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The Benefits of Workforce Diversity and Empowerment

Businesses now face an increasingly complex and uncertain environment which has generated a demand for the development of more flexible forms of organizations, the strengthening of corporate culture and the determination to make continuous improvements in the quality of products and services. Development and progress cannot occur in a vacuum. It needs the rich soil of multiple experiences in order to flourish - an intuitive personality combined with an analytical personality or marketing abilities with technical abilities that can provide better results in terms of solutions; in as much as multiple cultural perspectives can provide innovation and new perspectives. We have reached a situation today where the value of a company is measured by its intellectual strength, and its ability to initiate and innovate. Thus for an organization to function smooth, effective interaction among diverse employees is most paramount and businesses must be concerned with and address issues related
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Social Reconstructivism – The implications and philosophy for education in Jamaica

Social reconstructivism emphasizes education for social transformation and reflects a theory of human development that situates the individual within a socio-cultural context. Individual development derives from social interactions within which cultural meanings are shared by the group and eventually internalized by individual. According to Richardson 1997, individuals construct knowledge in transaction with the environment, and in the process both the individual and the environment are changed. The subject of study is dialectical relationship between the individual and the social and cultural environment. Schools are the socio-cultural settings where teaching and learning take place and where cultural tools, such as reading, writing, mathematics, and certain modes of discourse are utilized. This approach stated Martin 1994; and O’Loughlin, 1995, assumes that theory and practice do not develop in a vacuum; they are shaped by dominant cultural assumptions. Formal knowledge, which
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Through the eyes of an educator: An understanding of the perspectives on education and training by a senior teacher in Jamaica.

Some of the issues regularly presented when discussing an individual’s perspective on education and training are learning challenges which typically include mental challenges, limited teaching materials and insufficient classroom infrastructure. However, one significant area that must be considered when assessing student learning is the issue of overcrowding in schools and by extension the classroom stated Mrs. Judith Hewitt a Guidance Counselor and senior educator at a technical high school in Westmoreland. Mrs. Hewitt defines learning as a relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs through experience. However, this learning experience she lamented may be impaired when overcrowding produce effects such as: regular class disruptions, lack of individual attention for students and poor academic achievement. Mrs. Hewitt stated that for many teachers overcrowding affects their ability to execute teaching strategies effectively and diagnose and address learning disorders improp
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The Assumption of the Role of Education in Jamaica

Classrooms in Jamaica are overwhelmingly authoritarian and undemocratic. They focus on fragmented knowledge that is disconnected from the students’ lives. Proven reforms are resisted at all levels and systematic progressive change is non-existent after many decades. Why is this so? The standard liberal outlook is that schools are ‘neglected’, but they have the potential, with reform, to be a major progressive force in society. This document questions these assumptions through a review of the educational framework on the assumption of the role of education in Jamaica. The major claim to our perspective is that our educational system’s primary role is to mirror, support, stabilize, and reproduce the fundamentally hierarchical structures that existin society. The current state of our educational system is far from ideal. Nearly half a century after the reform of the education system, an overwhelming majority of classrooms are based on the realist model: learning is authority-based and f
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What is competition and how does competition help firms to operate at their optimum level?

The term competition refers to two or more organizations or firms competing in the same marketplace for the same consumer dollar. Competition varies from that of being monopolistic, oligopolistic to that of being perfect or pure. The competitiveness of firms is severely undermined by the high cost of debt service and working capital. These costs affect the total budgetary outlay displacing expenditure in critical areas of infrastructure and human resource development. This has negative consequences for investment and growth in both the short term and long term. Sluggishness in economic activity results in slow revenue growth, further limiting the firm’s ability to provide basic goods and services to effectively compete in the marketplace. The firm’s economic strategies therefore will always be geared toward encouraging investment, increasing output, creating jobs, improving productivity and achieving international competitiveness. Firms compete constantly on the basis of price, qu
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Why do Christians still have Problems?

As children of a loving, caring, heavenly father, why are we – Christians – still faced with trying to cope with the problems of the world? We all have problems! That’s life; but we also have a Lord who not only helps us grow through our problems, but also gives us the power to triumph over them. God allows us Christians to face difficulties in life not as punishment, but to strengthen our faith and trust in him. God does not only have a redemptive purpose for problems; he also gives us a specific promise in the Bible for every problem. This book, the Bible, is a compilation of these problems that so many people have in common, and of the amazing promise of God to deal with these problems. We are spiritually purified not primarily by the dark night of our soul, but by experiencing how much God loves us when we face failure and limitations. The Bible represents human nature as hostile to God (Ezek. 16:46 – 52 NEB), which is primarily why we fail. It predicts a future fu
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