Institution

Welcome to Africa -the blackest continent of the predominantly blue world, the second-largest and second-most-populous continent. Undoubtedly, like most continents, Our great African freedom fighters won the freedom struggle ages back. Serious issues such as corruption,  unemployment, poverty, among others, are still eating into our country’s economy and not enabling it to grow. Where does the problem lie? Why do these yet exist? In governance or society as a whole? We need to identify those gray areas which lead to the spread of corruption and adopt strict measures for eradicating those causes. Af Ricans gaining independence from British rule was one thing. We only can make these worth freedom efforts when every citizen of this country can enjoy a basic standard of living, provided there will be
no injustice in our society.No doubt, our country is a land of nature and vivid landscape:

however, the beauty and goodwill of our nation have been stained by the subsequent corrupt doings now and then. Virtually in every sector, we can see corrupt personnel who do not deliver their roles and responsibilities well unless ordinary people bribe them. Such unlawful activities are going day by day, as we, the citizens of this country, are urging these people, and no strict actions are being taken.

Likewise, such people think that they can easily escape the laws and go unharmed.

The worst of the situation is the use of power and money by officials. Even if an ordinary man needs any help from the government, he has no better option than to stick to the usual practice. You would find corrupt people in the senior administration to the junior team and even at the clerical positions. It is challenging for a common man to evade them and get his/her work done. What then is corruption? Corruption is a harmful action of greed rearing since the last decades of independence. The world bank defines it’’ as abuse of public office for private gain’’ ( World bank.pdf, n.d.), while USAID defines it as’’ abuse of entrusted authority for private gain’’( USAID.pdf, n.d.). This broad definition doesn’t distinguish between public office and the private one and treats the various types of corruption within the individual sector -like bank president misusing bank funds for his gain as corrupt behavior. Nye(1967) sees corruption as ‘’behavior that deviates from the regular duties of the public role’’ (P.419).

Van Klaveren(1970) says that’’ corruption is when a corrupt civil servant regards his office as a business, the income of which he will seek to maximize’’. Friederich(1966) looks at it from a public interest perspective. He defines it as a pattern that exists whenever a responsible officeholder takes an illegal act to benefit those who provide him rewards, thereby doing damage to the public and its interests. However, the best way of defining corruption is to list the acts which constitute corrupt practices. Mismanagement of state property and or funds, hindrance of justice, and interfering in the duties of agencies tasked with exposing, scrutinizing, and impeaching illegal comportment, among others. Corruption is a threat to sustainable development in Africa and needs to stop.

Why do people practice corruption? What makes people corrupt? Sumah (2018) said the causes of corruption vary from places depending on the social, political, economic, and cultural circumstances. He added,’’ corruption is strongly influenced by low salaries of public administration employees(state officials). The wages and salaries received by workers are not substantial enough to cater for their family and themselves. In the quest for more money, these employees tend to improve their financial position by receiving bribes and doing all forms of corrupt practices.

Research done by Allen et al. (2013) demonstrates that corruption occurs due to the inability of agencies, institutions, and the government to pay and reward the local officials adequately. The failure of the government to pay these officials are due to insufficient tax revenue.Sumah(2018) added,’’ the socioeconomic situation of the government officials also affects the phenomenon of corruption’’. It is the responsibility of the government to reward and motivates officials and workers when the need arises. In cases where the government fails to deliver his duty, corruption is the only act workers and or officials can do to better their lives.

Another contributory factor to corruption in Africa is a self mentality. Self mentality occurs when one takes a decision only considering the benefits to themselves or their families, and not taking into account the implications of their actions in the broader society. The self mentality can manifest itself in many ways — one of the prominent being favoritism toward one’s ethnic group, or a family member. An explanation for this, specifically in the social and cultural context of Ghana, can be found. Leading up to the emergence of colonial rule in the ‘’Gold Coast’’, the country we call Ghana now was just a group of tribes. The member’s responsibilities are being only to their clan and their tribe. After the settlement and alliance of these tribes, this tribe mentality persisted. The effect of this continued into post-colonial Ghana, with a large number of people having no great sense of national identity. This trickled down into institutions and the government, which bred nepotism at these levels, persisting to this day. Voting even takes place along tribal lines.

The two strands of the conservative thought have ostensibly different views on how the society ought to be organised. The paternalistic strand derives from the 18th century based on an organic society in which privileges and obligations were classified according to hierarchy, with the consequence that the rich should take responsibility as custodians for the poor, nobelle oblige, this rhetoric is used to provide social assistance.

The liberal strand derives the from 19th century classic liberalism in which individuals pursue their own interests in a self-help society based on the free market system in which any form of interference in the economy will lead not only to bureaucratic inefficiency but could also be dangerous as a means for totalitarianism. 1 According to W. H. Greenleaf, a distinguished historian of the British political tradition, the two strands share principles which separate them from other ideologies even though they have different conceptions of the society2.

Already in the early nineteenth century different outlooks of the two stands began to appear. In 1835, the conservative Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel advocated a firm government in a free market economy. When Disraeli led the conservative party, however, this attitude changed completely. He believed that competitive capitalism harmed the traditional community. He blamed Peel for selfishness and when the electorate expanded he used the ‘one-nation’ appeal referring to the feudal ideal, in which the rich took their responsibility as custodians for the poor.

Disraeli did not believe that without social assistance the mass of the electorate would endorse traditional institutions3. This paternalistic brand proclaimed by Disraeli has been the ascendant strand in British conservatism until 1970’s. The liberal strand has been rarely represented by the mainstream conservative thinkers until 1975, when Margaret Thatcher became the leader of the party. Which does not mean that liberal thinkers were absent in this doctrine, throughout the history of British conservatism individualist principles have been proposed.

Perhaps it should be noted that in the United Kingdom Liberals have been displaced by the Conservative Party, absorbing many liberal principles on the way which explains the liberal conservative tradition not found in continental Europe4. It was during the French Enlightenment that many conservative principles were developed as a defence for the establishment, the ancient regime. They countered progressive ideals such as liberty with contrasting theories about history, tradition and moral community.

According to Joseph de Maistre individuals are social beings deriving from traditions in the society. Social continuity is guaranteed by moral guardians such as the family, the church and the state. There is no state of nature such as posited by Rousseau; the society reflects the authority of God. The notion of rights was therefore nonsense as obligations always precedence. They stood for hierarchy, aristocracy, the primacy of the collective over the individual and the importance of the sacred. All of these traits were also present in Burke’s writings.

Edmund Burke is one of the first who developed conservative principles in England, and although he and his contemporaries have advocated principles now regarded as dead many contemporary conservative thinkers like to trace back their ideas to this heritage5. Although Burke, a Whig, supported a constitutional Monarchy in which the sovereign was constrained by parliament and the parliament by a small and exclusive electorate, he believed in representation of the independent wise derived from ‘natural aristocracy’. 6 When conservatives relate to Burke they mean his themes about organism, test of time and reform.

Like Burke, conservatives distrust social change and accept human inequality. Human beings are naturally diverse in energy and talent which also implies that levelling classes is futile, egalitarian programmes are dangerous as they entail authoritarian measures which will crush individual liberty and social hierarch is desirable because the majority will benefit from the leadership of the few. Because conservatives prefer tradition they do not have any illusion that future times can eliminate imperfections of human arrangements, in contrast with their ideological adversaries.

But the proposition that conservatism is rooted in a natural dislike of change is blameworthy as they have merged ahistorical patterns of individual behaviour in the Western culture with specific ideals about how the government and the society ought to be organised. Those who equate conservatism with opposition are therefore unsophisticated. A. O. Hirschman has defined three theses in which conservatives vindicate there position advocating tradition. The perversity thesis in which they warn for the opposite of the intended goal, for example; the bid for liberty during the French Revolution would lead to tyranny.

The futility thesis, by which social engineering will never eliminate inequalities as it is impossible. And they warn for too high cost outweighing reform in the jeopardy thesis7. Therefore conservatism is best positioned as a device against unproven and thus false optimism. In Edmunds Burke’s book, Reflections on the Revolutions in France in 1790 he claimed that historical experience is more reliable than abstract speculation. The society is a product of organic growth, according to Burke, accumulating the wisdom of generations rather than by impractical ideals.

In this same context he advocated the age of reason, comparing the small ‘individual stock’ with the inexhaustible ‘general bank and capital of nation and ages’. According to Burke the individual is sinful and react more often passionate than rational, prone to selfishness and mistaken judgement and therefore incapable of understanding the complexity of public interest. He warned against rationalism, a faulty judgement of individual formulation intoxicated with their capacity of abstract thinking disconnected from historical realities8.

It is this disconnection of traditions what Burke shares with conservatives throughout the history. John Reeves who opposed to the natural rights advocated by progressive liberals in the late 18th century, because they rested on rational thinking. In 1872 Benjamin Disraeli blamed Whigs for abstract thinking fashionable in continental Europe, substituting cosmopolitan for national principles. And in the last century Michael Oakeshott depicted politics as an art of where to go next, not a science of setting up a permanent society.

Wise politicians use tradition as experience to decide what to do next and are not concerned with ideals such as a classless society. He used the enfranchisement as an example; women were granted the vote not by logic but by their gradually improving legal and social status. Oakeshott defined therefore two types of knowledge, practical knowledge based on tradition and technical knowledge based on abstract thinking. 9 According to Oakeshott technical thinking is incomplete without practice through time; abstract thinking in pursuit of ‘loose metaphysical’ thinking is therefore bound to fail.

Clearly, conservatives have vindicated tradition to blame their adversaries of admitting to impractical rational schemes, but concluding that the heart of conservatism lies in traditionalism would not be sustainable. The conservative tradition has shown us that they do sometimes admit to idealistic speculation. While Disraeli blamed Whigs of ‘loose metaphysical’ speculation, he himself referred to an idealistic ideal of the feudal society to dismiss the capitalist market system and to provide social assistance.

But also liberal conservatives have been prone to support dogmatic schemes in order to achieve the political formulae they believed consists out of the ‘sound’ conduct. Those Thatcherites have also put aside Oakeshotte’s notion of art, as they knew where to go next. And the New Right broke with tradition as they advocated radical change. This implies that conservatism does not advocate tradition per se and therefore stands for something as they have an image of a sound political order, which determines their attitude to social change.

It is the essence of this sound political order which is not clear; there is no future plan which they pursue, perhaps because conservatives do not believe in utopia10. If the conservative standpoint to established institutions distinguishes a set of principles contrasting other ideologies, this would imply that both strands are in pursuit of the same ‘sound’ political conduct, but using different means. Or, although the two strands hold contrasting views on society they ought to be in pursue of the same ends.

As mentioned above the paternalist strand used the feudal ideal to provide social assistance for the poor since Disraeli. Harold Macmillan who presented ‘the middle way’ as an updated expression of this ‘one-nation’ ideal as a means to attack the increasingly growing inequalities between two nations, the rich and the poor. The providence of welfare in 1954 was presented by R. A. Butler in a conservative manner; the Disraelian approach to modern politics did not require conservatives to abandon their traditional vindication of inequality. Disraeli provided us with inspiration and he cautioned us …. We should seek to secure greater quality not by levelling the few, but by elevating the many’.

The modernised Disraelian strand became party orthodoxy until the 1970’s and created a consensus between the major parties over social Welfare. When the liberal strand took over from the collective strand as the mainstream of the British Conservative Party some fundamental differences became clear between the two strands, like the disagreement over the responsibilities of the powerful and the justification of wealth. 1 When collective conservatives talked about decent housing and adequate welfare they often cite Disraeli when urging the aristocratic ethos of noblesse oblige to be adapted in modern conditions. The collectivists felt morally justified to distribute money from the rich to the poor. Which does not mean liberal conservatives did not have a morally justification for their approach to social assistance. They feel that a competitive market is just as it rewards individuals reflecting the diversity of human talent and it nurtures habits of prudence and self-reliance.

For liberal conservatives poverty is related to skill and effort, when you give provide welfare you create therefore an environment in which they do not have to work. Another justification of an unfettered economy is that the rich, people with special talent, create wealth which will eventually triples down to the poor. In this sense the rich are creators of prosperity instead of plunderers of the poor. In this same context they justified the distribution of power and wealth. This is in contrast with the collective strand who justifies wealth and power on social breeding of the elite.

Common to these strands is the acceptance of inequality and the social obedience of the majority to firm leadership. 12 The arrival of Margaret Thatcher did not only underline these disagreements over justification and distribution of wealth and power, but was a departure from the paternalist strand in general. Many people would argue that the New Right represented classic liberalism instead of conservatism ends. Keith Joseph denied that there was a break with traditional conservative thinking.

As long as institutions, culture, conservative responsibilities and political practices were recognisable or at least would be recognisable in the near future, conservatives could be tolerant. According to them conservatives could no longer be confident that this was so by the ends of the 1970’s. In these circumstances conservatives had to advocate in a reconstruction of a social, economical and political order in an attempt to restore lost values. 13 But it is the advocacy of a free-market economy what causes contradiction.

Hayek, one of the leading neo-liberalist thought, himself wanted to link the free-market with the reason of test of time, which is in principle incompatible. When you support an unfettered market system you will have to accept the spontaneous outcomes it produces and accept any regime which survives, which is in contrast of Hayek’s refusal of certain institutions and mechanisms such as income distribution. The explanation of Hayek’s refusal is his particular use of tradition. 14 Without this he would be dependent on the outcome of the market. It is his use of spontaneous which is misleading.

Although Hayek describes the social order to be spontaneous he probably means that the outcome of the innumerate individual decisions is spontaneous. The social order is constituted out of decisions taken, influenced by tradition and practice. Society is spontaneous as social order comes from within the society, which sits ill with the notion of evolution. According to the evolution theory the society is the result of social arrangement which have survived15. The incompatibility in Hayek’s notions of tradition and the spontaneous market was underlined by people like Letwin.

Those liberal conservatives claimed that there was a clear distinction between the free market theory and Thatcherism. Whereas classical liberals favour the spontaneous outcome of the free market in both economical and social sphere, liberal conservatives distinguishes them. The economic consideration of Thatcherism is secondary to the programme of moral regeneration. The extension of ownership promotes rather than reduces traditional continuity in families. Private ownership of properties gives families the opportunity to hand on property which provides them with continuity.

Thatcherism was a programme for radical change in many areas but recognised the importance of tradition in other contexts, attacking ‘entrenched’ institutions rather than traditional ones16. In this sense Thatcherism is in a direct line with conservatism. Other people find the connection between classic liberalism and conservatism illogical. Liberal conservatives accept much of the teachings of the laissez-faire theory and yet they insist on nationality and a strong state. In a free market system boundaries constrain the economy and are therefore harmful rather than desired.

In principle markets ignore social and cultural differences between individuals and nations. A strong state is desirable as it preserves competition within the economy and encourages individual to participate and to buy private property17. When Letwin proclaimed that private ownership promotes continuity in family life, the influence of paid labour was not taken into consideration. The new Right stimulates structural changes of the economy in which demand and supply determine paid labour. The contradiction in the neo-liberal thought is damaging.

On one hand they encourage market competition with detraditionalisation effects, and on the other hand they proclaim to promote the very traditional symbols which it also helps to dissolve and which are held as essential for social solidarity, like the family. Conservatives like Oakeshott, do not belief that market institutions can prosper in an autonomous way; this would namely imply mechanisms of thrust18. Thrust can only be protected by law to a certain extent. Norms and values are part of a wider nexus of social institutions not inherent in economical contracts but in tradition.

Accepting the market as an autonomous mechanism which produces endless economical growth also contradicts with the conservative acknowledgement of imperfectability. According to most forms of conservatism humans have often wrongly tried to encompass the world with rational and abstract thinking, which is why they preferred tradition. The New Right does accept Imperfectability in the social sphere and beliefs that the government is incapable of economic planning, but see the market place as a frictionless machine.

According to the New Right their doctrine flourished because they had discovered flaws and failures in the organisation the collectivist and socialist had supported after the Second World War19. These problems could be solved by letting free markets flourish and by renewing the core of moral institutions such as the state and the family. The most obvious change of the New Right was the departure from Keynesianism. In the decades before the arrival of Thatcher in British government there was a consensus over welfare policy.

Keynes’ management of demand theory had controlled tendencies of capitalism towards cycles of boom and depression fairly well. This era, which is often referred to as a ‘golden age’, was characterised with economical growth. According to some, Keynesianism became ineffective as a result of intensified globalisation and the transformation of everyday life. The Management of demand theory could not cope with the 24-hour international market which typified ‘new’ globalisation20. Keynesian and other welfare programmes presumed a society with more stable lifestyle habits than are characteristic in contemporary 24-hours market economies.

Unconstrained markets intensify globalisation which will lead to more detraditionalisation in social life and thus in the family. The New Right proclaimed that the family was central to their theory, but in the context of globalisation as positioned above this is certainly contradictive. As mentioned above conservatives use the notion of tradition in a particular way. The new Right has showed us that conservatism is not always opposed to radical change. According to Roger Scruton the radical change does not have to be a departure of the notion tradition21.

Conservatives, he says, place faith in institutions which have been tried before and wishes to give as much as necessary authority to constitute an accepted and objective public realm. Authority is opposed to social contract and all other social arrangements based on choice; authority comes from the transcendent qualities of established institutions. Allegiance is what a member of a collectivity owes to authority. People relate to collectivities, but this is not determined by individual choice or conscious but by the socially and morally transcendent.

Transcendence is also the core of tradition. Conservatives are therefore not concerned with any form of authority, but authority legitimised by traditional symbols and allegiance is not just a matter of belonging to some corporate body but it refers to an affiliation with organised groups based on tradition. Sructon also said that practices worth conserving need to have the weight of a successful history of something that has flourished. Such practices must have the ‘allegiance’ and ‘authority’ of their participants and must give a durable meaning to the emergence to be preserved22.

These considerations, he says, rule out traditions such as torture, crime and revolution. This test of time is based on a sort of evolutionism in which symbols of traditions have survived through time interpreted for their social function, which is at least suspicious and certainly does not explain the position of conservatives to tradition. The objective distinction which separates the quality of tradition with habits, customs and Oakshott’s notion of technical knowledge is that it is determined by and ritual or revealed truth which is also the origin of its authority.

In this sense tradition is not embedded in the practice but in certain rituals transmitted by guardians of tradition such as priests, wise men and respected elderly. The past is therefore essential for tradition, not because it must persist over an indefinite time but because it has to be passed on by practice, like in an apprenticeship23. In the past decades in which globalisation and thus detraditionalisation had intensified preserving tradition has become more like fundamentalism.

Fundamentalism is nothing more than securing tradition with traditional means, according to Giddens, as it asserts its ritual truth without moral and cultural communication in conditions where traditions are under challenge24. This is potentially dangerous as it excludes social groups within the cosmopolitan society. The New Right, then, proclaims to be linked with conservatism advocated by people like Burke and Oakshott but is better to be viewed as radicalism in pursuit to preserve and restore institutions they value. My conclusion, therefore, is that the two strands of conservatism are incompatible.

There are several hotel management concepts that hotel managers use not only to ensure a smooth running of hotels, but also to help them to achieve economic success, social influence, technological advancement, environmental protection and conservation hence sustainability. Good management concepts ensure that organizations acquire competitive edge over their competitors. Each hospitality organization has specific management concepts that they use to ensure that there is smooth running of the institutions. This paper highlights some of the effective concepts in hotel management that are being used by some successful hotels with a case study of Hilton hotel.

Leadership is one of the hotel management concepts that are being used which minimizes more of ‘maintenership’ but more of leading the institution. In this concept, the manager becomes more pro-active than reactive. The manager always sees ahead the challenges that may appear instead of chasing after them. In the hotel, the manager is supposed to walk around interact with the employees and guests and know the possible challenges that they are facing. In this management concept, the manager is able to identify any possible challenge that may arise in the future in a hotel, correct them and ensure that all challenges are addressed earlier before they are harmful to the hotel. Areas where a manager can act earlier and correct possible problems where the customer lacks   variety of food in their meals or poor communication with the service provider.

Direction is another management concept that should also be employed in the management of hotels. The manager gives direction by creating atmosphere and conditions that should be followed in an institution. This can be done through communication to the subordinates especially during staff general meeting. In this concept, the staff should know that they will be held accountable for their activities. It is important to involve the staff in coming up with mission statement or letting them understand the mission statement, so that they are familiar with the ultimate goal and objective of the organization. (Rutherford D. G et al 217).

Community involvement in the management is also an effective management concept in the hotel. It is important to relate well with the outside environment so that they can have a positive attitude about your institution. As a manager, one should keep economic indicator of the nearby region. The local community should therefore be involved in decision making and benefit sharing so that they can have a positive attitude with your institution and support it. Some of the way that they can support the institution is through being customers in the same institution, being hospitable to the hotels clients and supplying of the items to the hotel. This ensures that there is sustainability of the business.

Training and education off the management and the subordinate staff is also a management concept that is employed by the hotel managers. This ensures that the staff keeps on being trained on the services and management of the hotel. It also involves reading of journals and newspapers to ensure that one understands the latest trend of the customer’s interest in the services provision. In training, new management techniques are also learnt, in various departments. Mostly the hotels keep on developing programs on refreshment courses.

Empowerment to the employees is also a concept used which ensures that employees are granted authority to make everyday decisions within guidelines. For instance many guests may feel that they are in the middle of bureaucracy when they want to have a charge adjusted in their account folio, when the waiter has to go and ask the supervisor. In most cases the guest feels that the services that are given to them are not user friendly. To a certain extent, the employee could be made at liberty to negotiate with the client and ready at a satisfactory level of both parties. With this, the client gets the services that they feel satisfied with. (Clarke Alan 64),

Cost management is also another concept for managing hotels. Hotel managers tend to examine labor cost reduction opportunities when the hotels are experiencing high operating expenses. An examination of movements in labor and all other expenses shows that payroll reductions contributes significantly to the cost controls implemented in both 1991 and 2001/2002. (Robert Mandelbaum 2)

Hilton group of hotels management have employed some of the above managerial concepts and have succeeded. The hotel is managed over in the world and is a international chain of full-service hotels and resorts. Hotels are owned, managed, or franchised to independent operators by the Hilton Hotels Corporation. The managerial concepts used include consistent training and education. The hotel recruits graduates staff in management positions like in front office, house keeping, food and beverages, Conference and meetings halls and kitchen. There are also refresher courses program where their staff keeps on being trained to hospitality recognized institutions of learning. Read  Industry

The hotel managers who lead and directs the hotels in way that the whole chain of hotels are run the same and the staff know what is expected of them. Leadership and direction has ensured that the hotel provides high quality services to all its clients. The hotel also has policy that ensures that the staff is empowered to make their own decisions especially when dealing with clients. The hotel target mostly business clients who are mostly learned and work under busy schedule. The high qualified and empowered staff provides quality services which makes it easy for the hotels to have business even at low season, and are able succeed economically allover the world.

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Work cited

Clarke Alan, Wei Chen international Hospitality Management: Concepts and Cases

Butterworth-Heinemann, 2007 p 212-225

Robert Mandelbaum, Managing Hotel Labor Costs, PKF Consulting 2004 pg2-3.

Rutherford D. G., Michael J. O’Fallon, Hotel management and operations

John Wiley and Sons, 2006 p 64.

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BUSINESS STUDIES VOL 15, NO1, JUNE 2007: pages 1 of 13 A STAKEHOLDER VIEW OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT IN CHINESE FIRMS Dr Xueli Huang1 Dr Scott Gardner2 Despite the fact that China has emerged as a driving force of the world economy over the last decade, little research has been undertaken into how Chinese firms strategically manage their businesses.

This paper develops a theoretical framework of strategic management in the Chinese firms through reviewing and synthesising five strategic perspectives that are relevant to the Chinese context: the Industry Structure View (ISV), Resources-Based View (RBV), Institutional View (IV), Relational View (RV), and Stakeholder View (SHV). We elaborate the relevance of the SHV in the Chinese context and its relationships with other strategic perspectives. Finally, we offer several managerial and research implications based on the theoretical framework developed.

Key Words: strategic management, Chinese firms, stakeholder perspective I. INTRODUCTION One of the most significant developments in the global economy is the re-emergence of China as a major driving force of the world economy. Since the implementation of the open-door, market-oriented policies in 1979, China has quadrupled its GDP and sustained a significant average growth rate of over 9 per cent. The foreign direct investment (FDI) in China in 2004 amounted to US$ 60 billions, making China the biggest FDI destination country over three consecutive years from 2002.

Chinese organisations now compete fiercely in domestic markets, and the international trade arena, with the value of China’s international trade accounting for over 70 percent of its GDP in 2004. The Chinese have also expanded their business operations to other countries as illustrated by the recent examples such as the Levono, China’s largest Personal Computer (PC) manufacturing company, acquiring IBM’s PC division, and the unsuccessful bid of China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), China’s third largest oil company, for Unocal, the ninth largest oil company in the USA.

Despite the important role played by the Chinese economy in general, and Chinese firms in particular, in the global economy, China has been considered as one of the most underresearched regions in the world (Tsui, Schoonhoven, Meyer, Lau, & Milkovich, 2004). Although interest from executives, academics and media on Chinese business matters has 1 Dr Xueli Huang is Senior Lecturer at the School of Management, Edith Cowan University. Email: x. huang@ecu. edu. au 2 Dr Scott Gardner is Associate Professor at Murdoch University. Email: s. gardner@murdoch. edu. au 1

A stakeholder view of strategic management in Chinese firms increased dramatically over the past several years, little research effort has been devoted to studying the strategic management of Chinese organisations. This paper investigates strategic management in Chinese organisations. In doing so, an attempt is made to integrate the current literature on strategic management, focusing on the two dominant perspectives of the past twenty years: the Industry Structure View (ISV) (Porter, 1979) and the Resource Based View (RBV) (Barney, 1997; Prahalad & Hamel, 1990; Wernerfelt, 1984).

It also examines Post, Preston and Sachs’ (2002) conceptual schema of complementary perspectives for strategic analysis of 21st century corporate environments – the Stakeholder View (SHV). In attempting to make sense of increased strategic complexity and the central role of networks of human relationships in shaping economic activity in Eastern (notably Chinese) and Western markets, our analysis will call upon the ISV, RBV and SHV with additional reference to other contemporary strategic perspectives including the Relational View (RV)(Dyer & Singh, 1998), and the Institution-Based View (IBV) (Peng, 2002).

By focusing these lenses on how business is conducted in the cultural context and commercial environment of China, this paper aims to: 1) enhance understanding of why and how the strategic behaviours of Chinese managers differ from those of Western managers? 2) explain why the SHV is relevant to Chinese management practice; and 3) develop an integrated theoretical framework that can be used for guiding future research into the unique characteristics of strategic management in Chinese organizations. II. LITERATURE REVIEW

The Industry-Structure and Resource Based Views How firms behave and what determines a firm’s performance in international competition are two of four fundamental issues in strategic management (Rumelt, Schendel, & Teece, 1994). Searching for sources of competitive advantage has been a key theme for strategy researchers and business managers over the past five decades. Consequently, a number of strategic management views or thoughts have emerged that explain either sources of competitive advantage or how firms form strategy (Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, & Lampel, 1998).

The ISV and RBV are two prominent views that have endured in the literature and in practice despite significant reconfiguration of global market boundaries and technologies over the decade to 2006. The fundamental assumption of ISV proposed by Porter (1979) is that a firm’s performance is primarily determined by the environment, including both macro environment and industry environment within which it operates. These two broad sets of environmental factors heavily influence the attractiveness of a position for a firm to occupy.

As such, a firm uses its market power, or in Williamson’s (1991) terms, ‘ strategizing’, as a primary means to generating supernormal returns or achieving competitive advantage. The second prominent perspective of strategic management is the RBV proposed by Wernerfelt (1984) and subsequently developed by strategic scholars, most notably by Barney (1986; 1997), Rumelt (1984) and Teece and his colleagues (1997). The RBV 2

International Journal of Business Studies argues that a firm’s competitive advantage is primarily based on the heterogeneity of the key resources and capabilities it owns or controls, particularly those that are difficult to mobilise. It is the heterogeneity and immobility of these unique resources and core competence that earn a firm’s supernormal rents. In Williamston’s term, firms adopting this approach are ‘economizing’ (Williamson, 1991).

Although the RBV has been widely used in strategic literature, its contribution to the theoretical development has been recently challenged (Priem & Butler, 2001). The Relational and Institution-Based Views Although these two schools of strategic management mentioned above have contributed significantly to understanding of the firms’ strategic management practices and behaviours, the quest continues.

Recent effort devoted to this area has resulted in several promising and interesting developments over the past decade which are relevant to the study of strategic management in Chinese organisations, including the Complex Response Process View (CRPV), (Stacey, 2003), Relational View (RV) (Dyer & Singh, 1998), Institution-Based View (IBV) (Peng, 2002) and, more recently, the Stakeholder View (SHV) by Post, Preston and Sachs (2002b).

There are considerable overlaps across these views that attempt to balance the long standing use of high level and rational industry analysis to explain firms’ strategic behaviours, within a defined marketplace, with a more dynamic, processual, and ultimately political view of strategy. This is focused on human motives and interactions within inter-connected, local, national and global networks or constituencies.

The Relational View (RV) (Dyer & Singh, 1998) proposes that firms can achieve abovenormal returns through profiling and actively managing their network of relationships with other business organisations, particularly with suppliers and users. Dyer and Singh (1998) also outline four mechanisms through which these inter-organizational relationships can generate competitive advantage.

They are: 1) investing in relationspecific assets to gain productivity in the value chain; 2) substantial knowledge exchange, or sharing between participating organisations to enhance inter–firm organisational learning; 3) leveraging the complementary resources and capability of alliance partners to develop new products and services; and 4) using effective governance to reduce transaction costs.

As Dyer and Singh (1998) argue, one of the major benefits of this view is that it extends the unit of analysis for sustainable competitive advantage from a single firm (RBV) or single industry (ISV) to a network of inter-organizational relationships. The RV can be regarded as a middle range theory as it only focuses on a limited number of concepts (Neuman, 2003). Another recently developed view that is relevant to the studies of strategic management in Chinese organizations is the institution-based view (IBV) (North 1990; Peng, 2002).

This view attempts to explain why the strategic decisions of apparently similar firms in different countries vary, and considers institutions as a new set of independent factors, besides a firm’s resources and its industry structure, that influence its strategic choices. According to North (1990), institutions are “the rules of the game in the society”. More specifically, Scott (1995) refers to institutions as “cognitive, normative, and regulative 3 A stakeholder view of strategic management in Chinese firms structures and activities that provide stability and meaning to social behaviour”.

Thus, institutions help identify what strategic choices are acceptable and supportable, reduce uncertainty, and provide consistency to firms. Based on this view, therefore, institutional factors constrain the choices a firm can make, and are often considered in the strategy literature as part of the environment under which organisations operate. Organisations in different countries behave differently because the political and legal systems, social norms and values vary from one country to another, and these are important elements which influence strategic decisions.

In other words, the institutional framework, as defined by Davis and North (1970) as “the set of fundamental political, social and legal ground rules”, in different countries influences firms’ strategy and consequently their performance. The IBV has shed much light on our understanding of strategic behaviour of firms in different countries, and could be good platform for developing new theoretical perspectives that are pertinent to the emerging business culture of China. (Peng, 2005).

The Stakeholder View A more recent development in strategic thinking is the stakeholder-based view (SHV) (Post, Preston, & Sachs, 2002b). In line with the institution-based view, the SHV recognizes the important role played by political and social arenas shaping organisational decision making and performance. Post, Preston and Sachs (2002) build on this broad position, arguing that organisations, and particularly powerful multinational corporations, need to actively develop, maintain and manage relationships with their key stakeholders, including governments and communities.

This proactive cultivation and long term management of strategic relationships contrast to the IBV, which suggests passive conformance to the rules. It is however quite consistent with management as understood and practiced in Chinese business networks. It therefore deserves more detailed discussion and elaboration in this paper. According to Post, Preston and Sachs (2002) the stakeholder view holds that “the capability of a business enterprise to generate sustainable wealth, and hence long-term value, is determined by its relationships with critical stakeholders” (p. 1). There are two primary, but implicit, assumptions on which the SHV is based. First, a firms’ sustainable and long-term value is determined by three broad types of factors: industry structure, resource base, and social and political setting. It combines the external and internal environments of the firm, and human relationships within its immediate sphere of operations and broader constituency as loci for analysis.

Second, within this broad constituency there are critical stakeholders whose relationships with the focal firm influence its performance either positively or negatively, (See Figure 1). Thus, the authors (Post, Preston, & Sachs, 2002a) argue that the SHV both integrates the industrystructure view and RBV into a broader analytical framework for understanding strategic decisions and actions, and complements them through a broader understanding of how the industry position, resources and firm performance are affected by social and political factors. International Journal of Business Studies Figure 1 The stakeholder view of the corporation (Post, Preston, & Sachs, 2002, p. 55) The theoretical foundation of the SHV can be traced back to the stakeholder theory popularised by Freeman’s seminal work on stakeholder management and its ethical implications (Freeman, 1984).

Since then, the stakeholder concept as a significant element in strategic management theory and practice has been widely used in varied settings, including the public sector and not-for-profit organizations in the USA and various European contexts. Following Freeman’s discussion of the purpose and ethical considerations of stakeholder management, Donaldson and Preston (1995) proposed three types of stakeholder theory: descriptive, instrumental and normative.

Descriptive stakeholder theory attempts to describe and explain specific characteristics and behaviours of business organisations, instrumental theory is used to identify the connections between stakeholder management and organizational performance often where profit motive or advantage over rivals are dominant considerations, whilst normative theory focuses on the interpretation of corporate functioning, including moral and philosophical guidelines for operations and management (Donaldson & Preston, 1995).

Based on this typology of stakeholder theory, instrumental motives and the quest for competitive advantage through stakeholder management appear to have dominated in the literature over the past fifteen years. However this has been offset to a certain extent in recent years by an increased focus in the literature on the role of stakeholders and stakeholder management in the practice and adoption of corporate social responsibility by US and European multinationals (Laszlo, 2003; Sirgy, 2002; Vogel, 2005).

In common with other major US based stakeholder theorists, Post, Preston and Sachs (2002) widely disseminated notion of the SHV has been developed primarily from observations of the characteristic management behaviours within a small number of large US and European based multinational corporations, which they refer to as “large, complex enterprises” (p. 9), citing examples such as Motorola, Shell, and Cummins Engine Co. The reasons for adopting this particular case-based research method is that it 5 A stakeholder view of strategic management in Chinese firms equires an in-depth and comprehensive understanding of the organisations under study, and that the development of the relationships with its critical stakeholders is often evolutionary and path-dependent. Summarising the strategy perspectives discussed above, an integrative framework can be proposed as shown in Figure 2. Figure 2. An integrative model of strategic management in the Chinese organisation Is the SHV perspective appropriate for understanding and explaining strategic management in Chinese organisations? Whilst the SHV ocuses on the relationships with key stakeholders and its impact on the long-term organisational wealth, many have observed that unique business relationships, or Guanxi, have been based on characteristic behaviour of Chinese managers. Thus, there is a coincidence between the SHV theory and Guanxi practice in China. Using the distinction provided by Argyris and Schon (1978) between theory and practice, one could wonder if the SHV is a theory espoused and consciously enacted by Western managers in recent years, but imbued in Chinese business practices for many centuries.

As stated by Donaldson and Preston (1995), how stakeholder theory is understood varies from country to country, even in the highly developed market capitalist economies, of the USA, Europe, and Japan. The current Chinese context, in an economic, and more so, social and political sense, is vastly different from those of Western countries. Therefore, it is helpful at both a conceptual and practical level to examine how and why stakeholder management is practiced by Chinese firms.

In the following section, we attempt to explain strategic behaviours of Chinese business practitioners, particularly the relationships between stakeholder management and other 6 International Journal of Business Studies dominant strategic views through examining the Chinese business settings and making use of the theoretical insights offered by the SHV. III. THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT AND OTHER STRATEGIC VIEWS IN THE CHINESE CONTEXT Although the five strategic views mentioned above have been largely developed independently, a close examination of these views reveals that overlaps exist between some of them.

In the following subsections, we focus our discussion primarily on the relationship between the SHV and other views. Stakeholder management and resource-based view in the Chinese business setting Based on the RBV, an organisation can generate supernormal rents through the identification, acquisition, and use of its resources that are valuable, rare, difficult to imitate and non-substitutable (Barney, 1991). Although human resources have been considered as one of the four major categories of resources within the firm, RBV has not looked beyond the properties of these resources.

The focus of this view is primarily internal with little attention who, outside the firm, can influence the processes of resource access, acquisition and use. The relationship between organisational performance and external resources has been convincingly elaborated by the resource-dependence theory developed by Pfeffer (1978). According to the resource-dependence theory, the organisation relies heavily on its external stakeholders for key resource inputs to survive and prosper.

For Chinese organizations, there is considerable dependence on external stakeholders for resource acquisition and use. Typically these external bodies or parties would be partly those with authority for either allocating resources, such as governments and banks, or influencing resource acquisition and use, such as taxation departments, or Bureau’s of Industrial and Commercial Administration, which can exercise considerable discretion within the broader legal and regulatory framework impacting Chinese business contexts. One particular point in case is the role of the Chinese government.

Historically Chinese governments have controlled much of the national wealth and resources, and been heavily involved in making economic decisions. For example, most of major investment decisions in the state-owned enterprises have been directly influenced by the Chinese governments. Moreover, anecdotal evidence, either from public media or the word of mouth conventional wisdom in China, suggests that cultivation of relationships with Chinese banks, other business entities and their employees, are important to support financing, timely information sharing and sourcing critical materials for business enterprises.

Stakeholder management and the market-based view Establishing a strong market position in China is very difficult because Chinese markets, even market segments, are usually big due to its large regional population bases. The well-established, and usually large, state-owned enterprises also make it harder to operate competitively for new comers in the Chinese markets. Although many new business 7 A stakeholder view of strategic management in Chinese firms opportunities are continuously emerging, most of them are still heavily regulated by the Chinese governments.

The governments can help and/or deter market position building through licensing (e. g. , taxi industry, iron ore importing), investment approvals (e. g. , steel mills), and issuing permits for key capital intensive activities such a commercial building and large scale infrastructure projects, whilst similar practices of these can also be observed in Western countries, the licensing and approval processes in China are often opaque and leave much room for discretion by government officials.

Stakeholder management and institutional view As discussed above, the legal and political settings in China have profound influence on the strategies pursued by Chinese organisation. The legal systems in China have traditionally been loosely configured and left much room for interpretation. Chinese laws are usually not well codified and difficult to reinforce (Ahlstrorm & Bruton, 2001). Moreover jurisdictional boundaries between the governmental departments at the same level or governments at different levels often overlap.

Therefore, favourable relationships with Chinese regulatory authorities can have a positive impact on the organisation’s performance. With regards to the political setting in China, the long history of feudalism in China from 221BC to 1912 has consistently shown a close link between political power and economic wealth. With the prevailing feudal system, political power was centrally controlled by the emperor and his royal family with business enterprises in China relying heavily on their government (emperor and royal families) for survival or prosperity.

Coupled with the loose legal systems, favourable relationships with the Chinese government or royal family have traditionally been considered extremely important for business organisations to maintain their survival and growth. Modern Chinese history shows similar patterns of a close link between the government and business entities. Even after the Chinese communist party took over the power in 1949, the Chinese government controlled most of the country’s wealth. Many Chinese large enterprises are still state-owned.

Therefore Chinese governments have been heavily involved in economic activities at both industry and firm levels over the past five decades. Developing a favourable relationship with various government departments and doing business under their authority or with their help, is still considered one of the most profitable courses for Chinese businesses to adopt in today’s global economy. It is good relationships with the government that help business organisations to grow and occupy a strong position in specific industries with provincial, national and international market penetration.

This relational perspective on business and strategy has many historical and cultural precedents in China. Stakeholder management and relational view in the Chinese cultural setting Since the time of the Qin Dynasties Chinese culture has been dominated by Confucianism that stresses the importance of human relationships and harmony within a society. This requires that interpersonal relationships be appropriately arranged. The friendship (yi), which emphasized the mutually beneficial relationships between one and other, has been 8 International Journal of Business Studies egarded as one of the four characteristics of the fundamental tenet of Confucianism is humanity (ren). The central significance of these principles of friendship or egalitarianism has not waned in the Chinese recent history. In contrast, the Chinese Communist Party reinforced these ideas during the 1950s to 1960s, and more recently from the mid 1990’s to the present day, as a desirable social norm or virtue. At the business level, the Chinese governments have facilitated cooperation and collaboration among the state-owned enterprises in many business areas, such as new product development (Huang, Schroder, & Steffens, 1999).

Frequent gatherings amongst businesses either through political meetings or economic activity among managers in China has also served to facilitate this collaboration and cooperation processes. Such institutional and cultural settings in China manifest in different behaviours including information sharing and informal governance, two of the four mechanisms suggested by Dyer and Singh (1998) which can be used by organisations to enhance their competitive advantage.

It suggests that the strong cultural and institutional foundation that exists in Chinese business for developing reciprocal relationships. This can help improve organisation’s performance – a central principle for the Relational View. IV. THE STAKEHOLDER VIEW AND MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS FOR CHINESE MANAGERS AND RESEARCHERS This paper explored the relational basis on which the Chinese organisations compete in their domestic markets drawing comparisons with recent Western views of strategic behaviour.

These were framed in a broader historical context of doing business in China. It is contended that the recent stakeholder view proposed by Post, Preston and Sachs (2002) provides much promise in terms of both theoretical and practical insights into how and why strategic management is practiced in Chinese organisations. However, clear differences in Chinese and Western social and political systems, and the stage of capitalist evolution need to be considered in applying the SHV to the Chinese settings.

As stated by Donaldson and Preston (2005), how stakeholder theory is understood varies even in the market capitalist economies. This is more evident in the contemporary Chinese context, where social and political settings are vastly different from those of Western countries. A number of managerial and research implications are proposed from this paper. First, we have presented an integrated framework of strategic management that indicates the mechanisms linking relationships with key stakeholders and organisational performance.

It is proposed that whilst developing and maintaining these relationships has been traditionally valued by Chinese as part of their culture, contemporary Western strategic management thinking would seek to equate effort spent on this area with measurable performance outcomes and long term competitive advantage. With this in view, the integrated framework presented could be used to provide Chinese managers with a more holistic and formalised view of strategic management to support the development clearly articulated objectives and productive long term interactions with key stakeholders. A stakeholder view of strategic management in Chinese firms Secondly, it is clear from the framework presented that the stakeholder view is only one of the approaches for creating organisational wealth. Several types of organisations are competing in the Chinese markets and each could be competing on different basis. Multinational corporations compete on their market position and resources, whilst stateowned enterprises compete on the basis of being institutionalised within political and cultural settings, providing strong market influence and ready access to resources.

Most local private firms may compete on the cultural settings, flexibility and speed of decisionmaking. As the Chinese governments gradually level the playing field for all business players, the political settings in China will be changed. Therefore, managers of Chinese organisations, particularly state-owned enterprises, need to develop relationships with other types of new era capitalist stakeholders who can help build strong market position and/or gain access to key resources.

Thirdly, relationships with the stakeholders need to be considered as strategic (intangible) assets for business organisations in Western markets and as a powerful means to compete in China. As in the West, these relationships are located within a broader social and transactional knowledge networks (Kaplan & Norton, 2004; Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998), containing untapped strategic value for Chinese companies operating locally, regionally, and globally. Currently many Chinese managers spend much effort practicing a stakeholder theory in a fragmented way at a one – on – one, individual level.

Whilst the compounding effect of the aggregation of these individual relationships is not clear, there is an argument with respect to the SHV to support a more strategically aligned, and systematic integration of these routinised interactions at the organisational level. This is one of the most challenging issues in implementing stakeholder theory in the Chinese organisations, as most of the relationships with key stakeholders are based on the trust between individuals, rather than between organizations.

Looking to the future merging of Chinese and Western business practices organisational structure also needs to be redesigned to manage the relationships with key stakeholders. This is crucial. Although stakeholder orientation can be built into organisational culture, people need to be assigned to facilitate the ongoing integration and implementation of stakeholder management. There is no doubt that stakeholder management is both a science and an art. It requires intuition and human skills – more art than a science. However, it also requires systematic, rational, and analytical techniques.

A number of stakeholder management techniques have been developed over the past decade, which may support the integration of stakeholder management into mainstream in to the strategy processes of Chinese businesses- most notably stakeholder mapping (Johnson, Scholes, & Whittington, 2005), and cognitive mapping (Eden & Ackermann, 1998) which help to tap into the social capital and relationships embedded in broader business networks. Finally, from a methodological point of view, the SHV points out the importance of a more holistic and integrated approach in understanding strategic management in Chinese organisations.

So far, most of studies on Chinese management have used existing Western management theories to explain the Chinese business phenomena. In other 10 International Journal of Business Studies words, they exploit the existing theories, rather than exploring the Chinese management practice or behaviours to develop new theories from a Chinese perspective. Veteran researchers have called for a better balance between exploration and exploitation in conducting business research in China (Tsui et al. , 2004).

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The rapidly increasing population of elderly all over the world has been one of the important concerns of the decision makers and planners on how to provide health care and facilities. Statistics shows that population of elderly accounts for one individual of the ten persons is now at age 60 years old and above. It is projected that in the year 2015, there will be an increasing rate of elderly population such that there will be five out of 10 persons considered as senior citizens. In the Philippines, there is an estimated 5. Million elderly Filipinos or about 6. % of the total 80 million populations. This is projected to grow by 9. 5% in the year 2020. Despite of the life expectancy and the facilities on medical and social systems provide to elderly, the vital question is “What are their situations and experiences at elderly stage? ” Are they experiencing uncomfortable situations such as loneliness, depression, social isolation or controversial quality of life? In some Asian countries like the Philippines culture dictates that the family must take care of their elders.

But some arousing circumstances like when both couples of a family must work so that here is no one to take care of them or when poverty cripples the financial status of the family. These circumstances will leave an option but to put their elders in an institution. The connotation that putting them in an institution might divulge some questions such as will the elders be lonely when they are in an institution or will they be happy thinking that they will never be a burden for their family.? Will their loneliness affect the quality of life that they have in the institution?

How the Filipino family may adjust when their elders are in the institution and as they are facing the dead of ingratitude to their loved one. According to some research studies, it was postulated that the quality of life is not homogeneous, but multidimensional in nature with many option extending from health indications to individual habits, cultures and ethics. Loneliness has a psychological dimension which reflects somebody attitude and behavior about his life. Elderly often expresses negative feelings and loneliness because of the ageing process and social strength that influence their quality of life.

In this reasons, loneliness could be a one important parameter or indicators that effect the quality of life or vice versa, particularly the elders’ society. Theoretical Framework Psychosocial Theory. Erik Erikson (1950) who took a special interest in the final stage of life, concluded that the primary psychosocial task of late adulthood (65 and beyond) is to maintain ego integrity (holding in to one’s sense of wholeness) while avoiding despair (fearing there is too little time to begin a new life course).

According to the author, those who succeed at this final task also develop wisdom that includes accepting without any regrets of life and has to live until the end of last breath death). He emphasized that even older adults who are above in the high degree of integrity can felt some despair at this stage which they contemplate their past experiences. Interactions Theory. Weiss (1978) mentioned there are two elements of loneliness. One aspect is the emotional loneliness due to the absence of an attachment figure; and the other one is the social loneliness or the absence of an acceptable social network.

Register Theory of Generative Quality of Life for the Elderly. According to M. Elizabeth Register and JoAnne Herman (2006), the quality of life is defined as being unconnected with the forces and processes that constitute an assenting existence. The elderly generate quality of life as they experience connectedness in which is a state of synchronous, harmonious, and interactive presence with the six interrelated forces and processes. It involved the act of being metaphysically connected to spiritual, biological, environmental and to the society.

Conceptual Framework In the above theoretical framework, the conceptual framework of the study is developed as shown in Figure 1. The first rectangle box contains the variable of loneliness (independent variable) while the second rectangle box contains the actors contributing to the dimensions of quality of life. The two arrows determine the relationships between loneliness and the quality of life of elders. The third rectangle contains the output/outcome of the study as an “Enhanced Quality of Life” of the elders in the community and the institution.

Conceptual Paradigm Figure 1. Conceptual Paradigm Showing the Relationship between Loneliness and Quality of Life of Elders Statement of the Problem The study will determine the relationship of loneliness and quality of life of elderly individuals living in the community and institutions. Specifically, the study will seek to answer the following questions: 1. How may the level of loneliness of the elders in the community and in the institution be described when categorized as: 1. 1 . Positive feelings, and 1. 2. Negative Feelings? . What is the level of the quality of life of the respondents when grouped according to: 2. 1. Emotional aspect 2. 2. Physical aspect and 2. 3. Social aspect? 3. Is there a significant relationship between loneliness and quality of life of the elders? 4. Is there a significant difference in loneliness and quality of life between elders in the community and in the institution? 5. What are the policy recommendation(s) to improve quality of life and sustain the programs of elderly in mitigating the loneliness of elders?

In this study, the researcher will provide policy recommendations or measures on how to intervene appropriate program and activities for the elderly whether in the community or within the institution. Hypothesis The hypothesis will be tested at 0. 05 level of significance. Ho: There IS no significant relationship between the level of loneliness and quality of life among elders. Ho: There IS no significant difference IN the loneliness and quality of life of elders living in the community and institution. Significance of the Study Student nurses.

The result of this study will help them enhance their knowledge and understanding on taking care of elders. It will help them to have an open mind to care holistically for the elders and to treat them highly individualized. Family members. The findings of the study can help them assess the quality of life of elders in institutions and will serve as a guide in the decision making if they are pushed to whose between putting their beloved parents to an institution or not. Health practitioners. The results of the study can help them to reach out beneficial conclusions.

They can detect the factors on how to mitigate and improve the quality of life by avoiding the loneliness experiences of elders. It can also provide information on what are the weaknesses and opportunities of elder’s daily living and make a sustainable program and activities, I. E. , rehabilitation programmer for elders. Future researchers. This study can provide information to have follow-up study to elated the variables and other parameters to measure the loneliness relative to the quality of life.

Scope and Limitation The focus of this study is to establish the relationship between loneliness and quality of life of the elders at the institutions and community levels. The study will adapt and use the generic questionnaire developed by Nottingham Health Profile for Quality of Life and UCLA Loneliness using the Liker scale. The respondents of this study will be limited to 150 respondents in which the elders had an age ranging from 60 to 89 years old. The respondents also had no dementia and physical disability.

Definition of Terms Loneliness refers to the positive and negative feelings of the elderly in community and institution. Negative Feeling- refers to a state of social isolation and feelings of emptiness. Positive Feeling- state of harmony with oneself and other people. Quality of Life- refers to the emotional, physical and social dimensions of the elders. Emotional Aspect- refers to the inner feelings of elders regarding their emotion. Physical Aspect- refers to the functional and biological status of the elder Social Aspect- refers to the status of connection of elders to the people surrounding them.

This question focuses on Gladstone’s liberalism and to what extent he applied it during his first ministry, 1868-74. Liberalism is a political philosophy that stresses individual liberty, equal opportunity and rights, Victorian liberalism was a mixture of ideology, morality and self-interest, and it advocated civil and religious liberty. Gladstone was the embodiment of Victorian liberalism, he tried to put forward his liberalism but he often found that he fought a lone battle in the cabinet.

To assess the extent of how much Gladstone’s liberalism was applied during his first ministry, I will be looking at the acts that were passed during this period and looking at how liberal in nature they were. His attention was mainly focused on Ireland as he said in his own words “It is my mission to pacify Ireland”. He put forward 3 acts and bills concerning Ireland, at the time these were fairly controversial, as he was one of the first Prime Ministers to address the Irish question.

The first act that Gladstone passed as Prime Minister was The Disestablishment of the Irish Church Act. This broke the connection between church and state and ended the Anglican church’s status as the established church of Ireland, this aimed to reduce endowments and redistributing a third of its annual reserve to non-religious ends, e. g. improving hospitals. This was quite a liberal act as it allowed people to freely attend whichever church they wanted.

This however showed Gladstone’s willingness to solve a problem without appreciating its background and not understanding its immediate practical requirements. Th Irish Church Act was Gladstone’s first liberal move and gave an indication of the path his future acts would take. His second act in 1870 was The Irish Land Act. This was initially one of his most liberal measures as it gave a lot of the protection to the tenant, the individual, but it was diluted so its effectiveness was reduced.

It said that tenants should have greater protection from eviction and should be compensated if their rent was deemed excessive, be given compensation for improvements and repairs they had made and that new tenants should compensate the old tenants for their share in the property. The most important part of this at was the compensation if the rent was deemed excessive; Lord Salisbury objected to this clause as he said that no court had the right to adjudicate on the fairness of rent.

This omission made the bill limited and unremarkable, this caused anger as it did not live up to its expectations and it failed to realise the aim of the land-lord. At first this bill promised to be a very important bill as it finally gave protection to the tenants but in the end it just made the tenants position less secure as land-lords could now freely increase rent as there was no-one to stop them. This should have been another success for Gladstone but after it had passed through parliament it became just another ordinary act.

The Education Act of 1870 put forward by William Forster allowed for the continuation of denominational schools, but in districts where schooling was deficient a locally elected board would be set up. This had the power to organize schools and enforce the attendance of children aged between 5 and 12 who were not being educated in any other way, the boards could also decide whether religious teaching was to be given in their schools. This mainly benefited the working class who before had been unable to send their children to school because it was too expensive so the children went to work instead.

The two main organizations involved in this act were the National Education League and Union. The League was non-conformist and wanted gratuitous secular education, the Union was Anglican and wanted religious teaching. The pressure resulting from the conflict between the two groups produced the Cowper Temple Clause; this meant that only non-denominational religious education was to be provided in schools receiving state aid. This was an important liberal act as it gave educational opportunities to the working class who had never before had the chance of free schooling. Other important acts included The 1870 Civil Service Act.

This meant that all positions within the civil service were open to public competition, this was obviously a liberal act as it gave the opportunity to people to hold positions which had never been open to them as before a system of patronage was used. Army reforms were also introduced these were the 1871 Army regulation Act. The aim of this was “To combine in one harmonious whole all the branches of our military forces”, this abolished the system of purchase, an officer bought his commission and could sell it for whatever he could get, and also flogging in peacetime was abolished.

The 1871 University Test Act made positions of teaching at Oxford and Cambridge open to non-Anglicans. The Ballot Act introduced the secret ballot, this meant that people could express their opinions without being persecuted. The Trade Union Act of 1871 legalized trade unions. Workers were now protected and had their interests looked after so if they felt that they were being treated unfairly they could do something about it. All of these acts cohered with the liberal philosophy, they gave long overdue equal rights and opportunities to everyone.

One of the final acts by Gladstone was the Licensing Act of 1872. This tightened the control on licensing and fixed public houses opening and closing times, with this Gladstone did his party immense harm by alienating brewers and distillers who naturally turned to the conservatives. Gladstone had no doubt in his mind what had caused his election defeat in 1974, in a letter to his brother he commented ” We have been borne down in a torrent of gin and beer”, this act did more harm than good and ended Gladstone’s first ministry.

Gladstone’s serious view of life, his devotion to progress and his insistence on justice and right made him a leader who was idolized or hated. His was the figurehead of liberalism and his many liberal acts showed how passionate he was about it. He was not a great Prime minister but during his first ministry he tried very hard to spread liberalism that appealed rather to a particular mentality that might be found in all classes, so in fact it was above class.

In conclusion Gladstone’s liberalism was his belief in equal opportunities, in an era when this was not available to everyone it was a very brave belief as many of the population could not afford schooling, but thanks to Gladstone this problem was now fixed. He applied his liberalism to a great extent as he introduced some very important changes, these being the Education and Irish Church acts. The way his ministry ended showed that he had not finished and more was to come, mainly his pursuit of Irish Home Rule. He was probably more important for what he was than what he did.

Multinational Corporations have always been and are currently now under harsh criticism. They are mainly condemned for exploiting resources and workers of third world countries, taking jobs away from the US industry, and destroying local cultures. Although there are negatives of multinational corporations, there are also positives. Business done overseas provides jobs for the people of the host country, improving the standard of living, and transfers technology. Richard T. De George explains moral standards, in five basic theses, that multinational corporations must adhere to in order to maintain corporate ethics.

De George argues in his first thesis that using US standards as moral standards is not right and creates false dilemmas for MNCs. Critics of MNCs argue American corporations should adhere to the same living, social, and business standards of the US, regardless of where they conduct business. Setting high standards is commendable, but they are not morally required. This means that rules and regulations are not part of a MNCs moral responsibility. I agree with this De George’s first thesis because morality concerns human welfare.

Although the American standard of living is much higher than a third world, as long as MNCs don’t hurt human life, they should be able to open a corporation that holds the same standard of that host country even if it is significantly lower than America. However, there is an exception to this thesis concerning MNCs dealing with the drug and food industry. Those type of businesses should apply America’s FDA and OSHA standards, “with respect to hazardous occupations? with respect to pay, with respect to internalizing the costs of externalities, and with respect to foreign corrupt practices,” (DeGeorge, p. 264).

This is because drugs and foods directly affect human welfare. De George explains that regardless of differences in culture and values, there are seven moral norms that can be applied to MNCs to ensure they are conducting their business ethically. The first is the basic norm which is to do no intentional direct harm. The second utilizes the utilitarian principal, to produce more good than bad for the host country. Third is to contribute activities to the host country’s development meaning that if the MNC is not helping the host country and only benefiting themselves, they are exploiting that country.

The fourth norm is to respect the human rights of employees even if the local businesses do not. Fifth is to pay fair share of taxes. This gives a guideline to MNCs, suggesting that to do business overseas just for the benefit of tax breaks is not moral. The sixth norm is to respect local cultures and work with, not against it, meaning that MNCs should understand the host land’s values and culture norms and incorporate it within their organization. Lastly, MNCs should cooperate with the local host country in the development and enforcement of just background institutions for example, health and safety standards.

I agree that if MNCs understand and follow these moral norms, they will not be criticized for exploiting the host country. De George’s third thesis explains that critics should use the seven moral norms as a criterion to judge MNCs individually as a case-by-case study analysis. Financial institutions, agricultural enterprises, drug companies, extractive industries, and other manufacturing industries are the five types of business operations each having its own set of moral issues.

I agree that each industry is different, and MNCs should not be grouped as a unit and should be judged separately based on the seven moral norms. De George’s fourth thesis argues that MNCs because Third World countries are short of sufficient just background institutions, the use of clear moral norms are even more necessary. He also argues that because MNCs are capable of unifying mankind by providing the economic base MNCs have a special responsibility to support just background institutions to increase the standard of living for the host country and those around it.

I partially agree with this thesis. Just because MNCs are capable of changing a country, they have no obligation to do so. It is not their moral responsibility to do so either. Although they should support just background institutions, they do not have to. De George’s fifth and final thesis explains that responsibility is linked to ownership. Whatever portion one owns of the MNC one must take that amount of accountability. This means that “what host countries cannot expect is that they can demand control without accepting correlative responsibility,” (DeGeorge, p. 266).

I agree with this thesis. Whoever is in charge of something must become aware that it is them who must take the liability. Part Two: Review Question #2 Today, American MNCs operating overseas face many moral dilemmas. I feel the most important dilemma regards not only the exploitation of resources and employees, but how the MNC affects the host economy. MNCs affect their employees’ welfare directly, but also affect the host country’s citizens indirectly.

By providing jobs the spending capital within the host economy increases, and creates a better standard of living. Personally, I believe that MNCs operating in Third World countries do more good than harm. I agree with Ian Maitland, author of In Defense of International Sweatshops. Maitland’s article “examines and rejects the idea that sweatshops pay unconscionable wages, that they impoverish local workers and widen the gap between the rich and poor, and that American companies collude with repressive regimes that stifle dissent and repress workers” (p. 198).

One can use Maitland’s facts and compare that with the five types of business operations that raise moral issues differentiated by De George. The first is banks and financial institutions. According to De George, financial institutions have a small number of employees, their “function is to provide loans for various types of development” (p. 265). His main argument is that MNCs do more harm than good because by looking at the case in Africa, “by lending to the government they usually strengthen the government’s policy of apartheid” (p. 265).

However, this is not the case for the majority of MNCs. Although repression does exist, “economic development appears to be relaxing that repression rather than strengthening its grip” (p. 203). Wages match or exceed local wages. Therefore there isn’t even a need for unions to form. Lastly, government policies are intended to help create jobs for the unemployed and underemployed. The second business operation are the agriculture enterprises. De George says that MNCs “buy the best lands and use them for export crops while insufficient arable land is left for the local population to grow” (p. 265).