Religious Aspects of Social Location Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Religious Aspects of Social Location - Essay Example From very small things like always telling the truth to huge societal obligations like respecting women, learning, rules of living in society, and treating even my enemies well, my religious learning has shaped every aspect of my life. Offering my prayers five times a day made me humble, disciplined, and made me believe in my blessings. It has strengthened my belief in a superior power and made me a positive thinker at even the oddest hour. I abstain from bad habits, such as illegal relationship, liquor, fights, backbiting, conspiring just because Islam taught me so. I am interested in getting myself educated and travelled to America because my religion asked every one including women, children, and men to get educated even if we have to travel for longer periods. I offer prayer five times a day in any mosque with other Muslims and Imam. If there is no mosque nearby, I offer it alone on a clean surface. Every year, in the month of Ramadan, I observe fast for a month which is followed by Eid-ul-fitar. It is followed by another religious practice called sacrifice of animals on Eid-ul-adha; I practice this tradition with my family. My family gives alms to poor; it is a certain amount on our money which is given as charity. I have also performed Hajj and Umrah.

Privatization of State Owned Enterprises Research Proposal

Privatization of State Owned Enterprises - Research Proposal Example Governments in developed countries (e.g. Britain and Japan) started privatizing SOEs in the early 1980s; by the late 1980s it had become apparent that a privatization revolution would sweep the world (Young, 1987). While the bulk of privatizations during the past decade occurred in developed countries, in recent years the emphasis has shifted to developing countries (The Economist, 1993). In these countries, capital markets can hardly absorb the large amounts of privatized equity, and governments are offering to sell SOEs to western multinationals as strategic owners (The Economist, 1993; Ramamurti, 1992). In addition, these countries look to western multinational enterprises for managerial and technical know-how. This trend creates possibilities for growth and entry into countries whose economies are currently expanding faster than most developed economies. While privatization in the 1980s created opportunities for portfolio investments, the 1990s also promise the control of privati zed firms through mergers and acquisitions (Freudenberg and Bird, 1991; Nankani, 1990; Ramamurti, 1992). For these reasons, privatization is considered here to be an international management concern. Empirical research and theory on direct investment into former SOEs, unfortunately, is scant. Economists generally agree that reducing government ownership of companies improves the macro-performance of an economy, and they also expect that a competitive environment and market discipline should increase the efficiency of the privatized firm (Donahue, 1989; Hutchinson, 1991; Ramamurti, 1992; Vickers and Yarrow, 1988). Empirical research on this latter point, however, has yielded conflicting results (Cook and Kirkpatrick, 1988; Hutchinson, 1991; Parker and Hartley, 1991). Strategic management research considering the performance of the SOE after it is acquired by a private firm is missing entirely. No mergers and acquisitions work has yet considered the purchase of SOEs, nor have researchers examined the conceptual relationship between traditional mergers and the acquisition of an enterprise from the government. On the one hand, the public/private shift inherent in privatization might imply that acquisition processes work differently for privately and publicly owned firms. The strategy, structure, and culture of the public organization can be expected to differ significantly from those of private firms because of the often special missions of SOEs and distinct environments in which they may be operating (Aharoni, 1986). Since post-acquisition integration processes are determined by the historic conditions of the merging firms (Nahavandi and Malekzadeh, 1988; Shrivastava, 1986), these differences may crucially influence the success of a merger between a private firm and a newly privatized SOE. The pre-acquisition conditions of the target also influence performance (Datta et al., 1992), and thus the distinctive contingencies of the SOE can be expected to affect post-acquisition performance as well. Furthermore, the objectives of a government selling an SOE are as much political -- that is, cat ering to specific stakeholder groups, for instance current employees of the SOE -- as economic, a fact that should significantly affect the negotiations and may also determine the post-privatization performance of the former SOE. Only recently has the strategic management literature begun to examine the implications of government policy for