A Personal Manifesto on Success and Happiness Research Paper

A Personal Manifesto on Success and Happiness - Research Paper Example As the paper declares work as a noun defines an activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result. Another conception of the word work is that it is an activity as a means of earning income or employment. From these two concepts of work can be drawn different perceptions. Work as merely an act of doing something productive and work as an activity that generates income such as employment. The latter concept of work suits the definition that is widely known by most people. Having a job, an employment, running a business, all these are confined in the context of work that has an end goal of making money, salary, income or profit. According to the report findings the history of work is far rooted in the history of mankind. How work is viewed today is a byproduct of human experiences along the path of historical milestones of men. The concept of work can be traced back even into the realms of the Bible. God said to Adam, "In the sweat of thy face shall thou eat bread, till thou return to the ground". Even in the beginning according to the Bible, God assigned the allegedly first ever work to Adam. Work then can be described as some activities that need sweating in order to eat. In that sense it would tilling the soil and planting and growing plants to bear fruits to eat. Work then spells really hard work and is contrasted with leisure as Adam Smith puts it as toil and trouble. Thus leisure is a different story from work that is why according to the bible God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work. (Genesis 3:19 as cited by Dupre and Gagnier). If to rely alon e from the following context it can be concluded that God wants people to work really hard during work days and set a separate day for leisure which is somewhat deviated from the modern context of work that can go along with play—having fun while working all at the same time. People of yesteryears works comparatively different than modern people does work. The work they knew then was more on physical exertion. Tracing back the first humans, they did not work in the way that we understand it today. Primitively like before, our ancestors spent much of their time searching for food and shelter, a short-term and endlessly repeated process that was necessary for survival (The Readers Digest Australia). This repeated process lead to the definition of work division wherein some are hunters and others are gatherers and basically women do the cooking for the whole group to survive and move on. Work in this essence brings definition to food and survival. The idea of the working day is a product of

Measuring Construction Industry Performance Essay

Measuring Construction Industry Performance - Essay Example Revenues from constructed buildings are not keeping pace with escalating cost of equipments, transportation and other economic factors. The prices of related construction items are quietly unrelated to the expenditure put in constructing, transporting materials, processing and selling. Floods and droughts have made the established businessmen to become debtors though they have borrowed money and invested the same in equipment and land. There are delays in getting government funds, which are in adequate to meet these types of natural calamities. Though there are private insurance companies to cover insurance of these investments from weather-related catastrophes they are not that much helpful. The small players who solely depend on their investments are the losers of these natural calamities. Like any other traders or businessmen, investors can ensure long term growth and stability through proper planning in changing market conditions during the periods of floods, drought and in price downsizing and also taking the help of key performance indicators (KPI) or benchmarking so that they may not depend on the assistance and support of government. Sharon McClements et al (2002) concluded that the Construction Best Practice Programme, have developed a benchmarking gateway known as KPI zone. In construction fi In construction field, many problems are attributed to UK consumer's refusal to recognise and pay for value added to the products produced by the small investors. Because of this, the investors are not able recover their investments and expenses through sales which tends them to expect government subsidies to support them. The investors are not in a position to bear the smallest price increase in power tariff. There are two types of economic nationalism. The first protection in trade is represented in establishing a system of rates and tariffs in favour of domestic production and discourages foreign imports. This kind of protection is desired to encourage establishment of industrial base in UK by saving small and infant industries against the competition of larger and well-established firms in abroad. The second economic protectionism is a post world war -II phenomenon that is related to the proprietorship as UK businesses by foreign traders and investors. Multinational companies have been set up after world war-II due to immense investments of foreigners in UK business. Multinational companies thought that they could evade tariff restrictors in UK by introducing their own branches plants and subsidiaries, which allowed them to go to markets, mobilize resources and capital and get favours with UK government. These kinds of investments have created to the economic nationalism due to expansion of multinational companies. The foreign owned companies could not take central position over economic decisions from their head office from outside UK. The economists in UK are compelled to demand for bringing out a legislation to oversee the activities and restrain the growth of foreign ownership in UK economy. UK is one of the members of many international groups; one amongst them is G-8, the eight largest industrial democracies. The G-8 countries heads of governments