Investments in Training Are Assumed to Have Positive Returns
For years, companies have been operating under the assumption that they are reaping positive benefits from their training efforts. They train workers because they believe it strengthens the organization and serves as a retention tool (Lachnit 2001). They accept training as a given expense, showing human capital investments as expenditures on their corporate balance sheets, not as assets that are expected to generate income. However, because intuition and casual estimates have formed the basis of many of their training investment decisions, many companies have little evidence to verify that they are realizing positive returns on these investments.
This practice of operating from an underlying belief in the value of training is not unique to the United States. A study of 15 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that the majority of enterprises believe employee training is responsible for “productivity improvements, greater workforce flexibility, savings on material and capital costs, improved quality of the final product or service, and a more motivated workforce” (National Centre for Vocational Education Research 2001, p. 1). However, many companies have not measured the benefits and related them to the cost of training in a way that reveals the rate of return on a firm’s investment (ibid.). Apparently there is no other workplace issue on which so much money is spent with as little accountability as training (Worthen 2001).
In today’s competitive and economically volatile market, business managers can no longer approve spending without substantial justification to support their spending decisions. They are asking their hu...
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...: NCVER, 2000. http://www.ncver.edu.au/research/papers/downloads/roi.pdf
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The fear of Japan invading Canada in World War Two cause racism to arise in Canada. After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941 (Bolotta et al, 2000), Canadian citizens feared the Japanese immigrants living in Canada may aid Japan in attacking. Worried about its citizens and problems that may arise, the Canadian government prevented the problem by interning Japanese Canadians. The issue with this solution was the Canadian Government was not justified in interning the Japanese Canadians. The Canadian government had no reason to intern the Japanese Canadians; it was unreasonable, unnecessary and discriminatory.
“As European adventurers traversed the world in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries they initiated the “Columbian Exchange” of plants, animals, and diseases.”(P. 26). The Columbian Exchange refers to a period of exchanges between the New and Old Worlds. The exchange of plants, animals, diseases and more modernized technology, beginning after Columbus landing in the Americas in 1492. It lasted through the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Domesticated animals such as cattle, horses, sheep and pigs were introduced to the Americas. The Americas introduced to Europe many new crops such as potatoes, beans, squash, and maize. In time Native people learned to raise European livestock and European and Africans planted American crops. This was the positive effect of the encounter and it was largely responsible for the doubling of the world’s population in the next three hundred years. There were also many negative effects to the “Columbian Exchange” A major consequence was the spread of disease in the New World. Diseases carried by Europeans and Africans devastated the population of the Americas. As Europeans traveled through the Americas epidemics came with them. Typhus, diphtheria, malaria, influenza, cholera, and smallpox killed many of the native people. One example was
“They spoke of the Japanese Canadians,'; Escott Reid, a special assistant at External Affairs, would recall, “in the way that the Nazi’s would have spoken about Jewish Germans.'; Just like in that statement, I intend to expose you to the ways that the Japanese were wronged by Canadians throughout the Second World War. As well, I intend to prove what I have stated in my thesis statement: After the bombing of Pearl Harbour, the Japanese in Canada were wronged by being torn from their homes to be put into internment camps to serve Canadians through hard labour.
The tendency to racially discriminate and victimise against certain minorities or a specific nationality was a long-lasting sting of racism which was a part of Canadian history. The discrimination by Canadians directed towards Japanese-Canadians during WWII was a significant historical event that needs to be addressed. After the Pearl Harbour attacks in Hawaii by the Japanese navy, 24,000 Japanese-Canadians were placed in internment camps, where they were stripped of their identity and freedom of rights based upon their racial origin. In the aftermath of the internment, many Japanese-Canadian natives were left without life savings, as all of their belongings were confiscated and never given back. This internment of the Japanese-Canadians occurred
World War Two had a significant impact on Canadian history as the Canadian government revoked many rights and changed the lives of Japanese-Canadians that were interred. Between 1941 and 1945, over 21,000 Japanese-Canadians (in which over two thirds were born in Canada) were limited of their rights and freedom and were forced into internment camps "for their own good". The Japanese-Canadians were considered as enemy aliens by the Canadian government the day after Japan bombed Pearl Harbour. They lost many rights along with it and their property was confiscated as well even though the Canadian government promised that they would receive their property back after the war was over. While the Japanese-Canadians were living in the internment camps, they were forced to suffer from the harsh nature and living conditions of the camps. Also, after all those these years of internment, the end result was that the Japanese-Canadians were given the freedom to move and were given a formal apology from the government in 1988. Not only did the internment of Japanese-Canadians tear families apart and scar the lives of many innocent civilians, but it also made the Canadian government open their eyes and realize how they were treating different ethnicities even though Canada was supposedly a free country.
was the driving factor that ultimately resulted in the internment of the Japanese Canadians. Racial prejudice against Orientals had been around in B.C. since the 1850s when Chinese immigrants came to Canada to help with the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. A newspaper article described the Chinese as a “marvelous human machine, competent to perform the maximum of labour on the minimum of sustenance” (Adachi 42). While they were beneficial for contractors, they posed a threat to the white population (Figure 3). The cartoon suggests that the low living standards of the Chinese allowed them to endure the harshest conditions, while being satisfied with the lowest wages. In contrast, the typical European is portrayed as a civilized human being who cannot compete with the Chinese workers without sacrificing his dignity. As a result, when the Japanese started immigrating to Canada later on, the British Columbian population only saw them as another threat to their culture due to the similarities they shared with the Chinese. However, the Japanese proved to be a greater problem since they were not affected by the Head Tax imposed on the Chinese (Hickman, 33; Morton). The attack on Pearl Harbour was an excuse that finally allowed British Columbians to release the anti-Japanese sentiment that they had been suppressing for years. In addition, when the final decision to intern the Japanese Canadians was passed, the government considered them all as potential threats (Figure 4). There was no effort made to distinguish those who posed potential threats and those who did not; most of them had no connection with Japan besides for their ancestry. This can only be attributed to racism, as there are only 38 suspects out of the 22,000 internees. Similarly, selling of Japanese property was another racist act that the government claimed to be necessary for the war effort and to increase national security (Sunahara 90; “The War Years”).
The threat represented by the Japanese Canadians was largely exaggerated. Feelings of racism were magnified by the attack on Pearl Harbour which led people to draw false conclusions and make exaggerations about the Japanese Canadians. People generally believed that Japanese Canadians belonged to a fifth column and were therefore secretly helping out the enemy (ibid). In British Columbia, people be...
Search for precious metals by the Spanish, in a sequential over exploitation fashion, pushed the Spanish inland, but not as fast as their diseases, plants, and animals (Grennes 2012) Classic American icons such as beef, pork, horses, and wheat were actually participants in the Columbian Exchange. Technologically, the New World suddenly acquired iron tools and wheels. (Grennes 2007) In the sense of biological diversity, the Americas were more fragile due to its 12,000 years of isolation (Sheridan)
The Japanese Canadians were discriminated whether they were interned or not. Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbour, racism towards the Japanese Canadians was not something new. Japanese Canadians “had defined their communities since the first immigrants arrived in the 1870s”. An Anti-Asiatic League was formed in Canada in 1807, it was the source of much of the hostility toward Japanese Canadians. The league was made to bound the amount of passports distributed and restricted them from working the sectors of British Columbia. Another group entitled the White Canada Association were, “dedicated to combating the ‘evils’ of the Asian presence in British Columbia.” During the federal election of 1935, both the Liberal and Conservative parties ran smear campaigns against the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, now known as the New Democratic Party, condemning the...
The core of the Japanese experience in Canada lies in the shameful and almost undemocratic suspension of human rights that the Canadian government committed during World War II. As a result, thousands of Japanese were uprooted to be imprisoned in internment camps miles away from their homes. While only a small percentage of the Japanese living in Canada were actually nationals of Japan, those who were Canadian born were, without any concrete evidence, continuously being associated with a country that was nothing but foreign to them. Branded as “enemy aliens”, the Japanese Canadians soon came to the realization that their beloved nation harboured so much hate and anti-Asian sentiments that Canada was becoming just as foreign to them as Japan was. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese Canadians lost almost everything, including their livelihood. Their dignity as a people was being seriously threatened. Without any proper thought, they were aware that resistance against Canada’s white majority would prove to be futile. Racial discrimination had its biggest opportunity to fully reveal itself while the Japanese silently watched the civil disdain take action, the time slip by throughout the evacuation and internment, and their daily lives simply fall apart at the seams.
As a consequence of Columbus’s infamous discovery of the Americas, countries immediately began flocking to the so-called New World to make use of the new and precious resources abundantly available there. This was especially true bewteen the 1500s and the 1700s. Culture and economics flourished profoundly in both Europe and the Western Hemisphere. The Columbian Exchange, which is the modern term for the interaction between European countries and the Americas, had a dramatic effect on both areas. The cultural changes were more obvious within the Western Hemisphere, and they included the introduction of Christianity to the “New World,” and the mixed culture of the colonies as a result of its monetary advantage. Meanwhile, the economic impact
The Columbian exchange was the widespread transfer of various products such as animals, plants, and culture between the Americas and Europe. Though most likely unintentional, the byproduct that had the largest impact from this exchange between the old and new world was communicable diseases. Europeans and other immigrants brought a host of diseases with them to America, which killed as much as ninety percent of the native population. Epidemics ravaged both native and nonnative populations of the new world destroying civilizations. The source of these epidemics were due to low resistance, poor sanitation, and inadequate medical knowledge- “more die of the practitioner than of the natural course of the disease (Duffy).” These diseases of the new world posed a serious
Concluding, the significance of the Columbian exchange greatly impacted what we know of life today. The major impacts that have shaped what we know of the world today happened during the Colombian exchange. The major impacts of the Colombian exchange was Christianity that led to the rise of the Catholic Church, new food crops and domesticated animals that improved the Europeans and American living, new military technology such as weapons and horses, slavery of the natives and Africans and diseases that drastically harmed the different ethnic groups. Colombian Exchange between the old world and the new world still holds a drastic impact on the world today. If we didn’t have these influences then the world would be completely changed. Trading still continues today and has made an impact all over the world.
Training is an integral part of any organization’s development and is an ongoing process. Training programs will vary according to the position held within a company. “Training is a learning experience that seeks a relatively permanent change in individuals that will improve their ability to perform on the job” (DeCenzo & Robbins, 2007, p. 223, para. 1). Good organizations can be linked with the training and development of good employees. Any organization’s success in growth and innovation is dependent upon the talent, motivation, and leadership of its employees. Efforts made to recognize the value of each employee and the job he or she performs will contribute to a workplace environment that inspires, supports, and rewards employee development.
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