Friday, January 31, 2020

Background and Motivation Essay Example for Free

Background and Motivation Essay The terms â€Å"corporate blog† or â€Å"business blog† have appeared very often in both of newspapers and academic journals. Increasing attention has been paid in understanding this new phenomenon. According to the Investor Business Daily, â€Å"there are 45% USA’s largest public companies have corporate blogs. † (where is your citation – is this also Klosek? ) Business Week has proposed the following: â€Å"Corporate blog is a blog used by the company to reach some goals. It helps businesses communicate internally more cheaply and effectively than workflow management software and e-mails. † A corporate blog can be one of the more successful popular communication tools after the E-mail, ICQ and MSN. In 2006, Business Week Online issued that A Weblog (or blog) can be a powerful marketing tool, but it can also expose a business to a legal minefield. As reported by Jacqueline Klosek, â€Å"Blogs can be used to market a companys products and services, facilitate communications with clients, and even counter negative publicity† (Klosek, 2006). Several studies have pointed out the advantages of employing corporate blogging, citing that corporate blogging may be a tool for search engine marketing; a means of building good relationships with the customer; building of a company’s reputation; helping to put human voice to a company; serving as a way for employees and customers to communicate; and a tool for directly and immediately getting the customer’s feedback. There are still many threats that may hinder the adoption of the corporate blog, such as legal impediments with regards to violation of intellectual property rights and mismanagement leading to an eventual downfall of the organization; the disclosure of trade secrets can jeopardize the blogger’s career since this problem may cause his termination from the position, and also â€Å"Careless statements posted on a company-sanctioned blog can come back to haunt the company through litigation and other avenues† Klosek (2006) stresses. Since the study and research in corporate blogging phenomenon is still in its early days, scholars who have conducted empirical studies only focus on the benefits and risks when adopting the corporate blog, or the motivation behind creating corporate blog. It’s lack of analyzing the existing utilization and the effects of corporate blog from a systematic theoretical perspective. the DOI theory (Rogers, 1995, 2003) becomes mature, it can be applied in explaining how and why an innovation can be widely adopted and diffused. In order to find out the reasons indicate why corporate blog as a new innovation has been widely adopted and successful diffused, the DOI theory can be an effective framework for analyzing corporate blogging phenomenon. Thus, this paper aims to determine why the corporate blog as a new innovation is being widely adopted and used by the both the individual blogger and various IT organizations; the motivation in adopting blogging; the benefits of the corporate blog to organizations; and the reasons for its success. The research also tries to explain how and why the corporate blog is welcomed and has become a popular and successful new innovation, and the compatibility of its utilization with the existing values of its users. Thus, the author has conducted an empirical study in order to answer these problems from the Diffusion of Innovation theory (DOI) perspective. IT industry companies have been selected as samples for this study.

Wednesday, January 15, 2020

Melani McAlister

Culture and history are interdependent concepts that have always influenced and determined the path of human societies as time progressed.   The power of culture in determining the prevalence of an ideology or a specific society has never been most evident than when the human societies were progressing towards accelerated development in the 19th and 20th centuries. Melani McAlister’s â€Å"Epic Encounters† and Edward Said’s â€Å"Orientalism† demonstrate human societies’ preoccupation in uncovering the ‘truth’ and reality behind the seemingly accelerated progress of ‘developed’ nations over other ‘developing or underdeveloped’ nations.   The two authors expressed particular interest in understanding what set apart Western nations from Middle Eastern or Oriental nations, as conceptualized by McAlister and Said, respectively. In their discussion of the Western society and the ‘otherness’ of Middle Eastern and Oriental nations, the authors conducted researches utilizing different methodologies.   In understanding McAlister’s analyses of the otherness of Middle Eastern nations from the United States, she conducted research based on cultural artifacts, primarily mass media artifacts that chronicle the history of the US-Middle East relationship.   Said, meanwhile, looked into the history of the creation and development of Orientalism based on a meta-analysis of historical and cultural documents that can provide greater understanding and additional perspective in determining the specific point from which Orientalism sprang from. The central focus of this proposal is to provide a comparison of McAlister’s and Said’s respective concepts of â€Å"otherness,† as ascertained by their (1) conceptualization of the societies under study, and (2) methodologies adopted by the researchers (McAlister and Said) in coming up with their generalizations.   In effect, the researcher proposes a meta-analysis by looking closely into the two authors’ conceptualization and operationalization of the concept of â€Å"otherness,† in the context of Middle Eastern, Oriental, and Western societies. The first phase of the proposed study is to uncover how McAlister and Said developed their respective concepts of otherness, applied in the context of Middle Eastern and Oriental cultures, respectively.   The rationale for determining this first step of the meta-analysis study is to first determine whether the authors developed similar criteria in developing the concept, â€Å"otherness.† It is interesting to note that upon closer study of their works, McAlister’s concept of otherness is more culture-based, while Said’s was centered on history.   These differences in perspectives made their analysis radically different, while still maintaining one focus: the theme of Other versus Western society.   However, in the conduct of the meta-analysis of the otherness concept, it is vital to note that both authors subsisted to analyzing cultural products—mass media artifacts for McAlister, and historical documents for Said. A major influence that helped determine â€Å"otherness† in the authors’ works was the methodology they used in analyzing the different societies under study.   Analyses of their methodologies would provide more depth in the research’s interpretation of â€Å"otherness.† In fact, combining a meta-analysis on the concept of â€Å"otherness† and methodologies used to understand â€Å"otherness† provides triangulation in the study, giving the researcher more direction in determining which between McAlister and Said provided a more accurate and objective conceptualization of â€Å"otherness.†Ã‚   The last phase of the proposed study will integrate the findings from the first two phases of the study, giving an overall picture of the authors’ basis for focusing on the concept of otherness as determined by history and culture. References: McAlister, M.   (2001).   Epic Encounters: culture, media, and US interests in the Middle East.   University of California Press. Said, E.   (1979).   Orientalism.   NY: Vintage.

Tuesday, January 7, 2020

The Emergence Of Feminist Sociology Essay - 1408 Words

In the beginning, the emergence of feminist sociology was to give voice to a marginalized group, women, in the academia of sociology to question the relations of ruling in patriarchal societies. However, feminist theorizing in mainstream sociology is as equally as problematic as theorizing from a male’s standpoint found in primitive sociological works. Since its emergence, feminist sociology served the â€Å"interests of white, middle class, heterosexual women,† thus, not only reproducing the identity of â€Å"women† constructed in patriarchal societies, but in which also create a new form of domination and oppression over individuals that does not portray characteristics of true â€Å"womanhood.† Therefore, the emergence of queer theory hoped to deconstruct the static identity categories, contesting categories that are considered to be normal and natural. From the beginning, â€Å"capitalist patriarchal societies created an institutionalized heterosexual ity framework over gender.† That is, within this social context, heterosexuality has become the dominant hierarchical division in which has come to regulate our gender roles through institutional structures. Therefore, gender categories are once again reconstituted in which male and female are seen as the unquestionable identity categories that every social actor must assume. The naturalization of heterosexuality is justified with the claim that the two sexes, male and female, are biological and therefore â€Å"naturally occurring.† This isShow MoreRelatedfactors that contributed to the rise and development of sociology1511 Words   |  7 Pagescontributed to the rise of sociology and the latter`s development. In simply terms, sociology is the scientific study of the society and human behavior. The emergence of sociology traces back to the eighteenth century up to present day. 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