Notesmilenge.files.wordpress.com



Individual Society & Nation

Module I:

Individual differences are the facts that make people different from each and other. We all know that we are different from each other.. in may ways such as : our physical aspects, our likes, dislikes, interests, values, psychological makeup (and the list goes on) in other words... the whole "Personality". 

Because, no two people or Animals can be "same" (they can be similar only ) so the concept of individual differences !! If there were to be no individual differences, there would be no quarrels and moreover.. there would be no Love too !! Psychology has a special stream of study ng individual differences in people so as to understand them better.I hope I have answered your question to your satisfaction.You can contact me for more..I would love to asnwer.

Managing Individual differences:

1. Speak a little less, listen a little more

Most people get tremendous pleasure from speaking about themselves. But, here we have to be careful; if we always speak about our achievements or tribulations, people will get fed up with our egoism.

If we are willing and able to listen to others, we will find it much appreciated by our friends. Some people are not aware of how much they dominate the conversation. If you find you are always talking about yourself, consider the advice of the Greek philosopher, Epictectus:

“Nature gave us one tongue and two ears so we could hear twice as much as we speak.”

2. Which is more important being right or maintaining harmony?

A lot of problems in relationships occur because we want to maintain our personal pride. Don’t insist on always having the last word. Healthy relationships are not built through winning meaningless arguments. Be willing to back down; most arguments are not of critical importance anyway.

3. Avoid Gossip

If we value someone’s friendship we will not take pleasure in commenting on their frequent failings. They will eventually hear about it. But, whether we get found out or not, we weaken our relationships when we dwell on negative qualities. Avoid gossiping about anybody; subconsciously we don’t trust people who have a reputation for gossip.

4. Forgiveness

Forgiveness is not just a cliché; it’s a powerful and important factor in maintaining healthy relationships. However, real forgiveness also means that we are willing to forget the experience. If we forgive one day, but then a few weeks later bring up the old misdeed, this is not real forgiveness. When we make mistakes, just consider how much we would appreciate others forgiving and forgetting.

5. Know When to Keep Silent

If you think a friend has a bad or unworkable idea, don’t always argue against it; just keep silent and let them work things out for themselves. It’s a mistake to always feel responsible for their actions. You can offer support to friends, but you can’t live their life for them.

6. Right Motive

If you view friendship from the perspective of “what can I get from this?” you are making a big mistake. This kind of relationship proves very tentative. If you make friendships with the hope of some benefit, you will find that people will have a similar attitude to you. This kind of friendship leads to insecurity and jealousy. Furthermore, these fair weather friends will most likely disappear just when you need them most. Don’t look upon friends with the perspective “what can I get out of this?”. True friendship should be based on mutual support and good will, irrespective of any personal gain.

7. Oneness.

The real secret of healthy relationships is developing a feeling of oneness. This means that you will consider the impact on others of your words and actions. If you have a true feeling of oneness, you will find it difficult to do anything that causes suffering to your friends. When there is a feeling of oneness, your relationships will be free of jealousy and insecurity.

For example, it is a feeling of oneness which enables you to share in the success of your friends. This is much better than harboring feelings of jealousy. To develop oneness we have to let go of feelings of superiority and inferiority; good relationships should not be based on a judgmental approach. In essence, successful friendship depends on the golden rule: “do unto others as you would have done to yourself.” This is the basis of healthy relationships.

8. Humour

Don’t take yourself too seriously. Be willing to laugh at yourself and be self-deprecating. This does not mean we have to humiliate ourselves, far from it — it just means we let go of our ego. Humour is often the best antidote for relieving tense situations.

Bridging Individual Differences:

1. Perceived Interdependence

2. Shared goal

3. Sense of Crisis

4. Respect

5. Trust

"Personality" can be defined as a dynamic and organized set of characteristics possessed by a person that uniquely influences his or her cognitions, emotions, motivations, and behaviors in various situations.

Type A:

A typical Type A is aggressive, independent, ambitious, volatile, and rigid. They usually are fast talkers, have no patience for laziness, and do not eat or sleep well. Prototype: Ari Gold from Entourage—a high-strung go-getter.

Type B:

Type B’s are gregarious, social animals, who live by the motto, “don’t sweat the small stuff.” They are generally well-liked, but suffer from distractedness and a lack of attention to detail. These are the folks who used to get yelled at in science class for talking to their partner about the big party at Lisa’s rather than dissecting the frog (not that I’m talking from experience or anything . . .). Prototype: Rachel from Friends—well liked, social, not driven by success but rather personal relationships; needs to be well liked.

Type C:

This lesser-known type is notorious for feeling like they should sweat the small stuff. They are logical, analytical rule-followers who need to be sure of the why’s and how’s before making a move. They dislike risks, are not the greatest at standing up for themselves, and tend to be a bit anti-social, preferring the unchanging manner of numbers and facts to the unpredictable nature of other people. Prototype: Milton Waddams from the movie Office Space—the guy who waddles around mumbling about his precious stapler, and ultimately burns down the office because someone takes said stapler away. (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, do yourself a favor and rent Office Space. It’s a classic.)

Type D:

Hardly anyone talks about this type, probably because they are too busy worrying to make much of an impression. Type D’s are described in such wonderfully complementary terms as “anxious”, overreacting”, and “needing to be told what to do”. On the positive side, they are often the “rock” of the workplace, the loyal one with little ambition of her own—the perfect person to complain to about other co-irkers or your Type A boss. Prototype: Honestly? I can’t think of one. Maybe they don’t make memorable characters for TV shows or movies because they don’t create much drama. The closest I could swing was Erin, the receptionist who replaced Pam on The Office.

Module II:

Definition of Diversity 

The concept of diversity encompasses acceptance and respect. It means understanding that each individual is unique, and recognizing our individual differences.  These can be along the dimensions of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, or other ideologies.  It is the exploration of these differences in a safe, positive, and nurturing environment. It is about understanding each other and moving beyond 

simple tolerance to embracing and celebrating the rich dimensions of diversity contained within each individual.

How to Manage Diversity in a Workplace

Diversity in the workplace means bringing together people of different ethnic backgrounds, religions and age groups into a cohesive and productive unit. Advances in communication technology, such as the Internet and cellular phones, have made the marketplace a more global concept. In order to survive, a company needs to be able to manage and utilize its diverse workplace effectively. Managing diversity in the workplace should be a part of the culture of the entire organization.

Step 1

Confirm that all of your personnel policies from hiring to promotions and raises are based on employee performance. Avoid allowing tenure, ethnic background or any other kind of category into your human resources policies. Managing a diverse workplace begins with strong policies of equality from the company. Once these policies are in place, the company can begin implementing diversity measures throughout the entire organization.

Step 2

Rate the qualifications of the candidate based on the quality of his experience, not age or any other category, when hiring. When you hire a diverse but qualified workforce, you are on the right track towards being able to manage the diversity in your company.

Step 3

Encourage diversity when creating teams and special work groups within the company. If a manager creates a work group that does not utilize the skills of the most qualified employees, then insists that the group be changed to include all qualified staff members.

Step 4

Treat complaints of favoritism or discrimination seriously. Encourage employees to report all instances of discriminatory behavior, and have a definitive process in place for investigating and dealing with these issues.

Step 5

Hold quarterly trainings for the entire staff on the benefits of diversity in the workplace. Encourage discussions at these meetings on how the company can better manage workplace diversity.

Barriers and Challenges to Managing Diversity

What are the most common barriers to implementing successful diversity programs?

We introduced this chapter by noting that diversity is a sensitive, potentially volatile, and sometimes uncomfortable issue. It is therefore not surprising that organizations encounter significant barriers when trying to move forward with managing diversity. The following is a list of the most common barriers to implementing successful diversity programs:71

1. Inaccurate stereotypes and prejudice. This barrier manifests itself in the belief that differences are viewed as weaknesses. In turn, this promotes the view that diversity hiring will mean sacrificing competence and quality.

2. Ethnocentrism. The ethnocentrism barrier represents the feeling that one’s cultural rules and norms are superior or more appropriate than the rules and norms of another culture.

3. Poor career planning. This barrier is associated with the lack of opportunities for diverse employees to get the type of work assignments that qualify them for senior management positions.

4. A negative diversity climate. Climate is generally viewed as employee perceptions about an organization’s formal and informal policies, practices, and procedures. Diversity climate is a subcomponent of an organization’s overall climate and is defined as the employees’ aggregate “perceptions about the organization’s diversity-related formal structure characteristics and informal values.”72 Diversity climate is positive when employees view the organization as being fair to all types of employees;

5. An unsupportive and hostile working environment for diverse employees. Sexual, racial, and age harassment are common examples of hostile work environments. Whether perpetrated against women, men, older individuals, or LGBT people, hostile environments are demeaning, unethical, and appropriately called “work environment pollution.” It also is important to note that harassment can take place via e-mail, texting, and other forms of social media. For example, a recent study of 220 employees revealed that the initial harassment began by e-mail or phone.74 Managers are encouraged to treat electronic harassment the same as any other type of harassment.

6. Lack of political savvy on the part of diverse employees. Diverse employees may not get promoted because they do not know how to “play the game” of getting along and getting ahead in an organization. Research reveals that women and people of color are excluded from organizational networks.75

7. Difficulty in balancing career and family issues. Women still assume the majority of the responsibilities associated with raising children. This makes it harder for women to work evenings and weekends or to frequently travel once they have children. Even without children in the picture, household chores take more of a woman’s time than a man’s time.

8. Fears of reverse discrimination. Some employees believe that managing diversity is a smoke screen for reverse discrimination. This belief leads to very strong resistance because people feel that one person’s gain is another’s loss.

9. This photo highlights a diverse workforce at GE. The company is proud of its approach…Diversity is not seen as an organizational priority. This leads to subtle resistance that shows up in the form of complaints and negative attitudes. Employees may complain about the time, energy, and resources devoted to diversity that could have been spent doing “real work.”

10. The need to revamp the organization’s performance appraisal and reward system. Performance appraisals and reward systems must reinforce the need to effectively manage diversity. This means that success will be based on a new set of criteria. For example, General Electric evaluates the extent to which its managers are inclusive of employees with different backgrounds. These evaluations are used in salary and promotion decisions.76

11. Resistance to change. Effectively managing diversity entails significant organizational and personal change. As discussed inChapter 18, people resist change for many different reasons.

In summary, managing diversity is a critical component of organizational success.

Advantages of Workplace Diversity:

Businesses are recognizing the need and importance of investing in diversity and inclusion as part of their overall talent management practices and to continually challenge their organizations to make the connection between those principles and their corporate performance..  Diversity is especially crucial in today’s global marketplace, as companies interact with different cultures and clients.  The payoffs touch every area of the business by potentially resulting in increased creativity, increased productivity, new attitudes, new language skills, global understanding, new processes, and new solutions to difficult problems. greater agility, better market insight, stronger customer and community loyalty, innovation, and improved employee recruitment and retention.  The businesses that fail to see the importance of Diversity and inclusion might find themselves unable to attract and retain the kinds of customers, employees, and business partners that constitute our changing world in 5 to 10 years

Among the advantages of diversity in the workplace are:

1. Increased Productivity: Diversity and Inclusion brings in diverse different talents together working towards a common goal using different sets of skills that ignites their loyalty and increases their retention and productivity

2. Increased creativity and Problem solving: With so many different and diverse minds coming together many more solutions will arise as every individual brings in their way of thinking, operating and solving problems and decision making

3. Attract and Retain talent that add a competitive edge to any organization.  Feeling included and appreciated increases loyalty and feeling of belonging.  Language skills pool is increased and propels organization forward either to compete in the International global world or to increase its diverse customer base

4. Help to build synergy in teams and enhances communication skills that brings in new attitudes and processes that profit the whole team

5. Applying the proper diversity& inclusion management strategies does not only save money on litigation expenses generated by discrimination lawsuits but is the right thing to do for the business.

6. It increases market share and create a satisfied diverse customer base by relating to people from different backgrounds.  It does propel the United States and its status to claim its place and success in the global business world of the 21st century

Module III:

Socialization

Human infants are born without any culture.  They must be transformed by their parents, teachers, and others into cultural and socially adept animals.  The general process of acquiring culture is referred to as socialization.  During socialization, we learn the language of the culture we are born into as well as the roles we are to play in life.  For instance, girls learn how to be daughters, sisters, friends, wives, and mothers.  In addition, they learn about the occupational roles that their society has in store for them.  We also learn and usually adopt our culture's norms through the socialization process.  Norms are the conceptions of appropriate and expected behavior that are held by most members of the society.  While socialization refers to the general process of acquiring culture, anthropologists use the term enculturation  for the process of being socialized to a particular culture. 

Agents of Socialization

The individual responds differently to different socialization patterns. The following paragraphs will help to explain the influences of socialization on an individual.

Family

The most important agent of socialization, family helps mold an individual. The family values, beliefs, religious inclinations and political views shape an individual's outlook towards society. Parents are the biggest influence for the social development in children.

Schools

After family, schools are probably the most important influence on an individual. Schools help pass on knowledge, create awareness and inculcate the feelings of tolerance in individuals. The second step to socialization is schools where a child meets different children and learns to make out the right and wrong in society.

Community and Culture

Community and culture help pass on the religious views and cultural traditions in an individual. A community is the group where an individual meets people with similar ideologies and interact for personal and community growth.

Peers

Meeting like-minded people, making friends and hanging out together may seem like a teenagers life. But in fact, each and every individual in society loves to have social contact. Peers have great impact on an individual's thoughts and line of thinking. An individual learns to behave in a manner that they think will be acceptable to their peers. Peer acceptance is an important part of socialization.

Mass Media

In today's world, mass media is one of important ways of socialization. People are influenced by the social norms portrayed by the mass media. Political, religious and social views are enforced in a hard way through the repeated exposure and arguments put forth by the agents of mass media.

Through the above explanation, you will understand, that agents of socialization play an important role in an individual's life. The different positive attributes fed by these agents create harmony in an individual that makes him feel confident and respect social etiquette. Without the norms and rules of a society, humans would have nothing to differentiate themselves from animal groups. I hope this article has help to shed some light on the concept of socialization.

TYPES OF SOCIALIZATION

Primary socialization for a child is very important because it sets the ground work for all future socialization. Primary Socialization occurs when a child learns the attitudes, values, and actions appropriate to individuals as members of a particular culture. It is mainly influenced by the immediate family and friends. For example if a child saw his/her mother expressing a discriminatory opinion about a minority group, then that child may think this behavior is acceptable and could continue to have this opinion about minority groups.

Secondary socialization Secondary socialization refers to the process of learning what is the appropriate behavior as a member of a smaller group within the larger society. Basically, it is the behavioral patterns reinforced by socializing agents of society. Secondary socialization takes place outside the home. It is where children and adults learn how to act in a way that is appropriate for the situations they are in Schools require very different behavior from the home, and Children must act according to new rules. New teachers have to act in a way that is different from pupils and learn the new rules from people around them. Secondary Socialization is usually associated with teenagers and adults, and involves smaller changes than those occurring in primary socialization. Such examples of Secondary Socialization are entering a new profession or relocating to a new environment or society.

Anticipatory socialization Anticipatory socialization refers to the processes of socialization in which a person "rehearses" for future positions, occupations, and social relationships. For example, a couple might move in together before getting married in order to try out, or anticipate, what living together will be like] Research by Kenneth J. Levine and Cynthia A. Hoffner suggests that parents are the main source of anticipatory socialization in regards to jobs and careers.

Re-socialization Re-socialization refers to the process of discarding former behavior patterns and reflexes, accepting new ones as part of a transition in one's life. This occurs throughout the human life cycle. Re-socialization can be an intense experience, with the individual experiencing a sharp break with his or her past, as well as a need to learn and be exposed to radically different norms and values. One common example involves re-socialization through a total institution, or "a setting in which people are isolated from the rest of society and manipulated by an administrative staff". Re-socialization via total institutions involves a two step process: 1) the staff work to root out a new inmate's individual identity & 2) the staff attempt to create for the inmate a new identity. Other examples of this are the experience of a young man or woman leaving home to join the military, or a religious convert internalizing the beliefs and rituals of a new faith. An extreme example would be the process by which a transsexual learns to function socially in a dramatically altered gender role.

Organizational socialization

Organizational socialization is the process whereby an employee learns the knowledge and skills necessary to assume his or her organizational role. As newcomers become socialized, they learn about the organization and its history, values, jargon, culture, and procedures. This acquired knowledge about new employees' future work environment affects the way they are able to apply their skills and abilities to their jobs. How actively engaged the employees are in pursuing knowledge affects their socialization process.They also learn about their work group, the specific people they work with on a daily basis, their own role in the organization, the skills needed to do their job, and both formal procedures and informal norms. Socialization functions as a control system in that newcomers learn to internalize and obey organizational values and practices.

ModuleV:

VALUES AND ETHICS

Values and ethics are central to any organization; those operating in the national security arena are no exception. What exactly do we mean by values and ethics? Both are extremely broad terms, and we need to focus in on the aspects most relevant for strategic leaders and decision makers. What we will first discuss is the distinctive nature of ethics for public officials; second, the forces which influence the ethical behavior of individuals in organizations; and third, explore the actions strategic leaders can take to build ethical climates in their organizations.

THE IMPORTANCE OF VALUES AND MORALS 

According to Father of Indian Nation M.K.Gandhi

"If wealth is lost nothing is lost"

"If health is lost something is lost"

"If character is lost everything is lost"

Best of all things is character.

Every one knows that life is precious – that life is important. We all protect our life because we care for it more than anything else. If life is so important, the values of life are even more important. Values are guiding principles, or standards of behaviour which are regarded desirable, important and held in high esteem by a particular society in which a person lives. 

"The Importance of Values and Morals are the code we live by in a civil and just society. They are what we use to guide our interactions with others, with our friends and family, in our businesses and professional behaviour. Our values and morals are a reflection of our spirituality; our character. They are what we hope to model for our children and the children around us, because children do watch us as they develop their own sense of right and wrong.

Value education means inculcating in the children sense humanism, a deep concern for the well being of others and the nation. This can be accomplished only when we instill in the children a deep feeling of commitment to values that would build this country and bring back to the people pride in work that brings order, security and assured progress.

What are human rights?

Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, whatever our nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language, or any other status. We are all equally entitled to our human rights without discrimination. These rights are all interrelated, interdependent and indivisible.

Universal human rights are often expressed and guaranteed by law, in the forms of treaties, customary international law, general principles and other sources of international law. International human rights law lays down obligations of Governments to act in certain ways or to refrain from certain acts, in order to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms of individuals or groups.

Some list of Human Rights:

1. Right to speech

2. Right to live

3. Right to freedom

4. Right to Life

5. Right to liberty

6. Right to thought

7. Right to expression

8. Right to education

9. Right to work

10. Right to equality before the law, social, cultural and economic right. Etc.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download