Huck Finn Grows Up :: essays research papers

Many changes violently shook America shortly after the Civil War. The nation was seeing things that it had never seen before, its entire economic philosophy was turned upside down. Huge multi-million dollar trusts were emerging, coming to dominate business. Companies like Rockefeller’s Standard Oil and Carnegie Steel were rapidly gobbling up small companies in any way possible. Government corruption was at what some consider an all time high. “The Rich Man’s Club'; dominated the Senate as the Gilded Age reached its peak. On the local front, mob bosses controlled the cities, like Tammany Hall in New York. Graft and corruption were at an all time high while black rights sunk to a new low. Even after experiencing freedom during the Civil War, their hopes of immediate equality died with the death of Lincoln. Groups like the KKK drove blacks down to a new economic low. What time would be better than this to write a book about the great American dream, a book about long h eld American ideals, now squashed by big business and white supremacy? Mark Twain did just that, when he wrote what is considered by many as the “Great American Epic';. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, “The great American epic,'; may be one of the most interesting and complex books ever written in the history of our nation. This book cleverly disguises many of the American ideals in a child floating down the Mississippi River on a raft with a black slave. On the outside of the story, one can see an exciting tale of heroism and adventure; however, that is not all. The book shows Mark Twain’s idea of the classic American idealism, consisting of freedom, morality, practicality, and an alliance with nature. Twain manages to show all this while poking fun at the emergence of the “robber barons,'; better know as the big business of the late nineteenth century. Twain portrays many different American values in this book by expressing them through one of the many different characters. The character that Twain chose to represent morality and maturation is none other than Huck Finn himself. Throughout the novel one sees many signs of chang e. The setting is constantly fluctuating, except for the constant Mississippi, and Huck and Jim, a runaway slave, under-go many changes themselves. At the end of the novel Huck Finn shows a large change in his level of maturity than he had exhibited in the beginning of the book.

Organization behavior Essay

Attribution theory: an important tool for understanding and managing goal oriented organization behaviors. Attribution theory is known as the effective way which helps us to assume that people’s behaviour is caused by internal or external situational factors. This essay is going to discuss about the key elements of attribution theory and the relationship between them. In addition, the way of attribution theory process works in organizations are also mentioned. Also it considered how attribution theory implements in organizations as an effective tool which can help leaders to attribute employees’ behaviours and workplace outcomes. This essay reviewed some famous articles in attribution theory and psychology fields and abstracted relative points to discuss. Types of attributional explanations and the underlying dimensions of those attributions affected individuals’ emotions, expectations and behaviours. (Jianjun & Shenghua, 2009) The reason that internal and external attribution can be useful tools in management practice is that they can help managers understand causes of employee behaviours and can assist employees in understanding their thinking about their own behaviours. If you can understand why you behave a certain way, and why others around you do so, then you have a better understanding of yourself, others, and your organization. The perception of the causes of certain behaviour may affect the judgment and actions of both managers and employees. The locus of causality can be internal or external, which stands for the recognition of internal or external attribution. Also as Kelly (1967) concluded as the covariation model, which describes the three type of information that we can use to make attribution decisions are consensus, distinctiveness and consistency. In determining whether behaviour is based on internal or external factors, you look at the level of consistency, distinctiveness and consensus of the behaviour. For instance, internal attributions are made with low consensus, low distinctiveness, and high consistency while external factors when all three are high. Leaders can use covariation model to make attributions of employees’ performances. However, this model also has one important limitation, which is that it cannot to distinguish unintentional and intentional behaviour. (Ben, Olufemi, Olukunle &Patrick, 2012) As attribution theory is applied in different organizations and may be an important factor which can affect managers’ decision, the  innate bias of people in the way they make attributions should be paid much attention. The basic one which is called fundamental bias describes the tendency to make internal attributions over external attributions. It emphasizes more on socialization such as culture or social settings. As concluded by Zuckerman (1979), there are two main attribution biases. The self- serving bias is the tendency of individuals to regard their successes as the result of their own effort or ability and blame failure on external factors. Thus, the situation could be that managers may blame employees for their failure. On the contrary, employees may attribute failures to external factors. The actor- observer bias stands for the tendency of observers to attribute the behaviours and outcomes of actors to their internal factors while actors attribute their outcomes to the external environment. For instance, managers may blame the failure on employees whereas employees are biased toward attributing their failures to external factors including their supervisors. After comparing these two biases, it is obviously that self- serving bias happens when both actors and observers focus on the outcomes while the actor- observer bias is based on the situation that actors emphasize on external factors but observers focus attention on actors. In organizations, performances are evaluated by managers. Those two biases can effect managers’ and employees’ evaluations of employee performance as well as the quality of their relationship. (Mark, 2007) In terms of leadership, if leaders don’t aware that they have attribution bias, some problems will appear in communication and team work. Employees make attributions based on their perception of the causes attributable to leaders’ behaviours. (Phil, Charlotte, Julie&James, 2009) after employees perceived their leader are not satisfied with their performance, they tend to feel loss of self- esteem. Reflecting into behaviours, it is possible that employees’ job satisfaction and turnover decrease. After that, it is more difficult for leaders to motivate employees to increase productivity or improve their performance. Another thing which is worth mentioned is attribution styles. Attribution styles are tendencies to make particular types of attribution over time and across different situations. Martinko (2002) indicated that there are sixteen possible intrapersonal styles. Basically, there are two most well-known attribution styles which are optimistic attribution style and pessimistic attribution style. To some extent, optimistic attribution style  can correspond to self-serving bias. However, pessimistic styles are characterized by external and unstable attributions for success and internal and stable attributions for failure. (Martinko, Douglas& Borkowski, 2007) In an organization, optimistic leaders believe that the employees will perform well in the future but the pessimistic leaders have the opposed ideas. Also optimistic employees think they will have a good performance while pessimistic ones have the opposed ideas. These phenomenons imply one possibility that there may be clashes between the attribution style of leaders and employees. Just as the study did by Martinko, Douglas & Borkowski (2007) demonstrated that optimistic leaders are less likely to blame their members for poor performance and make opportunities for their members to succeed in the future than are pessimistic leaders, which may lead to lower quality relationships between employees and pessimistic leaders. As relationship becoming less harmonious, the goal- achieve thinking will be inconsistent. In addition, Harvey, Harris and Martinko (2008) got a result through studying and hypothesising which presented attribution styles have significantly effect on turnover intentions. There is a positive relationship between hostile attribution styles and turnover intentions. (Harvey, Harris &Martinko, 2008) The situation could be someone with a pessimistic attribution style and low self-efficacy can be helped by being given tasks that allow them to succeed early on and build their confidence as they progress to more complex tasks. In dealing with someone with an optimistic attribution style, managers can help the employee gauge whether or not they are capable of a certain type of project by having them shadow someone doing that job or linking them with a mentor higher up in the organization. Recognizing and dealing with someone with a hostile attribution style might be difficult since this style can look similar to the optimistic style. However, this style in particular, will benefit from open communication that leads to correct attributions for outcomes. This is one type of employee that managers do not want to leave guessing about a poor performance appraisal, demotion, layoff, or other negative outcomes. Also in terms of job satisfaction, it indicated a negative relationship between hostile attribution style and job satisfaction, but suggested that satisfaction fully, as opposed to partially mediated the attribution style–intent to turnover relationship. (Harvey, Harries& Martinko, 2009) In  view of leaders, the attribution style of leaders is probable sign of their expectation of employees’ performances, which influence how they treat and evaluate employees. Attribution theory implementation in different fields: Leadership: Attribution theory plays a significant role in field of leadership. It is the tool that how leader attribute employees’ performance. There are many different situations. For example, when a leader is facing the negative outcome, he is more likely to have internal attribution of it. (Korsgaard, Brodt & Whitener, 2002) If the employee attributes the leader’s behavior internally, he will blame it on leaders so that he will have a doubt with leader’s ability. Also it is possible to appear conflict between leaders and employees. In order to improve the accuracy of leaders’ attribution, leaders can try to do the work that employees do and may have the similar feeling with them, which is a way to gain psychological closeness. And it is better to assign tasks and duty clearly to avoid unnecessary error in working. Motivation: According to Harvey and Martinko (2009), we can promote and maintain employees’ motivation through five means such as screening resilience, immunization and multiple raters for performance. However, in general situation, attributional training and increasing psychological closeness are most common and effective way. Attributional training helps employees accurate their attribution style and may correct their attribution biases as well as having a better understanding with internal and external factors. In other word, attributional training is a good way to make employees have a full – scale recognition of workplace outcomes through effective communication between managers and employees. In term s of increasing psychological closeness, the best way is to pick experienced managers to manage employees and handle the positive or negative outcomes so that they can provide more attributional feedback to employees. Performance reviews and group work: Kelley’s (1973) covariation model which contains consensus, consistency, and distinctiveness can be used by managers to evaluate and review employees’  performance. Consistency is proposed to lead to attributions regarding the stability of the outcome. For example, when an employee fails a task, if the manager is with low consensus, he will think that only this employee fail, then it is impeded correct evaluation. Also, when managers face dividing work in a group, the locus of covariation is needed to attribute and estimate the different characteristic of employees’ behaviors. Recruitment and selection: When managers start recruitment and selection, they have to ensure that they have appropriate attribution style and try to minimize the attribution bias. For example, the interviewers will tend to believe that candidates who appear anxious in the interview are actually behaving anxious because they are lack of anti-pressure ability, rather than because they are in a stressful environment. Then wrong decision and selection will be made because of the attribution bias. In conclusion, it is obvious that attribution theory process is related to internal and external factors through the discussion of relationship of essential portions of attribution theory process. Besides, attribution bias and styles cannot be ignored in organization behavior and activities because they will have a big effect on different fields such as leader- member relationship or motivation towards employees. As the importance of attribution theory and the functions been argued, it can be summarized that organizations should take advantage of attribution theory to manage employees and improve organization performance. Reference list: Ben E. Akpoyomare Oghojafor, Olufemi Olabode Olayemi, Olukunle O. Oluwatula, Patrick Sunday Okonji. (2012). Attribution theory and strategic decisions on organizational success factors. Journal of management and strategy, 3: 32-39. Harvey, P., Martinko, M.J., & Gardner, W. (2006). Promoting authenticity in organizations: An attributional perspective. Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 12: 1-11. Harvey, P., Harris, K.J., & Martinko, M.J. (2008). The mediated influence of hostile attributional style on turnover intentions. Journal of Business and Psychology, 22: 333-343. Harvey, P. and Martinko, M.J. (2009). An Empirical Examination of the Role of Attributions in Psychological Entitlement and its Outcomes. Journal of  Organizational Behaviour, 30: 459-476. Harvey, P., & Martinko, M.J. (2009). Attribution theory and motivation. Organizational Behavior, Theory and Design in Health Care, 27:143-158. Kelley, Harold H., (1967). Attribution Theory in Social Psychology, Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 39: 242- 277 Korsgaard, M. A., Brodt, S. E., & Whitener, E. M. (2002). Trust in the face of conflict: the role of managerial trust-worthy behavior and organizational context. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87: 312–31. Martinko, M.J., Harvey, P., & Douglas, S.C. (2007). The role, function, and contributions of attribution theory to leadership: A review. Leadership Quarterly, 18: 561-585. Martinko, M. J., Moss, S. E., and Douglas, S. C., & Borkowski, N. (2007). Anticipating the Inevitable: When Leader and Member Attribution Styles Clash. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.104 (2): 158-174. Martinko, Mark J. and Thompson, Neal. (1998). A synthesis of the Weiner and Kelley attribution models. Journal of Basic and Applied Psychology, 20(4): 271-284. Phil C. Bryant, Charlotte A. Davis, Julie I. Hancock and James M. Vardaman, (2010). When Rule Makers Become Rule Breakers: Employee Level Outcomes of Managerial Pro-Social Rule Breaking, Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 22: 101-112. Silvester, J., Anderson-Gough, F. M., Anderson, N. R. & Mohamed, A. R. (2002). Locus of control, attributions and impression management in the selection interview. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 75: 59 – 76. Zuckerman, M. (1979). Attribution of success and failure revisited, or the motivational bias is alive and well in attribution theory. Journal of Personality, 47: 245-287.

Justice Without Justice What if the Criminal Justice System isnt Justice - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 4 Words: 1195 Downloads: 6 Date added: 2019/02/20 Category Society Essay Level High school Tags: Criminal Justice Essay Did you like this example? Oftentimes in society, much of what drives law enforcement can be the community and society they are involved in. Socioeconomic status, racial underpinnings within communities, and overall demeanor are factors that affect how a law enforcement officer may interact with the residents of their community. In the movie Murder on a Sunday Morning, these interactions are not only seen within law enforcement but the members of Jacksonville Florida. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Justice Without Justice: What if the Criminal Justice System isnt Justice" essay for you Create order Identified as the suspected killer in Mary Ann Stephens murder, Brenton Butler is identified and captured within 2 hours of the killing. Much of this swift capture can be attributed to the racial profiling of the husband, as well as Officer Martin’s first-hand account as the first officer on the scene. The public defender, Ann Finnell, supports this theory, stating that racial profiling may have caused a law abiding citizen his life in prison. In this film, views of racial profiling and improper police conduct ultimately led to years of pain, as well as lawsuits filed against the City of Jacksonville, after Butler’s not guilty verdict. Unfortunately, race, religion, and ethnicity have become too common in our society as catalysts for violent murders, shooting rampages, and organized crimes. The most common is race, being easy to differentiate an African American from a Caucasian. These stark differences have led to wrongful convictions, racial injustice, and a divide between law enforcement and the public. The events portrayed in Murder on a Sunday Morning are just that. Jim Stephens quickly identifies Brenton Butler as the shooting in his wifes death, and this leads to a spiral for Brenton Butler. His lawyer, Pat McGuinness, focuses on the racial profiling that exists. The fact that Jim identifies the killer as a black man, and Butler happened to be walking by should have absolutely no correlation, but Stephen’s upbringing in Georgia may have fueled his ill taste toward African Americans. Ann Finnell begins to break down the story given by Stephen, focusing on the fact that Butler was wearing a shirt with a logo, though Stephens never identified a logo. The perception of an African American often seems to focus solely on the fact that the color of that persons skin is dark. I found it easy to connect this story to modern times, through examples of such profiling. In 2012, George Zimmerman shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, because Zimmerman perceived Martin to be a threat of some kind. This as well happened in Florida and may be due to some sort of cultural bias towards African Americans in the southern region of the country. The racial profiling that occurred may have been taken into account and led to the not guilty verdict of Brenton Butler. Ann Finnell, the public defender highlights this in the beginning, talking about this idea of racial profiling, and it is all too common in the society we live in today. Racial profiling is in someways traced back to the community. We have this sense that everyone should look like us, and that anything different may be bad. Just becaus e someones skin is a different color in no way means they are either inferior or more likely to cause a crime. Oftentimes, we get caught up in stereotypes. Statistically, people tend to believe that young African American males are dangerous. It is evident all around the country, and yes, there are young African American men who have committed crimes, but what about the older Caucasian woman who also committed the same murder? The criminal justice system clouds its vision with the idea of what a criminal should look like, and this means that people will sometimes not pay for a crime they committed, or even worse, pay for a crime they did not commit. In addition to racial profiling, police brutality and policing tactics are also a common issue that arises in the criminal justice world. In this film, and in the reading â€Å"I Did it† police scare tactics and even violence are used in an effort to get a confession, whether real or coerced. In the film, Brenton Butler was found with bruises and marks indicating that he had been hit. Brenton Butler may have very well have confessed both due to the violence towards him, as well as the fact that he is an African American male who is being charged murder. In the reading â€Å"I Did it† Kolker talks about how law enforcement will sometimes lie, making up some false evidence in an effort to get a coerced confession out of a possible suspect. In the reading, Sterling had a solid alibi at the time of the murder, yet somehow, 3 years later, Sterling was in an interrogation room, admitting to the murder of Viola Manville. In some ways, through the reading and the film, I got a sense that much of the coercion that occurs is due to the fact that the suspect does not know their rights to an attorney, is unable to pay for a lawyer, or the police are so convincing that the suspect believes they did it, and sees the officer as a higher power how knows better than them. Whatever reason causes coerced confessions, they cause a skewed vision of the criminal justice system. When Brenton Butler was interrogated, the detectives essentially told him what he had done. Butler, not aware of his rights, is asked to sign the form. The detective then hits Brenton Butler, after threatening to him if he did not sign the form. During the trial, Butler’s lawyers break down the confession, questioning the detectives confession written on behalf of Butler. Butler’s lawyers break down the fact that none of what was written ever came out of Brenton Butler’s mouth. This type of coercion may be a way for officers to be received by the community as doing their du ty. This comes at the cost of someones innocence or a guilty mans free walk. Sometimes, the criminal justice system either fails to review all of the evidence or someones personal beliefs and intuitions may cloud such judgment and the officer may be unwilling to admit their mistake and fix it. There are entire offices dedicated to the freedom of wrongly convicted felons, many of which were in some way coerced into a confession. In my opinion, this is an example of some type of police brutality. Even though it may not be physical, it is a downright abuse of power that places someones freedom at an inferior level to the officers ego or vindictive feelings towards a suspect. The racial profiling and police tactics portrayed in Murder on a Sunday Morning, as well as in the reading â€Å"I Did It† reveal a harsh reality that engulfs the criminal justice system to this day. Racism within the criminal justice system places an ethnic divide on communities and can cause a greater gap between citizens and law enforcement. Policing tactics border on illegal and are fraudulent in nature. These acts have unfortunately made their way to the news headlines, and more often than not, lead to a criminal justice system that is skewed, and is viewed as a negative part of the community.