Puppet On The Fast Track

The case of Mr.Puppet raises questions of determinacy with regards to the existence, or nonexistence as the case may be, of free will. The scenario presented is that a group of “evil” doctors managed to create and nurture a Hitler clone, named Mr. Puppet, to be evil. Mr.Puppet then embezzles money from a Lehman Brothers, a now defunct investment firm who is then caught in the act and murders the witness; Mr. Puppet is later arrested and the doctors come forward to say he is a victim of his circumstances. From this scenario one can see several clear questions which arise. The popular debate of nature versus nurture comes into question, i.e., is he evil because he is a clone of Hitler, because he was raised poorly, is it some combination of

In Daniel Orozco’s Orientation, a nameless character is shown the ropes of the inner office workings as a new employee. The conflict is the surprising contrast between what appears to be normal, monotonous office procedures with the disturbing insights into the personal lives of the employees that work there; professionalism versus unprofessionalism. This conflict affects everyone in the story by the sheer discomfort of everyone knowing everyone else’s businesses, while maintaining the facade of not knowing or “you may be let go” (Orozco).

Dynacorp is a worldwide information systems and communications business. In 1990 the company started to have fewer earnings than in the past, so the CEO tried to change the design of the company to run better. In this paper, I analyze this organization though the political lenses to better understand how changing the structure can help improve revenue and quality. As discussed in the book, the political lens sees the organization in terms of conflicts of interests, power, and goals among individuals and groups within the organization. The way to understand the dynamics of political conflict is to understand who has power, from where that power comes, the basis of the power and how much

The dominant idiom of Indian writing today is firmly entrenched in pain, anxiety of displacement, nostalgia, yearning to belong to roots, and so on. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss are two such novels that explore the tragedy of man on several levels using different perspectives. Both the novels are about averted culture-clash tragedies, homogeneity vs. heterogeneity, and about Indian sensibilities.

Also contributing to the outcome of the power struggle were structural features that existed across the financial industry. The whole industry is governed and motivated by profits generated through individual contribution irrespective of the firm’s net performance. This particular industry structure results in the classic inter departmental tensions to maximize the individual department’s profits. To a certain extent, Lehman had to comply with rest of the companies by creating the isolated departmental structure to maintain its top performers. As a result, when a department creates 60-80% of the firm’s profit, the power shifts to the department making the most money. Lehman could have created an alternate compensation strategy to reduce the potential for power struggle between the departments. For example, rather

Roy takes a very particular approach to provide justice for Indians, in that she lives with the poor community that she is reaching out to. Her strategy for change provides insight into the personal connections in a community that help to attain change in governmental accountability, transparency, and economic justice. All the while, we watch Aruna shape her personal life and maintain personal integrity. Her courageous acts leave the reader

In the case of “Thomas Green: power, office politics, and a career in Crisis”, it describes the dilemma of Thomas Green who works in a company called Dynamic Display. Thomas was recruited as an account executive, and then five months later, he was promoted as a Senior Market Specialist directly by the President Shannon McDonald. Thomas’s boss Frank Davis hadn’t expected to choose Green as the new senior market specialist, and he was very dissatisfied with Green’s work style and performance three months after the promotion. After being informed that Frank Davis had emailed McDonald about his concerns about Green’s performance, Green was getting really worried about his situation and not sure how to explain his perspective to

The narrator sees himself as a good, amiable employer and acts in ways that will preserve his image and allow him to “…cheaply purchase a delicious self-approval” (276). The narrator invests personal

As there are many satirical components in this book, Heller could not miss the opportunity to observe the science of success in contemporary society. Statistically speaking, the average CEO has been diagnosed with an anti-social disorder which means that they do not have a moral compass. In order to get what they need, they will use these methods in order to succeed. Heller sees that these business leaders are not necessarily intelligent, but more that they have learned the system. Any fool can learn a system and manipulate its outcome; therefore, it does not require a brain, merely a soulless

Mike Judge’s 1999 film “Office Space” comically portrays the mundane every day realities of office workers. Joshua Ferris hit the nail on the head with his comparable novel; “Then We Came To An End”. Much like films “Clockwatchers” and “Up In The Air” all share much of the same: cynical job dissatisfaction, suppressed emotion, and lack of motivational state of employee’s. This is shown almost simultaneously when Peter arrives at work only to check his watch minutes after. It is a familiar drone like feeling among corporate cubicle slaves; controlled by office politics and the need to appear busy. Judge wittingly magnifies personalities; leadership styles and types of control that allows viewers to laugh at the sad facts of their office life.

Richard Powers’ work Gain is a tour de force of whatever it is. I say this, rather than describing it as merely a novel, although that is precisely what it is, because Powers has herein created something more than your typical story. In this work, two seemingly unrelated paths are set on ambagious paths which will ultimately culminate in their intertwining. On one path we are presented with the apotheosis of a specific corporation’s development, and on the other is the idiosyncratic life of an individual living in a place where this corporation has its hand on virtually everything. Herein Powers has presented what is probably the most riveting illustration of a fictional corporation’s rise. In fact, it is so engrossed in detail that parts of it rival real corporate histories, such as The Great A&P and Nature’s Metropolis. The central question here is derived from more than everyday consumers being buffaloed by Machiavellian corporations. Rather, Powers ascertains the question of how have we come to be where we are? In doing so, Powers destroys the illusion that geography is solely composed of maps. His illustration of how a corporation can grow, and in seeming reaction to that growth an individual woman can wither, permeates the very texture of our lives. You see, it is this mode of production, for which we all possess profound disdain, that is the source of our everyday living and experiences. Long before you or I were born, business had already replaced nature as the

In the wake of the recent financial crisis, many commentators attempted to analyze the roots of the conflict from a political or economic perspective. Anthropologist Karen Ho, a veteran of Wall Street as well as an academic, attempted to understand the reason that Wall Street behaves the way it does in her 2009 anthropological study of American finance entitled Liquidated: An ethnography of Wall Street from a cultural perspective. The central paradox with which Ho begins her book is: " the economy experienced not only record corporate profits and the longest rising stock market ever, but also record downsizings," further concentrating the wealth in America (Ho 2009: 1-2). But how can corporations grow richer as the American public as a whole grows poorer? Corporations no longer view themselves as responsible for taking care of their employees, creating good products, or serving their original mission. Instead, the focus is on generating shareholder wealth (Ho 2009:3). Shareholders, not the larger public, have become the symbolic and real focus of firm strategy. The shareholder "symbolized and 'stood in' for the whole of the corporation and became the sole locus of concern and analysis" during the time Ho conducted her study in the late 1990s and continues to this day (Ho 2009:175)

Though Wall Street seems to be an enigma to the common man, nothing more than a phantom one hears about constantly. Many view Wall Street in a negative light because they seem to be living in an elite exclusive parallel world, where they are untouched by the economic disasters they cause. In some way they really are living in a parallel world, in the sense that Wall Street has its own culture that is separate from other surrounding cultures. In Biographies of Hegemony author Karen Ho explores this sub-culture especially focusing on their recruitment methodology. One of the parts of their culture is the word “smart” which means something different to them. “Smartness” implies that recruits standardize themselves and Investment Banks customize themselves in order to be impressive to each other and because Wall Street’s business relies on impressiveness.

'The Wolf of the Wall Street', written by Jordan Belfort, is a high end structured novel which purely embarks the reader onto a journey exploring one's destined route to social statistic success as well as rotten failure. Self-discovery can possibly conclude to radical reinforcements of amorality, revolting and great human attributes. The story of Jordan Belfort primarily explored these multifaceted concepts through two core values of trust and loyalty. With the benefits of using third person perspective, Belfort can exemplify his past through strong subsidisation of literacy techniques used throughout his novel. Conclusively, Jordan Belfort uses the narration to give his audience a brief insight to his ongoing self-discovery.

The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins is a well-known book in the past and even more well-known book in the present. To have experienced and lived through the hardship of being an economic hit man is astonishing. This novel contains knowledge and informative information, that even one who is not that knowledgeable about this field of study can understand and become further informed of how corrupt the major organizations in this global economy are like. Additionally, it can further inform those who already are in this field of study and suggest possible solution, that could lessen the impact and the control on an economic and political science standpoint. This SWOT analyse paper will provide informative points to show how the strengths of this novel outweighs the weaknesses, as well as how the author discuss the opportunities that can improve development outcome that outweighs the possible threats that can arise from such opportunities.