Research Paper on Eliminating Job Stress Thesis

Research Paper on Eliminating Job Stress - Thesis Example .................................................................................16 Results & Analysis........................................................................................20 Discussion of Findings†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦31 Conclusions†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦34 Recommendations†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.35 Limitations†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦...†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.35 References.................. ...................................................................................37 Introduction This paper will study job stress in organizations and how it impacts employee performance. It will take on a qualitative approach to research by conducting interviews/ focus group discussions with employees with varying positions in a selected company. The growing complexity of living in contemporary times is brought about by several factors related to progress. Working in various jobs may be much more challenging due to the evolution of job descriptions to include maximized work schedules filled with unceasing tasks. Oorganizations deemed to be successful may still run into internal problems, mostly related to their employees. These employees form a major part of the organizational setup. and majorly it is due to their performance that organizations become successful or bankrupt (Dewe, Driscroll O, & Cooper L, 2010). A major concern of organizations is the productivity of their employ ees as achievement of organizational goals depend on it. One major factor that may severely impact employees’ performance at work is â€Å"job stress†. (Dewe, Driscroll O, & Cooper L, 2010). Executive Summary The awareness that job stress can adversely affect the performance of workers in an organization can be alarming since stress may be inherent in most organization. This study explores how job stress affects the work performance of employees in an organization. Specifically, this study engages discussions with teachers and staff of a school. A focus group interview was conducted with 10 members of the educational institution concerned. They were asked their opinions regarding the relationship between job stress and employee performance; the main causes of job stress; what happens to them when they are stressed and the impact of job stress in both their personal and professional lives. Background of the study With the increase in volume of work, complexity in situat ions and heavy competitions job stress is on the rise. Generally, stress is what one feels when the demands on his life exceed his ability to meet those demands. According to data from health and safety, company executives recorded that in Britain around 420,000 were going through stress, anxiety and other pressure issues. In 2006, the figures mounted to 195,000 fresh cases (Dewe, Driscroll O, & Cooper L, 2010). Over the years the rate has continued to increase and by 2007 it was stated that out of every 6 individuals at work, one among them was experiencing job stress. When carrying out research, it is important to understand the scope of the problem and how it will benefit the industry in that regard. As it can be seen from the statistics mentioned above, job stress is a significant issue. Since each employee is an asset of the organization and is contributing to the running of the organization it is essential to study his/her interests and issues and keep them at

Grand Theft Childhood Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Grand Theft Childhood - Essay Example This case, an exemplary example, is not only cause for concern, but is evidence that media does direct our values and in doing so promotes activities outside acceptable social norms. The vast array of entertainment available through video games has made them a mainstay of children's pastime. A full 79% of our children between 7 and 17 years of age play an average of 8 hours a week (Walsh). Many video games are appropriate and often aid educational purposes and project positive images of society. They often offer instruction, problem solving, and entertainment. However, when games step outside our sense of a well-ordered society, they bring with them a baggage of debate on their influence. The recent explosion of violent video games has brought controversy from the living room and into the halls of Congress. Games that feature gun play, excessive mutilation, and behavior associated with criminal activity have raised concern across the board from parents to medical professionals. The intense concern about video and computer games is based on the belief that the ultra violent games are inappropriate for all children and harmful to some. Exposure to "Grand Theft Auto" increases physiological arousal, aggressive thoughts, and aggressive emotions and actions (Walsh). According to Walsh, "In a study of 8th and 9th graders, students who played more violent video games were also more likely to see the world as a hostile place, to get into frequent arguments with teachers, and to be involved in physical fights". Critics are quick to point out that the problem is not the video game, but underlying hostility in the child. However, this does not seem to be validated by research. According to a 2004 research study, Gentile, Lynch, Linder, and Walsh concluded, It was hypothesized that exposure to video game violence would be positively related to aggressive behaviors, such as arguments with teachers and physical threats. This hypothesis was confirmed. Students who play more violent video games are more likely to have been involved in physical acts and get into arguments with teachers more frequently. It should come as no great shock that exposure to violence, even with the knowledge that it is just a game, can initiate and manifest aggressive behavior. I have seen my friends after a period of playing "Grand Theft Auto" and have noticed a change in behavior immediately following the game. Their speech is more coarse, actions more rude, and their driving becomes more reckless. Yet, they play it off as being just a game. They explain that it is no different than an eight year old watching the violence taking place in a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Their theory of the self realization that its only a game and can't translate to the real world may have some validity. A study of 5 to 9 year old children's cartoon viewing habits indicated that children might be discerning between fantasy and reality. The study noted that, " [...] [M]others were shocked by the aggressive and "dark" programmes their children were watching. However, even though some of the children found them disturbing they realised they were simply cartoons, that nobody got hurt and that the good characters always won" ("Children's Cartoons Harmless"). So as children can tell good from bad in a cartoon, can a

Leadership Perspectives and Theories

Leadership Perspectives and Theories Discussion about two fundamentally different perspectives toward leadership development ‘Leaders are born and ‘Leadership skills can be developed. Leadership is seen as an important component of any organisations structure because at all levels in an organisation there tend to be positions of authority. In every organisation there will be people under the control of people with higher job titles and status, for example, employees under the power of team leader, i.e., precisely stating â€Å"subordinates under the control of super ordinates (Finchman, R. et al, 2003).† Though there is a wide range of definitions of leadership, it can be generally be defined as the ability to motivate and influence other people to perform tasks and achieve objectives which otherwise they wouldnt be willing to do. Moreover, leadership depends upon the context in which it occurs along with an understanding of the needs and opinions of its followers. But, still there has been a lot of argument and debate concerning the difference between management and leadership. It is true that differences between the two terms can be put neatly on paper, but still it is suggested that the distinctions between the two are vague, with the two qualities usually overlapping each other in business context. This is because it is believed that every manager is bound to possess leadership qualities to be able to work effectively towards the success of an organisation. As literature states, there have been different perspectives relating to leadership development. They basically are the Trait Approaches, Behavioural Approaches, Contingency theories and the Transformational theories of leadership. The trait theory believes that leaders are born and possess certain personality traits beforehand which ultimately lead them to take on a powerful dominant position. Behavioural approaches look for certain ideal behavioural patterns in the leaders and contingency theories state that there is no one idealistic leadership quality and that leaders should modify their qualities and skills according to the situational demands as well as relating to the cultural and organisational context of the organisation. Finally, the transformational theories introduce the emergence of the new leader with qualities such as being visionary, inspirational and participative along with encouraging change. According to theories and researches conducted, it is pointed out that a good leader would be the one who understands himself, his fellow and group members with whom he interacts and the company along with the broader social environment in which he works to be able to choose wisely his skills. Also, he is able to behave appropriately in times of perceptions that are very importantly relevant to his behaviour, i.e., to be able to direct when called for direction and to be able to provide freedom when there is requirement of participative freedom. They are believed to establish direction and are expected to encourage people to come into their strategies and plans. Also, there are some leadership skills which are considered indispensable. These generally include an ability to have an intuition and judgement, the intelligence factor, motivation, assertiveness, risk- taking ability, smart enough to analyse situations and take actions, relevant knowledge and many more. Now, here we are concerned with the two fundamentally different perspectives of whether ‘Leaders are born or ‘Leadership skills can be developed towards the development of leadership qualities and their respective implications on the development of management in an organisation. However, choosing one perspective can sometimes be difficult. This is due to fact that leadership being such a subjective topic, it is impossible to believe in a single perspective. Both the perspectives are right to an extent of their own. It is indeed a true fact that there are born Leaders. Moreover, the old age saying that ‘Leaders are born and not made even gets stronger by looking at all the examples of great and historic leaders, like Hitler, Mother Teresa, etc. These leaders gained their status and respect because of their strong personalities or some in-born attributes which are difficult to come through training and development. It is an elusive charisma in some people which ultimately makes them World leaders and the followers look up to them. And these certain qualities looked in a leader are generally the ones that are the in-grown traits of ones personality, for instance the ability to have an intuition and vision, motivation factor and the natural intelligence. These are all characteristics which differ from person to person. Also, by birth certain kind of talent is already embedded in a few people because of which they stand apart and go on to the path of becoming a leader. For example: A person wh o is an average basketball player will never be able to achieve the skills which Michael Jordan excels at in spite of getting the best training, putting in all his efforts and practising to the fullest. Though, his skills would improve but never to that extent. And hence, we see that the concept of born leaders is existent. But then to what extent can this be seen to be true? Should we believe that the skills by birth are just the skills to be possessed to become leaders, i.e., there can be no self-development for a person lacking the so called necessary skills to become a leader. Here comes a noteworthy point that, by just being born with talent, it isnt necessary that one becomes a leader. Unless and until one works on the pursuit of perfection and improvement, he/she will not be able to able to become a Leader. In fact, all the great leaders who reached their status today did so due to their hard work and maybe went through some sort of learning process. It was necessary for them also to hone and develop their skills and learn from their predecessors. For example : It was seen that President John.F.Kennedy though made a great leader, maybe for some people, due to his charm persona but the fact was that he also had some learning from London School of Economics and he also undertook a Leadership training program in the military services during World War II. Moreover, there is a problem associated with identifying what kinds of leadership skills are apt. When it comes to choosing Leadership positions in organisations, the organisations generally look out for expertise, work experience and the respective seniority levels. They look for people with strong or charismatic personalities, who are commanding and can manage other people well by mesmerizing them with their stage presence. However, these are usually wrong indicators of choosing great leaders. This is seen from the fact that even the extraordinary organisations having the most intelligent, experiences and insightful board of directors have made the errors of choosing the wrong leaders. In California, when there was a rapid-change in the technology sector due to the growth of internet IPOs, HP realised that they needed a leadership change with a leader with a freshly new business perspective to help control its languishing stock prices and stalling growth. For this they hired a lead er who had won quite a lot of business titles and had had an impressing background. But, in the hands of the new leader, the company suffered its first loss, lost many jobs and saw a decrease in their stock prices. But, contrastingly, in the hands of the former down-to-earth CEO, HPs annual sales increased. This showed that leadership plays an important role in the success or failure of an organisation, yet still many companies do not have effective Leadership Development programmes in place and they indulge and invest in it only in terms of emergencies. A research conducted by the Institute of Leadership Management showed that a significant proportion of business leaders today must owe the credit to the gaining of their leadership skills from experiences learnt outside the school, as 12 percent left school before the age of 16 and only one-third of them (31 percent) had a University degree on leaving full time education. These statistics, therefore, state that in order to achieve success, academic qualifications might not be a pre-requisite and leadership skills can be developed through coaching and formal training also with an effective development programme in place. Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, showed traits of becoming a future leader from childhood. But since he didnt have an academic degree he was not seen to be fit for the description of a classic leader. When he joined JC Penny as a management trainee, he always worked hard but then his paperwork wasnt up to the mark because of which his boss always told him that he wasn t fit for retail industry. At last, he resigned, not to sit back but to open his own firm which gave competition to JC Penny and surpassed it in retail dominance. This example suggests that in spite of not having academic qualification, Sam Walton would have been a great leader for JC Penny, if it had an effective system to tap the leadership potential in him. Hence, the above points suggest that leadership skills can definitely be developed not only through leadership training development programmes but also from real-life learning experiences arising on the job front. Hence, the perspective ‘Leadership skills can be developed holds more importance than the perspective ‘Leaders were born. However, no amount of teaching can ever fully help a person to know about leadership. Leadership is a phenomenon which can always be learnt through practical application. Leadership skills can be developed by watching other leaders, i.e., role models and emulating their behaviour. Leaders also enhance their skills by realising the fact that one can never get stuck in a situation. Even if one fails in a task, one needs to use that lesson to enhance his performance in future. This shows that the only failure they see is the failure to not learn from a mistake. They also improve by using the feedback from their supervisors, peers and junior colleagues to get better results. Moreover they learn by trying out new things and then review their performance critically. The best thing about the development of leadership skills and not assuming the notion of born leaders is that, leadership training helps to bring out certain behavioural aspects like character, passion and vision in people not having them and builds them to develop skills which can be used in future for becoming effective leaders. Furthermore, according to an article written by James Brava, teaching leadership skills to front-line managers through the support of the organisation as well as senior leaders can help lead to an improvement in an organisations flexibility to change and productivity. This is due to the fact that if front-line managers become leaders they can make decisions, can then use their own judgement and implement improvement. These techniques will assist in increasing employee engagement and employee motivation and thereby have a positive impact on management development in terms of an organisations performance level. A contrary point to note here is that, certain leadership skills even though believed to be associated with a persons character only, can still be developed among people to a great extent and affect the development of management of an organisation in a worth notable point. This means that if a person does not have skills to lead, he should not fall for the development of non-leadership aspects as there are a number of places to demonstrate ones leadership abilities. There are a lot many number of qualities looked in a person to become a leader which have already been mentioned relating to ability, motivation and sociability. But, the recent developments in the field of leadership show that it is not the just the old-age qualities of authority and intelligence that are enough to become a leader. No doubt, Intelligence is needed but rather than IQ and relevant knowledge, emotional intelligence is the pre-requisite to become a great leader. Emotional intelligence is the key factor which distinguishes star-leaders form the average leaders. Here we see a number of leadership skills that can be developed and how it might affect the development and learning of skills by managers for their own good as well as for their organisations. Emotional intelligence, a quality associated with leadership can definitely be learned, but it requires time and commitment. Hence, it is not believed that a person should have this trait by birth. Although, sometimes genetics do not play an important part in this as our parents qualities of empathy can be imbibed into us by birth. Self awareness is an aspect of emotional intelligence which tends to work for the organisation resulting in increasing its and its employees performance by being aware of the fact that how their feelings will affect themselves as well as of their colleagues. Also, motivation is an indispensable virtual quality of leadership which aims at achieving for the sake of achieving and not for external rewards. Even though, this can be seen as a personality trait to be associated with the concept of ‘born leaders, still it can be developed with course while learning in an organisation when one introspects about his passion for work, doesnt get disappointed with failures and has an urge for commitment towards his organisation. Therefore, it isnt difficult to see the outcomes of motivation for organisational management development. This can be seen from the fact that people with such qualities can always lead to the building of a team with managers sharing the same qualities. Also, as one sets a high performance bar for oneself, so will he for his employing organisation leading to the latters success. ‘Born or classic leaders are often seen as the ones having fiery temperaments because their outbursts are often associated with their respective style marks of charisma and power. And hence self-regulation is generally not seen as a good trait of leaders. But self-regulation is a quality which is necessary to be developed among leaders because it leads to the creation of a fair and trusted environment reducing politics and infighting and hence an increase in productivity. More so, it has a positive effect on managing development as employees want to be level-headed instead of hot-heads considering their leaders being calm and less moody. As a consequence, talent flocks to the organisation. In terms of environment changes, management development needs arise which can be taken care of effectively if managers are in control of their emotions. This is because in such a scenario they do not panic and tend to accept the challenges in a positive way. Empathy is another quality which is rarely seen to exist in the concept of ‘leaders are born. This is because according to this concept, they usually have attributes which are seen as being autocratic and exploitive. And hence, the perspective regarding born leaders might seem to fail here. Empathy or consideration skill is strongly recommended as a component of leadership due to it being effective while dealing with teams, diversification in organisations and for retaining talent in todays competitive market-world. It is usually developed while working in a team where there can be a mismatch and misunderstanding among the viewpoints of the members. This helps leaders develop their skills of understanding and recognising the emotional makeup of the team leading to collaboration among employees which can ultimately lead to higher job market for the organisation. Also, in order to keep good talent within their organisation coaching and mentoring is necessary for which empathy ski lls are needed. Therefore, a leader having these skills will effectively provide good coaching which leads to an increase in job performance along with job satisfaction and less attrition rate. Another fact which proves that Leadership skills can be developed can be seen during situations when a persons leadership skills might come under a test. This can seem to happen in terms of a crisis as was in the case of Intel Israel. During the First Gulf War when Iraq was resorting to its Scub missile attacks, the operation of the Intels firm unit in Israel was at stake because the civil defence directive had ordered organisational units to close down ensuring safety. But Dov Frohman continued the normal operations as he was concerned about the companys survival and success as he considered that a core aspect of leadership. Also, according to his belief during such situations there are three major points a leader should develop focus on the survival of the organisation in the long-term giving it the highest priority, going against what everyone says and expects to do and finally trusting ones instinct. As a result of following these qualities, commitments to Intel were met for the future of Israels high tech economy as well as for Intel Israel, because of which it today is â€Å"the headquarters for the companys global RD and product development in wireless technology as well as a major centre for chip fabrication (Harvard Business Review, December 2006)†. Also, following these three rules not only help deal with the situation aptly but also thinks about the organisations success which is the basic rule of leadership and management development. Moreover, this can be seen as a time for managers to be able to learn and develop skills not only for their own good but even for their organisation. In all organisations it is seen that management generally means conducting, controlling, directing and linking. But an article by Henry Mintzberg who has studied a lot of managers and management in a symphony orchestra, states that Covert Leadership, an aspect which can seem to develop might be better than overtly display of leadership. This is because in todays world knowledge and trained workers respond to inspiration and not supervision because they know what to do. According to him, management in a symphony orchestra can be seen as a good deal of what managing in todays world is all about. The article throws light on the fact that though the conductor manages all its musicians, but he does so in a covert way be it controlling, directing or developing culture. It showed that what is generally seen as conventional leading is seen as operations doing in the context of an orchestra because the conductor got involved directly and personally in all the tasks getting done. Also it was s een that extreme supervision isnt necessary today and that the coordination can occur independently, but however certain amount of power is necessary. Lastly it is noted that though the conductor managed all the inside operations, he was also concerned with the external networking for his orchestra. Hence, a positive outcome of covert leadership on management development is that it not only satisfies employees but in the end it also tends to give a feeling of satisfaction to the leader. And if managers accept this trait of leadership and follow all the six qualities of internal controlling, leading and doing along with external communication, linking and dealing, they can raise the organisation to a high level. Furthermore, it is evident that in todays modern world every manager or leader is faced with the dilemma of being torn between which leadership style to use and when democratic or authoritative. According to the earlier times, leaders were just seen as ones possessing the required intelligence, vision and the ability to empower others. But todays scenario sees the fact that leadership skills tend to be developed and be used according to the demand of the situation. A continuum developed by Tannenbaum and Schmidt concerning the authoritative versus democratic choice of leadership style, shows that any one of these extremes (either emphasis on manager or on the subordinate centred behaviour) isnt apt and that there are a range of behaviours which are best to use when necessary. The decision of what leadership style to use is highly influenced by factors which concern managers behaviour, non-managers or subordinates behaviours and the situational aspects. If a manager understands his p ersonality traits effectively, he is likely to know clearly which style to use. The situational factors such as organisation type (might approve certain behaviours and not others), group effectiveness (how well people coordinate together to resolve issues), nature of problem (depends on whether subordinates have relevant knowledge about the problem) and time constraints (depends upon the criticalness of the situation) also affect the way a manager thinks in decision-making situation). Similarly, a clear understanding about the employees behaviour and their expectations or demands from him, can help him decide to be permissive or coercive. This can ultimately lead to the development of good and flexible communicative relationships among organisation members leading to the creation of good work teams, i.e. the development of management which ultimately can affect an organisations success rate. Therefore, whatever is the case, the implications would always be in the favour of the organ isation with the manager being flexible and insightful so as not to face the issue of leadership dilemma. Finally, in the end wed like to discuss two main important points. Firstly, how companies can create leadership development programmes in order to tap the talent of people showing the capabilities of becoming future leaders. In regard to this, companies ought to create a development profile needed for identifying strong leader including qualities they think should be suitable for their particular company or the industry. On completion of the creation of profile, the company can use a number of effective assessment tools like psychometric tests, employee surveys, feedback reviews etc. to identify these characteristics in their employees. Secondly, we need to discuss critically as to what we need whether it is the image of a heroic leader with a vision, inspiration and charisma or the image of a manager who can organise, plan and control issues in an organisation. In the beginning, it was mentioned that there are differences between management and leadership but they usually overlap. However, arguably it is seen that now there has been a widening gap between managers and leaders. According to studies in the twenty-first century, it was seen that a new perspective of transformational leaders came into being. These transformational super leaders had all the characteristics which were suitable during a hostile and a rapidly changing environment. This new leader had the ability to create visions of what can happen in future and was able to communicate them. These traits indicated the difference between management and leadership according to some writers. But a more recent study of leadership trends stated that such views could be dangerous and that what is more importantly required is the capabilities of change management. According to a lot of writers the concept of visionary leaders is not good as they can destabilize the organisation. For instance, in the opinion of Jim Collins, leaders who are seen to be world class are generally not effective, and it is the senior ordinary managers or executive which actually handle work well by combining both humility and persistence. Moreover, it is believed that the efforts of these middle managers should be appreciated because in spite of them not being top managers they still are implemental in starting and aiming change. Finally these repercussions against the concept of new leaders, leads back to the argument between the distinction of management and leadership suggesting that now leadership destabilises while management drives change. To sum it all, it can be said that though leadership skills are developed but still in-born traits are sometimes necessary and that in reality organisational change occurs due to the help of competent managers and not because of the concept of leaders possessing charismatic visionaries and personalities. (3898 words excluding references) Works Cited Brava, J., (n.d.) Are Frontline Leadership Skills Instinctive or Learnt?. Available: http://ezinearticles.com/?Are-Frontline-Leadership-Skills-Instinctive-Or-Learnt?id=3231942. Last accessed January, 2010. Britains Bosses Learn to Lead at an Early Age. (n.d.). Available: http://www.i-l-m.com/research-and-comment/1449.aspx. Last accessed January, 2010. Buchanan, D., Huczynski, A. (2004). Organizational Behaviour: An Introductory Text, 5th Edition, London: FT Prentice Hall. Donaldson, D., (n.d.) Can Leadership Training Make Great Leaders?. Available: http://www.articlesnatch.com/Article/Can-Leadership-Training-Make-Great-Leaders-/509240. Last accessed January, 2010. Finchman, R., Rhodes, P. (2003). Principles of Organizational Behaviour, 3rd Edition, Oxford: University Press. Frohman, D. (2006). Leadership Under Fire, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 84, No. 12, pp. 124-131. Goleman, D. (1998). What makes a leader?, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 76, No. 6, pp. 93-102. Hurst, R. (September 10th, 2007). Is a leader born or made?. Available: http://leadershiptrainingdevelopment.com/is-a-leader-born-or-made. Last accessed January, 2010. Leadership Development Are Leaders Born or Made?. (n.d.). Available: http://www.impactfactory.com/gate/registered/leadership_skills_training_development/registeredgate_1619-9103-73572.html. Last accessed January, 2010. MacDoanld, D. (December 8th, 2009), Why is it so hard for companies to find great leaders?. Available: http://learnthis.ca/2009/12/the-problem-with-leadership/. Last accessed January, 2010. Mintzberg, H. (1998). Covert Leadership: Notes on Managing Professionals, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 76, No. 6, pp. 140-147. Tannenbaum, R. and Schmidt, W. (1973). How to Choose a Leadership Pattern, Harvard Business Review , 51(3), 162-180.

Launching The New Engineered Jeans Essay -- Business and Management St

Launching The New Engineered Jeans 2.1 Introduction The outline bellows gives an overview of the new engineered jean that Levis will be launching Product A top-end Jean in straight cut that is fits snugly and is flattering, well cut using the engineered technology Price  £90 Target Segment Fashion conscious female 18-35yrs 2.2 Objectives of the Launch ============================ * Break into Womenswear Market * Re-launch Engineered technology to emphasise fit * Make consumer aware of new product * Increase sales of engineered Jeans 2.3 The Marketing mix 2.3.1 Segment The Women’s market has been the by far the strongest sector in terms of increased sales since Jeans sales began to boom in 2001 (see appendix E), this trend is expected to continue into 2007 (Mintel, 2003). After the Male orientated anti-fit campaign, now is a good time for Levis to turn their attention to the female market. The number of 15-24 year olds in Britain has already increased dramatically and is expected to grow by around 7% by 2007 (Mintel, 2003 See Appendix D). At present Levi’s do not have our having problems reaching the younger female customer (Foster, 03/2004). If Levi’s can break into this market it will generate a significant increase in sales. 2.3.2 Product In a recent poll on hanbag.com the †Denim Diva† look, Jeans teamed with a sexy top and high heels, was voted the most popular by the women who voted (www.wgsn.co.uk, 10/1...

Aspiring Education Essay

Education is a must on every people’s lives, a requirement for a person to be successful in life. We can all remember how our parents scold as, as we disobeyed on what they are telling us to do. My parents inspire me about education. Both of them finished high school and graduated in college; my father graduate with a Master’s Degree while my mother has a Bachelor’s Degree. They struggled so hard to be successful, so my siblings and I will have a healthier life, a better house, family and a brighter education. In this quote Chanakya said, â€Å"Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats the beauty and the youth.† Chanakya interprets that it is the most powerful and the best treasure in all things that you will achieve in life. Education is intensely vital; it can strongly provide one with priceless life opportunities, ultimately save one from a life of agony, and powerfully free those who are understated. In â€Å"Straw into Gold,† Sandra Cisneros emphasizes sharply that education opens doors, gives one perspective, and provides one with valuable life opportunities. For instance, she openly explains, â€Å"I had the same sick feeling when I was required to write my critical essay for the MFA exam – the only piece of noncreative writing necessary in order to get my graduate degree.† Sandra conveys the idea that she still continue to pursue her education even though she knows that she can fail anytime. The author suggests that you have to keep going even though you know that you will fail. Further, she later explains, â€Å"Along the way there has been straw for the taking. With a little imagination, it can be spun into gold.† Sandra articulates the idea that we can create a better person in ourselves if we allow education to permit to take a hold of us. The author suggests that even with a little imagination you can achieve your dream. Therefore, in her narr ative, Cisneros ultimately reveals that we just need to turn our dreams  into reality. In â€Å"Learning to Read and Write,† Frederick Douglass emphasizes that education is the key to freedom. For example, he explains, â€Å"Under its influences, the tender heart became stone, and the lamblike disposition gave way to a tiger-like fierceness.† Douglass conveys the idea that his once gentle mistress transformed into a cruel woman who did not want him to get educated. The author suggests that his mistress became gullible to the ignorant ideas about slavery. Further, he later explains, â€Å"The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness.† Douglass implies the idea that he found a new hope of freedom to slavery that makes his soul to eternal wakefulness. The author suggests that if he has the determination and work-hard he will become a free person and not a slave. Thus, in his slave narrative, Douglass ultimately reinforces the concept that only education will provide one with liberty and self-determination. In â€Å"Superman and Me,† Sherman Alexie emphasizes that education can save one’s life. For example, he explains, â€Å"We were poor by most standards, but one of my parents usually managed to find some minimum wage job or another, which made us middle class by reservation standards. I had a brother and three sisters. We lived on a combination of irregular paychecks, hope, fear, and government surplus food.† Alexie express the idea that they’re living in poverty and they survived because of his parent’s minimum wage job. The author suggests that they still persist to live on a world of hope, fear, irregular paychecks, and government surplus food. Further, Alexie interprets, â€Å"I am smart. I am arrogant. I am lucky. I am trying to save our lives.† Alexie conveys the idea that he struggled, studied hard, and stood up just to save the other Indians and escape from the reservation. The author suggests that if you study hard you can get out, f rom the reservation, and be a free Indian. Thus, in his narrative, Alexie ultimately reinforces the concept that only education will provide one with valuable life opportunities. The three authors showed the different essential sides of education. Education is intensely vital; it can robustly provide one with  opportunities, ultimately save one from a life of misery, and mightily free those who are discreet. In this quote, Carl Rogers said, â€Å"The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn.† Carl conveys that if you know how to listen, speak, read, and learned how to learn it means that you are an educated person. He also interprets that you will not be educated if you don’t know how to learn. Therefore, we should take advantage of education while it last.

Anne Fleche – the Space of Madness and Desire

Tennessee Williams exploits the expressionistic uses of space in the drama, attempting to represent desire from the outside, that is, in its formal challenge to realistic stability and closure, and in its exposure to risk. Loosening both stage and verbal languages from their implicit desire for closure and containment, Streetcar exposes the danger and the violence of this desire, which is always the desire for the end of desire. Writing in a period when U. S. rama was becoming disillusioned with realism, Williams achieves a critical distance from realistic technique through his use of allegory. In Blanche's line about the streetcar, the fact that she is describing real places, cars, and transfers has the surprising effect of enhancing rather than diminishing the metaphorical parallels in her language. Indeed, Streetcar's â€Å"duplicities of expression†(3) are even more striking in the light of criticism's recent renewal of interest in allegory. 4) For allegory establishes the distance â€Å"between the representative and the semantic function of language† (I89), the desire that is in language to unify (with) experience. Streetcar demonstrates the ways in which distance in the drama can be expanded and contracted, and what spatial relativism reveals about the economy of dramatic representation. Tennessee Williams' plays, filled with allegorical language, seem also to have a tentative, unfinished character. The metalanguage of desire seems to preclude development, to deny progress. And yet it seems â€Å"natural† to read A Streetcar Named Desire as an allegorical journey toward Blanche's apocalyptic destruction at the hands of her â€Å"executioner,† Stanley. The play's violence, its baroque images of decadence and lawlessness, promise its audience the thrilling destruction of the aristocratic Southern Poe-esque moth-like neuraesthenic female â€Å"Blanche† by the ape-like brutish male from the American melting-pot. The play is full in fact of realism's developmental language of evolution, â€Å"degeneration,† eugenics. Before deciding that Stanley is merely an â€Å"ape,† Blanche sees him as an asset: â€Å"Oh, I guess he's just not the type that goes for jasmine perfume, but maybe he's what we need to mix with our blood now that we've lost Belle Reve† (285). The surprising thing about this play is that the allegorical reading also seems to be the most â€Å"realistic† one, the reading that imposes a unity of language and experience to make structural sense of the play, that is, to make its events organic, natural, inevitable. And yet this feels false, because allegorical language resists being pinned down by realistic analysis — it is always only half a story. But it is possible to close the gap between the language and the stage image, between the stage image and its â€Å"double† reality, by a double forgetting: first we have to forget that realism is literature, and thus already a metaphor, and then we have to forget the distance between allegory and reality. To say that realism's empiricism is indistinguishable from metaphor is to make it one with a moral, natural ordering of events. Stanley is wrong and Blanche is right, the moralists agree. But the hypocrisy of the â€Å"priggish† reading is soon revealed in its ambivalence toward Blanche/Stanley: to order events sequentially requires a reading that finds Blanche's rape inevitable, a condition of the formal structure: she is the erring woman who gets what she â€Å"asks† for (her realistic antecedents are clear). For the prigs this outcome might not be unthinkable, though it might be — what is worse — distasteful. But Williams seems deliberately to be making interpretation a problem: he doesn't exclude the prigs' reading, he invites it. What makes Streetcar different from Williams' earlier play The Glass Menagerie (I944)(5) is its constant self-betrayal into and out of analytical norms. The realistic set-ups in this play really feel like set-ups, a magician's tricks, inviting readings that leave you hanging from your own schematic noose. Analytically, this play is a trap; it is brilliantly confused; yet without following its leads there is no way to get anywhere at all. Streetcar has a map, but it has changed the street signs, relying on the impulse of desire to take the play past its plots. In a way it is wrong to say Williams does not write endings. He writes elaborate strings of them. Williams has given Streetcar strong ties to the reassuring rhetoric of realism. Several references to Stanley's career as â€Å"A Master Sergeant in the Engineers' Corps† (258) set the action in the â€Å"present,† immediately after the war. The geographical location, as with The Glass Menagerie, is specific, the neighborhood life represented with a greater naturalistic fidelity: â€Å"Above he music of the ‘Blue Piano' the voices of people on the street can be heard overlapping† (243). Lighting and sound effects may give the scene â€Å"a kind of lyricism† (243), but this seems itself a realistic touch for â€Å"The Quarter† (4I2). Even the interior set, when it appears (after a similar wipe-out of the fourth wall), resembles The Glass Menagerie in lay-out and configuration: a ground-floor apartment, with two rooms separated by portieres, occupied by three characters, one of them male. Yet there are also troubling â€Å"realistic† details, to which the play seems to point. The mise en scene seems to be providing too much enclosure to provide for closure: there is no place for anyone to go. There is no fire escape, even though in this play someone does yell â€Å"Fire] Fire] Fire]† (390). In fact, heat and fire and escape are prominent verbal and visual themes. And the flat does not, as it seems to in The Glass Menagerie, extend to other rooms beyond the wings, but ends in a cul-de-sac — a doorway to the bathroom which becomes Blanche's significant place for escape and â€Å"privacy. † Most disturbing, however, is not the increased sense of confinement but this absence of privacy, of analytical, territorial space. No gentleman caller invited for supper invades this time, but an anarchic wilderness of French Quarter hoi polloi who spill onto the set and into the flat as negligently as the piano music from the bar around the corner. There does not seem to be anywhere to go to evade the intrusiveness and the violence: when the flat erupts, as it does on the poker night, Stanley's tirade sends Stella and Blanche upstairs to Steve and Eunice, the landlords with, of course, an unlimited run of the house (â€Å"We own this place so I can let you in† 48 ), whose goings-on are equally violent and uncontained. Stella jokes, â€Å"You know that one upstairs? more laughter One time laughing the plaster — laughing cracked — † (294). The violence is not an isolated climax, but a repetitive pattern of the action, a state of being – it does not resolve anything: BLANCHE I'm not used to such MITCH Naw, it's a shame this had to happen when you just got here. But don't take it serious. BLANCHE Violence] Is so MITCH Set down on the steps and have a cigarette with e. (308) Anxiety and conflict have become permanent and unresolvable, inconclusive. It is not clear what, if anything, they mean. Unlike realistic drama, which produces clashes in order to push the action forward, Streetcar disallows its events a clarity of function, an orderliness. The ordering of events, which constitutes the temporality of realism, is thus no less arbitrary in Streetcar than the ordering of spade: the outside keeps becoming the inside, and vice versa. Williams has done more to relativize space in Streetcar than he did in The Glass Menagerie, where he visualized the fourth wall: here the outer wall appears and disappears more than a half-dozen times, often in the middle of a â€Å"scene,† drawing attention to the spatial illusion rather than making its boundaries absolute. The effect on spatial metaphor is that we are not allowed to forget that it is metaphor and consequently capable of infinite extensions and retractions. As we might expect, then, struggle over territory between Stanley and Blanche (â€Å"Hey, canary bird] Toots] Get OUT of the BATHROOM]† 367 ) — which indeed results in Stanley's reasserting the male as â€Å"King† (37I6 and pushing Blanche offstage, punished and defeated — is utterly unanalytical and unsubtle: â€Å"She'll go] Period. P. S. She'll go Tuesday]† (367). While the expressionistic sequence beginning in Scene Six with Blanche's recollection of â€Å"The Grey oy† (355) relativizes space and time, evoking Blanche's memories, it also seems to drain her expressive power. By the time Stanley is about to rape her she mouths the kinds of things Williams put on screens in The Glass Menagerie: â€Å"In desperate, desperate circumstances] Help me] Caught in a trap† (400). She is establishing her emotions like sign-posts: â€Å"Stay back] †¦ I warn you, don't, I'm in danger]† (40I). What had seemed a way into Blanche's char acter has had the effect of externalizing her feelings so much that they become impersonal. In Streetcar, space does not provide, as it does in realistic drama, an objective mooring for a character's psychology: it keeps turning inside out, obliterating the spatial distinctions that had helped to define the realistic character as someone whose inner life drove the action. Now the driving force of emotion replaces the subtlety of expectation, leaving character out in space, dangling: â€Å"There isn't time to be — † Blanche explains into the phone (399); faced with a threatening proximity, she phones long-distance, and forgets to hang up. The expressionistic techniques of the latter half of he play abstract the individual from the milieu, and emotion begins to dominate the representation of events. In Scene Ten, where Blanche and Stanley have their most violent and erotic confrontation, the play loses all sense of boundary. The front of the house is already transparent; but now Williams also dissolves the rear wall, so that beyond the scene with Blanche and Sta nley we can see what is happening on the next street: A prostitute has rolled a drunkard. He pursues her along the walk, overtakes her and then is a struggle. A policeman's whistle breaks it up. The figures disappear. Some moments later the Negro Woman appears around the corner with a sequined bag which the prostitute had dropped on the walk. She is rooting excitedly through it. (399) The mise en scene exposes more of the realistic world than before, since now we see the outside as well as the inside of the house at once, and yet the effect is one of intense general paranoia: the threat of violence is â€Å"real,† not â€Å"remembered† and it is everywhere. The walls have become â€Å"spaces† along which frightening, â€Å"sinuous† shadows weave — â€Å"lurid,† â€Å"grotesque and menacing† (398-99). The parameters of Blanche's presence are unstable images of threatening â€Å"flames† of desire, and this sense of sexual danger seems to draw the action toward itself. So it is as though Blanche somehow â€Å"suggests† rape to Stanley — it is already in the air, we can see it being given to him as if it were a thought: â€Å"You think I'll interfere with you? Ha-ha] †¦ Come to think of it — maybe you wouldn't be bad to — interfere with†¦ † (40I). The â€Å"inner-outer† distinctions of both realistic and expressionistic representation are shown coming together here. Williams makes no effort to suggest that the â€Å"lurid† expressionistic images in Scene Ten are all in Blanche's mind, as cinematic point-of-view would: the world outside the house is the realistic world of urban poverty and violence. But it is also the domain of the brutes, whose â€Å"inhuman jungle voices rise up† (40I) as Stanley, snakelike, tongue between his teeth, closes in. The play seems to swivel on this moment, when the logic of appearance and essence, the individual and the abstract, turns inside-out, like the set, seeming to occupy for once the same space. It is either the demolition of realistic objectivity or the transition-point at which realism takes over some new territory. At this juncture â€Å"objective† vision becomes an â€Å"outside† seen from inside; for the abstraction that allows realism to represent truth objectively cannot itself be explained as objectivity. The surface in Scene Ten seems to be disclosing, without our having to look too deeply, a static primal moment beneath the immediacy of the action — the sexual taboo underneath realistic discourse: BLANCHE Stay back] Don't you come toward me another tep or I'll STANLEY What? BLANCHE Some awful thing will happen] It will] STANLEY What are you putting on now? They are now both inside the bedroom BLANCHE I warn you, don't, I'm in danger] (40I) What â€Å"will happen† in the bedroom does not have a name, or even an agency. The incestuous relation lies beyond the moral and social order of marriage and the family, adaptation and eugenics, not t o mention (as Williams minds us here) the fact that it is unmentionable. Whatever words Blanche uses to describe it scarcely matter. As Stella says, â€Å"I couldn't believe her story and go on living with Stanley† (405). The rape in Streetcar thus seems familiar and inevitable, even to its â€Å"characters,† who lose the shape of characters and become violent antagonists as if on cue: â€Å"Oh] So you want some roughhouse] All right, let's have some roughhouse]† (402). When Blanche sinks to her knees, it is as if the action is an acknowledgment. Stanley holds Blanche, who has become â€Å"inert†; he carries her to the bed. She is not only silent but crumpled, immobile, while he takes over control and agency. He literally places her on the set. But Williams does not suggest that Stanley is conscious and autonomous; on the contrary the scene is constructed so as to make him as unindividuated as Blanche: they seem, at this crucial point, more than ever part of an allegorical landscape. In a way, it is the impersonality of the rape that is most telling: the loss of individuality and the spatial distinctions that allow for â€Å"character† are effected in a scene that expressionistically dissolves character into an overwhelming mise en scene that, itself, seems to make things happen. The â€Å"meaning† of the rape is assigned by the play, denying â€Å"Stanley† and â€Å"Blanche† any emotion. Thus, the rape scene ends without words and without conflict: the scene has become the conflict, and its image the emotion. Perhaps Streetcar — and Williams — present problems for those interested in Pirandellian metatheatre. Metatheatre assumes a self-consciousness of the form; but Williams makes the â€Å"form† everything. It is not arbitrary, or stifling. Stanley and Blanche cannot be reimagined; or, put another way, they cannot be imagined to reimagine themselves as other people, in other circumstances entirely. Character is the expression of the form; it is not accidental, or originary. Like Brecht, Williams does not see character as a humanist impulse raging against fatal abstractions. (In a play like The Good Person of Setzuan, for example, Brecht makes a kind of comedy of this â€Å"tragic† notion — which is of course the notion of â€Å"tragedy. â€Å") Plays are about things other than people: they are about what people think, and feel, and yet they remove these things to a distance, towards the representation of thoughts and feelings, which is something else again. If this seems to suggest that the rape in Streetcar is something other than a rape, and so not a rape, it also suggests that it is as much a rape as it is possible for it to be; it includes the understanding that comes from exposing the essence of appearances, as Williams says, seeing from outside what we cannot see from within. At the same time, and with the same motion, the scene exposes its own scenic limitations for dramatizing that which must inevitably remain outside the scene — namely, the act it represents. Both the surface â€Å"street scene† and the jungle antecedents of social order are visible in the rape scene, thoroughly violating the norms of realism's analytical space. When Stanley â€Å"springs† at Blanche, overturning he table, it is clear that a last barrier has been broken down, and now there is no space outside the jungle. â€Å"We've had this date with each other from the beginning]† We have regressed to some awful zero-point (or hour) of our beginning. (A â€Å"fetid swamp,† Time critic Louis Kronenberger said of Williams' plays, by way of description. (7) We are also back at the heart of civilization, at its root, the incest taboo, and the center of sexuality, which is oddly enough also the center of realism — the family, where â€Å"sexuality is ‘incestuous' from the start. â€Å"(8) At the border of civilization and the swamp is the sexual transgression whose suppression is the source of all coercive order. Through allegory, W illiams makes explicit what realistic discourse obscures, forcing the sexuality that propels discourse into the content of the scene. The destruction of spatial oundaries visualizes the restless discourse of desire, that uncontainable movement between inside and outside. â€Å"Desire,† Williams writes in his short story â€Å"Desire and the Black Masseur† (I942-46), â€Å"is something that is made to occupy a larger space than that which is afforded by the individual being. â€Å"(9) The individual being is only the measure of a measurelessness that goes far out into space. â€Å"Desire† derives from the Latin sidus, â€Å"star† (â€Å"Stella for Star]† 250, 25I ); an archaic sense is â€Å"to feel the loss of†: the ndividual is a sign of incompleteness, not self-sufficiency, whose defining gesture is an indication of the void beyond the visible, not its closure. The consciousness of desire as a void without satisfaction is the rejection o f realism's â€Å"virtual space,† which tried to suggest that its fractured space implied an unseen totality. Realism's objectivity covered up its literariness, as if the play were not created from nothing, but evolved out of a ready-made logic, a reality one had but to look to see. But literature answers the desire for a fullness that remains unfulfilled — it never intersects reality, never completes a trajectory, it remains in orbit. The nothing from which literature springs, whole, cannot be penetrated by a vision, even a hypothetical one, and no time can be found for its beginning. As Paul de Man reasons in his discussion of Levi-Strauss' metaphor of â€Å"virtual focus,† logical sight-lines may be imaginary, but they are not â€Å"fiction,† any more than â€Å"fiction† can be explained as logic: The virtual focus is a quasi-objective structure osited to give rational integrity to a process that exists independently of the self. The subject merely fills in, with the dotted line of geometrical construction, what natural reason had not bothered to make explicit; it has a passive and unproblematic role. The â€Å"virtual focus† is, strictly speaking, a nothing, but its nothingness concerns us very little, since a mere act of r eason suffices to give it a mode of being that leaves the rational order unchallenged. The same is not true of the imaginary source of fiction. Here the human self has experienced the void within itself and the invented fiction, far from tilling the void, asserts itself as pure nothingness, our nothingness stated and restated by a subject that is the agent of its own instability. (I9) Nothingness, then, the impulse of â€Å"fiction,† is not the result of a supposed originary act of transgression, a mere historical lapse at the origin of history that can be traced or filled in by a language of logic and analysis; on the contrary fiction is the liberation of a pure consciousness of desire as unsatisfied yearning, a space without boundaries. Yet we come back to Blanche's rape by her brother-in-law, which seems visibly to re-seal the laws of constraint, to justify that Freudian logic of lost beginnings. Reenacting the traumatic incestuous moment enables history to begin over again, while the suppression of inordinate desire resumes the order of sanity: Stella is silenced; Blanche is incarcerated. And if there is some ambivalence about her madness and her exclusion it is subsumed in an argument for order and a healthy re-direction of desire. In the last stage direction, Stanley's groping fingers discover the opening of Stella's blouse. The final set-up feels inevitable; after all, the game is still â€Å"Seven-card stud,† and aren't we going to have to â€Å"go on† by playing it? The play's turn to realistic logic seems assured, and Williams is still renouncing worlds. He points to the closure of the analytical reading with deft disingenuousness. Closure was always just next door to entrapment: Williams seems to be erasing their boundary-lines. Madness, the brand of exclusion, objectifies Blanche and enables her to be analyzed and confined as the embodiment of non-being, an expression of something beyond us and so structured in language. As Stanley puts it, â€Å"There isn't a goddam thing but imagination] †¦ And lies and conceit and tricks]† (398). Foucault has argued, in Madness and Civilization, that the containment of desire's excess through the exclusion of madness creates a conscience on the perimeters of society, setting up a boundary between inside and outside: â€Å"The madman is put into the interior of the exterior, and inversely† (II). (I0) Blanche is allegorically a reminder that liberty if taken too far can also be captivity, just as her libertinage coincides with her desire for death (her satin robe is a passionate red, she calls Stanley her â€Å"executioner,† etc. . And Blanche senses early on the threat of confinement; she keeps trying perversely) to end the play: â€Å"I have to plan for us both, to get us both — out]† she tells Stella, after the fight with Stanley that seems, to Blanche, so final (320). But in the end the play itself seems to have some troub le letting go of Blanche. Having created its moving boundary line, it no longer knows where to put her: what â€Å"space† does her â€Å"madness† occupy? As the dialogue suggests, she has to go – somewhere; she has become excessive. Yet she keeps coming back: â€Å"I'm not quite ready. â€Å"Yes] Yes, I forgot something]† (4I2 4I4). Again, as in the rape scene, she is chased around the bedroom, this time by the Matron, while â€Å"The ‘Varsouviana' is filtered into a weird distortion, accompanied by the cries and noises of the jungle,† the â€Å"lurid,† â€Å"sinuous† reflections on the walls (4I4). The Matron's lines are echoed by â€Å"other mysterious voices† (4I5) somewhere beyond the scene; she sounds like a â€Å"firebell† (4I5). â€Å"Matron† and â€Å"Doctor† enter the play expressionistically, as functional agents, and Blanche's paranoia is now hers alone: the street is not visible. The walls do not disintegrate, they come alive. Blanche is inside her own madness, self-imprisoned: her madness is precisely her enclosure within the image. (II) In her paranoid state, Blanche really cannot â€Å"get out,† because there no longer is an outside: madness transgresses and transforms boundaries, as Foucault notes, â€Å"forming an act of undetermined content† (94). It thus negates the image while imprisoned within it; the boundaries of the scene are not helping to define Blanche but reflecting her back to herself. Blanche's power is not easy to suppress; she is a eminder that beneath the appearance of order something nameless has been lost: â€Å"What's happened here? I want an explanation of what's happened here. † she says, â€Å"with sudden hysteria† (407-8). It is a reasonable request that cannot be reasonably answered. This was also Williams' problem at the end of The Glass Menagerie: how to escape from the image when it seems to have bee n given too much control, when its reason is absolute? Expressionism threatens the reason of realistic mise en scene by taking it perhaps too far, stretching the imagination beyond limits toward an absoluteness of the image, a desire of desire. The â€Å"mimetic† mirror now becomes the symbol of madness: the image no longer simply reflects desire (desire of, desire for), but subsumes the mirror itself into the language of desire. When Blanche shatters her mirror (39I) she (like Richard II) shows that her identity has already been fractured; what she sees in the mirror is not an image, it is indistinguishable from herself. And she cries out when the lantern is torn off the lightbulb, because there is no longer a space between the violence she experiences and the image of that violence. The inner and the outer worlds fuse, the reflecting power of the image is destroyed as it becomes fully self-reflective. The passion of madness exists somewhere in between determinism and expression, which at this point â€Å"actually form only one and the same movement which cannot be dissociated except after the fact. â€Å"(I2) But realism, that omnivorous discourse, can subsume even the loss of the subjective-objective distinction — when determinism equals expression — and return to some quasi-objective perspective. Thus at the very moment when all space seems to have been conquered, filled in and opened up, there is a need to parcel it out again into clearly distinguishable territories. Analysis imprisons desire. At the end of A Streetcar Named Desire, there is a little drama. Blanche's wild expressionistic images are patronized and pacified by theatricality: â€Å"I — just told her that — we'd made arrangements for her to rest in the country. She's got it mixed in her mind with Shep Huntleigh† (404-5). Her family plays along with Blanche's delusions, even to costuming her in her turquoise seahorse pin and her artificial violets. The Matron tries to subdue her with physical violence, but Blanche is only really overcome by the Doctor's politeness. Formerly an expressionistic â€Å"type,† having â€Å"the unmistakable aura of the state institution with its cynical detachment† (4II), the Doctor †¦ takes off his hat and now he becomes personalized. The unhuman quality goes. His voice is gentle and reassuring s he crosses to Blanche and crouches in front of her. As he speaks her name, her terror subsides a little. The lurid reflections fade from the walls, the inhuman cries and noises die our and her own hoarse crying is calmed. 4I7) Blanche's expressionistic fit is contained by the Doctor's realistic transformation: he is particularized, he can play the role of gentleman caller. â€Å"Jacket, Doctor? † the Matron asks him. † He smiles †¦ It won't be necessary† (4I7-I8). As they exit, Blanche's visionary excesses have clearly been surrendered to him: â€Å"She allows him to lead her as if she were blind. † Stylistically, he, realism replaces expressionism at the exact moment when expressionism's â€Å"pure subjectivity† seems ready to annihilate the subject, to result in her violent subjugation. At this point the intersubjective dialogue returns, clearly masking indeed blinding — the subjective disorder with a assuring form. If madness is perceived as a kind of â€Å"social failure,†(I3) social success is to be its antidote. Of course theater is a cure for madness: by dramatizing or literalizing the image one destroys it. Such theatricality might risk its own confinement in the image, and for an instant there may be a real struggle in the drama between the image and the effort to contain it. But the power of realism over expressionism makes this a rare occasion. For the â€Å"ruse,† Foucault writes, â€Å"†¦ ceaselessly confirming the delirium , does not bind it to its own truth without at the same time linking it to the necessity for its own suppression† (I89). Using illusion to destroy illusion requires a forgetting of the leap of reason and of the trick it plays on optics. To establish order, the theatrical device repeats the ordering principle it learns from theater, the representational gap between nature and language, a gap it has to deny: â€Å"The artificial reconstitution of delirium constitutes the real distance in which the sufferer recovers his liberty† (I90). In fact there is no return to â€Å"intersubjectivity,† just a kind of formal recognition of it: â€Å"Whoever you are — I have always depended on the kindness of strangers. † Streetcar makes the return to normality gentle and theatrical, while â€Å"revealing† much more explicitly than The Glass Menagerie the violence that is thereby suppressed. This violence is not â€Å"reality,† but yet another theater underneath the theater of ruse; the cure of illusion is ironically â€Å"effected by the suppression of theater† (I9I). The realistic containment at the end of Streetcar hus does not quite make it back all the way to realism's seamlessly objective â€Å"historical† truth. History, structured as it is by â€Å"relations of power, not relations of meaning,†(I4) sometimes assumes the power of reality itself, the platonic Form behind realism, so to speak, When it becomes the language of authority, history also assumes the authorit y of language, rather naively trusting language to be the reality it represents. The bloody wars and strategic battles are soon forgotten into language, the past tense, the fait accompli. Useless to struggle against the truth that is past: history is the waste of time and the corresponding conquest of space, and realism is the already conquered territory, the belated time with the unmistakable stamp of authenticity. It gets applause simply by being plausible; it forgets that it is literature. To read literature, de Man says, we ought to remember what we have learned from it — that the expression and the expressed can never entirely coincide, that no single observation point is trustworthy (I0-II). Streetcar's powerful explosion of allegorical language and expressionistic images keeps its vantage point on the move, at a remove. Every plot is untied. Realism rewards analysis, and Williams invites it, perversely, but any analysis results in dissection. To provide Streetcar with an exegesis seems like gratuitous destruction, â€Å"deliberate cruelty. † Perhaps no other American writer since Dickinson has seemed so easy to crush. And this consideration ought to give the writer who has defined Blanche's â€Å"madness† some pause. Even the critical awareness of her tidy incarceration makes for too tidy a criticism. In Derrida's analysis of Foucault's Madness and Civilization, he questions the possibility of â€Å"historicizing† something that does not exist outside of the imprisonment of history, of speech — madness â€Å"simply says the other of each determined form of the logos. â€Å"(I5) Madness, Derrida proposes, is a â€Å"hyperbole† out of which â€Å"finite-thought, that is to say, history† establishes its â€Å"reign† by the â€Å"disguised internment, humiliation, fettering and mockery of the madman within us, of the madman who can only be a fool of a logos which is father, master and king† (60-6I). Philosophy arises from the â€Å"confessed terror of going mad† (62); it is the â€Å"economic† embrace of madness (6I-62) To me then Williams' play seems to end quite reasonably with a struggle, at the point in the play at which structure and coherence must assert themselves (by seeming to) — that is, the end of the play. The end must look back, regress, so as to sum up and define. It has no other choice. The theatrical ending always becomes, in fact, the real ending. It cannot remain metaphorically an â€Å"end† And what is visible at the end is Blanche in trouble, trapped, mad. She is acting as though she believed in a set of events — Shep Huntleigh's rescue of her — that the other characters, by their very encouragement, show to be unreal. There is a fine but perhaps important line here: Blanche's acting is no more convincing than theirs; but — and this is a point Derrida makes about madness — she is thinking things before they can be historicized, that is, before they have happened or even have been shown to be likely or possible (reasonable). Is not what is called finitude possibility as crisis? † Derrida asks (62). The other characters, who behave as if what Blanche is saying were real, underline her absurdity precisely by invoking reality. Blanche's relations to history and to structural authority are laid bare by this â€Å"forced† ending, in which she repeatedly questions the meaning of meaning: â€Å"What has happened here? † This question implies the relativity of space and moment, and so of â€Å"ev ents† and their meanings, which are at-this point impossible to separate. That is why it is important that the rape suggest an overthrow of meaning, not only through a stylized emphasis on its own representation, but also through its strongly relativized temporality. (Blanche warns against what â€Å"will happen,† while Stanley says the event is the future, the fulfillment of a â€Å"date† or culmination in time promised â€Å"from the beginning. â€Å") Indeed, the problem of madness lies precisely in this gap between past and future, in the structural slippage between the temporal and the ontological. For if madness, as Derrida suggests, can exist at all outside of opposition (to reason), it must exist in â€Å"hyperbole,† in the excess prior to its incarceration in structure, meaning, time, and coherence. A truly â€Å"mad† person would not objectify madness — would not, that is, define and locate it. That is why all discussions of â€Å"madness† tend to essentialize it, by insisting, like Blanche's fellow characters at the end of Streetcar, that it is real, that it exists. And the final stroke of logic, the final absurdity, is that in order to insist that madness exists, to objectify and define and relate to it, it is necessary to deny it any history. Of course â€Å"madness† is not at all amenable to history, to structure, causality, rationality, recognizable â€Å"though† But this denial of the history of madness has to come from within history itself, from within the language of structure and â€Å"meaning. † Blanche's demand to know â€Å"what has happened here† — her insistence that something â€Å"has happened,† however one takes it — has to be unanswerable. It cannot go any further. In theatrical terms, the â€Å"belief† that would make that adventure of meaning possible has to be denied, shut down. But this theatrical release is not purifying; on the contrary, it has got up close to the plague, to the point at which reason and belief contaminate each other: the: possibility of thinking madly. Reason and madness can cohabitate with nothing but a thin curtain between. And curtains are not walls, they do not provide solid protection. (I6) Submitting Williams' allegorical language to ealistic analysis, then, brings you to conclusions: the imprisonment of madness, the loss of desire. The moral meaning smooths things over. Planning to â€Å"open up† Streetcar for the film version with outside scenes and flashbacks, Elia Kazan found it would not work — he ended up making the walls movable so they could actually close in more with every scene. (I7) The sense of entrapment was fundamental: Williams' dramatic language is its elf too free, too wanton, it is a trap, it is asking to be analyzed, it lies down on the couch. Kazan saw this perverse desire in the play — he thought Streetcar was about Williams' cruising for tough customers: The reference to the kind of life Tennessee was leading rear the time was clear. Williams was aware of the dangers he was inviting when he cruised; he knew that sooner or later he'd be beaten up. And he was. (35I) But Kazan undervalues the risk Williams is willing to take. It is not just violence that cruising invites, but death. And that is a desire that cannot be realized. Since there is really no way to get what you want, you have to put yourself in a position where you do not always want what you get. Pursuing desire requires a heroic vulnerability. At the end of â€Å"Desire and the Black Masseur† the little masochistic artist/saint, Anthony Burns, is cannibalized by the masseur, who has already beaten him to a pulp. Burns, who is thus consumed by his desire, makes up for what Williams calls his â€Å"incompletion. † Violence, or submission to violence, is analogous to art, for Williams: both mask the inadequacies of form. Yes, it is perfect,† thinks the masseur, whose manipulations have tortured Bums to death. â€Å"It is now completed]†(I8) NOTBS I Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire, in The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, vol. I (New York, I97I), 246. Subsequent references are to this edition and rear nod by page number in the text. 2 See Conversations with Tennessee Williams, ed. Albert J. Devlin (Jackson, Miss . , I986). 3 Paul de Man, Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism, 2nd ed. , revised (Minneapolis, I983), I2. See de Man, Blindness and Insight, I87ff, where he outlines the critical movements in Western Europe and the U. S. that have thus â€Å"openly raise d the question of the intentionality of rhetorical figures† (I88). Among the critics he cites are Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, and Michel Foucault (to whose work I will turn later in this essay). Subsequent references to Blindness and Insight are noted by page number in the text. 5 Tennessee Williams, The Gloss Menagerie (New York, I97I). 6 Stanley is quoting Huey Long. 7 See Gore Vidal's â€Å"Introduction† to Tennessee Williams' Collected Short Stories (New York, I985) xxv. 8 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. I: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York, I978), I08-9. 9. Tennessee Williams, â€Å"Desire and the Black Masseur,† in Collected Stories (New York, I985), 2I7. I0 Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. Richard Howard (New York, I965). II. Ibid. , 94. I2 Ibid. , 88. I3 Ibid. , 259-60. Subsequent references are noted by page number in the text. I4 Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected