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“The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.” This was what the Socrates had concluded hundreds of years ago. In this essay, reputation is the opinion held by someone or a group of people. Also for simplicity of matter, organizational and national reputation here has to be earned, or else, familial reputation would mean maintaining a previous reputation they have always upheld. Ultimately, everybody seeks to attain ‘good’ reputation either through proper or crude means.
Familial reputation is important in some developing countries till today. One prime example would be honour killings among the Palestinians. Palestinian communities are typically insular. Family members often remain in the same village or neighborhood for their entire lives. Hence, everyone knows each other background clearly, the reputation and honour of a family are its most important attributes. Steeped in a collective sense of identity, families (both immediate and extended) take pride in accomplishments of individual members and feel shame if one of them does something dishonourable (usually the blame is pointed to the woman). Unfortunately, honour is based on what men feel is important, and reputation is everything. Unlike the Westerns that champion individualism, the Arabs focus on the group. The family is more important than the individual and they would by all means eradicate the girl that sully the family honour. Women beaten, burned, strangled, shot or stabbed to death are often ruled an accident, suicide, or family dispute, if they are reported at all. Police and government officials are often bribed to ignore crimes and hinder investigations. Such women are killed and buried in unmarked graves; their very existence is removed from community and clan records. Families can even place advertisements in local newspapers to look for female relatives accused of immoral behaviors, and kill her if found. The whole family wants her dead and the community is warned neither to interfere nor to hide the women. In the Palestinian communities like Gaza Strip and Jordan, women are executed in their homes, in open fields, and occasionally in public, sometimes before crowds of cheering onlookers. Women are killed by their fathers, husbands, brothers, uncles, cousins, or even by their own sons. Relatives of the victims, including mothers and sisters, often defend the killings and occasionally help set them up. Even when apprehended, perpetrators of these killings serve as little as three to six months or no incarceration time for honour killings are accorded specials status in the courts sanctioned by the educated elite, who pass laws that enable murderers to get off with impunity. Men convicted of premeditated murder are treated like celebrities upon their release. Neighbours would shower them with compliments and their fathers commending them as heros for restoring the family honour and reputation. There are at least twenty-five “official” honour killings a year among the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza strip and thirty-five a year in Jordan. Actual number of deaths is much higher as many are unreported and unaccounted for. In short, if a woman brings shame to the family – through allegations of premarital or extramarital sex, by refusing an arranged marriage, attempting to obtain a divorce, or simply talking with a man – her male relatives are bound by duty and culture to slain her so as to uphold and maintain the familial honour and reputation and to deter others from doing wrong. Only by living up to their familial reputation, can the rest of their siblings be married off and the family not discriminated against.
Organisational reputation is also important in the world today. As Chris Satterthwaite wrote in an article, “We are no longer living in a world of messages, but in a world of conservations. Those conservations can lead to new levels of intimacy and greater corporate response.” With continuous globalisation, technology will always advance and the world will only get smaller every day. Relationships become important and seen as a key step in doing business. Before establishing a relationship, trust has to be built upon between companies. And before trust, reputation comes first. Companies must build upon trust and reputation of transparency, openness, clarity of purpose, values and ethics. Organisational reputation is a key source of competitive advantage as products or services become less differentiated when comparing to similar or substitutable ones. When products and services are less differentiated, it would be more justifiable for a company to raise its price and command a higher profit, thereby maximising its total revenue. Consumers are willing to pay more for established, reliable and credible brands. Therefore, organizational reputation is important as it is directly related to its financial performance. Reputation then acts as a driver of market value for an organization. Reputation defines who a company is. Say Apple, and the very word that comes into everyone’s mind would be innovation. Reputation is about ‘winning hearts as well as minds’. Companies need to understand the gap between how they perceive their own reputations and what its stakeholders believe and experience might differ. Consumers only gravitate to companies that are solid, stable, consistent, trustworthy, credible and secure. Reputation helps both inside and outside a company. Internally, workers, customers and stakeholders would be proud to be associated with the organization. Workers are then motivated to work for the company by living up to its reputation. Within the company, reputation establishes the right mindset, and then influences desirable behavior and hence unleashing further competitive advantage. Thus, reputation also helps shapes the organization, either by achieving and living up to its name, or even outdoing its current reputation. Externally, reputation builds credibility, which also means having a better chance of clinching better deals. If consumers do not trust the company, based on its poor reputation, consumers would refuse to purchase any products or services related to the company. They would also be less willing to invest or deal business with them. Consumers would by all means ignore the attempts made to communicate with them. On the other hand, if consumers trust the reputable companies, they would be even prepared to forgive mistakes by giving a ‘benefit of the doubt’. For reputation is a fragile commodity which takes years to build but can be lost in seconds. But, a strong reputation can allow organizations to withstand crisis by falling back on an established ‘bank of goodwill’. Thus, reputation provides a path for consumer to rediscover a company positive aspect despite the sudden setback. Recently, online organizational reputation has been in the highlights in response to the explosion of social media that amplifying the voices of individual Internet users. This industry of online fixers is sprouting to defend clients against damaging information on the web. With potential customers increasingly heading online to research products and services, bad reviews or complaints that turn up in a search can mean a lost business. Online reputation management services helps by promoting positive pages, and creating other sites that will push damaging references off the first few pages of the search results. They also recruit bloggers to write about clients on third-party sites. Many are not interested in fixing the problem, but doing a cover-up of their products or services reputation with thousands of dollars per month. Thus, while an organization image might belong to it, the organizational reputation is a given. Reputation is so important in business, with its benefits as discussed aforementioned, that they would rather spend more money on it flourishing their profile than fixing the problem.
National reputation is also critical in determining a country’s success in the world today. A strong national image and identity for the country, government, organization, regions and business they represent makes a difference in its success of its business, trade, tourism efforts as well as its diplomatic and cultural ties with other nations. A country can be reputable for the goods or services she produce and export and the extent how consumers proactively seek or avoid products from each country-of-origin. For example in Singapore car population, around 70% of the cars used are from Japan. That is simply because Japanese products are reliable and long lasting in the general Singapore perspective. A country can be reputable for her governance in its level of competency and fairness as well as its commitment to global issues such as democracy, justice, poverty and the environment. For example, the general perception of Singapore government is that it is efficient, corrupt-free and ultimately strict and shows no mercy in crimes especially drug-trafficking. As such, drug carrier triads would definitely think twice before bringing in drugs into or across Singapore. A country can be reputable for her heritage and appreciations for its culture which includes film, music, art, sport, literature. For example, Venice with its rich heritage of how the country was built with wooden poles on that muddy swampland and how it become affluent and later the breakdown of society as it indulge in decadence like gambling. It has many ancient artifacts and even the body of St. ____ which lies beneath the church. A country can be reputable for her population in her people’s competence education, openness and friendliness, as well as qualities like discrimination and hostility. For example, the Japanese are known for their politeness in treating customers. A country can be reputable for her tourism industry, such as the draw of natural and non-made tourist attractions and the level of interest in visiting that country. Singapore has recently unveiled its latest world largest Singapore Flyer which has seen booming increase in its attraction of rides after beating the London eye. A country can be reputable in her economic and social situation. Countries like Singapore may prove to be very attractive for people to live, work and study in given its peaceful, stable and conducive environment she offers. If countries were to achieve any mix or all of such reputation, they can increase the likelihood that the world will purchase and recommend her products and services. They can create heightened investor interest in industry, research and science. They can enhance their ability in recruiting and retaining talented people, like retaining the creator of Dolly the Sheep in Singapore for its bio-medical industry. They can build stronger credibility and trust in times of crisis. They can develop more productive cultural relations with other countries and their populations. They can improve their chances in bidding for and hosting important sporting and cultural events like how Singapore brands herself as a young nation and won the bid for 2010 Youth Olympic Games. They can generate a higher and more positive profile for themselves in international media. They can also establish more productive collaborating, partnerships and agreements with other countries. Thus, National reputation is important as a country success is entirely dependent on it. Only with reputation, can a country establish relationships with other countries (both government and consumers), thereby ensuring economic growth (with trade), hence being able to further develop upon its richness in value with the profit (culture and heritage, technology, workers skills, tourism facilities, etc). Thus, with a good head start, when countries work into improving its own national reputation first, would then only be able for them to promote this wholesome cycle stated above.
In a nutshell, reputation stands for everything. If reputation was not even worth anything, then what would explain the phenomenon that nations spend millions of dollars promoting their tourism? Why organizations must have sectors like public relations and jobs like imaging consultant still exist? Why are there laws against libel and slander in place to protect individual’s reputation? Reputation may be important or may not be important in the world today. But in view of any beholder, the demand for the existence of reputation is there to stay. For who on this Earth would not want to be remembered in the name of history, at least one’s country, organization or even families and friends, after spending quality time granted by heaven.
Since ancient times, the idea and system of police has been in place in many countries and civilization. For example, the “Lord of Night Watch” in Venice, whereby this group of “police”, made up from local citizens, took turns to patrol the city. And after centuries, there is still no one standardized policy as to how much power should be granted to such law enforces when they deal with crime.
There are various forms of police in many different countries. Together with the complexity of government, cultural background and societal values, the powers granted to these laws enforcers when dealing with crime varies drastically. For the simplicity of matters, police are regarded as law enforcers – these includes the everyday policemen one would see patrolling in the streets, traffic police and even prison wardens. For the phrase ‘unlimited powers’, the police could do simply anything they deemed fit. By this, it also means that these law enforcers could deal with crime without any checks and balances.
Unlimited powers granted to police themselves may ironically bring about more crimes. With unlimited powers, police themselves have to face tantamount pressure and are tested on their faith and discipline to abstain from material gains or wants. Should any of them deviate from the righteous path and succumb to such ill-gotten gains, the aim of granting police unlimited powers to increase efficiency of solving crimes is now used to aid the progress of crimes itself. A prime example would be the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) in Singapore. The Singapore government saw a need and initiated the CPIB, solely for the purpose of carrying out frequent and though checks and balances into the power and given autonomy within the government, likewise for ministries and other private bodies, including the police. The CPIB has successfully exposed many internal frauds and briberies, thereby ensuring bodies to be stable and corrupt-free. If the police were perfectly corrupt-free, would there be a need for such stringent checks to be in place? Why do such bodies like the CPIB still exist in both developed and developing countries till today? Albeit it is true that checks on the person’s background and character has been placed before recruiting them as part of the police, but police themselves are just like any one of us – humans. And to err is human. A person’s character can change over time and for some, granted with the sudden tremendous power, might not be able to cope with it effectively. Hence, it is safe to say that unlimited power should not be granted to the police on the basis that they themselves are also human, which are prone to commit errors and misuse the power given, indirectly aiding crime itself.
Unlimited powers should not be granted to police as they would become perpetrators of crime themselves. Prison wardens who are given too much authority without adequate accountability may fail to treat the incarcerated with dignity and respect, further convincing their charges to stay unrepentant and sociopathic. The infamous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment – a psychological study of human responses to captivity and its behavioral effects on both authorities and inmates in prison – suggests that given the go ahead by the right authorities, most ordinary people can be encouraged to cross the line from exacting fair punishment to carrying out sadistic mental and physical torture. Prison guards are easily tempted to see inmates as mere objects, a number rather than a name. More often than not, they are encouraged to instill fear and an overwhelming sense of powerlessness in their prisoners, taking away their individuality and privacy through strip searches, sleep deprivation and public humiliations. Recently, the 2004 Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal graphically demonstrates what American state prisons like Attica have known for years, that without supervision, prison can turn both jailers and inmates alike into animals. Hence, without any checks and balances, for the given unlimited powers granted to police, there is the probability with the abuse of power, thereby the legal system failing in its aim of punishing those incarcerated fairly, but also turning the police into criminals themselves indirectly.
Unlimited powers should be granted to police in view of the ever-evolving nature of crime. Money laundering has become easier because of the light speed, borderless financial transactions afforded by the Digital Age. High volumes of legitimate transactions also make illegally laundered money harder to detect. Money laundering has grown at least tenfold since 1990, reaching $1 to $1.5 trillion today. Only with unlimited powers, police are then better able to outwit cunning and often ruthless criminals empowered by technology, many of which whom successfully able to conceal their identity well. Hence, if police were not granted with unlimited powers of such, would it not then meant that the police are not serving their duty to its best given the present state of technology presently? Would not then that their efficiency is said to be compromised when our society lurks with many crafty and knowledgeable would-be criminals? Thus, we do see the need for police to be virtually ‘invincible’ at times to deal with such contemporary crimes. Only then would such crimes be minimize and kept in check by the police.
In essence, with regard to the various factors discussed aforementioned, police should not be granted unlimited powers when dealing with crime. However, if the situation calls for it, they may, under the supervision of a higher authority.
1 THE average Japanese woman can expect to live to 84; her counterpart in Botswana will die at 39.
2 BLACK men born in the US stand a one-in-three chance of going to jail. For white men the odds are one in 17.
3 ONE in five of the world’s population - 1.25 billion people - is undernourished.
4 NEARLY half of British 15-year-olds have tried illegal drugs and nearly a quarter are regular cigarette smokers.
5 CHILDREN living in poverty are three times more likely to suffer mental illness than children from wealthy families.
6 EIGHTY-ONE per cent of the world’s executions in 2002 took place in just three countries: China, Iran and the USA.
7 SUPERMARKETS in the UK know more about their customers than the government does. They use loyalty cards to determine your income and what your interests are.
8 EVERY cow in the EU is subsidised by £1.40 a day - three out of four Africans have less than that to live on.
9 SAME-SEX relationships are illegal in more than 70 countries. In nine - including Afghanistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia - the penalty is death.
10 EVERY hour, UK households throw away enough rubbish to fill the Royal Albert Hall.
11 THERE are 27 million slaves in the world.
12 A THIRD of the world’s population is at war. In 2002, 30 countries were fighting in 37 armed conflicts - a combined population of 2.29 billion people.
13 THE UK has the second-highest rate of teen pregnancies in the developed world, behind the US. There are 30.8 births for every 1,000 teenagers. Teenage mothers are twice as likely to live in poverty.
14 ONE in five people live on less than 50p a day.
15 THERE are 44 million child labourers in India, some working 16-hour days.
16 PEOPLE in industrialised countries eat between six and seven kilograms of food additives every year. A ham sandwich can contain up to 13 E-numbers.
17 GOLFER Tiger Woods is the world’s highest-paid sportsman, earning £44million a year, including £30,000 a day for wearing Nike caps - which Thai workers get £2.20 a day to make.
18 EVERY week an average 88 children are expelled from US schools for carrying a gun.
19 LANDMINES kill or maim one person every hour.
20 THERE are at least 300,000 prisoners of conscience, often held in appalling conditions, sometimes tortured, simply for peacefully expressing their own beliefs.
21 CARS kill two people every minute.
22 THE US owes the United Nations $1bn in unpaid dues. Yet it spends the same amount on its military programme every 23 hours.
23 TWENTY-SIX million people voted in the 2001 UK General Election. More than 32 million votes were cast in the first series of Pop Idol.
24 IN Kenya, bribery payments make up a third of the average household budget.
25 THE world’s trade in illegal drugs is estimated to be worth around £225bn - about the same as the world’s pharmaceutical industry.
26 TO fly a kiwi fruit from New Zealand to the UK means five times its weight in greenhouse gases being pumped into the atmosphere.
27 MORE than 150 countries are known to use torture.
28 AMERICANS spend £5.6bn on pornography every year - the same amount their government spends on foreign aid.
29 THE average urban Briton is caught on camera 300 times a day. With 10 per cent of the world’s 30 million CCTV cameras, we are the most watched nation in the world.
30 IN 2001, 13.2 million Americans and 2.5 million Britons had plastic surgery.
31 BRAZIL has more Avon ladies than members of its armed forces. Physical beauty is so highly prized that calling someone vain is a compliment.
32 EIGHTY-TWO per cent of the world’s smokers live in developing countries.
33 THE world’s oil reserves could be exhausted by 2040.
34 MORE than 70 per cent of the world’s population has never heard a dial tone. In Africa just one in 40 people has a phone.
35 A QUARTER of the world’s armed conflicts of recent years have involved a struggle for natural resources.
36 ALMOST 30 million Africans are HIV-positive. By 2050 the disease may have claimed as many as 280 million lives.
37 TEN languages die out every year.
38 MORE people die from suicide than in armed conflicts. In the past 45 years, suicide rates have grown by 60 per cent worldwide.
39 SEVEN million American women and one million American men suffer from an eating disorder.
40 THERE are 67,000 people employed in the lobbying industry in Washington DC - 125 for each member of Congress.
41 SINCE 1977, there have been 80,000 acts of violence or disruption at abortion clinics in North America.
42 THERE are 300,000 child soldiers fighting in conflicts around the world.
43 MORE people can identify the golden arches of McDonald’s than the Christian cross. The same goes for the Shell oil logo, the Mercedes badge and the Olympic rings.
44 A THIRD of the world’s obese people live in the developing world. Campaigners blame Western countries for dumping cheap, processed, fatty foods on poorer nations.
45 IN 2003 the US spent $379bn on its military. This was 22 times the combined military spending of the seven “rogue states” - Cuba, Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.
46 MORE than 12,000 women are killed in Russia every year as a result of domestic violence.
47 SIXTY-ONE per cent of British teenagers believe aliens have landed on Earth, while 39 per cent have any belief in Christianity.
48 TWO million girls and women are subjected to genital mutilation every year.
49 IN China, as a result of the preference for sons over daughters and the country’s one-child-per-family law, there are 44 million fewer women than men.
50 SOME 120,000 women and girls are trafficked into Western Europe every year. The UN estimates the trade is worth £4bn a year.
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