King Claudius. His superior qualities render him a worthy antagonist capable of a plummeting downfall at the climax.    G. Wilson Knight in "The Embassy of Death" interprets the character of Claudius:    Claudius, as he appears in the play, is not a criminal. He is - strange as it may seem - a good and gentle king, enmeshed by the chain of causality linking him with his crime. And this chain he might, perhaps, have broken except for Hamlet, and all would have been well. But, granted the presence of Hamlet - which Claudius at first genuinely desired, persuading him not to return to Wittenberg as he wished - and granted the fact of his original crime which cannot now be altered, Claudius cannot now be blamed for his later actions. They are forced on him. As King, he could scarcely be expected to do otherwise. (n. pag.)    The drama opens after Hamlet has just returned from Wittenberg, England, where he has been a student. What brought him home was the news of his father’s death and his uncle’s accession to the throne of Denmark. Philip Burton in â€Å"Hamlet† discusses Claudius’ sudden rise to the Danish throne upon the death of King Hamlet I:    A strong new king was immediately needed; the election of Claudius, particularly in the absence of Hamlet, was inevitable. What is more, it was immediately justified, because Claudius manages to dispel the threat of invasion by appealing to the King of Norway to curb his nephew, Fortinbras; the ambitious young soldier was the more ready to cancel the projected invasion because the object of his revenge, Hamlet’s father, was now dead, and in ret... .../ham1-col.htm    Faucit, Helena (Lady Martin). On Some of Shakespeare's Female Characters. 6th ed. London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1899.    Jorgensen, Paul A. â€Å"Hamlet.† William Shakespeare: the Tragedies. Boston: Twayne Publ., 1985. N. pag. http://www.freehomepages.com/hamlet/other/jorg-hamlet.html    Knight, G. Wilson. "The Embassy of Death." The Wheel of Fire. London: Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1954. p. 38-39. http://server1.hypermart.net/hamlet/wheefire.html N. pag.    Mack, Maynard. â€Å"The World of Hamlet.† Yale Review. vol. 41 (1952) p. 502-23. Rpt. in Readings on The Tragedies. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1996.    Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1995. http://www.chemicool.com/Shakespeare/hamlet/full.html No line nos.      

Effects of Societal Changes in Management Practices Essay

Companies are faced with the need to uplift competitive standards through implementation of measures that take care of the demands and challenges brought about by societal changes. The changing societal trends should be accompanied by changes in management practices. The changes covers the areas of responsibilities such as strategic planning, reinforcing the values and ethical issues of the company, analytical work, training employees and the adoption of the relevant technologies which can reduce the workloads on employees. Much effort should also be geared towards the retention of the employees (Duckier, 2006). The management has the responsibilities to foresee the future labor requirements projected through the use of techniques such as environmental scanning. Information from journals, mass media, potential think tanks, public opinion surveys, research, NGOs among other sources are of positive contribution for an environmental scanning (Duckier, 2006). Demographic Changes  Societal aspects related to demographic changes include age, social class, gender, fertility rates, mortality rates and family mobility. Demographic factors include increasing life expectancy of people, immigrants into the society, aging population, baby boomers approaching retirement and generation diversity among others all of which are associated with some demands. Increased life expectancy has led to employees working longer as a result of increased healthier lives. Financial concerns further extend their working life. Ageing in population as a demographic factor, affects economic, political environmental physical as well as cultural aspects in the society and workplace. Health provision and other social services and the company’s potential to pay for them are affected by population ageing (Society for Human Resource Management, 2003). Social Changes Social Changes are mostly caused by advance in technology. In an effort to adapt the upcoming technology there arises some economic imbalance between some agents (Society for Human Resource Management, 2003). Diversity has a vast range of concept ranging from personality and work style to all of the visible dimensions such as race, age, ethnicity or gender, to secondary influences such as religion, socio-economics and education, to work diversities as management and union, functional level and classification, or proximity to headquarters. Today’s impetus behind workplace diversity is compliance and inclusion in the business. The collaboration of cultures, ideas and different perspectives brings greater creativity and innovation resulting to improved organizational performance. Today’s paradigm is integration, learning and promotion of equal opportunities and value cultural differences, using talents of all employees to gain diverse work perspective. Diversity caused by immigrants, participation of women in the workplace and the aboriginal populations causes some considerable pressures in the workplace (Society for Human Resource Management, 2003). The management is faced with the duty of training the immigrants ranging from the internal language to the internships in the workplace. The management is also entitles to recognize credentials of the immigrants of their alien countries. Disabled employees are another aspect of diversity. The number of disabled employees increases with age, while more women than men are disabled. The issue of disability in the workplace calls for the management to face accommodation issues and offer more flexible schedules for work delivery (Frederick, 1996). Ethnic minorities have become significant inclusions into the labor market making diversity brought about by culture a significant component of a global labor market. The diversity brought about by culture has therefore called for some strategic management approaches to facilitate the retention of the talents in the workplace. Culture is a significant factor in the process of talents hiring keeping and development in the organization. The process involved in management becomes acceptable and effective due to the influence of the people making applications and prospecting to join the organization hailing from diverse cultures. Culture is also a potential moderator of the relationships in the organization (Stone, Stone-Romero & Lukaszewski, 2007). Implications in management practices Implications of this societal changes in the company requires the following roles in the management practices Developing and Implementing HR plans: Management practices should focus on assignments as well as opportunities involving the required number of people, specific place and time, peoples qualifications, their growth needs, development and rewarding the employees. Competencies involving the skills and inherent knowledge of the workers are utilized for a successful performance. It involves the already existing, competencies required for the future, those that can be avoided and whether the company will hire or develop the needed talents. Behaviors reflect attitudes of employees, the organizational values, detrimental behaviors to the company, whether there is need of behavior elimination or behavior modification and the behaviors that affect the customer. Employees should work longer hours, work in a more smatter way or be more hardworking, motivation is important towards retention of the worker and the degree of reliability. Managers should also conduct a review and focus of results achieved. The results serve as a guide for required corrections and setting future paces of duty and task performance (Jones, 1991). Recruiting and Retention of Employees: In majority of organizations retention of talents acquired overtime is important for the purpose of the company’s viability and attaining a market competitive advantage. Many workers complain of lack of opportunities for advancement of their careers, unsatisfactory pay and overburdening workloads. These have been causes of adverse talents turnover. To overcome these, the company should strive to make all efforts towards retention of their qualified and skilled employees achieved through motivation. Company managers should appreciate the existing competition brought about by globalization. The impacts of retention on the performance of the company have been found to be desirable. Turnover has been attributed to adverse relationship between the task performing workers and their managerial staff. The company should thus initially identify the right talents for specific duties followed by all efforts to retain the talent. In the efforts to sustain the business, the employees should be made satisfied since â€Å"people management is the next frontier for extracting and crafting more value from company assets† (Jones, 1991, 16). The talents turnovers are never caused by issues of compensation packages and the relevant benefits entitled to the employees but rather a management issue. Three key areas requiring concentration by the company are the process of the company and the inherent structure, the developments of the people and a conducive environment of working for the employees. It is a great loss to the company in a situation where a talent is hired, internal training offered and all the necessary items required for the job offered to an employee then within a short period of performance, the employee l eaves the company for employment in another company. Any company should therefore adopt the simplest and most effective strategy of management of getting the right people, keeping these people in the company and developing the people for the benefit of the company (Social Trends 2000, Labour Market Trends, 2002). The simple strategy enhances the rest of the functions such as diversity, compensation, compliance etc. (Jones, 1991). The right choice should be made, the reasons why the people quit the company understood and make appropriate use of time to develop the potential in the people while offering opportunities for their development (Jones, 1991). Labor Productivity: The productivity of labor in any company should be cost effective. The input of labor is associated with costs which should linearly relate to the labor output value. Labor management in any business organization should be dictated by the size of the organization. For healthy cost effectiveness in labor, the existing workers should be handsomely remunerated, offered internal trainings in the work place, their skills tapped to the maximum and uplift their working morale. This essentially reduces the company’s labor costs on individual perspective and increases productivity (Social Trends 2000, Labour Market Trends, 2002). Organization Flexibility: The Company should target the profit margin while utilizing the labor resource. Much productivity should be achieved while the cost of labor should be competitive. Flexibility has been taken from the point of both financial and numerical (head count) perspectives. For appropriate coping with the flexibility in the company, both short-turn and long-term measures are at the disposal of the managerial entity of the company (Social Trends 2000, Labour Market Trends, 2002). Social Legitimacy: The citizens and nations to which the workers bear their origin are significant contributors of development and nurturing the talent inherent in these individuals. The organization employing the talents are therefore submissive to the neighboring society and the government who have the power to regulate the environment the workers are subjected to. Most companies only address the most basic and minimum responsibilities of societal concern such as health issues and safety issues. The companies are duty bound to uphold the ethical practices associated with employment issues of child labor, unionizable rights, forced labor in addition to the safety/ health issues should be accorded significant address and any complaints from employees for lack of compliance looked at (Boxall & Purcell, 2002). Globalization of the current decade has brought about competition for talents. In the circle of HRM, there exist some strategic tensions as a reality. Examples of such tension include labor scarcity and labor motivation. The labor scarcity calls for individual firms to compete actively against other companies. According to the laws advocated against forced labor any worker can terminate services in any company for an employment opportunity in another company. The ability of any company to become dominant and competitive in the market as far as labor is concerned depends to a great degree to its ability to compensate workers and avail development opportunities for its worker (Boxall & Purcell, 2002). Labor motivation creates a strategic tension as a result of the mode of relationship between the workers and their managerial staff. Both the worker and manager interact on the basis of trust element. Nobody is capable to exercise entire control over another person and in any interactions, conflict due to diversity in individual interest are un- escapable. Most businesses are based on capitalism which exhibits exploitation while the workers are more oriented towards a more pluralistic tradition. Motivation entails the level of recognition of the worker at the workplace and to what extent the tasks are seen to be interesting to the workers. The degree of trust the worker expects from the managerial staff also determines the extent of strategic tensions brought about by motivation (Boxall & Purcell, 2002). Changing Management: For the viability of the company the management should address the aspects of cost effectiveness in productivity. For flexibility within the organization and legitimacy, â€Å"employers require workers to be both dependable and disposable† (Boxall & Purcell, 2002, 17). Brilliance in performing the duties and tasks is an important component of management. Management approaches such as â€Å"Taylonism† (Scientific Management) â€Å"Human Relations Movement’ and’ Total Quality Management† (Boxall & Purcell, 2002, 18) have in the past been formulated all aimed at enhancing human resource management. The basic concept is a participative role of every employee in the company’s decision making, commitment in execution and implementation of company’s policies all of which have important bearing towards motivation of the task performing employees (Boxall & Purcell, 2002). The Theory of Performance can be adopted by managers to cope with societal changes in the work place. Boxall & Purcell, (2002) have described this theory as â€Å"High Performance work systems, HPWS (p21). It entails adding the value to each individual employee by enhancing â€Å"productivity, defect rates and the proper utilization of the factory space† (p21). In the process of improving productivity great care should be taken to avoid stressing workers. The theory aims to effectively motivate workers, to widen the company’s social legitimacy and the employees’ attitudes of the employer. Conclusion The ideal reasons as to why people in any organization perform to the standard are knowledge, expertise, skills and experience, they are beefed with the necessary motivation and incentives, and they are surrounded by a conducive working environment and are allowed appropriate channels to express themselves. The work systems of the company and the employment models of the same company are some added components of labor management acting at individual as well as collective perspectives of people’s management. Talents inherent in people in any organization play a very significant role in the company’s steps towards gaining competition advantage. Any organization requires that the existing talents are utilized with commitment of the highest order and exhibiting flexibility

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