Poems Explore The Theme Of Death English Literature Essay Essay Example

Poems Explore The Theme Of Death English Literature Essay Essay How make the Writers of Remember , Crabbit Old Woman and Refugee Mother and Child use their verse forms to research the subject of decease? Christina Rossetti s Remember , Phyllis McCormack s Crabbit Old Woman and Chinua Achebe s Refugee Mother and Child all explore the effects of decease and the agony it causes for everyone straight involved. In Rossetti s Remember the poet shows us the hurting and desperation associated with decease. McCormack s Crabbit Old Woman is a supplication for people to see past the typical stereotype of old people as being hopeless and non deserving caring for, when they are approaching decease. Chinua Achebe s Refugee Mother and Child conveys to us the arrant devotedness a female parent feels for her kid whilst cognizing that her clip is limited, and is based on refugees in the Nigerian civil war in the 1960 s. We will write a custom essay sample on Poems Explore The Theme Of Death English Literature Essay specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Poems Explore The Theme Of Death English Literature Essay specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Poems Explore The Theme Of Death English Literature Essay specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer In Christina Rossetti s Remember a adult female is first inquiring her spouse to neer bury her even though she is close to decease, but so changes her head and realizes that it is rational for him to bury her and populate his ain life. The first stanza starts with her stating Remember me when I am gone off, in this the adult female addresses her loved one, and even though she uses the imperative it does non experience commanding at all. In making this Rossetti has efficaciously established a sense of understanding towards the adult female. The following line Gone far off into the soundless land ; uses Gone far awayaˆÂ ¦ as a euphemism of decease and with the usage of the word far the euphemism becopmes more powerful due to the fact that distance is added. The other half of the sentence soundless land nowadayss us with a placid image of the hereafter whilst still giving the reader a sense of isolation through the usage of the word soundless . Rossetti uses initial rh yme in keep me by the manus, to clearly demo us what their relationship used to be and to show us with a physical connexion that has been lost because of her decease. The 2nd stanza is similar to the first in the sense that she is seeking to convert her spouse neer to bury her. The concluding stanza gives us a dramatic alteration to the remainder of the verse form. She now tells her spouse that it would be all right to bury me for a piece . This shows us that she is really a caring individual and merely wants what is best for her spouse, and instead have him travel on than linger in hurting for the remainder of his life. As we are now given an image of her lovingness love the verse form ends optimistically. As this is a sonnet it should follow either the Petrachan construction or the Shakespearian construction, Remember does neither, although it is rather similar to the Petrarchan construction. A Petrarchan construction would typically follow the rhyming form of A-B-B-A/A-B-B-A/C-D-E-C-D-E ( the cuts stand foring the alteration in stanza ) , whereas Rossetti s sonnet follows the rhyming construction of A-B-B-A/A-B-B-A/C-D-D-E-C-E. I found that Rossetti normally changes the rhyming form in her sonnets[ 1 ]. This is done deliberately as the significance signifier the eight has now been changed in the six. At first it was a supplication for her spouse non to bury her, and so it changed to her desiring her spouse to bury. This makes the poem really fluid because non merely does the context of the lines alteration, the rhyming form has besides adapted to this alteration in context. The iambic pentameter adds a really smooth beat to the verse form, doing it look as though the adult female is unagitated and non angered, even in decease. Crabbit Old Woman and Remember are likewise in the sense that they both have a voice showing an statement which pleads for recollection. In Crabbit Old Woman we are presented with an old lady whose end is to seek and convert the nurses to see past the typical stereotype of old people as hopeless and non deserving caring for, as she is approaching decease and does non desire to be remembered as such. The rubric of this verse form instantly evokes a sense of decease as old age is frequently associated with it. The first 22 lines are a series of inquiries which are directed towards the nurses, and are seeking to uncover the typical beliefs that the nurses have when caring for the old adult female. The turning point of this verse form occurs at line 23-24 Then open your eyes/ you re non looking at me. This line is the old lady demanding to be acknowledged by the nurses. The original negative onslaught upon the nurses has now changed to positive, happy memories as we are led through her life. In this life narrative the linguistic communication has wholly changed from a colloquial manner to a more poetic manner. This alteration is shown by line 34 with wings on her pess, which is a metaphor for the freedom she one time had, whereas now her freedom is restricted as she can non go forth the infirmary. The remembrances of her life are highly accurate and since we are traveling through her life as she ages it feels as if we are turning the pages of a book At 40 , At 50 . One interesting thing that McCormack has done is that she has kept this portion all in present tense. Making this is a manner of demoing the reader that these memories are kept fresh in her head, and it shows us that she can retrieve it with easiness. The following turning point of the verse form once more induces a temper alteration except this clip it is from positive to negative. The really first line ( line 57 ) of this temper alter entirely sets the tone for the remainder of the verse form. Dark yearss are upon me, this line shows us merely what her life is like now, fearful and cold. The personification of nature in line 67/68 Tis her joke to make/ old age expression like a sap. shows us her ideas and feelings ; that she feels like an imbecile and is at that place to be laughed at. This last portion contains imagery associated with death- crumbles , old carcase and beat-up bosom . This imagination makes the reader recognize what is go oning to the adult female in her old age, and that her decease is inevitable. The concluding thing worth adverting about this verse form is that although the adult female does non desire to decease she accepts that her decease is a blunt fact and asks the nurses one more clip to see past her physical organic structure and look inside and see who she truly is. Similarly, Refugee Mother and Child besides presents a series of blunt fact [ s ] to show the horrors of decease for the refugees in Nigeria. In Chinua Achebe s Refugee Mother and Child we are shown what day-to-day life is like for refugees in the Nigerian civil war ; they are filled with decease and sorrow. This verse form is based on the refugees who were in the civil war in Nigeria in the 1960 s[ 2 ], and although he bases this verse form on merely one of the refugee households, in kernel this was what was go oning to all the refugees. This civil war created 1000000s of refugees which had to fly to the south-east of Nigeria to avoid being killed2. One of the first things Achebe does in this verse form is arousing a sense of spiritual images of fear by mentioning to Madonna and Child . These images suggest the sheer devotedness the refugee female parent feels for her deceasing kid, and it besides attaches non merely a physical love but a religious love every bit good. This fi rst stanza is in complete contrast the 2nd 1 in which we are presented with negative and coarse linguistic communication, which portrays the state of affairs of the refugees. Achebe has efficaciously appealed to three of our senses: touch, odor and sight with combed the rust-colored hair , smell of diarrhea and blown unfastened abdomens respectfully. Achebe uses these vulgar images to seek and do us understand the cruel world of the universe, which is, many guiltless people enduring due to the effects of war. Physical descriptions of the refugees such as exhausted ribs and dried-up undersides are used to once more seek and do us understand the horrors that these people face every twenty-four hours. Stanza 2 starts off with a reasonably long gap sentence which has few verbs. This is deserving adverting because since there are less verbs it implies the deficiency of energy these people have. The female parent is associated with a shade twice in this verse form. This pick of enunciation gives us the feeling that she is close to decease and that even her ain decease is inevitable, non merely her kid s. Last Achebe reminds us of the female parent and kid s old lives, which were normal ( this would hold been before the civil war in Nigeria ) . In making this we are brought closer to them. The concluding simile of the verse form now she did it like seting bantam flowers on a grave brings us back to world and makes us recognize that the kid will decease. All three verse forms deal with the subject of decease frequently in direct and clear ways. Although each of the poet s talk about different facets of decease, they all still complement each other in footings of the concluding results for the characters portrayed in the verse form. Achebe s verse form shows the results of wars and political battles whereas Rossetti s and McCormack s verse forms both trade with decease in a more controlled environment where the cause of decease is non due to the states struggles. The chief difference between all three verse forms is the manner decease is presented. In Remember , although decease is a critical portion of the verse form it besides revolves around emotions of the characters alternatively of merely the coarseness of decease. This is a contrast to Refugee Mother and Child where the coarseness of decease is the chief facet of the verse form. Crabbit Old Woman besides differs to the other verse form as age is an of import feature of the p iece. Refugee Mother and Child and Crabbit Old Woman likewise use physical imagination which Remember does non. This usage of physical imagination makes understanding the poet s message finally easier. In decision these verse forms have given me a greater grasp for the complexness of decease and how it can differ so abundantly from individual to individual.

Leadership Bob Shallenberger and John Cavanagh

Leadership Bob Shallenberger and John Cavanagh Bob and John are exercising leadership in various ways. First of all, they have a vision for their organisation and they have exchanged this purpose with their people. Employees are aware that the company wants to be recognised as the top green builder in the country so they will contribute towards this shared vision.Advertising We will write a custom coursework sample on Leadership: Bob Shallenberger and John Cavanagh specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Also, leadership can be seen through the fact that Shallenberger and Cavanagh have energized their people. They are passionate about their business and have passed on this energy to others in the organisation. This is an action that all leaders have to engage in. Furthermore, leadership has been exercised through the act of working with people well to produce remarkable results at the end. It appears as though they are actually partnering with their employees rather than merely giving th em orders on what to do or how to go about it (Dubrin, 2010). As they attract cool people to work with them, these two entrepreneurs are exercising the role of persuasion. In other words, they have managed to illustrate to the applicants that the company has the potential to provide them with the most conducive workplace environment. It seems as though the would-be employees have seen the supportive environment that they are likely to find here than elsewhere. Also, the leadership role of guiding could be another important factor. If already existing employees are treated with mutual respect rather than being ordered around then they are likely to stick to the company and maybe even spread the word that the firm is a great place to work. This would cause even more cool people to be attracted to it because they would be rest assured that there are going to find what they are really looking for (Dubrin, 2010). Cool people are likely to be keep working for Highland Homes because the ow ners are passionate about what they do. Instead of merely taking a businesslike and boring approach to everything, Shallenberger and Cavanagh believe in doing everything passionately. This inclination is going to rub off on everyone else as the latter will not just be thinking of their workplaces as just any other job.Advertising Looking for coursework on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Additionally, these two business owners have used very creative ways of handling business. For instance, they have the stereo, CD player etc that are typical in all their homes. Cool people are likely to want to work for people who continuously look for creative ways of doing business. Also, as opposed to being highly bossy, the employees of Highland Homes are going to stay on because they will find that their employers are very inspiring. They will be motivated to keep reaching their potential and this will defin itely keep them there (Dubrin, 2010). In order to be the top green residential builder in the US, Shallenberger and Cavanagh may need to cultivate great interpersonal skills within themselves so as to maintain a close association with the team working for them. This will cause them to possess joint accountability and decision making ability. A case in point was Roadway management which spread leadership to lower levels. This ensured that everyone played a part in the success of the firm and eventually contributed towards the realisation of huge profits. Essentially, what this implies is that once responsibilities are shared then the likelihood of attaining common goals is going to increase. They must motivate their people to want to work harder so that Highland Homes can outsmart or outdo their competitors. People who are driven by passion rather than rules are likely to put in more and their results would speak for themselves (Dubrin, 2010). Reference Dubrin, A. J. (2010). Leadersh ip: Research Findings, Practice, Skills (6th ed.). Rochester Institute of Technology

CTVA 2 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

CTVA 2 - Essay Example The number of males portrayed in photos and pictures totaled 121 while the number of females totaled 69. In all, 15 people were identified belonging to different ethnic groups. The number of writers with male names counted 13 while with female names counted 7. Text pages were 67while artwork was visible through some of the photos and pictures also included on 47 pages. Article analysis: Palestine Goes It Alone by Dan Ephron Dan Ephron has written on the possibility of making peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians in the year 2011. Examining the article on the first core concept of media literacy, which states that all media are construction, one perceives this construction by projecting the opposite of what President Mahmoud Abbas intends to achieve; the title of the article also points out, â€Å"Goes it Alone†, doubting the success of the peace talks. First paragraph of the article speaks in favor of the chances of peace realization but the very next paragraph dismi sses such efforts as waste of time, recalling Yasser Arafat’s 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence, which was a one-sided attempt without any concrete result. Different decisions and determining factors are reflected. Till the end of the second paragraph, the writer goes on dwindling between the viewpoints of stakeholders to the peace talks. Here the external reality is presented not in simple words but by presenting the past historical context on failure of talks between the two warring countries, the one still far away from global recognition as an independent country, Palestine, reflecting decisions taken by Yasser Arafat. The writer has deconstructed historical events to forecast failure of any possible peace movement in 2011. Through crafted language techniques and following its own rules, the writer makes a start with, â€Å"ODDS ARE THAT 2011 WON’T†¦Ã¢â‚¬  making a pun by using all capital letters to stress on the conclusion that the writer wants to project. In another line, â€Å"Remember Yasser Arafat’s 1988...Independence?† indicates the uselessness of the efforts of peace talks. The conclusion of the article is already decided as the title suggests, â€Å"Palestine goes it alone,† indicating that no discussions can reach a conclusion until both the warring parties come to the table. As media through this article is conveying a sense of actuality, away from superficiality; one cannot imagine any wonder here that one-sided attempts at peace making will be fruitful. Palestinians while reading the article would have different feelings of remorse while Israelis might marvel at the economic growth achieved by the West Bank, which comes nearer to the 3rd media concept of different people experiencing the same messages differently. Palestinians could experience helplessness from the endless sufferings of their people because of political instability. Lingering of the talks and not reaching their aims, people could feel a sense of harassment over the peace efforts made by the Palestinian political leadership. A small article of hardly half page projects a realistic picture of the political aspects of the problem. Readers worldwide would react on the author’s viewpoint as per their political and geographical attachment with the region and its people. The whole

Company Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Company - Assignment Example The group sales of the company were $70.9 billion in 2014 (Tesco PLC, 2014). However, the overall growth of sales was only 0.3%. The global financial crisis of 2008 has done considerable damages to the grocery and retail industry of the U.K. Tesco had the highest market share of 31.7% in 2007 which had significantly shrunk to 28.7% in 2014 (Wood, 2014). The emergence of competitors like Waitrose, Aldi and Lidl has adversely affected the market share of Tesco as they began to provide heavy discounts to consumers. A slow growth of economy combined with declining disposable income had been driving customers away from Tesco. Originally developed by Kaplan and Norton (1992 cited in Kaplan and Norton, 2001), this approach has soon become an important tool to measure organizational performance. This approach goes beyond the traditional measures of financial performance and includes three other critical performance indicators which can measure the effectiveness of an organizational performance namely customer perspective, internal organizational perspective and innovation and learning perspective (Kaplan and Norton, 2001). Empirical evidence shows that a number of successful transnational companies in diverse industries are using the balanced scorecard approach in order to improve their performance. For instance, Hilton Group in the hospitality industry, Wal-Mart in the retail industry and Toyota in the automobile industry are already using this approach for gaining competitive edge over their rivals (Weygandt, Kimmel and Kieso, 2009). Overall 57% of global companies have adopted this approach based on the value that they add to the business (Balanced Scorecard Institute, 2014). Tesco has been struggling with dwindling sales recently. In the third quarter of 2014, the sales of the company had fallen by 3.7% while the annual profit of the company had fallen by 6% (Wood, 2014). In this scenario there are two options

Back Belts Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Back Belts - Article Example The cause of back injury has not been attributed to any specific wrong doing by a worker. One of the main possibilities can be assumed to be lack of proper safety method such as wearing a back belt or any such support. Manufacturer’s claim: ITA-MED Co, 310 Littlefield Ave, South San Francisco, CA 94080, USA, one of the A manufacturers of back belts and supports claims, their products will reduce pressure, strain and pain in the lower back in addition to help the users adopt easy posture when handling heavy loads and escape injuries. They assure products of higher quality, with more comfort, better look and longer durability based on unique, versatile designs. Their motto is â€Å"Stay healthy with Back Supports from ITA-MED† (Back and Abdominal Supports, 2009). NIOSH Views: NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) is one of the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) within the Dept of Health and Human Services. It was formed to bear the resp onsibility for conducting research and proposing improved measures to prevent injuries and illness related to work. DHHS (NIOSH) Publication No. 94-127. (Back Belts: Do They Prevent Injury?, 1994). In 1994, the NIOSH released a report called DHHS, 1994, a review of the published scientific literature.

Issues of War Monuments in Estonia

Issues of War Monuments in Estonia Empty Spaces and the Value of Symbols: Estonias War of Monuments from Another Angle * This article is the first published output from British Academy small research grant ref. SG-39197, entitled Public Monuments, Commemoration and the Renegotiation of Collective Identities: Estonia, Sweden and the â€Å"Baltic World† Since the summer of 2004, the new EU member state of Estonia has been in the throes of what is described as a War of Monuments. The events in question began in the town of Lihula in western Estonia, where a veterans group erected a stone tablet commemorating those Estonians who in World War Two donned German uniform and fought on the eastern front against the USSR. Bearing the inscription To Estonian men who fought in 1940 1945 against Bolshevism and for the restoration of Estonian independence, the Lihula stone became the latest of several monuments commemorating a group that most Estonians today regard as freedom fighters. In this case, however, the soldier depicted bore SS insignia. Hardly surprisingly, this fact elicited widespread international condemnation, notably from Russia, the EU and Jewish organisations. The groups behind the monument insisted that the men in question had had no truck with Nazism, and had only enlisted as a last resort in order to obtain access to arms w ith which to repel the Soviet invader. The display of the SS insignia nevertheless disregarded the taboo that surrounds the display of Nazi symbols in todays Europe. Also, while the vast majority of Estonian SS legionnaires did indeed sign up only in 1944 as the Soviet army advanced into their homeland, at least some had previously belonged to auxiliary police battalions which have been implicated in Nazi atrocities.1 Concerned to limit potential damage to Estonias international reputation, the government of the day ordered the removal of the monument. The police operation to carry out this order on 2 September 2004 nevertheless provoked clashes with local residents, while the political fallout from the episode contributed to the fall of Prime Minister Juhan Parts several months later. Critics of the government action argued that if the Lihula monument was to be construed as a glorification of totalitarianism, then the same logic should be applied to Soviet monuments that had been left standing following the restoration of Estonian independence in 1991. Singled out in this regard was the Bronze Soldier on T[otilde]nismgi in central Tallinn—a post-war monument erected on the unmarked grave of Soviet troops who fell during the taking of the city in 1944. For the vast majority of Estonians, the arrival of the Soviet Army signalled the replacement of one brutal occupying regime by another, whic h quickly resumed the arrests, executions and large-scale deportations previously witnessed during the first year of Soviet rule in 1940 41. This remains the dominant perception amongst Estonians today. The leaders of post-Soviet Russia, by contrast, have adhered steadfastly to the Soviet-era view of these events as marking the liberation of Estonia from fascism. The defeat of the Nazis during 1941 45 remains central to Russias self-understanding in the post-Soviet era; its  current leaders emphatically deny that the events of 1940 and 1944 in the Baltic states constituted a Soviet occupation, and refuse to acknowledge the suffering which the inhabitants of these countries experienced at the hands of the Soviet regime. Commentators in Russia have emphasised that they will brook no alternative interpretations of the Soviet Unions role in the events of 1939 45, and have therefore characterised calls for the removal of the T[otilde]nismgi monument as a manifestation of support for fascism. For many of the ethnic Russians who today make up nearly half of Tallinns population, the Bronze Soldier has also remained a locus of identification, providing the site for continued unofficial commemorations on 9 May, which was celebrated as Victory Day during the Soviet period. Red paint was thrown over the monument just prior to 9 May 2005, when several other Soviet war memorials were also attacked across the country, and a German military cemetery desecrated in Narva. The following year, this date again elicited tensions: local Russian youth mounted round-the-clock surveillance at the Bronze Soldier, while an Estonian nationalist counter-demonstration led to scuffles on 9 May (Alas 2006a). The monument was subsequently cordoned off by police pending a decision on its future. This formed the object of vigorous political debate ahead of the March 2007 parliamentary elections. Matters relating to the establishment and upkeep of public monuments in post-Soviet Estonia have for the mo st part fallen to local municipalities. In late 2006, however, new legislation was adopted giving central government the power to override local decision making in this regard. This provision was motivated expressly by a desire to remove the monument and the soldiers remains from the centre of Tallinn to the more peripheral setting of the military cemetery on the citys outskirts (Alas 2006a, 2006b, 2006c; Ranname 2006). The subsequent removal of the monument in late April 2007 provided the occasion for large-scale rioting in central Tallinn. On 9 May 2007 hundreds of people visited the monument at its new location in order to lay flowers. Issues of past or memory politics2 have assumed a growing prominence in recent scholarly work on Estonia and the other Baltic states, with a number of authors also highlighting the apparently divergent views of the past held by Estonians and Estonian Russians, and the obstacles that this poses in terms of societal integration (Hackmann 2003; Budryte 2005; Onken 2003, 2007a, 2007b). Publicly sited monuments are evidently central to any discussion of such issues: as recent events in Estonia have shown, they frequently act as catalysts eliciting both official and unsanctioned expressions of collective identity (Burch 2002a, 2004).3 Thus far, however, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to monuments within the relevant academic literature on Estonia. This article is intended as a contribution in this regard, but it approaches the issue from a slightly different angle. The War of Monuments has focused political and media attention upon two different cases, one involving a settlement that is predominantly ethnica lly Estonian by population (Lihula) and the other a capital city (Tallinn) that is almost equally divided between Estonians and Russians. This article shifts the focus to the overwhelmingly Russian-speaking city of Narva, which today sits on Estonias border with the Russian Federation. In particular, our study examines the local politics surrounding the Swedish Lion monument (see Figure 1), which was erected in the city in November 2000 on the 300th anniversary of the Battle of Narva between Sweden and Russia. The Lion monument relates to a past that is far less immediate than the events of 1940 45, but which, as we demonstrate, is still highly salient to contemporary identity politics within Estonia. How, for instance, was the commemoration of a decisive Swedish victory over Russia framed and debated in a town where ethnic Russians and other Russian-speakers constitute 96% of the population? Equally significantly, todays Lion is depicted as the successor to a similar monument erected in 1936 during the period of Estonias inter-war independence. The reappearance of this symbol could therefore potentially be understood as part of a state-sponsored effort to banish the Soviet past and reconnect with a past Golden Age. Once again, one wonders how this was interpreted by a local population that was established in Narva as a direct consequence of the Soviet takeover and which, by dint of the legal continuity principle, mostly did not obtain the automatic right to Estonian citizenship after 199 1.4 Who then decided to erect the Lion monument, and why? What form did the commemoration of November 2000 take, and what are the main lines of public debate that have surrounded it? The current article will address these questions, and will also seek to link the Narva case to broader conceptual issues of identity politics and post-communist transition, particularly the current debate surrounding the possibilities for the development of a tamed liberal/multicultural nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe.5 Past politics and post-communism The dramatic events that have occurred in Europe over the past two decades have entailed a profound redefinition of collective identities at a variety of scales—national, supranational, regional and local. The end of the Cold War, the demise of the USSR, and the consequent processes of EU and NATO enlargement, all occurring within the overall context of economic globalisation and growing movement of population, have led communities and groups across the continent to revisit existing understandings of who We are and where We are going. Since historical memory is an essential component in the construction of collective identity, this process has necessarily involved renegotiation of the Past as well as debates concerning the Present and Future. Like all forms of identity politics, such memory work is contested, being embedded in complex †¦ power relations that determine what is remembered (or forgotten) by whom, and for what end (Gillis 1994, p. 3). In a similar vein, Graha m et al. (2000, pp. 17 18) remind us that heritage is time-specific and thus its meaning(s) can be altered as texts are re-read in changing times, circumstances and constructs of place and scale. Consequently, it is inevitable that such knowledges are also fields of contestation.6 Publicly sited monuments offer a particularly useful way into researching this phenomenon, since they provide us with a tangible manifestation of some memory work process. The memorial function of such objects can take the form of carefully choreographed gatherings at times of heightened political awareness, or precise moments of commemorative anniversaries. Wreaths might be laid; silence observed; political rallies enacted; pageants performed. Other actions might be characterised more by spontaneity: collective grief at a sudden, tragic event, or an iconoclastic attack on a memorial construed in negative terms. Individuals and groups will attach different, often mutually exclusive meanings to particular monuments. Moreover, such meanings are shifting and contingent: what constitutes an eloquent memorial at one particular moment in time (for instance during an annual commemoration) might become a mute, invisible monument for the rest of the year. In this regard, being ignored is as s ignificant as being noticed.7 Political changes in the present can radically alter the import of a memorial, without any physical change on its part. This reiterates that the context of the monument is intrinsic to meaning. Context, however, can also be physically rendered, as with the shifting of a memorial/monument from some focal point to somewhere more peripheral and less visible. Issues of collective identity have proved especially challenging in those states that have been created or recreated following the collapse of the USSR. These are for the most part configured as classic unitary nation states, and yet in nearly all cases, processes of state and nation building have been effectuated on the basis of societies that are deeply polyethnic or multinational in character (Brubaker 1996; Smith et al. 1998; Smith 1999). Moreover, nearly all of the states in question have painful pasts with which they need to come to terms (Budryte 2005, p. 1). In relation to this region, Paul Gready (2003, p. 6) reminds us that stripped of the fossilising force of Cold War politics, nationalism has become central to political transitions, both as a means and an end. Narratives of history that focus exclusively on the titular nationality and its subjugation and suffering at the hands of former colonial regimes invariably elicit opposition from minority groups, which can easily f rame their own exclusivist narratives of history along the same lines. Indeed, as the Estonian case exemplifies very well, conflicting narratives of the past can be seen as an integral part of the triadic nexus of nationalist politics—the relationship between nationalising states, national minorities and external national homelands—discerned by Rogers Brubaker in his 1996 work Nationalism Reframed (Pettai 2006). In using the past for present purposes, political and intellectual elites in the Baltic and other Central and Eastern European states have also had to take account of the requirements of integration with the European Union, which in the Estonian and Latvian cases especially, has entailed significant changes to the direction of nation-building (Smith 2002a, 2002b, 2003a, 2003b, 2005; Budryte 2005; Kelley 2004; Galbreath 2005). EU-supported state integration strategies launched at the start of the twenty-first century have set the goal of creating integrated multicultural democracies which will enable representatives of the large non-titular, non-citizen population to preserve certain aspects of their distinct culture and heritage as they undergo integration into the polity and the dominant societal culture (Lauristin Heidmets 2002). According to a number of authors writing on the politics of the past and of memory, these efforts to promote an integrated multicultural society necessar ily require all the parties involved to engage with a process of democratising history. Democratisation in this context would imply that history is no longer used extensively for political purposes, alternative readings are allowed to challenge dominant master narratives, a plurality of guardians of memory is tolerated, and that rather than merely stressing the suffering endured by ones own nation, historical narratives recognise that other groups suffered equally, and that the nation in question served as both a bystander and a perpetrator as regards the suffering of others (see Onken 2003, 2007a; Budryte 2005). A significant step in this direction came during 1998, when all three Baltic states established historical commissions.8 Composed of academic experts from home and abroad (in the Estonian case exclusively the latter), these bodies have been called upon to produce an independent assessment of events during the Nazi and Soviet occupations of 1940 91, and have already begun to publish their findings (Onken 2007b). However, developments such as the Estonian War on Monuments and the Baltic Russian dispute over the commemoration held in Moscow to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War Two (Onken 2007a) underline the extent to which the past is still underpinning conflictual political dynamics in the present. In this regard, Russias increasing reliance on the Soviet past for nation-building purposes and its indiscriminate blanket accusations of fascist tendencies in the Baltic states prompt Baltic politicians to insist that Soviet communism should join Nazism as one of the great evils against which contemporary European values should be defined. As is the case with other aspects of post-communist transition, however, a focus on the state level tells us only so much about the renegotiation of identity in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe. In this highly complex multi-ethnic environment, the sub-state regional level cannot be disregarded (Batt 2002). A focus on the sub-state level appears especially apposite as far as the study of Estonias public monuments is concerned, for, until now at least, decisions in this area have rested with local rather than with national government. Furthermore, one can point to different political logics that obtain at national and local level. As a result of the citizenship law adopted in the aftermath of independence, ethnic Estonians have constituted a comfortable majority of the national electorate during 1992 2007. The local election law of 1993, however, stipulates that while citizens alone can run for office, all permanent residents have the right to vote, regardless of citizenship status. This has meant that the ethnic composition of the electorate has in some cases been wholly different at municipal level. In this regard, the outright repudiation of the Soviet past displayed by local elites in Lihula stands in marked contrast to trends observable in the capital Tallinn, where Russian-speakers make up almost half the population, and Russian and pro-Russian parties, such as the Centre Party (Keskerakond), have been able to obtain a significant foothold in local politics. This contrast became evident not least in 1995, when the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II brought calls for the removal of the Bronze Soldier. The city council, however, tried instead to imbue this monument with an alternative meaning: a Soviet-era plaque referring to the liberation of Tallinn by the Red Army in 1944 was replaced by one that reads simply to the fallen of World War Two. This step can be read as an effort to inculcate some kind of shared understanding of a highly contentious past within a deeply multi-ethnic setting. What trends, however, can one identify in the more homogeneously Russian pe riphery that is Narva? Estonias new best friend. The rediscovery of Estonias Swedish past The return of the Swedish Lion monument to Narva, as one local newspaper described it (Sommer-Kalda 2000), can be seen in many ways as the culmination of a process of Swedish re-engagement with the eastern Baltic Near Abroad that began in 1990 with the establishment of a Swedish consulate in Tallinn. With considerable financial resources now being made available to support processes of economic and political transition in Estonia, Swedish cultural attach Hans Lepp began to explore how past cultural links might be utilised in the service of what he has termed soft diplomacy.9 Historic ties with Scandinavia have assumed an important place within the discourse of the ruling ethnic Estonian political elite since the 1990s, where they have been used to support the notion of a Return to Europe—or, more broadly, a Return to the Western World following the end of Soviet occupation (Lauristin et al. 1997; Smith 2001, 2003a, 2003b). Within this framework, the period 1561 1710, when Sweden progressively extended its dominion over much of the territory of present-day Estonia and Latvia, is remembered as the Happy Swedish time, which is said to have brought about a considerable improvement in the lot of the Estonian peasantry, before serfdom was returned to its former rigour following entry to the Russian empire. Hans Lepp and his diplomatic colleagues were alive to the possibility of trading on this feeling of goodwill in order to make Sweden Estonias best friend in the Baltic region, with all that this implied in terms of political and economic influence.10 It quickly became apparent, however, that Swedish assistance was most needed in Narva and its surrounding region of Ida-Virumaa. Quite apart from the socio-economic and environmental challenges posed by this largely Russian-populated border region, rising nationalism in neighbouring Russia raised the prospect that the local inhabitants might look eastwards towards Moscow rather than westwards towards Tallinn, with drastic implications for regional stability and security.11 In this specific context history had particular potential as a resource, given the important place of the Battle of Narva of 1700 within the Swedish historical imagination. Although the opening salvo in a disastrous war that saw the Baltic provinces ceded to Russia,12 the first Battle of Narva was nevertheless a remarkable victory by the troops of King Charles XII (often referred to as the Lion of the North) against the numerically superior forces of Peter the Great. In this respect, Eldar Efendiev, who as Mayor of Narva planned the November 2000 commemoration of the battle, claimed in an interview with the authors that Swedes know three dates—the birthday of Gustav Vasa; the birthday of the present King; and the date of the Battle of Narva.13 The significance of the latter event had been seen already in the inter-war period with the installation of a Lion monument on the battlefield site in 1936.14 Already prior to his appointment as cultural attach in 1990, Hans Lepp—then Curator of the art collections at the Swedish Royal Palace in Stockholm—suggested to Efendiev (at that time Head of the Narva Museum) that the restoration of the Lion monument might help to foster closer ties between Narva and Sweden in the present. Lepp subsequently pursued the idea of restoring the Lion with Narva city council in his roles as Swedish cultural attach to Estonia and member of the Swedish Institute. Not surprisingly, however, planning the commemoration of a decisive Swedish victory over Russia was a potentially fraught endeavour in a town where Russian-speakers now made up 96% of the population. Narva: Eastern, Western or in-between? The more essentialising geopolitical discourses of the post-Cold War era would see Narva as sitting on the westward side of the border that divides Western Christianity from Eastern Orthodoxy. Those who discern a Huntingdonian civilisational fault line between Estonia and Russia could point by way of evidence to the presence of two great fortresses—one German, one Russian—on the respective banks of the Narova River that separates Narva from its neighbouring settlement of Ivangorod and which today marks the state border with the Russian Federation. Not unnaturally, however, the citys past is rather more complex. As noted on the current website of the city government, Narva has not merely served as a defensive outpost and site of struggle between competing regional powers, but has also constituted a locus for trade and interaction between West and East, not least during the period when the city belonged to the Hanseatic League.15 From its foundation in the twelfth century to 1558, Narva did indeed constitute the easternmost point of the province of Estland, which was ruled first by the Danes and later by the German Livonian Order. Neighbouring Ivangorod takes its name from Tsar Ivan III, who ordered the construction of a fortress on the western border of his realm following Muscovys annexation of Novgorod in the late fifteenth century. Muscovy subsequently conquered Narva during the mid-sixteenth century Livonian wars, controlling the city from 1558 to 1581. The city then came under Swedish rule for 120 years following the Livonian Wars, a period which is described on the webpage of todays city government as Narvas Golden Age.16 For nearly three and a half centuries, Narva and Ivangorod functioned in effect as a single composite settlement, first under Swedish rule and then later during the tsarist period, when Narva came under the joint jurisdiction of the Estland and Saint Petersburg Gubernii of the Russian Empire. The conjoined status of the two towns persisted after 1917, when the inhabitants of the Narva district voted in a July referendum to join the province of Estland created following the February Revolution.17 After a brief spell of Bolshevik control during late 1918 to early 1919, when Narva functioned as the seat of the abortive Estonian Workers Commune, both towns were incorporated into the Estonian Republic under the terms of the 1920 Treaty of Tartu. It was only after the Soviet occupation in 1945 that the border was redrawn so as to place Ivangorod in the territory of the Russian Republic of the USSR. Although this division was little more than an administrative formality within a Soviet cont ext, the frontier revision set the scene for the establishment of a fully functioning state border between the two towns after 1992. The Narva that emerged from the Soviet period is almost completely unrecognisable from the one that existed prior to World War Two. Previously characterised as the baroque jewel of Northern Europe, the city was quite literally reduced to rubble in 1944 during fierce fighting between German and Soviet forces in eastern Estonia. While at least some historic buildings—notably the castle and the town hall—were restored, the ruins were for the most part demolished and the city entirely remodelled on the Soviet plan. As was the case with Knigsberg (Kaliningrad), Narva was inhabited by both different inhabitants and a different ideology after 1945 (Sezneva 2002, p. 48). The previous residents, having been evacuated by the occupying Nazi regime, were not allowed to return by its Soviet successor, and were replaced by workers from neighbouring Russia, who oversaw a process of Soviet-style industrialisation in the region. Today, Estonians make up less than 5% of the towns inhabit ants. As part of Narvas transformation into a Soviet place, new monuments were erected to commemorate the fallen of the Great Patriotic War and of the brief period of rule by the Estonian Workers Commune.18 All remaining traces of the pre-war Estonian Republic were swept away following the Soviet re-conquest of 1944. The 1936 Swedish Lion monument, which had been erected at the approaches to the city during a visit by the Swedish Crown Prince, was destroyed by artillery fire and the bronze lion removed by German forces during their retreat. This monument did not reappear under Soviet rule. The authorities did, however, restore and maintain objects linked to the citys Russian past, such as the two tsarist-era monuments to Russian soldiers killed in the battles of 1700 and 1704. As the movement for Estonian independence gathered momentum between 1988 and 1991, Narva gained a reputation as a bastion of support for the maintenance of Soviet power. The city government that came to office in December 1989 set itself resolutely against political change, demanding autonomy for north-east Estonia within the context of a renewed Soviet federation and, in August 1991, voicing support for the abortive Moscow coup which precipitated the collapse of the USSR. The Council was promptly dissolved in the aftermath of Estonian independence; yet, remarkably, its former leaders were allowed to stand in new elections, and were returned to power in October 1991, albeit on a turnout of only 30%. As ethnic tensions mounted in Estonia between 1991 and 1993, and Narvas economy went into freefall, local leaders again set themselves in opposition to central government policies that were designed to engineer a decisive political and economic break with the Soviet past. The last stand o f the Soviet-era leadership came in the summer of 1993: with fresh local elections scheduled for the autumn, the city government organised an unofficial referendum on local autonomy, in which it gained a 97% majority in favour on an officially proclaimed 55% turnout of local voters. With the national government standing firm and refusing to acknowledge the legality of the vote, and no support forthcoming from neighbouring Russia, a growing section of the local political elite appeared to accept that intransigent opposition to the new state order was blocking any prospect of achieving much needed economic renewal. These circles now called upon the existing leadership to give up power peacefully, which it did in October 1993 (Smith 2002b). At the time, the referendum of July 1993 was widely regarded as secessionist in intent. Available evidence, however, would seem to suggest that redrawing physical borders was not on the agenda: the aim was rather to tip the overall political balance within Estonia in favour of the Russian-speaking part of the population and, in this way, to bring Estonia as a whole more firmly within the ambit of Russia and the CIS. In this way, the leadership hoped both to retain power and to restore the citys previous economic ties with the East as well as developing new links with the West (Smith 2002b).19 While Soviet constituted the principal identity marker for Estonias Russian-speaking population prior to 1991, this did not preclude the development of a simultaneous strong identification with the specific territory of the Estonian SSR (widely identified in other republics as the Soviet West or the Soviet Abroad), and with the local place of residence. Between 1989 and 1991, the movement to ass ert Estonian sovereignty gained support from a significant minority (perhaps as much as one third) of local Russian-speakers, who could subscribe to a vision of Estonia as an economic bridge between East and West. Such feelings were by no means absent in Narva, where the 1989 census revealed that seven out of 10 residents had actually been born in Estonia (Kirch et al. 1993, p. 177). Even so, the collapse of the USSR inevitably created something of an identity void as far as Estonias Russian-speakers were concerned. Despite perceptions of discrimination, recent survey work has confirmed a growing identification with the Estonian state (Kolst2002; Budryte 2005; Ehin 2007) as well as significant support for EU membership. Most Russians, however, have scarcely been able to identify themselves with any notion of Estonian national community, with local place of residence and ethnicity serving as the prime markers of identity (Ehin 2007). Despite having an obvious cultural affinity with Russia and with the transnational Russian community across the territory of the former Soviet Union, a population raised in the different socio-cultural setting of the Baltic has found it hard to conceive of actually living in Russia or to identify politically with the contemporary Russian state. It is with this complex identity that the post-1993 leadership in Narva has had to reckon. The Estonian law on local elections passed in May 1993 stipulated that non-citizens could vote but not stand for office. This excluded much of the local population from seeking election, including a substantial proportion of the Soviet-era leadership. Ahead of the October 1993 poll in Narva, however, the state was able to co-opt elements of the local political elite through a process of accelerated naturalisation on the grounds of special services rendered to the state. The elections of October 1993 saw a strong turnout by local voters, and brought to power a coalition of locally based parties and interest groups. The city governments elected during the period 1993 2005—a period when the national-level Centre Party attained the dominant position within local politics—were far more ready than their predecessors to embrace the new political economy of post-socialism, and thus better placed to cooperate both with central government and with Western partners within the wid er Baltic Sea area. In this regard, the commemoration of the Battle of Narva and the installation of the Swedish Lion can be understood as an attempt to create a narrative of the citys past capable of underpinning growing ties with Sweden in the present. These ties assumed a particular significance after 1995, when Swedish textile firm Boras Wfveri purchased a 75% stake in Narvas historic Kreenholm Mill, then the citys second-largest employer. According to Raivo Murd, the ethnic Estonian who served as Mayor of Narva from 1993 to 1996, the investment was proof that Narva was finally beginning to shed the Red image that had prevailed under the former political dispensation.20 In a clear sign of its determination to break with the Soviet past, the city government appointed in October 1993 removed Estonias last remaining statue of Lenin, which had remained standing in the central Peters Square in Narva during the first two years of Estonian independence. The subsequent period has seen the installation of new monuments commemorating—inter alia—the victims of Stalinist deportations during the 1940s and key moments in the transition to Estonian independence during 1917 20. The Old Narva Society founded by surviving pre-1944 residents of Narva also put up a number of commemorative plaques marking the sites of churches and other key buildings from the pre-war city. Yet the post-1993 political e Issues of War Monuments in Estonia Issues of War Monuments in Estonia Empty Spaces and the Value of Symbols: Estonias War of Monuments from Another Angle * This article is the first published output from British Academy small research grant ref. SG-39197, entitled Public Monuments, Commemoration and the Renegotiation of Collective Identities: Estonia, Sweden and the â€Å"Baltic World† Since the summer of 2004, the new EU member state of Estonia has been in the throes of what is described as a War of Monuments. The events in question began in the town of Lihula in western Estonia, where a veterans group erected a stone tablet commemorating those Estonians who in World War Two donned German uniform and fought on the eastern front against the USSR. Bearing the inscription To Estonian men who fought in 1940 1945 against Bolshevism and for the restoration of Estonian independence, the Lihula stone became the latest of several monuments commemorating a group that most Estonians today regard as freedom fighters. In this case, however, the soldier depicted bore SS insignia. Hardly surprisingly, this fact elicited widespread international condemnation, notably from Russia, the EU and Jewish organisations. The groups behind the monument insisted that the men in question had had no truck with Nazism, and had only enlisted as a last resort in order to obtain access to arms w ith which to repel the Soviet invader. The display of the SS insignia nevertheless disregarded the taboo that surrounds the display of Nazi symbols in todays Europe. Also, while the vast majority of Estonian SS legionnaires did indeed sign up only in 1944 as the Soviet army advanced into their homeland, at least some had previously belonged to auxiliary police battalions which have been implicated in Nazi atrocities.1 Concerned to limit potential damage to Estonias international reputation, the government of the day ordered the removal of the monument. The police operation to carry out this order on 2 September 2004 nevertheless provoked clashes with local residents, while the political fallout from the episode contributed to the fall of Prime Minister Juhan Parts several months later. Critics of the government action argued that if the Lihula monument was to be construed as a glorification of totalitarianism, then the same logic should be applied to Soviet monuments that had been left standing following the restoration of Estonian independence in 1991. Singled out in this regard was the Bronze Soldier on T[otilde]nismgi in central Tallinn—a post-war monument erected on the unmarked grave of Soviet troops who fell during the taking of the city in 1944. For the vast majority of Estonians, the arrival of the Soviet Army signalled the replacement of one brutal occupying regime by another, whic h quickly resumed the arrests, executions and large-scale deportations previously witnessed during the first year of Soviet rule in 1940 41. This remains the dominant perception amongst Estonians today. The leaders of post-Soviet Russia, by contrast, have adhered steadfastly to the Soviet-era view of these events as marking the liberation of Estonia from fascism. The defeat of the Nazis during 1941 45 remains central to Russias self-understanding in the post-Soviet era; its  current leaders emphatically deny that the events of 1940 and 1944 in the Baltic states constituted a Soviet occupation, and refuse to acknowledge the suffering which the inhabitants of these countries experienced at the hands of the Soviet regime. Commentators in Russia have emphasised that they will brook no alternative interpretations of the Soviet Unions role in the events of 1939 45, and have therefore characterised calls for the removal of the T[otilde]nismgi monument as a manifestation of support for fascism. For many of the ethnic Russians who today make up nearly half of Tallinns population, the Bronze Soldier has also remained a locus of identification, providing the site for continued unofficial commemorations on 9 May, which was celebrated as Victory Day during the Soviet period. Red paint was thrown over the monument just prior to 9 May 2005, when several other Soviet war memorials were also attacked across the country, and a German military cemetery desecrated in Narva. The following year, this date again elicited tensions: local Russian youth mounted round-the-clock surveillance at the Bronze Soldier, while an Estonian nationalist counter-demonstration led to scuffles on 9 May (Alas 2006a). The monument was subsequently cordoned off by police pending a decision on its future. This formed the object of vigorous political debate ahead of the March 2007 parliamentary elections. Matters relating to the establishment and upkeep of public monuments in post-Soviet Estonia have for the mo st part fallen to local municipalities. In late 2006, however, new legislation was adopted giving central government the power to override local decision making in this regard. This provision was motivated expressly by a desire to remove the monument and the soldiers remains from the centre of Tallinn to the more peripheral setting of the military cemetery on the citys outskirts (Alas 2006a, 2006b, 2006c; Ranname 2006). The subsequent removal of the monument in late April 2007 provided the occasion for large-scale rioting in central Tallinn. On 9 May 2007 hundreds of people visited the monument at its new location in order to lay flowers. Issues of past or memory politics2 have assumed a growing prominence in recent scholarly work on Estonia and the other Baltic states, with a number of authors also highlighting the apparently divergent views of the past held by Estonians and Estonian Russians, and the obstacles that this poses in terms of societal integration (Hackmann 2003; Budryte 2005; Onken 2003, 2007a, 2007b). Publicly sited monuments are evidently central to any discussion of such issues: as recent events in Estonia have shown, they frequently act as catalysts eliciting both official and unsanctioned expressions of collective identity (Burch 2002a, 2004).3 Thus far, however, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to monuments within the relevant academic literature on Estonia. This article is intended as a contribution in this regard, but it approaches the issue from a slightly different angle. The War of Monuments has focused political and media attention upon two different cases, one involving a settlement that is predominantly ethnica lly Estonian by population (Lihula) and the other a capital city (Tallinn) that is almost equally divided between Estonians and Russians. This article shifts the focus to the overwhelmingly Russian-speaking city of Narva, which today sits on Estonias border with the Russian Federation. In particular, our study examines the local politics surrounding the Swedish Lion monument (see Figure 1), which was erected in the city in November 2000 on the 300th anniversary of the Battle of Narva between Sweden and Russia. The Lion monument relates to a past that is far less immediate than the events of 1940 45, but which, as we demonstrate, is still highly salient to contemporary identity politics within Estonia. How, for instance, was the commemoration of a decisive Swedish victory over Russia framed and debated in a town where ethnic Russians and other Russian-speakers constitute 96% of the population? Equally significantly, todays Lion is depicted as the successor to a similar monument erected in 1936 during the period of Estonias inter-war independence. The reappearance of this symbol could therefore potentially be understood as part of a state-sponsored effort to banish the Soviet past and reconnect with a past Golden Age. Once again, one wonders how this was interpreted by a local population that was established in Narva as a direct consequence of the Soviet takeover and which, by dint of the legal continuity principle, mostly did not obtain the automatic right to Estonian citizenship after 199 1.4 Who then decided to erect the Lion monument, and why? What form did the commemoration of November 2000 take, and what are the main lines of public debate that have surrounded it? The current article will address these questions, and will also seek to link the Narva case to broader conceptual issues of identity politics and post-communist transition, particularly the current debate surrounding the possibilities for the development of a tamed liberal/multicultural nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe.5 Past politics and post-communism The dramatic events that have occurred in Europe over the past two decades have entailed a profound redefinition of collective identities at a variety of scales—national, supranational, regional and local. The end of the Cold War, the demise of the USSR, and the consequent processes of EU and NATO enlargement, all occurring within the overall context of economic globalisation and growing movement of population, have led communities and groups across the continent to revisit existing understandings of who We are and where We are going. Since historical memory is an essential component in the construction of collective identity, this process has necessarily involved renegotiation of the Past as well as debates concerning the Present and Future. Like all forms of identity politics, such memory work is contested, being embedded in complex †¦ power relations that determine what is remembered (or forgotten) by whom, and for what end (Gillis 1994, p. 3). In a similar vein, Graha m et al. (2000, pp. 17 18) remind us that heritage is time-specific and thus its meaning(s) can be altered as texts are re-read in changing times, circumstances and constructs of place and scale. Consequently, it is inevitable that such knowledges are also fields of contestation.6 Publicly sited monuments offer a particularly useful way into researching this phenomenon, since they provide us with a tangible manifestation of some memory work process. The memorial function of such objects can take the form of carefully choreographed gatherings at times of heightened political awareness, or precise moments of commemorative anniversaries. Wreaths might be laid; silence observed; political rallies enacted; pageants performed. Other actions might be characterised more by spontaneity: collective grief at a sudden, tragic event, or an iconoclastic attack on a memorial construed in negative terms. Individuals and groups will attach different, often mutually exclusive meanings to particular monuments. Moreover, such meanings are shifting and contingent: what constitutes an eloquent memorial at one particular moment in time (for instance during an annual commemoration) might become a mute, invisible monument for the rest of the year. In this regard, being ignored is as s ignificant as being noticed.7 Political changes in the present can radically alter the import of a memorial, without any physical change on its part. This reiterates that the context of the monument is intrinsic to meaning. Context, however, can also be physically rendered, as with the shifting of a memorial/monument from some focal point to somewhere more peripheral and less visible. Issues of collective identity have proved especially challenging in those states that have been created or recreated following the collapse of the USSR. These are for the most part configured as classic unitary nation states, and yet in nearly all cases, processes of state and nation building have been effectuated on the basis of societies that are deeply polyethnic or multinational in character (Brubaker 1996; Smith et al. 1998; Smith 1999). Moreover, nearly all of the states in question have painful pasts with which they need to come to terms (Budryte 2005, p. 1). In relation to this region, Paul Gready (2003, p. 6) reminds us that stripped of the fossilising force of Cold War politics, nationalism has become central to political transitions, both as a means and an end. Narratives of history that focus exclusively on the titular nationality and its subjugation and suffering at the hands of former colonial regimes invariably elicit opposition from minority groups, which can easily f rame their own exclusivist narratives of history along the same lines. Indeed, as the Estonian case exemplifies very well, conflicting narratives of the past can be seen as an integral part of the triadic nexus of nationalist politics—the relationship between nationalising states, national minorities and external national homelands—discerned by Rogers Brubaker in his 1996 work Nationalism Reframed (Pettai 2006). In using the past for present purposes, political and intellectual elites in the Baltic and other Central and Eastern European states have also had to take account of the requirements of integration with the European Union, which in the Estonian and Latvian cases especially, has entailed significant changes to the direction of nation-building (Smith 2002a, 2002b, 2003a, 2003b, 2005; Budryte 2005; Kelley 2004; Galbreath 2005). EU-supported state integration strategies launched at the start of the twenty-first century have set the goal of creating integrated multicultural democracies which will enable representatives of the large non-titular, non-citizen population to preserve certain aspects of their distinct culture and heritage as they undergo integration into the polity and the dominant societal culture (Lauristin Heidmets 2002). According to a number of authors writing on the politics of the past and of memory, these efforts to promote an integrated multicultural society necessar ily require all the parties involved to engage with a process of democratising history. Democratisation in this context would imply that history is no longer used extensively for political purposes, alternative readings are allowed to challenge dominant master narratives, a plurality of guardians of memory is tolerated, and that rather than merely stressing the suffering endured by ones own nation, historical narratives recognise that other groups suffered equally, and that the nation in question served as both a bystander and a perpetrator as regards the suffering of others (see Onken 2003, 2007a; Budryte 2005). A significant step in this direction came during 1998, when all three Baltic states established historical commissions.8 Composed of academic experts from home and abroad (in the Estonian case exclusively the latter), these bodies have been called upon to produce an independent assessment of events during the Nazi and Soviet occupations of 1940 91, and have already begun to publish their findings (Onken 2007b). However, developments such as the Estonian War on Monuments and the Baltic Russian dispute over the commemoration held in Moscow to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War Two (Onken 2007a) underline the extent to which the past is still underpinning conflictual political dynamics in the present. In this regard, Russias increasing reliance on the Soviet past for nation-building purposes and its indiscriminate blanket accusations of fascist tendencies in the Baltic states prompt Baltic politicians to insist that Soviet communism should join Nazism as one of the great evils against which contemporary European values should be defined. As is the case with other aspects of post-communist transition, however, a focus on the state level tells us only so much about the renegotiation of identity in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe. In this highly complex multi-ethnic environment, the sub-state regional level cannot be disregarded (Batt 2002). A focus on the sub-state level appears especially apposite as far as the study of Estonias public monuments is concerned, for, until now at least, decisions in this area have rested with local rather than with national government. Furthermore, one can point to different political logics that obtain at national and local level. As a result of the citizenship law adopted in the aftermath of independence, ethnic Estonians have constituted a comfortable majority of the national electorate during 1992 2007. The local election law of 1993, however, stipulates that while citizens alone can run for office, all permanent residents have the right to vote, regardless of citizenship status. This has meant that the ethnic composition of the electorate has in some cases been wholly different at municipal level. In this regard, the outright repudiation of the Soviet past displayed by local elites in Lihula stands in marked contrast to trends observable in the capital Tallinn, where Russian-speakers make up almost half the population, and Russian and pro-Russian parties, such as the Centre Party (Keskerakond), have been able to obtain a significant foothold in local politics. This contrast became evident not least in 1995, when the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II brought calls for the removal of the Bronze Soldier. The city council, however, tried instead to imbue this monument with an alternative meaning: a Soviet-era plaque referring to the liberation of Tallinn by the Red Army in 1944 was replaced by one that reads simply to the fallen of World War Two. This step can be read as an effort to inculcate some kind of shared understanding of a highly contentious past within a deeply multi-ethnic setting. What trends, however, can one identify in the more homogeneously Russian pe riphery that is Narva? Estonias new best friend. The rediscovery of Estonias Swedish past The return of the Swedish Lion monument to Narva, as one local newspaper described it (Sommer-Kalda 2000), can be seen in many ways as the culmination of a process of Swedish re-engagement with the eastern Baltic Near Abroad that began in 1990 with the establishment of a Swedish consulate in Tallinn. With considerable financial resources now being made available to support processes of economic and political transition in Estonia, Swedish cultural attach Hans Lepp began to explore how past cultural links might be utilised in the service of what he has termed soft diplomacy.9 Historic ties with Scandinavia have assumed an important place within the discourse of the ruling ethnic Estonian political elite since the 1990s, where they have been used to support the notion of a Return to Europe—or, more broadly, a Return to the Western World following the end of Soviet occupation (Lauristin et al. 1997; Smith 2001, 2003a, 2003b). Within this framework, the period 1561 1710, when Sweden progressively extended its dominion over much of the territory of present-day Estonia and Latvia, is remembered as the Happy Swedish time, which is said to have brought about a considerable improvement in the lot of the Estonian peasantry, before serfdom was returned to its former rigour following entry to the Russian empire. Hans Lepp and his diplomatic colleagues were alive to the possibility of trading on this feeling of goodwill in order to make Sweden Estonias best friend in the Baltic region, with all that this implied in terms of political and economic influence.10 It quickly became apparent, however, that Swedish assistance was most needed in Narva and its surrounding region of Ida-Virumaa. Quite apart from the socio-economic and environmental challenges posed by this largely Russian-populated border region, rising nationalism in neighbouring Russia raised the prospect that the local inhabitants might look eastwards towards Moscow rather than westwards towards Tallinn, with drastic implications for regional stability and security.11 In this specific context history had particular potential as a resource, given the important place of the Battle of Narva of 1700 within the Swedish historical imagination. Although the opening salvo in a disastrous war that saw the Baltic provinces ceded to Russia,12 the first Battle of Narva was nevertheless a remarkable victory by the troops of King Charles XII (often referred to as the Lion of the North) against the numerically superior forces of Peter the Great. In this respect, Eldar Efendiev, who as Mayor of Narva planned the November 2000 commemoration of the battle, claimed in an interview with the authors that Swedes know three dates—the birthday of Gustav Vasa; the birthday of the present King; and the date of the Battle of Narva.13 The significance of the latter event had been seen already in the inter-war period with the installation of a Lion monument on the battlefield site in 1936.14 Already prior to his appointment as cultural attach in 1990, Hans Lepp—then Curator of the art collections at the Swedish Royal Palace in Stockholm—suggested to Efendiev (at that time Head of the Narva Museum) that the restoration of the Lion monument might help to foster closer ties between Narva and Sweden in the present. Lepp subsequently pursued the idea of restoring the Lion with Narva city council in his roles as Swedish cultural attach to Estonia and member of the Swedish Institute. Not surprisingly, however, planning the commemoration of a decisive Swedish victory over Russia was a potentially fraught endeavour in a town where Russian-speakers now made up 96% of the population. Narva: Eastern, Western or in-between? The more essentialising geopolitical discourses of the post-Cold War era would see Narva as sitting on the westward side of the border that divides Western Christianity from Eastern Orthodoxy. Those who discern a Huntingdonian civilisational fault line between Estonia and Russia could point by way of evidence to the presence of two great fortresses—one German, one Russian—on the respective banks of the Narova River that separates Narva from its neighbouring settlement of Ivangorod and which today marks the state border with the Russian Federation. Not unnaturally, however, the citys past is rather more complex. As noted on the current website of the city government, Narva has not merely served as a defensive outpost and site of struggle between competing regional powers, but has also constituted a locus for trade and interaction between West and East, not least during the period when the city belonged to the Hanseatic League.15 From its foundation in the twelfth century to 1558, Narva did indeed constitute the easternmost point of the province of Estland, which was ruled first by the Danes and later by the German Livonian Order. Neighbouring Ivangorod takes its name from Tsar Ivan III, who ordered the construction of a fortress on the western border of his realm following Muscovys annexation of Novgorod in the late fifteenth century. Muscovy subsequently conquered Narva during the mid-sixteenth century Livonian wars, controlling the city from 1558 to 1581. The city then came under Swedish rule for 120 years following the Livonian Wars, a period which is described on the webpage of todays city government as Narvas Golden Age.16 For nearly three and a half centuries, Narva and Ivangorod functioned in effect as a single composite settlement, first under Swedish rule and then later during the tsarist period, when Narva came under the joint jurisdiction of the Estland and Saint Petersburg Gubernii of the Russian Empire. The conjoined status of the two towns persisted after 1917, when the inhabitants of the Narva district voted in a July referendum to join the province of Estland created following the February Revolution.17 After a brief spell of Bolshevik control during late 1918 to early 1919, when Narva functioned as the seat of the abortive Estonian Workers Commune, both towns were incorporated into the Estonian Republic under the terms of the 1920 Treaty of Tartu. It was only after the Soviet occupation in 1945 that the border was redrawn so as to place Ivangorod in the territory of the Russian Republic of the USSR. Although this division was little more than an administrative formality within a Soviet cont ext, the frontier revision set the scene for the establishment of a fully functioning state border between the two towns after 1992. The Narva that emerged from the Soviet period is almost completely unrecognisable from the one that existed prior to World War Two. Previously characterised as the baroque jewel of Northern Europe, the city was quite literally reduced to rubble in 1944 during fierce fighting between German and Soviet forces in eastern Estonia. While at least some historic buildings—notably the castle and the town hall—were restored, the ruins were for the most part demolished and the city entirely remodelled on the Soviet plan. As was the case with Knigsberg (Kaliningrad), Narva was inhabited by both different inhabitants and a different ideology after 1945 (Sezneva 2002, p. 48). The previous residents, having been evacuated by the occupying Nazi regime, were not allowed to return by its Soviet successor, and were replaced by workers from neighbouring Russia, who oversaw a process of Soviet-style industrialisation in the region. Today, Estonians make up less than 5% of the towns inhabit ants. As part of Narvas transformation into a Soviet place, new monuments were erected to commemorate the fallen of the Great Patriotic War and of the brief period of rule by the Estonian Workers Commune.18 All remaining traces of the pre-war Estonian Republic were swept away following the Soviet re-conquest of 1944. The 1936 Swedish Lion monument, which had been erected at the approaches to the city during a visit by the Swedish Crown Prince, was destroyed by artillery fire and the bronze lion removed by German forces during their retreat. This monument did not reappear under Soviet rule. The authorities did, however, restore and maintain objects linked to the citys Russian past, such as the two tsarist-era monuments to Russian soldiers killed in the battles of 1700 and 1704. As the movement for Estonian independence gathered momentum between 1988 and 1991, Narva gained a reputation as a bastion of support for the maintenance of Soviet power. The city government that came to office in December 1989 set itself resolutely against political change, demanding autonomy for north-east Estonia within the context of a renewed Soviet federation and, in August 1991, voicing support for the abortive Moscow coup which precipitated the collapse of the USSR. The Council was promptly dissolved in the aftermath of Estonian independence; yet, remarkably, its former leaders were allowed to stand in new elections, and were returned to power in October 1991, albeit on a turnout of only 30%. As ethnic tensions mounted in Estonia between 1991 and 1993, and Narvas economy went into freefall, local leaders again set themselves in opposition to central government policies that were designed to engineer a decisive political and economic break with the Soviet past. The last stand o f the Soviet-era leadership came in the summer of 1993: with fresh local elections scheduled for the autumn, the city government organised an unofficial referendum on local autonomy, in which it gained a 97% majority in favour on an officially proclaimed 55% turnout of local voters. With the national government standing firm and refusing to acknowledge the legality of the vote, and no support forthcoming from neighbouring Russia, a growing section of the local political elite appeared to accept that intransigent opposition to the new state order was blocking any prospect of achieving much needed economic renewal. These circles now called upon the existing leadership to give up power peacefully, which it did in October 1993 (Smith 2002b). At the time, the referendum of July 1993 was widely regarded as secessionist in intent. Available evidence, however, would seem to suggest that redrawing physical borders was not on the agenda: the aim was rather to tip the overall political balance within Estonia in favour of the Russian-speaking part of the population and, in this way, to bring Estonia as a whole more firmly within the ambit of Russia and the CIS. In this way, the leadership hoped both to retain power and to restore the citys previous economic ties with the East as well as developing new links with the West (Smith 2002b).19 While Soviet constituted the principal identity marker for Estonias Russian-speaking population prior to 1991, this did not preclude the development of a simultaneous strong identification with the specific territory of the Estonian SSR (widely identified in other republics as the Soviet West or the Soviet Abroad), and with the local place of residence. Between 1989 and 1991, the movement to ass ert Estonian sovereignty gained support from a significant minority (perhaps as much as one third) of local Russian-speakers, who could subscribe to a vision of Estonia as an economic bridge between East and West. Such feelings were by no means absent in Narva, where the 1989 census revealed that seven out of 10 residents had actually been born in Estonia (Kirch et al. 1993, p. 177). Even so, the collapse of the USSR inevitably created something of an identity void as far as Estonias Russian-speakers were concerned. Despite perceptions of discrimination, recent survey work has confirmed a growing identification with the Estonian state (Kolst2002; Budryte 2005; Ehin 2007) as well as significant support for EU membership. Most Russians, however, have scarcely been able to identify themselves with any notion of Estonian national community, with local place of residence and ethnicity serving as the prime markers of identity (Ehin 2007). Despite having an obvious cultural affinity with Russia and with the transnational Russian community across the territory of the former Soviet Union, a population raised in the different socio-cultural setting of the Baltic has found it hard to conceive of actually living in Russia or to identify politically with the contemporary Russian state. It is with this complex identity that the post-1993 leadership in Narva has had to reckon. The Estonian law on local elections passed in May 1993 stipulated that non-citizens could vote but not stand for office. This excluded much of the local population from seeking election, including a substantial proportion of the Soviet-era leadership. Ahead of the October 1993 poll in Narva, however, the state was able to co-opt elements of the local political elite through a process of accelerated naturalisation on the grounds of special services rendered to the state. The elections of October 1993 saw a strong turnout by local voters, and brought to power a coalition of locally based parties and interest groups. The city governments elected during the period 1993 2005—a period when the national-level Centre Party attained the dominant position within local politics—were far more ready than their predecessors to embrace the new political economy of post-socialism, and thus better placed to cooperate both with central government and with Western partners within the wid er Baltic Sea area. In this regard, the commemoration of the Battle of Narva and the installation of the Swedish Lion can be understood as an attempt to create a narrative of the citys past capable of underpinning growing ties with Sweden in the present. These ties assumed a particular significance after 1995, when Swedish textile firm Boras Wfveri purchased a 75% stake in Narvas historic Kreenholm Mill, then the citys second-largest employer. According to Raivo Murd, the ethnic Estonian who served as Mayor of Narva from 1993 to 1996, the investment was proof that Narva was finally beginning to shed the Red image that had prevailed under the former political dispensation.20 In a clear sign of its determination to break with the Soviet past, the city government appointed in October 1993 removed Estonias last remaining statue of Lenin, which had remained standing in the central Peters Square in Narva during the first two years of Estonian independence. The subsequent period has seen the installation of new monuments commemorating—inter alia—the victims of Stalinist deportations during the 1940s and key moments in the transition to Estonian independence during 1917 20. The Old Narva Society founded by surviving pre-1944 residents of Narva also put up a number of commemorative plaques marking the sites of churches and other key buildings from the pre-war city. Yet the post-1993 political e

being in college :: essays research papers fc

Prof. Wu Essay #2 The Learning ?Life? Everyone goes through this journey in his or life. Some fare better than others do; yet we all strive onward. The journey in I am discussing is the schooling system. It is set up for an individual to progress gradually through levels; each designed specifically for stage in which the mind is, at that point in time. Some may agree and some will disagree, but the reality is everyone is ?graded? throughout his or life according to school when it is the knowledge learned outside of class, which makes the difference.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Looking back on my previous years of schooling, I have noticed that many of the subjects covered in school do not exactly deal with the ?real world.? For instance, when is the last time someone has used the number x giving the price of an item? There is no number x. Or when has someone asked for the year in which Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. These are facts of useless information. Unfortunately, these facts must be known for a person to reach the next level of learning (grade). I do not understand why classes are not taught for an individual to learn how to change the oil in his or her car or even change the tires, common material needed for everyday life.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Many times though I remember the teachers whose job was to teach the students these ?useless? facts and theories. I often admired many of them for the pure reason of them trying to adapt their teachings to ?real world? subjects. They understood that everything that they teach their students is not going to be used, but they know that it will make them a well-rounded individual. Teachers know when students do not care a lot about the subject in which they teach, as Terkel says in his essay, so they use tricks to enchant the minds of the students. ?Falling asleep is a tendency of the students,? Kelly states. History teachers for example usually talk about current events that all the students are familiar with and then tie the history event with the current event. Science teachers will conduct experiments using paper airplanes and lipstick to bring an idea across to every student. In his essay, Neusner explains different grading policies for students to grade their t eachers. ?Students should look at teachers as teachers look at students,?

Ishikawa

A Forefather of TQM Principles: Kaoru Ishikawa Total Quality Management (TQM) principles are based off of the philosophies of numerous individuals – W. Edward Deming, Joseph Juran and Philip Crosby, to name a few. One such individual is Kaoru Ishikawa. Touted as the â€Å"Father of Quality Circles and as a founder of the Japanese quality movement† (Beckford, 2002), his philosophy on quality control is critical to understand TQM in general. Knowing the fundamentals/ building blocks of TQM can be used to shape the future direction and improvement of TQM.Ishikawa hoped his philosophy would improve quality in work, which in turn would lead to improvement in quality of life (Beckford, 2002). Ishikawa was born July 13, 1915. He graduated from the University of Tokyo where he received an engineering degree in Applied Chemistry. Later he would become a professor of the same University. After graduating, he joined the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) in 1949. Th is could be seen as the first steps he took towards developing his quality control philosophy and following in the footsteps of his father in Management Science (Hutchins, 1989. The core ideas of Ishikawa’s philosophy on quality control – companywide quality control (CWQC) – can be divided into three main concepts (Beckford, 2002). The first is that quality is based off of a holistic approach. The second core idea of Ishikawa’s philosophy is that there is active participation in the quality program amongst the employees. The third core idea is that there is direct, simple communication between management and workers. A holistic approach means that not only is the end product/service a quality product/service but also extends to the process that developed it.The end is just as important as the means. The company has a program in place that strives for quality management, quality workers and quality processes within all levels of the company. I think this c oncept of quality at all levels within a company is especially important in today’s society where it is not enough to know a company provides a quality product but is socially and environmentally conscious. For example, if a company has a quality process in place when choosing and working with certain suppliers – they lessen the chance of being surprised that the supplier uses child labor or contaminates the environment.Ishikawa’s second core idea of active participation among employees emphasizes the importance the workers. It’s not enough to have a quality program in place; the employees (including leadership) have to be involved and to have a voice within the company. This is based off of the idea that employees not only can recognize the problems in a process but also the solutions (Beckford, 2002). One of the main complaints that employees have is that management is not in touch with what they actually do so they don’t listen when there is a p roblem or a solution. Ishikawa’s second core idea looks to avoid this phenomenon.The last core idea of direct, open communication between workers and management rounds out Ishikawa’s philosophy on quality control. It stresses the importance of group communication to be understandable and in â€Å"layman terms† so it can be pertinent for all levels of the company. Ishikawa’s contributions to quality management were numerous. He wrote 600+ articles and 31 books (Smith, 2011). He had 2 English translated books – â€Å"Introduction to Quality Control† and â€Å"What is Total Quality Control? The Japanese Way†. He was also behind the concept of quality circles and the Fishbone Diagram.Quality circles can be seen as a method of creating active participation within a company. It shows how Ishikawa believed that â€Å"all workers must be involved in quality improvement through teams to enhance the capability of individual workers and improve work processes† (Watson, 2004). Quality circles are groups of workers within a company that is formed to review, analyze and make recommendations for issues and problems. The Fishbone diagram was developed in 1943 as a problem-solving tool and was used to identify possible root causes to problems in a simple and straightforward presentation.It is one of the seven tools of quality control that is recognized worldwide (Smith, 2011). While all the tools of quality control is important, this diagram can be used in numerous disciplines ranging from not only quality management, but science, education, etc. The other tools of quality control is Pareto Charts, Stratification, Check sheets, Histograms, Scatter graphs and Control charts (Beckford, 2002) Throughout his career, Ishikawa was the recipient of numerous awards. Per Beckford, he received the Deming, Nihon Keizai Press and Industrial Standardization prizes and the Grant Award from the American Society for Quality Control.Ishik awa’’s work also prompted an award to be given out in his honor. In 1993, ASQ established the Ishikawa Medal where it is awarded â€Å"to an individual or a team whose work has had a major positive impact on the human aspects of quality† (ASQ, 2012) Ishikawa passed away April 16, 1989. Although he is no longer with us, his work and his philosophy is still vibrant and in use today. Understanding the core concepts behind Ishikawa’s CWCQ sheds light on TQM principles. His philosophies help shape how companies today develop their quality control programs.Maybe from the lessons and philosophy of Ishikawa, a future TQM guru could emerge, giving the world another individual that further advances quality in work and ultimately in life. References Beckford, J. (2002). Part two: The quality gurus: Chapter 8: Kaoru Ishikawa. Quality (Routledge), pg. 93 – 104. Watson, G. (2004). The Legacy Of Ishikawa. Quality Progress, 37(4), 54-57. SMITH, J. (2011). The Last ing Legacy OF THE MODERN QUALITY GIANTS. Quality, 50(10), 40-47. Kaoru Ishikawa 1915-1989. (2010). Quality Progress, 43(11), 19. Bauer, K. (2005). KPI Identification With Fishbone Enlightenment.DM Review, 15(3), 12. Hackman, J. , & Wageman, R. (1995). Total Quality Management: Empirical, Conceptual, and Practical Issues. Administrative Science Quarterly, 40(2), 309-342. Hutchins, David. (1989). Obituary: Professor Kaoru Ishikawa. The Independent. April 26, 1989. http://asq. org/about-asq/who-we-are/bio_ishikawa. html http://asq. org/about-asq/awards/ishikawa. html (Evans, James R.. Managing for Quality and Performance Excellence, 8th Edition. South Western Educational Publishing, 01/2010. p. 110). <vbk:1111509360#outline(3. 7. 2)>

Organisational Development in the Nursing Field

Organisational Development in the Nursing Field Free Online Research Papers Organisational development (OD) is widely documented in a plethora of literature many theorists suggest that OD is science based and its topics are rooted in behavioural sciences. OD emerged in the 1960s in order to support organisations with incremental changes which appeared very topical at the time. Paton et al (2005) suggests the prevailing emphasis of OD is on incremental change however OD originated in developing gradual or first order change within existing and established frameworks. In more recent times OD is required to respond to transformational change (Burns 1978, Bennis Nanus 1985, Marriner-Torney 1993). This form of change involves changing existing frameworks including attitudes, beliefs and cultural values. A commonality of both these types of change is that they require top down support towards strategy. However from reading a plethora of literature on OD an evident weakness is that not all change is instigated top down, ideas for change can and do come from any level within an organisation and sometimes pressures for change can be bottom up. Bottom up change lacks power and consequencely this could have a negative effect on the OD process. OD focuses on the process of change rather than the task and is linked to â€Å"soft data† (Peters Waterman 1982). There are numerous topics associated with OD including organisational climate, conflict, culture, management development, employee commitment all according to Mullins (1994) improve organisational performance. Mullins (1994) suggests all topics have to be interlinked or interdependable of each other to gain improved organisational performance. However it could be argued how the accuracy of outcomes are measured or quantified. As changing the interlinked topics may or may not increase outcomes, profits/performance could be increased by external changes and may not always be related to topics involved. Many Authors have tried to define/suggest a purpose of OD including (Beckhard Pritchard 1992, Schein 1985, Boddy Buchanan 1992). The literature suggests OD lacks a commonly agreed definition that is accepted as capturing its nature, principle and extent (Paton et al 2005). The emerging themes from the literature suggests OD applies behavioural science to achieve planned change. Goals include improved organisational effectiveness through using systems theory to analyse organisational issues (Ludwig Van Bertalanffy 1968.) OD appears to be a management discipline of significance to the settings approach in the workplace it creates an enabling workplace where people work effectively towards strategic goals aligning leadership, structure, relationships and learning towards goal attainment. A key theme of OD is improving organisational efficiency in conjunction with improving the quality of employees working lives (Brauche 2001, Saunders Barker 2001). This relates to the art and practice of linking people with purpose to reach and achieve strategic goal and is very much people focused. For the purpose of this paper I shall be critically evaluating OD processes and frameworks in line with current literature and applying these processes to current OD practices within the National Health Service (NHS) and more specifically to the Primary Care Trust (PCT) in which I work. I shall be producing the following OD strategy â€Å"Developing skill mix into the Evening District Nursing Team to provide service delivery in a more efficient and effective manner†. (See Appendix A outlining strategy). I will discuss the OD process used to formulate the strategy and plan the change and critically analyse this process. I will focus on the formulation of the change situation within the PCT and discuss common elements of change and how these elements proactively bring about change within the organisation. I shall evaluate the potential effectiveness of the strategy and the potential impact it may have on the organisation. In order to provide the contextual setting for this project it is important to briefly outline my role within the NHS and examine the changes in the NHS during the recent years. The NHS is a large organisation employing people with a wide range of talents, one of the smaller parts being the Primary Care Trust (PCT) for who I work. My role within the PCT is a clinical/operational management role integrated into a senior nursing role. I manage six District Nursing teams including the evening nursing service and work half time as a District Nurse. I report directly to a Performance/Service Development Manager who in turn reports to the Associate Director. The PCT employees approximately 1150 staff the majority are clinical staff providing community services. The past structure of the NHS has been embedded in a hierarchical â€Å"top down† controlling system styles, yet with the â€Å"Modern NHS† this culture is changing (Lucus 2005, Zimmerman et al 1998). The Government White Papers and National Health Service (NHS) Policy documents (DoH 1997, 1998a 1999, 2001, 2002) reflects plans for a modern NHS and outlines the Government plans for 2000 – 2010; These White Papers build a tangible base on which change for the NHS is based, providing anchoring points for the change on an incremental basis. Smith (2005) discusses how incremental change increases employees readiness to change this is very much evident in the aims and objectives of the PCT. The evening nursing service consists of 34 staff which equates to 6.79 whole time equivalent staff (see Appendix C) the staff all work part time and the majority have more than 10 years service. A service review reported some team members were not working to their grade and there was a need for skill mix within the team to meet the complex care needs of patients on their caseload. This review highlighted highly trained staff undertake clerical duties and simple tasks due too lack of appropriate grade of staff within the team. Community nursing has had to respond to changes from the Government and to the additional pressures including an increase in workload both on day time Community Nursing services but also on the ENS. These pressures are influenced by increasing numbers in the client group District Nurses visit, and the frailty/dependency of these clients. Demographic changes identify that the number of the elderly will increase with a dramatic rise amongst those aged 85 and over adding to District Nursing caseloads in the future. As more people are nursed in primary care the demand for out of hours community based nursing services such as the ENS has steadily risen. The care these clients receive has increased in complexity with the influx of continuing care clients and Active Case Management clients into the service. However despite all of the above the skill mix within the team has remained stagnant. OD INTERVENTIONS LITERATURE REVIEW Many authors discuss approaches to OD what it is and how it is used within organisations, however in practice OD never neatly fits into one approach as change can be chaotic with unexpected combinations and outcomes (Iles Sutherland 2001). Themes/Approaches to OD The OD processes for developing plans for change are based on an ideology of planned participation and democracy (Stacey 1996). These processes rely on change agents facilitating change rather than imposing change. Action Research is one intervention which helps to define a problem and participants then have ownership of that problem (Darwin et al 2002). Action Research The concept of Action Research is traced back to Lewin in the 1940s (Darwin et al 2002). Lewin argued in order to understand change and certain social practices social scientists must include practitioners from the real work in all phases of the inquiry (McKernan 1991). Lewin drew on theories of progressive education of the educational philosopher John Dewey. Carr Kemmis (1986) were critical of Lewins work around Action Research suggesting that democracy and group decision making were viewed as a technique to again the cooperation of workers rather than a fundamental principle for social action and in practice I feel this sometimes happens. Action Research is often referred to as a management tool for the introduction of change and the strength of Action Research lies in the coupling of participants and research to action and change. This type of change process reflects change in practice as a change agent in this process you need to be part of the change process to understand and empathise with the journey of the change and the people involved. As we know from practice change never runs smoothly, and at times unless you are personally involved in the change you can struggle with the emotions from staff affected from the change. Action Research creates spiral steps composing of planning, action and evaluation – the evaluation element being the results of the action (Kemmis McTaggert 1990). Action Research is a rigorous and systemic approach toward OD which uses scientific methods to initiate the change it uses research to enhance practice at a practical level. This type of OD is used in the NHS where care is evidence and researched based. It does require expertise and discipline to use it efficiently and effectively. The change agent requires knowledge and understanding of the Action Research process and knowledge of the validity of research, and the ability to think analytically around evidence and research before putting it into practice. There are 3 types of Action Research: Technical, Practical, and Emancipatory (Darwin et al 2002). The type more commonly used is practical where the researcher and practitioner comes together to identify a potential problem, it gives joint ownership of the problem associated with the change. The practical type gives more flexibility than the technical approach as it allows participants to problem solve as they move through the change which in turn can give multiple perspectives of the problem. This type of Action Research fits well into the ethos of the NHS and the principles that problem solving complex health and social problems lies beyond the ability of any one professional/team and large group intervention is required supported by a change agent to constantly monitor evidence and research to ensure practitioners constantly deliver evidence based. However a criticism of Action Research is that in a hierarchical organisation the empowering element of Action Research is often difficult to achieve due too the power structure involved within the organisation. The cultures in the NHS have changed people now constantly question practice and engage in new enquiry. Staff are actively encouraged to problem solve at shop floor level and Action Research would help staff to perform this. Specifically the methodology used in Action Research has the potential to be useful in areas such as developing innovations, improving healthcare and developing knowledge. Whitehead (2005) discusses how Action Research is gaining acceptance in healthcare management however examples of this in the literature are limited (Waterson 2000, Harrison 2000). Unfortunately Action Research has yet to gain widespread acceptance in the Health Service despite the fact clinicians in the NHS use evidence and research on daily basis. Action Learning Action Learning is an approach to OD which involves the development of people in organisations which takes the task as the vehicle for learning (Pedler 1991). Action Learning is learning from what is happening in the workplace opposed to acquiring new knowledge, although programme knowledge can be introduced into an Action Learning programme as it can give a conceptualised framework to the programme. Many Authors suggest that OD cannot be undertaken on an individual basis as it requires a group to formulate the process and Action Learning brings about changes in people via group work because individuals within the group influence each other and this can be an excellent way to change culture within organisations. Action Learning is a way of learning from Actions and there are 2 important elements to Action Learning:  · Group work: people who work together on their â€Å"doing† and their â€Å"Learning†  · Regular meetings: to allow time for questioning, understanding and reflecting (Weinstein 1999). The involvement of groups in Action Learning makes it effective for introducing change into an organisation and most importantly culture change (Weinstein 1999). Culture change can be difficult to change within organisations as attitudes are not born in us they are formed in groups for example family or work groups and these groups are instrumental in changing our attitudes and beliefs. Group work enables attitudes to change over a period of time and Action Learning enable this process. Changes in people comes about in groups because individuals influence each other and Action Learning sets out principles to challenge people in a group setting, which in the long term will help staff to address change in the workplace. Action Learning is embedded in the theories of Reg Revans (1983, 1982, 1998) but uses the Kolb Revans learning cycles which involves learning from our actions and suggests there can be no learning without action. Action Learning promotes the creative integration of thinking and doing to form learning. The theory of Action Learning consists of a number of elements:  · Programmed Knowledge  · Questioning  · Action  · Reflection Learning should also be greater than the change, thus programmed knowledge and questioning must be learnt faster than change to avoid becoming dated. Action Learning helps to conceptualise a problem the Action Learning set works through the symptoms of the problem narrowing the symptoms down to fine detail in order to get to the exact root of the problem this in itself can be challenging. Action Learning is used as a diagnostic at the implementation stage of a change to diagnosis a problem and it uses tactic knowledge for problem identification (Weinstein 1991). Several Authors suggest Action Learning produces slow results and can take time for people to develop their skills in order to gain full benefits from the set. People can struggle with the balance between accomplishing their task and learning from it and embracing the challenge of the group dynamics. For organisations that prefer quick results Action Learning may not be the appropriate approach to use. Action Learning requires commitment from employers through time and personal development. Sets can work on a task for a period of 6 – 12 months before producing results within an organisation. Employers need to understand this prior to committing their staff to the set. Long term outcomes from Action Learning can be measured in the form of professional development and organisational outcomes but it takes time to measure. Not all employers are able to commit this time and expense. Another common psychological barrier to Action Learning is the perception by the employees that they neither have the time or inclination to learn (Peters Smith 1996). However a counter argument to this is that Action Learning can develop an inclination for employees to become lifelong learners not only developing a learning organisation but a learning society (Koo 1999). Deloo Verstegen (2001) suggest that Action Learning may lead to personal growth but lacks results in organisational growth. Zuber-Skerritt (2002) challenges this suggestion by stating the Authors have not conducted successful Action Learning programmes themselves and show poor understanding of the theoretical concepts that is a pre-condition for successful Action Learning programmes. Whilst there are clearly benefits gained from Action Learning programmes both at a personal and professional level the financial benefits of such programme have never been quantified. One could argue that some organisations may not want employees developed so they constantly question and challenge and equally some employees would not want this either. However these organisations and employees would be left behind in a rapidly changing environment where people and organisations are facing uncertainties and challenges on a daily basis. Action Learning is a powerful tool in enabling managers to recognise and deal with ambiguity and anxiety and develop strategies for group learning. This learning group can be a microcosm of the organisation. The Action Learning model is an example of a powerful organisational intervention and can appeal to managers who may be unwilling to engage in a more traditional intervention, but yet Action Learning fits well in with today’s transformational management style. Action Learning sets in practice appears to contribute to and support transformational change in practice (McNamara 2006). OD STRATEGY FOR THE CHANGE WITHIN MY OWN ORGANISATION. Clinical performance indicators are powerful tools by which the quality and effectiveness of Health Care can be monitored and measured (Harvey 2004). Information gained from these indicators can assist in the restructuring and the redesign of care delivery. Community Nursing Services uses clinical performance indicators in the form of caseload profiling and caseload analysis to monitor the effectiveness of District Nursing Services. These clinical performance indicators are not deemed to be exact standards rather they are designed to be flags which alert the organisation to possible problems and or opportunities for improvement. A recent performance indicator highlighted that the Evening Nursing Service (ENS) lacked skill mix within the team resulting in highly trained staff performing task orientated skills and clerical work. DOH (2001) The NHS Plan documents strategies to ensure the right mix and numbers of professionals employed are in the right place at the right time. These documents supported the performance indicator by highlighting the need to analysis and optimize the ENS service. The skill mix within the team is highlighted in Appendix C and the staff work in pairs in the evening. I as the manager of the ENS was assigned the task of working with the team to plan a strategy for change to restructure the skill mix within the ENS service using the must appropriate OD intervention. The ENS team is a well established team and the skill mix within the team was stagnant, staff had been in post for many years, therefore the ENS has developed its own culture over the years and I was aware this culture would be hard to challenge and change. Culture can be an important enabler or inhibitor of change and understanding the role of organisational and professional culture is important (Davies et al 2001). Culture is often strong which means it can have a powerful impact on an organisation but it is not always positive and I felt this reflected the ENS team. The NHS echoes the words of culture â€Å"The way we do things around here† (Lundy Cauling 1996). This type of culture is classed at level three of Scheins1988 model of culture defined as the truest level of culture within an organisation – the taken for granted or invisible culture and this is was reflected in the ENS team. This strong culture can inhibit change especially when new strategies are implemented that go against the entrenched culture and basic norms as the change agent you can then become face to face with the power of culture. I was very aware that the power of the culture within the ENS was going to be difficult to change therefore I deci ded to use an approach by Gagliardi (1986) â€Å"Cultural incrementailism† which incorporates new cultures alongside old ones until the new cultures overtake and become embedded. This type of culture change does take more time to happen but I felt if I was going to change the skill mix in the team I could not change it overnight, new staff would have to work alongside old staff hopefully binging in modern views helping to change the culture in a gradual manner. I was aware from Waldersee Griffiths (2003) that the weakness of many change interventions is often attributed to failures in the implementation process rather than the strategy itself. Participative approach toward change appears to be a more conducive approach to use as its methods include support for the change from the work force. Spreitzer (1996) relates participative approaches to empowerment were employees believe they are important assets in the organisation and whilst this may true theoretically it is worth noting that there will always be employees who will resist change and clearly allowing them to participate in the change programme can increase the resisting factors of the change (Lewin model 1951). The clinical performance indicators which initiated this change were higher management led, which is indicative of OD. Therefore this change strategy involved using a three way approach: Ø Rational – Empirical approach Chinn Benn (1996), Nickols (2003) Ø Participatory approach See Appendix Ø Action Research using the Practical Interest model incorporating Kurt Lewin (1951) model of change. The aim of this approach was to allow the ENS team to perceive and understand the need for the change and then assist them as the change agent to develop responses through team participation (Stacey 2000). The Action Research element of the strategy would allow the team to have ownership of the change by building on the past but using research and evidence to move forward. Whitehead (2005) suggests post modern Action Research represents a much better fit for today’s modern NHS in line with current reforms in the Health Service Agendas, as the Action Research approach focuses on inclusion and participation as a means to transform and restructure organisations. From the literature I feel Action Research represents â€Å"best practice† for achieving organisational change and this underpins my choice of OD intervention (Zuber-Skerritt 1996). The Practical model of Action Learning would allow myself as an internal change agent and the team to work together to improve practice through the application of personal experience of the group (Grundy 1982). The Rational – Empirical approach (Chinn Benne 1996) fits into a top down approach of change which makes explicit which changes are necessary and targets the organisational elements assuming that staff will change to accommodate the change that people are rational beings and will follow their self interest. But a negative aspect of this approach is that note everyone is rational in a change situation either overtly or covertly and therefore this approach should be used with caution. The Participatory Approach would encourage all team members to get involved in the change and make democratic team decisions, employees who are involved in change develop an ownership for the change which can translate into commitment and motivation (Emery Emery 1993). A key mechanism of attitude change in a participatory approach is the generation of support for change among the workforce, without this support the change can be viewed as unlikely to succeed (Waldersee Griffiths 2003). Whitehead (2005) echoes my thoughts about using a participatory approach as it makes change easier to achieve when those affected by the change are involved in each cycle and therefore own the change. THE OD STRATEGY IN ACTION The first meeting with the ENS team was to â€Å"Diagnosis† the need for the change (Whitehead et al 2003). I was the â€Å"internal† change agent due too my detailed knowledge of the service this knowledge included actual work on the service, and felt this would give me credibility from the team members. As a team we looked at and analysed the caseload profiling and workload review of the ENS team, alongside reviewing associated literature on up-to-date evidence based on caseload profiling of an ENS service in a neighbouring PCT and then compared and contrasted the results. This relates to the Action Research element of the strategy. I also asked all team members to forward think prior to the first meeting and bring ideas with them of how they would like the service structured with rationales for their decisions. I felt this would encourage a participatory approach towards the strategy and forge constructive relationships with all team members (Whitehead et al 2003 ). My intension was to give the team members ownership of the change and in return for them to give commitment to any choices which may be made (Arygris Schon 1978). My hope was these interventions working jointly would lead to a cultural change within the team. By the end of the first meeting the majority of staff did agree that the skill mix within the team was inappropriate and therefore the problem was â€Å"Diagnosed†. Everyone went away to think about their â€Å"Ideal† team and bring their ideas to the next meeting. The second meeting fostered a field force analysis (Lewin 1958) (see Appendix C). This became the unfreezing process (Lewin 1958). One of the aims of the meeting was to create the conditions necessary for a successful change (Burnes 1992). We focused on problems and opportunities which were identified and I as the change agent tried to increase the driving forces to make the meeting positive and productive. As a group we also undertook a SWOT analysis to highlight strengths and weaknesses which allowed us to devised a plan of â€Å"where we are now and where we go from here† with a time frame. Again this group work was creating the spiral steps of Action Research (Kemmis McTaggert 1991). I was aware at this meeting of the criticisms made by Carr Kemmis (1986) as previously discussed and my aim was for the group to have a social action opposed to me as the internal change agent gaining cooperation of the workers, therefore I undertook a more facilitator role within the group to remove any power status the staff viewed of me. I also wanted the individuals within the group not only to learn the task (what the group is working on) but also I wanted the group members to equally focus on the process (how the group is going about the change) to enable them to conceptualise the whole process. This conceptualising would allow the group to use a deeper level of OD intervention where activities involved in the change process are geared to helping individuals discover hidden aspects of their personalities and relationships within the group, which could help to change the culture within the group. One of the key issues identified from this meeting was the need to bring into the team a lower grade of untrained staff to address clerical issues within the team, a task presently undertaken by anyone in the team including highly trained staff, and also to lower the grade of the present team leader post of the team (which was vacant) in order to give the post more hours. This relates to Arnold et al (1998) when he talks about job redesign, where a job is re configured to give greater variety in the workplace in order to motivate people and to give more autonomy to empower people. This was the aim of the team discussion around the introduction of new grades within the team. This new design would ultimately improve the teams quality of working and the main drivers for this redesign were the present inappropriate use of skills. The meeting concluded by staff being asked to scan the literature around job redesign and skill mix, and to bring their findings to the next meeting. Individuals within the team volunteered themselves to write the lower grade job description for discussion at the next meeting. This meeting had an overall positive feel and ownership of the change did emerge from everyone present. This reflected the â€Å"practical† approach of Action Research – problem solving. This meeting concluded with change targets and outcomes agreed and formal systems appertaining the change were formalised. As the internal change agent working with the team it was interesting to note the type of players within the team shapers, finishers and plants (Belbin 1981). I was aware had all the players in the team been the same type of players then dynamics of the group could have been very different, giving different results to the change process. Schein (1992) suggests the concept of culture has its roots in theories of group dynamics and growth understanding, the dynamics can help develops strategies for change and organisational culture relating to team work or indeed can inhibit the change process. The third meeting was a brief meeting to discuss the job redesign and complete the new job descriptions. At this meeting senior staff were asked to be on the interview panel for the new posts alongside myself. This inspired the team as they had never been invited to sit on an interview panel before. I felt this learning opportunity really gave the team empowerment and ownership of the change in action. Although this change process was initiated† top down† this really gave the change a â€Å"bottom up† feel. My transformation leadership style (Patton 1990, Burns 1978) allowed me to see and share my knowledge around recruitment with the team, this systems approach to learning allowed me to combine formal training with on the job coaching to the team around the recruitment process. My aim was to develop the team to use double loop learning while they are in the change mode, encouraging them to question taken for granted beliefs (Argyis Schon 1978). However for double loop learning to occur the team needed to continue to develop a culture that supported change and risk taking and this included having an openness that encourages dialogue and expression of conflicting points of view. The refreezing process was when the new lower grade staff were in post. These were Band 2 and Band 6 staff. As a team we reviewed the whole change process four months after the new staff were in post. This evaluation monitored and established the effectiveness of the action taken during the Action Research process. We measured the effectives of the change by previously agreed outcomes and targets. These outcomes included:  · Less Bank nurse useage  · More staff on duty each evening – allowing appropriate grades of staff to undertake appropriate roles  · Moral of team improved  · Less sickness within the team The team agreed that all outcomes had been achieved and all team members felt more supported and happier in their role. This outcome supported the literature from Brache (2001) and Saunders Barker (2001) who both suggest the purposes of OD is to improve organisational effectiveness but also improve organisational health and quality of working lives. CONCLUSION The NHS culture has been created and sustained by its history, plurality of purpose, structures, uses and pro values and these are difficult to change in any change processes. Achieving and sustaining effective organisational change and renewal is imperative in any organisation. The people in an organisation can be either the key to achieving effective change or the biggest obstacle to success, and this can largely depend on the appropriateness of the OD intervention used. The price of failed change efforts can be high including loss of credibility on parts of leaders/managers. Leaders need to create a readiness for change at both at an individual and employee level and the NHS is no exception. However this change will depend on how leaders initiate the change and on which OD intervention they use to carry out the change. OD has been used many times in years gone by and to some degree OD is currently in a state of evolution as OD practices and techniques have become mainstream into the basics of management principles (Wooten White 1999). I felt using Action Research to initiate and facilitate my strategy for change worked positively in conjunction with my transformational leadership type. My understanding is that the best people to bring about change are those involved in it and who understand it best. Using Action Research as an OD intervention did involve all the team members in the whole change process and it brought about new learning and experiences for the team members and ultimately jelled them together as a team more cohesively. Using Action Research allowed the team to determine the conditions of their own lives at work, improving their working lives and conditions of work which in turn allows them to work more effectively. This strategy of change is a micro change within the PCT but has achieved macro results. As a manager I am aware that as a team we do not want to refreeze permanently in this new state, we need to view this as a transactional change where change occurs continuously to improve efficiency and effectiveness within the work place. Ambitious goals such as the achievement of the NHS plan will require that the NHS becomes an organisation able to embrace continuous, emergent change but will depend on the people in the NHS becoming more skilled in handling change and the use of OD interventions in a complex environment with multiple stakeholders, conflicting objectives and considerable constraints (Iles Sutherland 2001). 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