Domestic Surveillance and Government's Loss of Legitimacy

The terrorist attacks against the United States on the morning of September 11, 2001 created an environment ripe for the abuse of power. With a fearful nation clamoring for greater protection against future attacks, the National Security Administration (NSA) took the opportunity to create and implement a secret domestic spying and data mining program, the size of which had never before been imagined. Because information is the ultimate form of power in today’s world, unmitigated access to so much personal data has the potential to aggregate power into this one agency, leaving the rest of government and the populace unable to defend themselves against those who would use it to advance their own agendas. Once obtained, there is no way to check this power. Since government is only as legitimate as the populace believes it to be, such aggregations of power are likely to increase dissent among the citizenry and ultimately result in a belief that it has become illegitimate. Such a government is ineffective and puts the entirety of the populace in harm’s way, not only from terrorists outside its borders, but from potential domestic abuses of this power. In the rush to protect the country against terrorism, one must be careful the actions he or she takes do not inadvertently create a homeland security threat from within

Using Incentive to Motivate Students During a Professional Selling Class Project

Experiential learning methods are an important part of a robust sales curriculum. Sales call role-play, an experiential learning tool, is common in introductory and advanced sales call courses. While role-plays have several advantages, they are by definition, not “real-world.” Addressing this issue, some sales courses include sales projects/exercises in which students sell real products to real customers. This paper discusses how sales incentives were incorporated into a real-world sales exercise and the impact of those incentives on sales volume

The Ethical Perceptions of Salespeople and Sales Managers Concerning the use of Gps Tracking Systems to Monitor Salesperson Activity

Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) tracking systems are starting to be used by sales organizations to monitor salespeople as they drive their company cars in their territories. This paper examines and compares ethical perceptions of salespeople and sales managers regarding the use of GPS tracking technology. The results of a survey of salespeople and sales managers suggest both sales managers and salespeople perceive the use of such systems as ethical, provided the salesperson is aware of the system\u27s installation and use. The results also indicate that while salespeople perceive the personal use of a company car as unethical, most are likely to use a company car for personal reasons anyway. These results offer support for the contention that GPS tracking systems may be needed to reduce unethical use of company cars. Additional results and implications for sales managers are provided

How contact can promote societal change amid conflict: An intergroup contact field experiment in Nigeria

Intergroup contact, originally designed as a tool for prejudice reduction, offers a promising means to resolve intergroup conflict. Evidence for contact-based interventions to improve intergroup relations is sparse, however, with most studies focusing only on the individuals who directly engage in contact. We test the ability of a contact-based intervention to promote peace between conflicting groups with a field experiment in Nigeria, where farmer and pastoralist communities are embroiled in a deadly conflict over land use. We examine the effectiveness of the contact intervention on the wider population-not just those directly engaged in contact-using surveys, direct observation of behavior in markets and social events, and a behavioral game. We find those who lived in the communities that received the intervention had more positive intergroup attitudes and feelings of physical security, as well as were more likely to engage in voluntary intergroup contact measured through self-reports and observed behavior in markets. Exploratory analyses show that those who directly participated in the program and those who were exposed to it by living in the communities where activities were taking place changed similarly with regard to attitudes and perceptions of security, but not with regard to behaviors, indicating the spread to the wider community was likely due to norm change. These results suggest that contact interventions can have wider societal change and reduce the barriers to peace between conflicting groups

Ohio State University's Wetlands Watercolors Eco Art Exhibition Proposal

Course Code: ENR 2367A proposal for the implementation of an environmental art show at the Ohio State University's Wetlands.Academic Major: Agribusiness and Applied EconomicsAcademic Major: Environment, Economy, Development, and SustainabilityAcademic Major: Environmental ScienceAcademic Major: ExplorationAcademic Major: Financ