Ideologies of Management

Ideologies of Management The extent of complexity in the organisational management processes requires many questions to be raised in the pursuit of effective strategy for management HRM and employees relation. For managers, what important is the know-how, what, why and how to take the right decisions and how to release these decisions to employees. For them, the challenge is how to use the information gathered and also know how to ignore it. Also, their challenge focuses on how to mix being competitors and being evolver, how to face this complex and non-linear dynamics of the business environment and stay lean and agile. The dilemma is to keep the relation to employees in a good state such that motivation and satisfaction are the status quo, meanwhile the common good for the business is realised. This is why, tangible and intangible have been mixed, and this is why many call for human factor and conscious to play a role. This is difficult, but not impossible, the evidence is produced by Brown and Eisenhardt (1998) quoting companies such as Nike, Microsoft, Virgin and others. Industrial relations are very much connected to the trade and workers unions history. At the beginning of the last century there was a leaning towards mass labour and their unions. Trade Unions moved from strength to strength until it started to collapse due to many unworthy tactics and unwelcome strikes which brought many industries to standstill situations. Governments, including the British government, started to attack militancy in trade unions. Industrial relation started to take new forms. Nowadays, many changes have occurred in industrial relations. Silva (1998) stated changes in industrial relations practices (rather than in institutions and systems) such as increased collective bargaining at enterprise level, flexibility in relation to forms of employment as well as in relation to working time and job functions have occurred as a result of such factors as heightened competition, rapid changes in products and processes and the increasing importance of skills, quality and prod uctivity. Management of todays organisations have the conviction that taking unilateral decision is in their own rights, and that it should not be challenged by employees, or even stakeholders. They consider that this is their duty to manage. The conviction follows the ideology of Unitarism. In this work, this notion of management will be discussed in the light of three ideologies which are Unitarism, Pluralism, and Marxism. However, I will start by looking at the concept of job regulation, which some see as the core of industrial relation. Then, the other parts of the question will be discussed within this context. The concept of job regulations in some authors views represents the core of industrial relations. Flanders (1965) stipulated that study of industrial relations should be limited to the institutions of job regulation. In this approach, (Oram, 1984) indicated that the human relations variable was given a relatively insignificant role in the explanation of behaviour in industrial relations. Although personal, or unstructured, relationships were acknowledged as being important, they were considered by Flanders to be outside the scope of industrial relations. Flanders (1965) made a distinction between internal and external job regulations. Internal job regulations are those rules and regulation that can be changed internally by management and subordinates without any outside authorisation. This internal regulation could be achieved unilaterally by the management or bilaterally through negotiation with employees. On the other hand external job regulations are those being imposed on the org anisation from outside agencies where they could be any third parties, state regulation or any outside stakeholders. Hence, it can be said that job regulations as such may forge the industrial relations and external job regulation may allow different forms of unions. As mentioned previously there are three perspectives on employment relations and these are Unitarism, Pluralism, and Marxism. Unitarism by definition has a set of characteristics. In Unitarism, the organization is considered as one unit that is working towards a single goal. It represents the happy family picture. It also follows that all members of the family, i.e. the organisation, are loyal. Unitalirsts do not believe in conflicts or disputes and they do not expect or accept it. Trade unions have no role to play in unitarism, no negotiations and no collective bargaining. Any of these issues would be considered a disruptive influence to the path of the organisation towards its goal. Management in Unitarism considers making unilateral decisions is the norm and any opposition to this is illogic and irrational. Unitarism has a paternalistic approach where it demands loyalty of all employees. Atkinson and Curtis (2004, p. 492) stated paternalistic approach to employee relations in many small companies was found to be largely still intact. The governments intention of developing partnerships in the employment relationship in order to promote greater fairness in the workplace has, to a significant extent, failed. Small companies may not be granting their employees all their statutory rights. The statement quoted indicates that in this approach there is a sense of unfairness in such ideology of unitarism, at least in the view of the author. Other authors such as Rodriguez and Rios (2007) see that paternalism is counterproductive to productivity. Rodriguez and Rios (2007, p. 356) stated Given this historical account, paternalism has been closely related to the traditional personalized social bond between a boss and his employees. The association also implies that paternalism and productivity are not compatible. In this paper we argue that some of the new modern labour bonds that are being established rise from the paternalistic womb. New fully modern bonds non paternalistic are present as well. Both are related to productivity under the condition that organizations act consistently with the premises under which the contracts are made. By consistent we mean non hypocritical relationships that realistically and sincerely take into account those premises to decide upon Human Resources management policies and practices. On the other hand, authors such as Lewis (1989) see that unitarism approach is what is required in the midst of recession. Lewis (1989) referred to Cressey and Mclnnes (1985) argue that the effect of the recession has been to downgrade the role of consultation. In the companies in which they reviewed the process of consultation, it was trivial and bland. Any lifeboat democracy, as they term it, brought about by the desire to improve co-operation in order to cope with the recession, is extremely fragile and will come to grief on the rocks of managerial prerogative. Moreover, some authors consider that unitarism is normal and required, for example Wilkinson, et al (1991) stated unitarism is an underlying theme which remains unquestioned. Implementation is se en as a matter of motivation, with the correct attitudes being instilled by simple training programmes. Black and Ackers (1998) termed the context of unitarism as looked upon in this investigation as macho management or direct control as a management style. The authors then referred to what they termed as new unitarism and indicated that there is now a shift towards such ideology. Black and Ackers (1998) suggest that management is shifting its emphasis, within the strategy of responsible autonomy, away from the shop stewards organisation towards the shop-floor worker. This involves a shift of issues from collective bargaining to consultation and an attempt to supplement or replace the workplace corporatism of the post-war period, with a greater stress on direct communications with and involvement of the shop floor. The new unitarism attempts to circumvent unions and restrict their scope rather than smashing them. In support of this Gunnigle (1992) views neo-unitarism as a unitarist perspective involving a range of HRM policies designed to eliminate employee need for collective representation. In this sense neo-unitarism is a diluted version of the old unitarism that is investigated here. The second perspective that will be discussed within the context of unilateral managerial decisions is pluralism. Keenoy and Anthony (1992) indicated that the 1970s debate about pluralism was centred on the appropriateness of pluralistic methods to the achievement of social justice; an ethical controversy regarding how the business organizations should be managed. Chigara (1995) indicated that Pluralism holds that employers and employees interests are diametrically opposed to each other, and that they are held in the balance by the common need of keeping the enterprise alive. For pluralists, the trade union is a welcome vehicle for communication. Oram (1984, p. 23) added to the above that Pluralists see trade unionism as merely one more example of a competitive pressure group which Western democratic society accommodates as a matter of course. Pluralists also see that within legal limits, trade union aspirations can be fulfilled sometimes by imposing their wishes in ways which manage ment may see as arbitrary. Trade unions are seen as presenting legitimate challenges to managerial rule with one outcome being in the form of agreed rules, regulating terms and conditions of employment. Dobson (1982) indicated that in the pluralist approach, it is implicit to industrial relations a great belief in the virtues of collective bargaining since it is the method which is used to resolve conflicts. Dobson (1982) stated that other forms of job regulation-especially unilateral regulation by employer, trade union and workgroup-are usually condemned, since they over-ride the interests of other groups. The author then aired the views of the critics to pluralism as stipulating that the legitimacy of collective bargaining is based on certain assumptions, most notably the assumption that all interest groups possess approximate equality of power, so that the eventual compromise reflects equal concessions by all the parties. Even the commonly used definition of collective bargaining of joint job regulation, seems to suggest equality between the parties. Dobson (1982) added that Critics of pluralism have argued that power is very rarely distributed equally, and since in the long run the employer can move his production and investment elsewhere, power is predominantly concentrated in the hands of the employer. For the very same reasons other researchers such as Gunnigle (1992) pointed out to the rise of Neo-pluralism. Gunnigle (1992) stated that Neo-pluralism presented a second type of HRM which involves moves towards greater consensualism and commitment in unionized companies. It is characterized by what might be termed a dualist approach, involving the use of HRM techniques such as direct communications with employees and performance related pay systems alongside established collective bargaining procedures. Pluralism then seem to think that organisation conflicts does exist and that employers and employees interests may be different, however, having accepted this they also accepted that these conflicts are resolvable and that trade unions and the process of collective bargaining are more than capable of attaining a resolution. This assumes that power is equally distributed between employers, employees and unions. Hence, collective bargaining works efficiently. However, researchers also doubt this assumption. Dobson (1982) disputed this unrealistic balance of power and stated A more realistic view of collective bargaining, which takes account of the varying power balances between employers and workers, would see collective bargaining straddling the continuum between unilateral worker regulation on the one hand and unilateral employer regulation on the other. Such an approach would bring into question the pluralist assumption that collective bargaining is necessarily good per se, for at the extremes of the continuum the substantive content of a collective agreement may be identical to that of a unilateral decision. Dobson as such dismisse d the application of collective bargaining as equal to unilateral decision within the imbalance of power that exists in reality. Ackers (1994) agrees with Dobsons view and stated Today, the narrow, institutional version of pluralism is unsustainable. Any view of industrial relations as simply collective bargaining would confine it to a minority activity in a declining sector of the economy. The third perspective on employment relationship is that of Marxism. Hyman (1975) is considered as the authority on Marxism in relation to industrial relations, albeit that he was criticized for being too theoretical in his approach. Wood (1976) referred to Davis criticising the work of Hyman as so abstract and general as to be almost worthless, in either theoretical or practical terms. Still, Hyman explain that worker grievances could only be expressed through collective bargaining and industrial actions. Barbash (2005) indicated that the Marxist model assumes the existence of class conflicts and it is built on the assumption of coalition formation. Marxism stipulates that coalition formation is based on classes that form from out of groups that are in the same authority position in the organisation. Marxism also assumes that classes are able to regulate conflicts and can bring change through negotiations. Marxists acknowledge unions but see the faults in them when in the interest o f workers they seek economic improvement rather than embarking on a revolutionary change and they accuse some unions and their members are subject to false consciousness and that they need to work towards their Leninist destiny. Marxists believes that capitalism creates and endorses monopolies and that capitalism has a powerful luring to the workers when they acquire some powers. Therefore the Marxism approach is to make a goal of overthrowing capitalism. It supports the notion that industrial relations are made by those that are involve in the production and gives the first importance to workers and their affair. It holds true that workers for capitalism are considered a burden on profit making. Marxists also held the view that workers contracts are imposed upon them and they do not enter to it freely and that makes them weak as individual and their strength is therefore lies in their coalition. Marxism sees conflict of interest between capital and workers and employment relations are formed through this conflict. Marxism also uphold the view that trade unions presents optimal solution for such conflicts and ironically Marxists views that institutions of joint regulation would enhance rather than limit managements position as they presume the continuation of capitalism rather than challenge it. From the above a conclusion can be drawn regarding the conviction of management that they have the right to unilateral decision making over human resource issues and that this right is legitimate and rational. It is obvious to many that the trade unions power has been in the last two decades in a decline state. Also, the power of collective bargaining has been in decline, especially after the rise of capitalism in Eastern Europe. The pluralistic approach was seen to be restrictive to the flair and individualistic behaviour of entrepreneurial organisations. Pluralism, whilst acknowledging the conflicts in employers and employees interests, it upholds the idea that survival of the organisation is the derived force to keep it going. Pluralists see trade unions are as presenting legitimate challenges to managerial rule and that it leads to a satisfactory outcome. In fact, each one of the two perspective unitarism and pluralism has its critics. For example, in unitarism there is no obviou s reason as why managers have the only say, and whether this is sensible. It can be argued against unitarism that it gives organisation values to managers and not to groups. If it is a fact of life that conflicts exist in organisations, unitarism does not seem to appreciate this. The same also could be said about pluralism, where it is based on assuming a balance of power that seldom exists in organisations. It also assumes that all conflicts are resolvable and that all those involved have no hidden agendas apart from the common good. It also assumes the full trust in each party; therefore it is unreal and impractical. In regard to Marxism, it was found, in my view, as a mere attack on capitalism and rejection of all of its principles based on naive attempt to show its drawbacks. Marxism hence, relay on giving power to unionists leaders and support the use of extreme measures to resolve conflicts. The concept of job regulations seems to be taken by many researchers as the centre for employment relations and that this relation is formed by both internal and external means. As such this concept may encapsulate all three perspectives in one as it contain unilateral, bilateral and collective as well as state efforts in forming the employment relation. In regard to the subject in question which discusses the unilateral decisions by managements over human resource issues and whether it is legitimate or not. I am of the opinion that it is unrealistic to think that management would allow such decisions to be made collectively. Even if on the face of it, they pretend that it is so. I found myself entirely agree with Lewis (1989) who stated The industrial relations debate about the reasons why management promote employee participation in decision making has run for many years. Much of the literature emphasises the theory that participation in the U.K. is more imagined than real. It gives employees the illusion of a say in organisational decision making whereas the reality is that management use the illusion as a mechanism for control of employees. In fact, this illusion is carried out everywhere and seems ingrained in any organisation. REFERENCES Ackers, P. (1994) Back to Basics? Industrial Relations and the Enterprise Culture. Employee Relations, 16(8), 32 47. Atkinson, C. And Curtis, S. (2004) The impact of Employment Regulation on The Employment Relationship in SMEs. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 11(4), 486 494. Black, J. and Ackers, P. (1998)The Japanisation of British Industry? A Case Study of Quality Circles in the Carpet Industry. Employee Relations, 10(6), 9-16. Barbash, K. (2005) Theories and Concepts in Comparative Industrial Relations. Blackwell. Brown, S. and Eisenhardt, K. (1998) Competing on The Edge. Harvard Business School Pr; ISBN: 0875847544. Chigara, B. (1995) Article 2 of Convention No.87: Precepts And Their Application A Global Assessment. Managerial Law, 37(6), 1-20. Cressey, P. and McInnes, J. (1985) The Recession and Industrial Relations. ESRC conference, University of Warwick, March 1985. Dobson, J. (1982) What is Good Industrial Relations? Employee Relations, 4(2), 5-10. Flanders, A. (1965) Industrial relations: what is wrong with the system? London: Faber. Gunnigle, P. (1992) Human Resource Management in Ireland. Employee Relations, 14(5), 5-22. 1 Hyman, R. (1975) Industrial Relations, a Marxist Introduction. Macmillan, 220. 2- Keenoy, T., Anthony, P. (1992) HRM: Metaphor, Meaning and Morality, in Blyton, P., Turnbull, P. (Eds), Reassessing Human Resource Management, London: Sage. 3- Lewis, P. (1989) Employee Participation in a Japanese-Owned British Electronics Factory: Reality or Symbolism? Employee Relations, 11(1), 3-9. 4- Oram, S. (1984) Industrial Relations and Ideology-An Alternative Approach. Employee Relations, 6(2), 22 26. 5- Rodriguez, D. And Rios, R. (2007) Latent premises of labor contracts: paternalism and productivity: Two cases from the banking industry in Chile. International Journal of Manpower, 28(5), 354 368. 6- Silva, S. (1998) Human Resource Management, Industrial Relations and Achieving Management Objectives. International Labour Organisation, ACT/EMP Publications. Available from: http://www.ilo.org. [Accessed: 24th October 2009]. 7- Wilkinson, A., Allen, P., and Snape, E. (1991) TQM and the Management of Labour. International Journal of Manpower, 12(6), 35-42. 8- Wood , S. (1976) The Radicalisation of Industrial Relations Theor. Personnel Review, 5(3), 52 57.

Identification After Gender Essay

Time episode â€Å"Fionna and Cake† and reading â€Å"Berengier of the Long Ass,† the expectations of genders are exposed through the reversal of roles in both of these pieces. The characters in these stories clearly demonstrate the expectations that certain males and females must negotiate in order to expose the problems when there is labeling of certain genders. Judith Butler’s analysis of gender is that it is performative- meaning that nobody really is a gender from the start; after watching the video and reading the text for this exercise, t is clear that Fionna and The Knight expose the misconceptions of gender throughout societies today. In our society today there are certain notions that many people have about what are â€Å"right† and â€Å"wrong† for males and females to wear, think, and act. There are certain things that are expected out of males- a toughness about them, an attitude that declares them as â€Å"the man of the house†- that is unfairly labeled upon every male in our society. Females are expected to be the ones who constantly act â€Å"girly’ and let the males do everything involving manual labor- this is an unfair label that is placed upon every female in our society. The video that Judith Butler takes part in is an example of a certain female who does not believe in conforming with the problems of the rest of our society- taking a stand against the â€Å"normal ideas† of the public. Judith Baker’s ideas are expressed throughout â€Å"Fionna and Cake† and â€Å"Berengier of the Long Ass,† when Fionna , The Lady, and The Knight expose these misconceptions by swapping roles; The Lady and Fionna act as the males, while Prince Gumball and The Knight act as the females. The idea that Fionna and The Lady â€Å"act as the males† in these stories define the problem that our society has when it omes to the definition of males and females. There are certain expectations that must be fulfilled when it comes to being seen as a male or female, but in these two pieces (video and story), the main characters both reject the expectations, or try and fulfill them unsuccessfully. In the Adventure Time episode â€Å"Fionna and Cake† Fionna and Prince Gumball act as their opposite gender in many ways. Throughout â€Å"Fionna and Cake† Fionna refuses to completely fulfill these expectations that are placed among most females. Fionna goes through the majority of the video as a tomboy who would rather carry weapons in her person than make-up. However, by the end of the video she adapts to the â€Å"normal† expectations for females by dressing up in a dress and trying to flatter Prince Gumball. In order for Fionna to expose the expectations of certain genders, Fionna goes to the extreme limit when trying to act as a boy; for there is nothing more â€Å"manly’ for a human-being to do than to save someone’s life. Fionna saves Prince Gumball, which in turn creates a relationship between the two that was not there before. It becomes evident that there is a gender swap in this video when Fionna is the one who is catching Prince Gumball when he falls from the ceiling. o infatuate Fionna, portraying the inner-man of Princess Ice, and getting the inner- woman out of Fionna. Fionna Justifies the ideas of Judith Butler’s by showing the audience that it took awhile for her to find her preferred gender- switching preferences multiple times between the beginning and end of the video. Fionna proves that any female can be happy doing â€Å"male-type† things, but also can be happy with a man, which goes against the norm of being a â€Å"tom boy. † By the end of the story it is clear that Fionna chooses to give up the â€Å"girly’ personality that is expected mong women, while consistently being herself, and attracting the Prince of her dreams. In the reading â€Å"Berengier of the Long Ass,† The Knight and his Lady successfully pull off an epic gender swap that The Knight would not be very proud of. Throughout the beginning of the story the Lady constantly criticizes her husband for being lazy and not being a â€Å"chivalrous† Knight. Because she questions the Knight’s manhood, the Knight forces himself to make a change. The Knight then tries to fulfill the expectations of Knights in our society by creating fake battles in the forests to impress his wife. Because he does a bad Job of faking his fatigue and injuries after these fake battles, the wife begins to catch on to his tricks. The wife then follows him to the next â€Å"battle† realizing that what he was saying the whole entire time was a fraud. Butler’s applications to gender being performative comes into play here, because the Knight tries so hard to be a â€Å"man† -that his life turns upside down because of it. The Knight’s wife then brings back another guy to the house, knowing that because her husband is a â€Å"woman† in her eyes, he will not even think about doing anything to harm her. When the Knight realizes that his attempt at conforming to the public’s interpretation ofa knight has failed, he feels as though he is a failure- for the only important in most knights’ life is the chivalrous way in which they live. A Knight’s expectation is to be the most brave, genuine, and honest guy of all; however, in this case the knight’s wife was more of a knight than he was. The Knight in this story tried to adapt to the expectations that are naturally placed on him, and instead of adapting he completely failed at his attempt. Most people are better off being their atural-selves than trying to fulfill the expectations that others place on them. After analyzing Fionna, Prince Gumball, The Knight, and his wife, it is obvious that being yourself leads to the most happiness between one and their partner. Fionna maintains her inner-boy personality and ends up being the happiest girl in the world. The Knight tries to change his personality and ends up watching his wife hang out with another man. Judith Butler’s ideas really make sense after analyzing these characters because of the way in which characters can reject the expectations of their gender and be completely happy because of it.

Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse

On December 25, 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev announced the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Using the words, â€Å"We’re now living in a new world,† Gorbachev effectively agreed to end the Cold War, a tense 40-year period during which the Soviet Union and the United States held the world at the brink of nuclear holocaust. At 7:32 p.m. that evening, the Soviet flag above the Kremlin was replaced with the flag of the Russian Federation, led by its first president, Boris Yeltsin. At the same moment, what had been the world’s largest communist state broke into 15 independent republics, leaving America as the last remaining global superpower. Of the many factors leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union, a rapidly failing post World War II economy and weakened military, along with a series of forced social and political reforms like perestroika and glasnost, played major roles in the fall of the mighty Red Bear. The Collapse of the Soviet Union Fast Facts The Soviet Union officially dissolved on December 25, 1991, effectively ending the 40-year-long Cold War with the United States.When the Soviet Union dissolved, its 15 former Communist Party-controlled republics gained independence, leaving the United States as the world’s last remaining superpower.The Soviet Union’s failing post-World War II economy and weakened military, along with public dissatisfaction with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s loosened economic and political policies of perestroika and glasnost, contributed to its ultimate collapse. The Soviet Economy Throughout its history, the Soviet Union’s economy depended on a system under which the central government, the Politburo, controlled all sources of industrial and agricultural production. From the 1920s to the start of World War II, the â€Å"Five Year Plans† of Joseph Stalin placed the production of capital goods, like military hardware, over the production of consumer goods. In the old economic argument of â€Å"guns or butter,† Stalin chose guns. Based on its world leadership in petroleum production, the Soviet economy remained strong until the German invasion of Moscow in 1941. By 1942, the Soviet Gross Domestic Product (GDP) had plummeted by 34%, crippling the nation’s industrial output and retarding its overall economy until the 1960s. In 1964, new Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev allowed industries to emphasize profit over production. By 1970, the Soviet economy reached its high point, with a GDP estimated at about 60% that of the United States. In 1979, however, costs of the Afghanistan War took the wind out of the Soviet economy’s sails. By the time the USSR withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, its $2,500 billion GDP had dropped to just over 50% of the United States’ $4,862 billion. Even more telling, the per capita income in the USSR (pop. 286.7 million) was $8,700, compared to $19,800 in the United States (pop. 246.8 million).   Despite Brezhnev’s reforms, the Politburo refused to increase the production of consumer goods. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, average Soviets stood in breadlines as Communist Party leaders amassed ever greater wealth. Witnessing the economic hypocrisy, many young Soviets refused to buy into the old-line communist ideology. As poverty weakened the argument behind the Soviet system, the people demanded reforms. And reform they would soon get from Mikhail Gorbachev. Soviet Soldier with Soviet Flag. Corbis Historica / Getty Images Gorbachev’s Policies In 1985, the Soviet Union’s last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, came to power ready to launch two sweeping policies of reform: perestroika and glasnost. Under perestroika, the Soviet Union would adopt a mixed communist-capitalist economic system similar to that of modern-day China. While the government still planned the direction of the economy, the Politburo allowed free-market forces like supply and demand to dictate some decisions on how much of what would be produced. Along with economic reform, Gorbachev’s perestroika was intended to draw new, younger voices into elite circles of the Communist Party, eventually resulting in the free democratic election of the Soviet government. However, while the post-perestroika elections offered voters a choice of candidates, including for the first time, non-communists, the Communist Party continued to dominate the political system. Glasnost was intended to remove some of the decades-old limitations on the daily lives of the Soviet people. Freedoms of speech, the press, and religion were restored, and hundreds of former political dissidents were released from prison. In essence, Gorbachev’s glasnost policies promised the Soviet people a voice and the freedom to express it, which they would soon do. Unforeseen by Gorbachev and the Communist Party, perestroika and glasnost did more to cause the fall of the Soviet Union than they did to prevent it. Thanks to perestroika’s economic drift toward Western capitalism, coupled with glasnost’s apparent loosening of political restrictions, the government that Soviet people once feared suddenly appeared vulnerable to them. Seizing on their new powers to organize and speak out against the government, they began to demand the total end of Soviet rule. Chernobyl Disaster Exposes Glasnost The Soviet people learned the realities of glasnost in the aftermath of the explosion of a nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl power station in Pryp’yat, now in Ukraine, on April 26, 1986. The explosion and fires spread more than 400 times the amount of radioactive fallout as the Hiroshima atomic bomb over much of the western USSR and other European countries. Instead of immediately and openly informing the people of the explosion, as promised under glasnost, Communist Party officials suppressed all information about the disaster and its dangers to the public. Despite the risk of radiation exposure, May Day parades in the affected areas were held as planned, as paid covert government agents called â€Å"apparatchiks† quietly removed Geiger counters from school science classrooms. Not until May 14—18 days after the disaster—did Gorbachev issue his first official public statement, in which he called Chernobyl a â€Å"misfortune† and slammed Western media reports as a â€Å"highly immoral campaign† of â€Å"malicious lies.† However, as people in the fallout zone and beyond reported suffering from the effects of radiation poisoning, the falsehoods of the Communist Party propaganda was exposed. As a result, public trust in the government and glasnost was shattered. Decades later, Gorbachev would call Chernobyl â€Å"perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union five years later.† Democratic Reform Throughout the Soviet Block At the time it dissolved, the Soviet Union was composed of 15 separate constitutional republics. Within each republic, citizens of diverse ethnicities, cultures, and religions were often at odds with each other. Especially in the outlying republics in Eastern Europe, discrimination against the ethnic minorities by the Soviet majority created constant tension. Beginning in 1989, nationalist movements in the Warsaw Pact Soviet satellite nations, such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia resulted in regime changes. As the former Soviet allies divided along ethnic lines, similar separatist independence movements emerged in several of the Soviet republics—most notably, Ukraine. Even during World War II, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army had conducted a guerilla warfare campaign for Ukrainian independence against both Germany and the Soviet Union. After Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev, as the new leader of the Soviet Union, allowed an ethnic Ukrainian revival, and in 1954, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic became a founding member of the United Nations. However, the continued repression of political and cultural rights by the Soviet central government in Ukraine spurred renewed separatist movements in the other republics, which fatally fractured the Soviet Union. The Berlin Wall Since 1961, the heavily guarded Berlin Wall had divided Germany into Soviet-communist ruled East Germany and democratic West Germany. The wall prevented—often violently—dissatisfied East Germans from fleeing to freedom in the West. East Berliners climb onto the Berlin Wall to celebrate the effective end of the citys partition, 31st December 1989. (Photo by Steve Eason/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) Speaking in West Germany on June 12, 1987, U.S. President Ronald Reagan famously called on Soviet leader Gorbachev to â€Å"tear down that wall.† By this time, Reagan’s anti-communist Reagan Doctrine policies had weakened Soviet influence in Eastern Europe and talk of German reunification had already begun. In October 1989, East Germany’s communist leadership was forced from power, and on November 9, 1989, the new East German government did indeed â€Å"tear down that wall.† For the first time in nearly three decades, the Berlin Wall ceased to function as a political barrier and East Germans could travel freely to the West. By October 1990, Germany was fully reunified, signaling the coming collapse of the Soviet Union and other communist Eastern European regimes. A Weakened Soviet Military The economic liberalization of perestroika and the political chaos of glasnost severely reduced military funding and strength. Between 1985 and 1991, the residual troop strength of the Soviet Military fell from over 5.3 million to fewer than 2.7 million. The first major reduction came in 1988, when Gorbachev responded to long-stalled arms reduction treaty negotiations by drawing down its military by 500,000 men—a 10% reduction. During the same time period, more than 100,000 Soviet troops had been committed to the Afghanistan War. The ten-year quagmire that became the Afghan War left more than 15,000 Soviet troops dead and thousands more injured. Another reason for the troop decline was the widespread resistance to the Soviet military draft that arose when the new freedoms of glasnost allowed conscripted soldiers to speak publicly about the abusive treatment they suffered. Between 1989 and 1991, the now weakened Soviet military was unable to suppress anti-Soviet separatist movements in the republics of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Lithuania. Finally, in August 1991, Communist Party hardliners, who had always opposed perestroika and glasnost, led the military in an attempt to overthrow Gorbachev. However, the three-day August Coup—possibly the last attempt by the hardline communists to save the Soviet empire—failed when the now-fragmented military sided with Gorbachev. Though Gorbachev remained in office, the coup further destabilized the USSR, thus contributing to its final dissolution on December 25, 1991. Blame for the collapse of the Soviet Union is often unfairly placed solely on the policies of Mikhail Gorbachev. In the final analysis, it was his predecessor, Leonid Brezhnev, who wasted the nation’s massive profits from a 20-year-long oil boom on an unwinnable arms race against the United States, rather than working to raise the standards of living of the Soviet people, long before Gorbachev came to power. Sources â€Å"The Collapse of the Soviet Union.† U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historianâ€Å"END OF THE SOVIET UNION; Text of Gorbachevs Farewell Address.† New York Times Archives. Dec.26, 1991â€Å"A Comparison of the US and Soviet Economies: Evaluating the Performance of the Soviet System.† U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (October 1985)â€Å"Soviet Union Economy – 1989.† www.geographic.org.â€Å"United States Economy – 1989.† www.geographic.org.â€Å"A nuclear disaster that brought down an empire.† The Economist (April 2016).Parks, Michael. Gorbachev Pledges a 10% Troop Cut: Unilateral Pullback. New York Times (December 1988).

How Human Geography Has Evolved Over Time - 788 Words

Human geography has evolved over time; major evolution is seen in 1900s when there is a significant shift from Quantitative research is a way where objective theories are subject to testing by investigating the relationship between variables. These variables are capable of measuring particularly on the instruments such that the numbered data obtained can be examined through statistical techniques. The report written finally has a structure which consists of an introduction, review of literature and theory, methods, results, conclusion and discussion (Creswell, 2002). People who engage in this type of inquiry build assumptions about experimenting theories deductively, and protecting the situation from all kinds of bias, monitoring for substitute explanations and being capable of replicating and generalizing the findings. Quantitative methods make the use of physical reasoning and concepts, statistical techniques and mathematical modeling to understand phenomenon in geography. Most of the research in physical geography is based on these quantitative methods(Clifford et al., 2010). These methods were first adopted by human geographers in 1950s but in 1960s the period of quantitative revolution emerged. At this time the scientific approaches which influence human behavior were adopted by social sciences and human geographers started to bring scientific methods in their research. In this way researchers in human geography began considering quantitative methods while makingShow MoreRelatedGeography as a Science Essay examples1235 Words   |  5 PagesGeography as a Science Science, by definition, is: ‘†¦the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment†¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ 1 Geography is divided into physical and human dimensions; in the past, physical geography had taken pre-eminence over the latter due to the need of geographers to establish their discipline as an actual educational subject in colleges and universities. They therefore needed to impressRead MoreWhy Vienna Matters : Vienna1514 Words   |  7 Pagesmusic history is what draws a lot of people to visit the Austrian capital. Vienna’s physical geography is also what attracts a large population because of its position between the foothills of the Carpathians and the Alps. 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