Self-Evaluations and Organisational Citizenship Behaviour

Self-Evaluations and Organisational Citizenship Behaviour Background and Rationale The current research is aimed at identifying whether there is a relationship between an individual’s core self-evaluations and their organisational citizenship behaviour. Core-self evaluations are defined as a personality trait that reflects how an individual views themselves. For example, people who have high core self-evaluations think positively of themselves and are confident in their own abilities. Organisational citizenship behaviour is a term that encompasses anything positive and constructive that employees do, of their own choice, which supports co-workers and benefits the company; such as ‘going the extra mile’. Overall, this research is aimed at finding out whether core self-evaluations directly affect organisational citizenship behaviours or whether core self-evaluations affect an individual’s level of job satisfaction and organisational commitment, which in turn affect their organisational citizenship behaviours. Being able to identify factors that affect organisational citizenship behaviour is beneficial to organisations, as they can use this information in both the selection and development of their employees. The literature relating to each concept will be discussed. Core self-evaluations The concept of core self-evaluations (CSE) was introduced by Judge, Locke Durham (1997). They describe it as â€Å"a broad concept representing the fundamental evaluations that people make about themselves and their functioning in their environment†.In other words, it is a personality trait that reflects the extent to which an individual views themselves. CSE combines four, traditionally separate and distinct, personality traits: self-esteem, general self-efficacy, emotional stability, and locus of control. This self-assessment reflects who the individual is and how the individual perceives themselves (Judge, Locke Durham, 1997). For example, individuals with a positive core self-evaluation perceive themselves in a positive way regardless of the situation. They would be likely to see themselves as capable, worthy, and in control of their lives. However, individuals with a negative core self-evaluation would see themselves as less worthy than others, dwell on their failures, an d see themselves as victims of their environment (Judge, Locke, Durham Kluger, 1998). Previous research on CSE have found that individuals with high levels of CSE have a variety of positive outcomes such as higher levels of: subjective well-being (Judge, Erez, Thoresen, Bono, 2002), job satisfaction (Judge Bono, 2001), job performance (Erez Judge, 2001), engagement (Rich, LePine, Crawford, 2010), and popularity (Scott Judge, 2009). They also report lower levels of stress and conflict, cope more effectively with setbacks, and better capitalise on advantages and opportunities (Erez Judge, 2001). Core self-evaluations and Job attitudes There is evidence to suggest that there is a relationship between core self-evaluations and job attitudes. In this case job attitudes incorporates both job satisfaction and organisational commitment. The relationship between core self-evaluations and job satisfaction has been researched by various authors in which a consistent and significant relationship has been found (Judge, Locke Durham, 1997;Judge, Locke, Durham, Kluger, 1998; Bono Judge, 2003; Dormann, Fay, Zapf Frese, 2006). Furthermore, Stumpp, Hà ¼lsheger, Muck Maier (2009) looked at the relationship between core self-evaluations and found that core self-evaluations were related to both job satisfaction and organisational commitment. Organisational Citizenship Behaviours Organisational citizenship behaviours (OCBs) are voluntary employee behaviours that are not formally rewarded by the organisation, but contribute to either the success of the whole organisation or to the well-being of other employees (Borman Motowidlo, 1993). Examples of OCBs include: assisting co-workers with their work, helping new members of the organisation, talking favourably about the organisation to outsiders, and attending non-mandatory functions that help the organisation’s image (Lee Allen, 2002). Research on OCB’s have shown that they are important as they contribute significantly to both individual level (Rotundo Sackett, 2002) and organisational-level performance outcomes (Podsakoff, Whiting, Podsakoff, Blume, 2009). Organisational Citizenship Behaviours and Job attitudes There has been a relatively large amount of research into the main effects of job attitudes on OCBs. Various meta-analyses have found that job satisfaction and organisational commitment are all positively related to OCBs (Dalal, 2005;LePine, Erez, Johnson, 2002;Organ Ryan, 1995). Furthermore, job attitudes have been conceptually linked with OCBs (Bowling, Wang Li, 2011). It is thought that that the principle of reciprocity (Cialdini, 2001;Gouldner, 1960) and social exchange theory (Cropanzano, Howes, Grandey, Toth, 1997) can predict a positive relationship between job attitudes and OCBs. For example, employees who have positive job attitudes, such as high job satisfaction, are expected to reward their organisations for giving them a good job environment, by engaging in OCBs (Dalal, 2005;LePine etal., 2002;Organ Ryan, 1995).The current study is interested in testing whether core self-evaluations moderates the effects of job attitudes on OCBs. As research has suggested that positi ve self-concept contributes to ones general level of initiative and self-confidence (Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger, Vohs, 2003), job attitudes may therefore be more strongly related to OCBs for employees who have positive core self-evaluations (CSE). Core self-evaluations and Organisational Citizenship Behaviours Although scarcely examined in previous research, CSEs are expected to be positively related to OCBs. The rationale behind this is that positive self-concept contributes to an individual’s general level of initiative and beliefs about their general level of competence (Baumeister etal., 2003). Therefore, engaging in certain OCBs requires the individual to initiate social interaction and to be confident about their level of interpersonal competence (Bowling, Wang Li, 2011). For example, offering help to a struggling co-worker or volunteering to assist a new employee. Individuals with a positive CSE are more likely to engage in OCBs that incorporate high levels of social interaction for two reasons: they do not fear social rejection and they know that they are socially competent. Other types of OCB require the individual to be confident about their beliefs and have the drive to defend those beliefs (Bowling, Wang Li, 2011). These OCB’s may include: defending the organisa tion when others criticise it, communicating ideas to help improve the organisation, or showing loyalty to the organisation. Again, individuals with a positive CSE are more likely to engage in OCBs that require this form of initiative, because they are more likely to have a high level of self-confidence. Therefore, a certain level of initiative and self-confidence may be required to perform most OCBs. Reasons for Research The current study will expand on the existing CSE literature in two ways. Firstly, it will examine the relationship between CSE and OCBs. To date, few studies have identified whether CSE affects OCB’s. There is a clear conceptual basis to expect that CSE will be positively related to OCBs as many OCBs require personal initiative and self-confidence, both of which are enhanced by positive self-evaluations (Baumeister, Campbell, Krueger, Vohs, 2003). Furthermore, the constituent traits of CSE have been linked with OCBs. For example, self-esteem (Bowling, Eschleman, Wang, Kirkendall, Alarcon, 2010), internal locus of control (O’Brien Allen, 2008) and emotional stability (Small Diefendorff, 2006) are all positively related to OCBs. It will also examine whether there is an interaction between CSE and overall job attitude (job satisfaction and organisational commitment) and test whether this moderates the CSE–OCB relationship. The current research seeks to examine whether individuals with high core self-evaluations perform more organisational citizenship behaviours or whether there are moderating effects of job satisfaction and organisational commitment

Service Providing Robots :: Robotics

Many years ago, service-providing robots have been considered no more as fictitious thoughts made by deranged scientists and professors. In recent years, people have seen it become a reality. Within the past few years, many robotic products have come out that provide services for humans. Demand for these products have increased dramatically since then. One such robot is the Roomba, by iRobot. One author stated, â€Å"Uh oh. Somebody’s going to have to clean this up, I thought, looking down at the sausage and hamburger bits all over the carpet†¦As I went to get the vacuum cleaner, I wondered if it was time to get a personal robot.† He isn’t alone, stating that more than 1.5 million domestic cleaning robots have been sold by iRobot alone. They make four different models that clean all types of surfaces. Due to this sudden increase in sales, other companies have produced other robot types. A few examples are the Zucchetti Orazio floor cleaner, the Karcher RC3000 Robocleaner, and the Electrolux EL520A Trilobite. Although demand has not caught up to the new boom in the industry, the companies will welcome consumers with open arms when they decide to make the switch also. (Toplikar) Another article, released in 2003, states that in the first six months of that year, there was a twenty-six percent increase in demand for domestic and industrious robots for households and factories. Between January and June of 2003, 80,000 new robots were sold in Europe alone, claims the UN Economic Commission for Europe and the International Federation of Robotics, despite the twelve percent drop in the robotics market the previous year. Sales in North America increased an amazing thirty-five percent; a true economical boom. Industry still uses the majority of robots in manufacturing, although domestic units continue to grow. The majority of robots are in Japan, yet sales and use of robots in the United States will likely rise up as well. In 2002, new units, such as the automated lawnmowers and vacuum cleaners, rose from 20,000 to 33,000 units in a single year. (Clark) A third article talks about the disappointment in the year 2001, when Sony’s Aibo, a limited robotic dog came out, and how robots are going to improve in the years to come. In a talk with the creator of RoboSapiens, Mark Tilden, he explains the realistic future of robots. Robots are going to match their function, such as for entertainment, cleaning, and intelligent service. Robots already are becoming exactly what he said. In the year 2010, it is predicted that there will be 55.5 million robots, with a market of $75

Media Culture: the Triumph of the Spectacle

Media Culture: the Triumph of the Spectacle â€Å"Media culture is a contested terrain across which key social groups and competing political ideologies struggle for dominance and . . . individuals live these struggles through the images, discourses, myths, and spectacle of media culture† -Douglas Kellner, Media Culture Table of Contents Introduction——————————————————————————————-3 History of Media————————————————————————————-4 Media Spectacle————————————————————————————–5 Douglas Kellner’s Contribution & Guy Debord’s Influential Analysis of Spectacle——-7 The Spectacle Form of Media Culture————————————— ———————8 The Spectacle in the World of Business———————————————————-9 The World of Celebrities————————————————————————–10 The Madonna Phenomenon———————————————————————–10 The World of Politics——————————————————————————11 Conclusion———————â₠¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€Ã¢â‚¬â€13 Bibliography—————————————————————————————-14 Introduction At the end of the twentieth century, society became more and more aware of the changes in communication technology. People began to see changes in ommunication between individuals, changes in how individuals and society communicated, and changes in communication between societies and cultures. This led to an understanding of human development. The ability to communicate with the help of symbols is one of the fundamental features that differentiate us from the rest of the animal world. Without these practical communication skills and the intellectu al capacity needed to use these skills to transmit, preserve, and propagate thoughts, emotions, and values, it would not have been possible to create such unique religious, ideological, and philosophical systems. Furthermore, without communication, we would not have art. Art has had a strong relationship with the media throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. New inventions and technology created a very favorable atmosphere for the development of new methods and means of communication. These new communication methods both benefited and furthered events within society. At the end of the 20th century, advanced methods and technologies in the field of communication fully changed the face of the world. Due to this change, some say it is very hard to find the line between reality and the reality that has been created and filtered by media. Some contemporary communication theoreticians have said that we find ourselves in the era of the simulation of the world. History of Media Mass media, a term that arose in the United States in the early 20th century with the advent of far-reaching advertising campaigns and news networks, includes all those mediums through which information is distributed to the masses. This includes advertisements, newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and the internet. According to some scientists, people started to speak of the media as far back as ancient Greece and Rome. These discussions of media focused mostly on the rhetoric surrounding the practice of persuasion. The Greek philosopher Aristotle said that rhetoric is â€Å"the faculty of discovering in any particular case all the methods of persuasion. † This kind of communication puts a heavy emphasis on meaning, and how the meaning is constructed and conveyed. Current mass media works in a similar way. One of the most important goals f today’s media is to construct a message that will convince the receiver to agree to do or believe something. The earliest surv iving copy of a paper book, a Kumarajiva translation of the Hindu text The Diamond Sutra, is dated 868 CE (AD). Due to the slow spread of literacy among the common people, and the relatively high cost of paper and production of written media, written materials did not exist as widespread media until Johannes Gutenberg’s 1450 CE invention of the printing press with movable type. Thanks to Gutenberg’s invention, printed materials suddenly became much less expensive, and the spread of information in the form of written material became much easier. However, much of the population still remained illiterate and the cost of publishing printed materials remained high enough to limit media from reaching a wide range of the population. Newspapers were first developed in 1605. The first English-language newspaper was published in Amsterdam in 1620. Soon after that, newspapers published in England, and, eventually, in America, began to reach mass audiences directly. Around this same time, America was being colonized, and printed and written materials played an important role. Revolutionary material such as Thomas Paine’s Common Sense was published and distributed to the colonists, allowing the spread of ideas that eventually resulted in the creation of the United States. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Mayflower Compact1 were all examples of early colonial and American documents that figured prominently in the development of America as a nation. In the 1940s, new technologies and advancements in the field of media began to emerge. Radio began to play a major role in mass communication, as America went to war. Radio could provide information much faster than newspapers. These new advents in technology allowed media to gain significance, new meaning, and wider function. Radio, film, advertising, and the press grew as industries and became the center of the culture of communication within the U. S. nd within other capitalist democracies. The culture of media became a dominant force within all aspects of life, including politics and social life. 2 It was the beginning of a new era. The media industry began to concentrate on the invention of new technologies. They both wanted to provide people with a wide range of different good s from which they could choose but also wanted to continue to develop ways in which to reach and influence people. The media could now easily affect the minds of the public, forcing the people to accept a particular set of beliefs, which occasionally diverted from actual reality. Societies started to be manipulated and people were indoctrinated. The main goal of media was and still is to be persuasive enough to attract the attention of a potential receiver, and one of the most convenient ways to accomplish this goal is through the multimedia spectacle. Media Spectacle ‘Media spectacle' is a term created by Douglas Kellner to describe the creation by modern media of a display of contemporary dreams, nightmares, fantasies and values. The phenomenon of media spectacle has evolved over centuries, starting in ancient Greece and moving forward through hundreds of years of wars and other major public events. Today, media spectacle continually strives to achieve sensation and attract attention. In the contemporary world, media spectacle exists in nearly all spheres of our lives. The role of the media is not only to inform, educate, teach, and persuade but also to entertain. The role of media today might suggest that the â€Å"fun factor† has become the leading motivation for our involvement in media and information. The main goal in media is now to attract the visual attention of potential consumers. Therefore, images have become more important than text. It is also very important for the creators and producers of media to keep up with ongoing changes in public interest and attitudes, so media companies face a continual need to be flexible and creative in order to reach consumers. This applies not only to advertisment but also to political and entertainment media in general. Media not only needs to be visual and relevant, but also attractive. Advertisers, public relations departments, and political campaigners need to create messages that are structured in an attractive way, so that it reaches viewers and corresponds to their high expectations of mass media. If this is not done, the consumer will likely not respond to the media. It frequently occurs that a person is faced with a constant influx of media. The information that he or she is presented with may come from a variety of sources, and is likely both true and false information. Over time, it may become difficult for the consumer to distinguish between what is right and what is wrong; to distinguish between reality and fiction. Modern life is shaped by media. It is a power that affects both conscious and subconscious decisions and shapes ideas. We are surrounded by media. Boorstin writes that â€Å"each society and its culture are impelled by fascination with the image and the stimulation and due to it lost its grounding in substance or reality†. 3 Douglas Kellner’s Contribution & Guy Debord’s Influential Analysis of Spectacle Widely recognized social scientist Douglas Kellner and sociologist Guy Debord focused heavily on the topic of the Media Spectacle and its impact on perceived reality. Kellner is the author of the article â€Å"Media Culture and the Triumph of the Spectacle. † The scope of his activity and achievement includes membership in the American Sociological Association. He was also a member of the editorial service board of many journals including Theory, Culture, and Society. It is this journal that for more than twenty years has published some of the most innovative works in social science. It has been in the forefront of the renewal of cultural sociology. It provides a forum for articles that theorize the relationship between culture and society. In his article Kellner refers to ideas put forward by Guy Deboard. He is known for his impact through the group known as Situationist International. This was a libertarian group that came to prominence during the May Events in France in 1968. This band of avant-garde artists and intellectuals was influenced by Dada, Surrealism and Letterism and concerned themselves with the infusion of poetry and music, and with the transformation of the urban landscape. At first, the group was principally concerned with the suppression of art, that is to say they wished, like the Dadaist and the Surrealists before them, to supercede the boundary between art and culture as separate activities and to transform them into part of everyday life. In their analysis, the Situationists argue that capitalism limited life as a spectacle. The spectacle is the main concept of their theory (in many ways they reworked Marx's view of alienation). They say that the worker is alienated from his product and from his fellow worker and finds himself living in an alien world; moreover, they argue that capitalism, in order to ensure its economic growth, has created â€Å"pseudo-needs† to increase the consumption. According to this theory, modern society, or consumer society, is now a society of spectacular commodity consumption. People within this spectacle are treated like objects, rather than like active subjects. In this theory, people are like marionettes whose strings are pulled by invisible power. The Situationists’ idea was, in spite of all kinds of separation, to make a world in which individuals could directly produce their own life; in other words, to engage people in an active, creative life. The solution, for them, was not to wait for a distant revolution but to take a different approach, a â€Å"step by step† process of the reinvention of everyday life, here and now. To transform peoples’ participation in the world was for them the same thing as changing the structure of society. In the place of the society of the spectacle the Situationists proposed a society without money, commodity production, private property, wage labour, class division, based generally on communist ideas. The most important tenet of the proposal was that the so-called pseudo-needs would be replaced by real desires. This utopial ideal seemed to some to be slightly out of touch with reality but aimed to move the focus of the world away from lies and distortion. The Situationists placed a large amount of focus on the concept that individuals should actively and consciously participate in the reconstruction of every moment of life. They called themselves Situationists because they believed that all individuals should construct the situations of their lives, release their own potential, and obtain their own pleasure. The Spectacle-Form of Media Culture As I wrote earlier, spectacle culture has expanded in every area of life â€Å"and is becoming one of the organizing principles of the economy, polity, society†4. Guy Debord argues that â€Å"spectacle is†¦ social relation among people, mediated by images. The spectacle †¦ is a world vision, which has become objectified. . . in all its specific forms, as information or propaganda, as advertisement or direct entertainment consumption, the spectacle is the present model of socially dominant life†¦. â€Å"5. The spectacle phenomenon in this case refers to both high culture and to low cultural shows. The development of new media technologies made it easier for media to exercise influence over contemporary societies and cultures. In these societies media presented with images has the edge over plain texts. The visual spectacle, which combines all aspects of culture that communicate through visual means, made itself the ruler of the â€Å"outside world†. Factories and offices where people work are visually soaked environments. Films, television, video games, and the internet are also part of the influx of visual media that affects our thinking and behaviors. Moreover, we comunicate with the help of visualization. When we are trying to cross over cultural boundaries, our knowledge is often communicated visually, for example, we may use visual cues such as map boundaries and business graphs and data. The Spectacle in the World of Business The propagation of the spectacle is a major aspect of business, and plays a decisive role in whether any given corporation will succeed or not. Businesses, in order to survive, need to be present and visible for the potential customer. Entertainment and advertisement are the powers that support the business world through various of methods, one of which is creating a ‘pseudo event’. The idea of a ‘pseudo event’ was put forward by Daniel Boorstin, an American historian, who claimed that America and other countries find themselves in an age of illusion. The ‘pseudo event’ occurs where â€Å"an event is planned and staged entirely for the media, which accrues significance through the scale of its media coverage rather than through any more disinterested assessment of its importance†. 6 So to speak â€Å"pseudo event† exist for sole purpose of supporting media publicity and serves little to no other function in real life and is considered â€Å"real† only after viewing through news, advertisements, television, or other types of media. An extremely simple example is sitting for a family portrait. The event serves no other purpose than to be viewed through a photograph. Other examples include media spectacles, and many types of news. The World of Celebrities Media contributes to the creation of celebrities. â€Å"The celebrity†¦ is the human pseudo event, fabricated for the media and evaluated in terms of the scale and effectiveness of its media yisibility†. 7 A famous person provides dominant role models and icons of fashion, style, personality, and, at the same time, leads to the enrichment of the media industry. Media entrepreneurs want celebrities involved with their projects because they believe this will help them attract audiences. Film producers use stars as mean of attracting investment to their projects. Marketers use public celebrity statements as a means of profiling and branding their products. Sports promoters use celebrity athletes to attract media attention and increase the number of people who would come to that sport event. Celebrities also make money for the individual concerned. Their success depends on various handlers and image managers that help them to develop their public persona. Celebrities invade all kinds of sites today, ranging from contests in shopping malls to the management of major political campaigns. The importance of publicity, promotion and the exploitation of the media event are omnipresent. The Madonna Phenomenon Madonna became a master in her use of image with the help of mass media. Daniel Borstin is responsible for one of the most widely quoted aphorisms about celebrity: â€Å"the celebrity is a person who is well-known for his well-knownness. . . the celebrity develops its capacity for fame, not by achieving great things, but by differentiating its own personality from those of its competitors in the public arena. â€Å"8   Madonna has achieved just that. She has total control over her shows. She writes the songs, produces the music, and designs the stage sets. She controls all aspects of her show; not just her spectacle, but also all the things she does, including her films and public appearances. Madonna's entire life turns around the presentation of her image. Madonna is one of the greatest PR machines in history and she has hired top agents, publicists, and creative personnel to market her and produce her images. From the beginning her every move was surrounded by publicity and year after year Madonna references in media culture have proliferated. â₠¬Å"9   The circulation of an image plays a very important role as well. Madonna constantly changes her public image. Whoever she is at the moment; a good girl gone bad or a virgin in white, a glamour queen or a cosmic spirit or, finally, a doting mother, her ability to change images every couple of years has fascinated the world, and has been vital in her success. There is also other side of the coin, the pessimistic one, that assumes that Madonna is a victim of her own image, or that she finds herself in an artificially constructed reality. That problem is not only a problem for her, but also for our culture as a whole. Image is dominating more and more of our lives. The World of Politics â€Å"The brutal reality of the modern age is that all famous people are treated like celebrities by mass media, whether they be a great political figure, a worthy campaigner, an artist touched by genius, a serial killer. The newspapers and television programs responsible for their publicity do not draw any meaningful distinction between how they are publicised. â€Å"10 The most significant thing is to make a spectacle of oneself in order to be recognizable. If you want to gain the state of being popular you have to make yourself highly desirable, and the most important thing is to be visible through the media. No special achievements are needed to be popular; only the attraction of public attention is required. In the world of politics, if one wants to be good politician, one has to be spectacular. The management of the media' reporting of politics has become increasingly important to contemporary political campaigns. Public relations consultants, media advisers, and press officers have become standard components of the contemporary world of politics. Media spectacle is also an inseparable part of politics. It can often be seen that most well-known people engage in politics. This can be interpreted as political manipulation. It is possible that it is useful because spectators find it easier to identify with a celebrity that they know from TV than with a person that they are seeing for the first time. Conclusion In the contemporary world, mass media, and as a part of mass media, media spectacle, play very important roles. So many people live their lives or parts of their lives vicariously through the image world of the media- through TV, through soap operas, through any media outlet. Everything is just a matter of subjective perspective; everything is relative, depending on where you stand. Everything turns around the world we choose or create for ourselves. There is no reality, there are only images, different images. We can only see the world from where we stand, from that context, that language, that constructed reality. In other words, the things that you say and do are all coming from the outside-from the world of media. The real you is lost. Life becomes virtual, and we are living in the image. Bibliography: 1. Reader â€Å"Literary and Cultural Representation of American Society: Visual Media†, Prof. Dr. R. Isensee, â€Å"Super Media, A Cultural Studies Approach†, Michael R. Real, pp. 26 2. â€Å"Media Culture, Cultural studies, identity and politics between the modern and the postmodern. †, Douglas Kellner, pp. 16. 3. â€Å"Understanding celebrity†, Graeme Turner, Introduction, pp. 5. 4. Reader â€Å"Literary and Cultural Representation of American Society: Visual Media†, Prof. Dr. R. Isensee, â€Å"Media Culture and the Triumph of the Spectacle†, Douglas Kellner, pp. 1. 5. Debord Guy, â€Å"Separation Perfected†, in Evans and Hall(eds. ), â€Å"Visual Culture†,the Reader. Sage Publication, pp. 95-96 6. â€Å"Understanding celebrity†, Graeme Turner, Introduction, pp. 5. 7. â€Å"Understanding celebrity†, Graeme Turner, Introduction, pp. 5. 8. â€Å"Understanding celebrity†, Graeme Turner, Introduction, pp. 5. 9. â€Å"Media Culture, Cultural studies, identity and politics between the modern and the postmodern. †, Douglas Kellner, pp. 268 10. â€Å"Understanding celebrity†, Graeme Turner, Introduction, pp. 7. 11. â€Å"Visual Persuation- The Role of Images in Advertising†, Paul Messaris 12 â€Å"Mass Media and Society†(second edition), editied by James Curran and Michael Gurevitch.

The Revival Of Confucian Ethics - 1269 Words

Ashley Beteta Professor Lee Seung Ah Korean 40, Discussion 1B 10 December 2015 A Need for the Revival of Confucian Ethics South Korea’s education system has been viewed as a success as 93% of students graduate from high school. Furthermore this has caused countries around the world to praise Korea’s educational curriculum and the results it has produced by â€Å"rank[ing] at the top of the Programme for International Student Assessment survey results in reading, mathematics and science. South Korea is also one of the highest educated nations in the world† (ICEF 2014). Hence, it’s achievements have also been brought to attention by the United States president Barak Obama in 2009 as he compared South Korea’s education with America’s by†¦show more content†¦The success of the Korean educational system is credited to being influenced through Confucianism, resulting in the â€Å"educational fever† that has encompassed South Korea. When Confucianism was introduced during the Chosà »n Dynasty (1392-1910) it originally served as a way to maintain power for the upperclassmen. However, Confucianism began to replace the influence of Buddhism, leaving in its place, â€Å"a national ideology and religion, largely determined politics, economy, society, culture, and education† (Lee 3). In other words, Confucian ideals began to form the basis of Korean society during the Chosà »n Dynasty, which continued into Japanese colonialism (1910-1945) and remnants of it are still present today better known as Neo-Confucian. These ideals helped Koreans survive the turmoil it experienced as it was colonized, liberated, went through the Korean War and the 1997 IMF crisis. Since education had only accessible for the elite during the Chà ´sun dynasty, its association with this drove Koreans to embed education as way to achieve upw ard social mobility. However, social mobility through education is no longer as attainable as it was a few decades ago due to the overpopulated amount of students seeking higher education and competitive job market. Subsequently, Neo-Confucianism is beginning