Surf Up at Patagonia Essay Example

Surf Up at Patagonia Essay Example Surf Up at Patagonia Essay Surf Up at Patagonia Essay Surf’s Up at Patagonia. Question 1) Patagonia stresses the importance of hiring employees with passion- a passion for anything, not just sports. Why do they place such importance on passion? Why would they think that someone with a passion for something unrelated to sports (i. e. cooking) might be an excellent employee for their company? Answer. HRM department of any firm would desire the best employees while recruiting. It is because money and most importantly time is used up in training them. So the main objectives would be to hire very efficient and loyal employees. Efficient and motivated workers would also mean Labor Turnover at its minimum. Through these techniques a firm can save up huge chunk of money which can be invested elsewhere. Patagonia uses a very modern technique for recruiting its employees. A passion for anything would mean that employees would also have passion to do their job. Patagonia sells sports equipments and obviously sports resemble passion. As Patagonia is ‘a firm with passion,’ they also want their employees to be passionate towards anything. So that they can understand the importance of passion on work. This passion will lead to higher efficiency and well motivated workforce. Sincerity towards work will automatically increase and there will be lower labor turnover and absenteeism rate. Highly motivated workforce would also mean greater customer relationship and production of high quality goods. From these it can e derived that Patagonia is the ultimate gainer. Question 2) What effect do Patagonia’s practices of providing child-care and donating to environmental groups have upon employee productivity and retention? Why? Answer . Patagonia has this amazing child care facility which is ‘onsite daycare. Single parent employee’s children can stay at their sight. This will make the employees more secured about their children while at work. Thus, this will create a homely atmosphere for the working parents and will help them to concentrate more on work rather than worrying about their children. More concentration would mean more efficient workforce and high dedication t owards work. If the firm is more ethically responsible then the employees will feel proud to work at the firm. Patagonia shares a vast corporate social responsibility. Moreover, the employees can also choose where to donate money and where not. Sense of achievement will work upon the employees while selecting donating groups. The employees will also feel ethically responsible. This proudness for the firm will lead them to be more devoted towards their managers and Patagonia. And this devotion will obviously be reflected on their work, they will me more efficient and careful. By both ways the employees at Patagonia will become more efficient and thus there will be minimum wastage of resources and maximized profit for Patagonia. Question 3) Can you see possible abuses of a flextime program? What does a company do to prevent such abuses before they occur? Answer. Flextime is a facility a firm provides to its employees. Employees can choose their desired holidays and also working hours. It’s a key to help employees with the fixed universal working hours. Flextime is designed, especially in Patagonia, so that an employee can proactively maintain work-life balance. Now, there are also some fallbacks of flextime hours which can stated as follows: Efficiency of work may decrease due to reluctance to work during business hours. Employees may take the job too easily and might later face a haphazard situation, for example, time management. And this is how quality of work may decrease. The situation mentioned earlier may also spoil the business environment. Employees may work whenever they want to and code of conduct can be disobeyed. Employees may lie to the managers to enjoy facilities. By seeing an employee taking a time off may also tempt other employees also to take a break. In this way key employees might not be near hand when required urgently. t may also result in an decreased concentration towards work and spirit of teamwork as employees and working hours het divided. To prevent these types of lags a company may take the following measures: Hiring strong management group can stop mismanagement amongst workers. Check and survey back ground and other information on employees to see who actually needs flextime and to avoid miss use of facility. Measured flextime should be permitted to each employee and t here should be a rule that how many workers can take some time off at a particular period. Providing facilities like onsite child care may reduce the usage of flextime.

Definition and Discussion of Middle English

Definition and Discussion of Middle English Middle English was the language spoken in England from about 1100 to 1500. Five major  dialects of Middle English have been identified (Northern, East Midlands, West Midlands, Southern, and Kentish), but the research of Angus McIntosh and others... supports the claim that this period of the language was rich in dialect diversity (Barbara A. Fennell, A History of English: A Sociolinguistic Approach, 2001). Major literary works written in Middle English include Havelok the Dane,  Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,  Piers Plowman, and  Geoffrey  Chaucers Canterbury Tales. The form of Middle English thats most familiar to modern readers is the London dialect, which was the dialect of Chaucer and the basis of what would eventually become standard English. Examples and Observations Chaucers Canterbury TalesWhan that Aprill, with his shoures sooteThe droghte of March hath perced to the rooteAnd bathed every veyne in swich licour,Of which vertu engendred is the flour...[When the sweet showers of April have piercedThe drought of March, and pierced it to the rootAnd every vein is bathed in that moistureWhose quickening force will engender the flower...](Geoffrey Chaucer, General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, late 14th century. Translation by David Wright. Oxford University Press, 2008)Many Middle EnglishesMiddle English varied enormously over time and by region; Angus McIntosh notes that there are over a thousand dialectically differentiated varieties of Middle English. Indeed,  some scholars go so far as to say that Middle English is not... a language at all but rather something of a scholarly fiction, an amalgam of forms and sounds, writers and manuscripts, famous works and little-known ephemera. This is a little extreme, but certainly prior to the later fo urteenth century Middle English was primarily a spoken rather than a written language, and did not have official administrative functions in either a secular or religious context. This has resulted in a critical tendency to place English at the bottom of the linguistic hierarchy of medieval England, with Latin and French as the dominant languages of discourse, instead of seeing the symbiotic relationship between English, French, and Latin...By the fifteenth century Middle English was extensively used in the written documentation of business, civic government, Parliament, and the royal household.(Rachel E. Moss,  Fatherhood and Its Representations in Middle English Texts. D.S. Brewer, 2013) The Vocabulary of Middle English- In 1066, William the Conqueror led the Norman invasion of England, marking the beginning of the  Middle English  period. This invasion brought a  major influence  to English from Latin and French. As is often the case with invasions, the conquerors dominated the major political and economic life in England. While this invasion had some influence on English grammar, the most powerful impact was on vocabulary.(Evelyn Rothstein and Andrew S. Rothstein,  English Grammar Instruction That Works!  Corwin, 2009)- The core vocabulary of [Middle] English comprised the monosyllabic words for basic concepts,  bodily functions, and body parts inherited from Old English and shared with the other Germanic languages. These words include: God,  man, tin, iron, life, death, limb, nose, ear, foot, mother, father, brother, earth, sea, horse, cow, lamb.Words from French are often polysyllabic terms for the  institutions of the Conquest (church, administ ration, law), for things imported with the Conquest (castles, courts, prisons), and terms of high culture and social status (cuisine, fashion, literature, art, decoration).(Seth Lerer,  Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language. Columbia University Press, 2007) French Influence on Middle English- From 1150 to 1500 the language is known as Middle English. During this period the inflections, which had begun to break down during the end of the Old English period, become greatly reduced...By making English the language mainly of uneducated people, the Norman Conquest [in 1066] made it easier for grammatical changes to go forward unchecked.French influence is much more direct and observable upon the vocabulary. Where two languages exist side by side for a long time and the relations between the people speaking them are as intimate as they were in England, a considerable transference of words from one language to the other is inevitable...When we study the French words appearing in English before 1250, roughly 900 in number, we find that many of them were such as the lower classes would become familiar with through contact with a French-speaking nobility: (baron, noble, dame, servant, messenger, feast, minstrel, juggler, largess)... In the period after 1250,... the upper classes carried over into English an astonishing number of common French words. In changing from French to English, they transferred much of their governmental and administrative vocabulary, their ecclesiastical, legal, and military terms, their familiar words of fashion, food, and social life, the vocabulary of art, learning, and medicine.(A. C. Baugh and T. Cable, A History of the English Language. Prentice-Hall, 1978)- French continued to occupy a prestigious place in English society, especially the Central French dialect spoken in Paris. This prompted an increase in the numbers of French words borrowed, especially those relating to French society and culture. As a  consequence, English words concerned with scholarship, fashion, the arts, and foodsuch as college, robe, verse, beefare often drawn from French (even if their ultimate origins lie in Latin). The higher status of French in this [late Middle English] period continues to influence the associat ions of pairs of synonyms in Modern English, such as begin-commence, look-regard, stench-odour. In each of these pairs, the French borrowing is of a higher register than the word inherited from Old English.(Simon Horobin,  How English Became English. Oxford University Press, 2016) A Fuzzy Boundary[T]he transition from Middle to early modern English is above all the period of the elaboration of the English language. Between the late 14th and 16th centuries, the English language began increasingly to take on more functions. These changes in function had, it is argued here, a major effect on the form of English: so major, indeed, that the old distinction between Middle and modern retains considerable validity, although the boundary between these two linguistic epochs was obviously a fuzzy one.(Jeremy J. Smith, From Middle to Early Modern English. The Oxford History of English, ed. by Lynda Mugglestone. Oxford University Press, 2006)Chaucer on Changes in the Forme of SpeecheYe knowe ek that in forme of speeche is chaungeWithinne a thousand yeer, and wordes thoThat hadden pris, now wonder nyce and straungeUs thinketh hem, and yet thei spake hem so,And spedde as wel in love as men now do;Ek for to wynnen love in sondry ages,In sondry londes, sondry ben usages.[You k now also that in (the) form of speech (there) is changeWithin a thousand years, and words thenThat had value, now wonderfully curious and strange(To) us they seem, and yet they spoke them so,And succeeded as well in love as men now do;Also to win love in sundry ages,In sundry lands, (there) are many usages.](Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, late 14th century. Translation by Roger Lass in Phonology and Morphology. A History of the English Language, edited by Richard M. Hogg and David Denison. Cambridge University Press, 2008)