Corporate Culture And Work Motivation Of Employees

Corporate Culture And Work Motivation Of Employees Motivating employees is vital for any organization aspiring to succeed. However, the process of motivating is not straightforward due to the assortment of individuals needs. Research suggests that the valuable use of human capital, as against physical capital, is likely the most important determinant of organizational performance (Alder, 1991). The task has been made more complex with the fact that personalized needs have changed in recent years. For instance, in countless circumstances financial compensation is not considered as the main motivational factor of employees. As a result, it is extremely important that firms understand how to motivate their employees (human capital) to work to their full potential. It has been suggested that people from different national cultures are likely to be motivated by different factors (Boyacigiller et al, 1991; Fisher and Yuan, 1998).   In general, not all industries have adopted innovative practices in a broader scale, despite the fact that numerous studies have proven their success due to issues such as general unawareness of their benefits or unsuitability with the current corporate culture. Therefore, corporate culture plays a significant role in providing a framework where different motivational issues can act. Research has ignored on rudimentary cross-national differences when studying organizations (Steers and Sanchez-Runde, 2002). While much research has focused on motivation in the domestic US setting, only limited research has explicitly studied motivation in cross-national settings (Earley et al, 1999). Obtaining a more thorough understanding of the degree to which different factors motivate people in different countries is especially critical now as it becomes more common that companies operate in multiple countries and as information, people, and capital begin to flow more frequently across borders.   ORGANISATIONAL AND CORPORATE CULTURE In order to understand the degree to which various factors motivate employees from different countries, we first briefly discuss the national cultures of Sweden and Finland. Scholars (e.g Sondergaard, 2001; Yeh and Lawrence, 1995) have been increasingly critical of Hofstedes (1980)  framework for a number of reasons including that the data is from the late 1970s and cultures have now changed and that it is difficult to capture all of the intricacies of national culture in only four dimensions as well as replicability and psychometric properties of the dimensions. Due to shortcomings of the popular Hofstedes (1980)  framework, Trompenaara and Hampden-Turner (1997) will be used here, and applied to MNCs employees world-wide, to assist in characterizing their national cultures and highlight some differences between them. Generally, corporate culture can be seen as the total sum of all needed organizational activities that aim at fulfilling its purpose. It symbolizes the phrase this is the way we do things around here. Trampenaara (1997) defines it as the way in which a group of people solve problems (Trampenaara, 1997:7). According to a report made by Commissions of the European Communities, an average European individual works 1,660 hours a year and 70,000 hours in a lifetime. This means that large portion of each individuals life is spent at work. Seeing that the workplace is transforming into a second home, employees are to a greater extent drawing their motivation from features related to their work conformity. The increasing need for employees to work well beyond their 60s has lead to the overall worry of employee well-being. Therefore these innovative practices could be a part of an even bigger solution by contributing to the creation of a more human working environment, while at the same time offering incentives for innovation and efficient work. More so, when describing culture, one is discussing about various concepts such as values, norms and beliefs. According to Trampenaaras framework, they are often represented as concentric spheres comparable to the layers of an onion. Figure 1: Trompenaars and Hampden-Turners culture model Source: (Trompenaars et al, 1997) Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner model represents culture from its most implicit characteristic to its most explicit one. The assumption about existence is in the core of culture. This implicit aspect is based on the collective experience from which the group in a work environment organizes itself in order to deal with the environment and the different circumstances that the group has to face. The second layer consists of values and norms. Values can easily be identified as the ideals of a group. They are often written down and are the expressions of good and bad. The norms express what is right and wrong through formal or informal aspects such as law or social control. These norms and values dictate peoples behaviours within a group (work environment). Hence, cultural stability is based on the cohesiveness between the norms and the values in a group. The latter layer is the explicit product of the culture such as language, food, monuments and symbols, art, fashion and so on (Trompenaa rs et al, 1997). According to Donald Munro, culture can also affect motivation at lower physical levels, in that cultures produce artefacts and alter the environment in such a way that other mental processes that serve motivational states are also affected (Munro et al 1997). Therefore, corporate culture provides two implications to motivation: it limits its existence and it also provides a framework where to alleviate it. In general, corporate culture is determined by three characteristics related to the organizational structure (Trompenaars et al, 1997): Table 1: Characteristics à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ The general relationship between employee and organization. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ The authority system which defines managers and subordinates by a vertical or hierarchical system. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¢ The employees opinions about their place in the organizations future, purpose and goals. Source: (Trompenaars et al, 1997) Companies with strong corporate culture are more able to improve their performances by committing members of the organization in a stronger way. Thus, corporate culture highlights values, beliefs and behaviour that should be followed by the employees. Despite this it is up to the employees to decide whether to follow them or not. However, cultural considerations work the other way as well. Employees have an impact on the organization by bringing with them their own beliefs and values (Lok and Crawford, 2004). Hence, their level of commitment will depend on these individual factors. If employees adopt the values and beliefs that the corporate culture stands for, the result will be a high level of commitment and cohesion. On the contrary, if personal values and beliefs do not fit with the corporate culture, the gap can impact negatively on the employees. Obviously, the optimal result is achieved when the organizations culture and the employees beliefs and values match. Trompenaars Hampden-Turner have identified four (4) others different kinds of organizational cultures (Trompenaars et al, 1997) which are; Eiffel Tower culture: A strong and rational hierarchy characterizes where the role, which is strictly defined, is more important than the personality of the managers. Personal relationships are avoided in this kind of organizational culture because it can impact on the evaluation of the employees. Motivation and commitment of the employees are based on their role in the company and the rules that govern it. Guided Missile culture: Based on equality and task-orientation. It relates to other tasks in a bigger process to reach the goals. This culture is widespread in project orientation. This culture implies more loyalty towards professions and projects than organizations because individuals can change companies in order to be hired on a new project requiring their competences. Then, the motivation is intrinsic to people as well projects and can also be implemented by current pay-for-performance practices regarding to the reached objectives. Family: culture is characterized by strong relationships among people, which is mostly the case in this organization. The individuals are close to each other and have developed personal relationships like friendship. Incubator culture: Self-oriented and highly individualistic and egalitarian. The organization serves the fulfillment of the individual. Motivation is intrinsic to people and intense. Figure 1: Diagrammatic representation Trompenaars Four Diversity Cultures Source: (Trompenaars et al, 1997) Depending on the country these diverse cultures can be more or less present and their influence can vary as well. In general, the more attractive the corporate culture is seen by the employees, the more committed they are towards it. Therefore, corporate culture influences motivation of the employees. An attractive corporate culture must be real in the structure and behavior within the organization and not only in the words, which promote pleasant values. Reason for this being that, people can easily perceive the differences between claimed corporate culture and the reality itself. If motivated employees perceive that the culture promoted is not genuine they will lose their motivation and feel betrayed and disrespected (Earle, H.A., 2003). A consequence from this kind of activity can be that employees resign from their jobs. The impact of culture on motivation can also be seen in its capacity to have continuously challenging, productive and dynamic environment. The level of innovatio n and creativity has to be enduring in order to keep employees alert and motivated (Trompenaars et al, 1997). Most of the cultures that Trompenaars describes rarely ever exist in a pure form; they are more often in a combination, with one type dominating the relationship. One type of culture is more common in one country than the other. The figure below explains what type of culture dominates in what country. Figure 2 National Patterns of Corporate Culture Corporate Image Source :(Trompenaars et al, 1997:179) In order to have a more global view on the matter, six nations were placed on the figure (above). The figure shows how each nation differs in respect to the dominating corporate culture. This implies that individuals in each country relate differently, have different outlooks of authority, reflect, learn and change in various manners and that they are motivated by different rewards (Trompenaars et al, 1997). Thus, managers have a crucial responsibility in locating subordinates motivational factors and implementing them into corporate culture. There exist various motivational factors, which can be implemented into corporate culture in order to motivate employees. 3. MOTIVATION THEORY One of the most well known scholars in motivational issues is Abraham Maslow; the reason for this is its universal reputation. He believes that every individual has various needs that have to be satisfied. The hierarchy of needs as the Maslows theory is called consists of five different levels. If those levels are recognized for example in an employee, a manager can distinguish what kind of concepts may be used as motivational factors. Corporate culture itself has a significant role in providing a framework where motivational factors operate. Besides motivation, corporate culture facilitates such crucial aspects of organizational life as unity among employees and overall wellbeing. 3.1 Maslows Hierarchy of Needs theory Maslows theory is rooted in the Western traditions, since it steer action that is driven by self-interests. It takes into consideration how individuals satisfy different needs in their work environment. Maslow argued that there is a broad outline of needs, appreciation and satisfaction that individuals follow, in a more or less similar pattern. The theory also presupposes that a person cannot pursue the next need in the hierarchy, before the current one is satisfied. The hierarchical theory is presented in the figure three below. Figure 3: Maslows Hierarchy of Needs It is frequently demonstrated as a pyramid with the lower needs at the bottom. When climbing up towards the peak of the pyramid, one gets closer to the self-actualization needs. Occasionally managers have used Maslows pyramid as a sort of a guideline. The reason for this is that employees often find it difficult to express what they want from a job. One can relate Maslows theory to traditional and innovative motivational practices so that the higher one goes up in the pyramid the closer he/she gets to the innovative practices. Physiological and safety elements are more directly linked to basic issues such as having a job and getting financial compensation in return for the services provided at work. In contrast, self-esteem and self-actualization are more related to work environment and the job itself. 4. CONCLUSION From the above study and research, I concluded that the fact that the corporate cultures are a mix of cultures explains the use of a motivational theory and this studys results shows that national culture plays a significant role in knowing the conditions for motivating people. It is inspiring that largely opposite factors do the best job at motivating the Swedish and Finish employees. The findings speak to the importance of using extreme caution when transplanting the many western-developed motivation theories, and in fact management theories in general, to other national contexts. Corporate culture that exists in both countries is moderately similar. Both have a mixture of task and person oriented cultures. Culture affects task-orientated or person-orientated corporate culture. Person-oriented culture emphasizes the use of innovative motivational practices, with the aim of developing individuals and their work. These innovative practices result mostly in a high amount of freedom and entrepreneurship spirit that facilitate innovation and creativity- Maslows theory. The task-oriented culture promotes the use of traditional motivational tools.

America Revolution

The link between the French and Indian War and the American Revolution might seem unexpected, but the French and Indian War paved the way for the American Revolution. The influence of the French and Indian Wars on the American Revolution is even greater due to the success of the British in the colonial wars between Great Britain and France. The French and Indian War is the name used for the colonial wars that took place between Great Britain and France from 1754 until 1763 over the control of the territory in North America.The French and Indian War began on the basis of the rivalry between France and England which eventually began over the territories of the New World. The territory of North America was soon divided between British North America and the French North America, distribution of power that caught in the middle the Native Americans (Bell, 2003). The French and Indian War ended with the win of Great Britain, which by that time had already established itself as the worldâ₠¬â„¢s greatest empire, fact confirmed by the 1763 Treaty of Paris (Bell, 2003).However, the victory of Britain meant that its colonial empire increased and along with it the deficit of Great Britain. This deficit was passed on to the colonists in North America and later became the one of the reasons that led to the American Revolution. The influence of the French and Indian War on the American Revolution is noticeable especially due to the victory of the British which were faced with several problems that were among the reasons for the outbreak of the American Revolution.The American Revolution refers to the moment when the Thirteen Colonies that later became the United States gained independence from Great Britain. Although the fighting started twelve years after the end of the French and Indian War, the period that followed the Seven Years War represented the preparation for the American Revolution and the beginning for the revolutionary era (American Revolution). After the end of the French and Indian War American Colonies were faced with only one ruler, Great Britain, and gained an important ally for their revolutionary movement, France.â€Å"France played a key role in aiding the new nation with money and munitions, organizing a coalition against Great Britain, and sending an army and a fleet that played a decisive role at Yorktown† (American Revolution). If it wasn’t for the French and Indian War and if Great Britain wouldn’t have won over France, perhaps the American Revolution wouldn’t have occurred or it would have had a hard chance gaining any powerful ally in a battle against two colonial empires.While France became an ally in the American Revolution, Great Britain ended the French and Indian War with a great deficit, a deficit that it asked to be covered from the American colonies as a price of defending them from the French threat. These taxes imposed by Britain were considered to be illegal and caused great dissatisfac tion in the colonies, eventually leading to the outburst of the American Revolution.The most obvious link between the American Revolution and the French and Indian War is that of the taxes imposed by the British for the defense of the colonies from the French threat. The problem with the taxes, which eventually led to the American Revolution, was not that they were high or that they existed at all, it was that the colonists were not consulted about these taxes because they had no representative in the British Parliament (American Revolution). Since there was no representation of the American colonies in the British Parliament, how could there be taxation.The subject of â€Å"no taxation without representation† became one of the reasons why the colonies desired independence from the British government. Particularly this desire for equal rights and representation was the basis of the fight for independence from Great Britain. Taxation was not the only problem between the Britis h and the Americans. In 1764, the Parliament passed two acts that upset the colonists even more (Sugar Act and the Currency Act), leading to a boycott of British goods (American Revolution).Confronted with a common enemy, the colonies began to collaborate and from that moment on the road to the American Revolution began. The American colonies benefited greatly from the French and Indian War because this war left the victorious Britain in debt and exhausted so that it was a less threatening adversary by the time the Revolution began. â€Å"The war exposed the weakness of British administrative control in the colonies on various fronts† (1756-1776) .Through their attempt to cover war losses, the British â€Å"violated what many American colonists understood as the clear precedent of more than a century of colonial-imperial relations†. The taxation issue therefore became the symbol of hoe the relation between the colonies and Great Britain will continue and the necessity of independence occurred. Of course, taxation was not the only reason in the American Revolution, but it contributed greatly in setting a common cause in the colonies.The end of the French and Indian War had a significant influence on the American Revolution because until the end of the war, few British North America colonists revolted against their role in the British Empire. Bibliography: †¢ Bell, Sandra, Savoir Faire: the French and Indian War, May/June 2003, available at http://www. collectionscanada. ca/bulletin/015017-0303-05-e. html; †¢ American Revolution, available at http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/American_Revolution; †¢ 1756-1776: The Seven Years War to the American Revolution, available at http://www. tax. org/Museum/1756-1776. htm.

Teaching Strategies And Teaching Techniques Essay

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Desire to Explore the Relationship Between Your Beliefs and Your Classroom Practice How can I give all of my students the same attention, but in different ways, e.g. my highly motivated students need attention as well as my average and demotivated students. My personal philosophy is students academically below par, excluding language difficulties, learning deficiencies, etc. lack the motivation to succeed due to an ineffective teacher, neglect by the teacher to assess why and develop a plan to motivate the student to learn or a student that has continually been programmed by use of negative remarks to feel theyShow MoreRelatedTeaching Strategies For A Patient With Post Operative Wound Infection824 Words   |  4 Pagesof critical thinking, clinical judgment, and decision- making skills. Hence, the nurse educators should employ teaching strategies that promote critical thinking and clinical judgment skills (Hughes, 2008). 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What Is the Nobel Prize Medal Made Of

Have you ever wondered what the Nobel Prize medal is made of? The Nobel Prize medal looks like gold, but is it really? Heres the answer to this common question about the composition of the Nobel Prize medal. Answer: Before 1980 the Nobel Prize medal was made from 23 carat gold. Newer Nobel Prize medals are 18 carat green gold plated with 24 carat gold. Green gold, also known as electrum, is an alloy of gold and silver, with trace amounts of copper. The diameter of the Nobel Prize medal is 66 mm but the weight and thickness varies with the price of gold. The average Nobel Prize medal is 175 g with a thickness ranging from 2.4-5.2 mm. From 1902 to 2010, the medals were minted by the Swedish company Myntverket. However, the company ceased operations in 2011. In 2011, the Mint of Norway made the medals. In 2012, the Nobel Foundation awarded the contract for the medals to Svenska Medalk AB. The medals show the in of Alfred Nobel and the years of his birth and death.

The Love Of My Life - 1316 Words

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I remember that date, as if it happened yesterday. That was the day that changed my life and love of volleyball. This was the day I got severely injured during a volleyball tournament. The day had started and gone by painfully slow. Wherever I walked throughout North High School hallways you noticed volleyball bags, blankets, coolers, food and wrappers all stuffed into a small corner that a team redeemed as their spot. When I walked back into the muggy hot gym, I could

The Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist Free Essays

Antonio Allegio was born in Correggio, a small Lombard town near Reggio  Emilo. His birth date is unknown (Around 1489). His father was a merchant. We will write a custom essay sample on The Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist or any similar topic only for you Order Now Otherwise,  Little is known of Correggio’s life or training. In the years 1503-1505 he apprenticed to  Francesco Bianchi Ferrara of Modena. He was influenced by the classicism of authors  like Lorenzo Costa and Francesco Francia which can be found in his early paintings.  In 1516 he was in Parma, where he became a friend of Michelangelo Anselmi,  one of the main Mannerist painters of the period. He remained in that city until 1530.  In 1519 he married Girolama Francesco di Braghetis, also of Correggio and died in 1529. In this period Correggio paints his beautiful painting â€Å"Virgin and child with the  young saint John the Baptist.† It is a painting on oil on panel Italian circa. 1494-1534.  The subject matter of the painting is John the Baptist as a child and his first  meeting of the Madonna and the Christ child. Influenced by Leonardo da Vinci is  romantic with overwhelming radiance and cool pearly colors. The expressive content of  the painting is of joy, wonder and is playful. It seems to be a happy, leisurely time for all  three   people. The young Saint John Baptist’s mood is of reverence as he bows down and  looks up at the Christ child. The lines in the painting is of a symmetrical composition  arrangement with the Madonna leaning a little toward the young saint almost welcoming  her into her arms. The matter is religious for the young saint is meeting the Christ child as well as  welcomed into the arms of the Madonna. The young Saint John the Baptist’s looks as if  he is kneeling as he looks up from below to look at the Christ child. The figures are  peasants sitting on a bench in a garden underneath a vine. The Madonna is dressed in a  beautiful pale red dress and a cloak that is a rich blue on top and green underneath. The  cloak draped over her head is folded over and falling off revealing the green underneath  on the right side of the Madonna and the blue on her left shoulder. The color is rich in texture the brush stroke smooth and one stroke. The colors  are pale, delicate, and deep bringing out the rich color in the painting. The light and cool  pearly radiant color seems to be coming from within the people as well as behind the  Madonna. The specific effect is of symmetry in relation to each other. The work is  organized to show the Madonna in the center lovingly balancing the Christ child on her  left leg as she reaches out her left arm to welcome the young Saint John the Baptist. The  Christ child is sitting on the Madonna’s left leg he is raised above the head of the young  saint and the young saint kneel and look up. The central focus is of the Madonna inthe center and her smile as well as the Christ child balancing on the Madonna’s leg. Antonia Correggio reflected the historical context of the renaissance by using  the periods work of religious themes found in the Madonna, the Christ Child and a young  John the Baptist. The painting is a stylized and idealized. His religious symbolism is  largely drawn from the work of Jacobus de Voragine (1260) He created dynamic  composition and perspective in his dramatic three-dimensional focused paintings. The  mythological perspective depicts movement, drama and diagonal composition  arrangement. You can find this movement and drama in the painting â€Å"The virgin and  child with the young saint John the Baptist† in the Madonna’s movement of her arm as  she welcomes the young Saint to join her and her son. Also, in the composition of the  three. The Madonna is in the center of the painting thereby catching the eye of the person  looking at the painting. Antonio Correggio was an enigmatic and eclectic painter. His art was a means to  reproduce life in its most persuasive domestic side. Later, he initiated a style of  sentimental elegance and conscious allure with soft gestures and captivating charm by  using imaginary spaces as a replacement for reality. He used these elements of Mannerist  and Baroque stylistic approaches found at the time of the renaissance. Antonio Correggio  is considered to this day to be one of the boldest and most inventive artist of the High  Renaissance. He was revolutionary and is still influential for subsequent artists. Works Cited http://WWW.artic.edu/aic/collections/highlight_search?acc=1965.688page= 1ArtistID=310 How to cite The Virgin and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist, Essay examples

Software Crisis free essay sample

The term software crisis has been used since the late 1960s to describe those recurring system development problems in which software development problems cause the entire system to be late, over budget, not responsive to the user and/or customer requirements, and difficult to use, maintain, and enhance. The late Dr. Winston Royce, in his paper Current Problems [1], emphasized this situation when he said in 1991: The construction of new software that is both pleasing to the user/buyer and without latent errors is an unexpectedly hard problem. It is perhaps the most difficult problem in engineering today, and has been recognized as such for more than 15 years. It is often referred to as the software crisis. It has become the longest continuing crisis in the engineering world, and it continues unabated. This chapter describes some of the current issues and problems in system development that are caused by software—software that is late, is over budget, and/or does not meet the customers requirements or needs. Software is the set of instructions that govern the actions of a programmable machine. Software includes application programs, system software, utility software, and firmware. Software does not include data, procedures, people, and documentation. In this tutorial, software is synonymous with computer programs. Because software is invisible, it is difficult to be certain of development progress or of product completeness and quality. Software is not governed by the physical laws of nature: there is no equivalent of Ohms Law, which governs the flow of electricity in a circuit; the laws of aerodynamics, which act to keep an aircraft flying stably in the air; or Maxwells Equations, which describe the radiation of energy from an antenna. 7* 1 In addition, software is not manufactured like hardware; it does not have a production phase nor manufactured spare parts like hardware; it is typically custom-built, not assembled from existing components like hardware. Even in odays society, software is viewed with suspicion by many individuals, such as senior managers and customers, as somewhat akin to black magic. The result is that software is one of the most difficult artifacts of the modern world to develop and build. 2. Introduction to Papers The opening paper fortuitously appeared in a recent issue of Scientific American as the editors were casting about for a way to incorporate a recent rash of high-publicity software problems into the motivation for this tutorial. The paper defines and presents essentially all the major issues currently plaguing software development and maintenance. The article is popular rather than technical in the sense that it is journalistic in style and focuses on popular perceptions of software as black magic, but it raises many issues that software professionals need to be familiar with. It is also worth noting that many of the problems described are partly or largely due to nonsoftware issues such as politics, funding, and external constraints, but again the software professional needs to know that problems unrelated to software engineering must overcome if software projects are to be successful. The term software crisis not unexpectedly originated with the military, for that is where large, complex real-time software was first developed. More recently, as civilian and commercial software systems have approached and exceeded military systems in size, complexity, and performance requirements, the software crisis has occurred in these environments as well. It is noteworthy that the Scientific American article mentions military systems only peripherally. The article begins with a discussion of the highlypublicized and software-related failure of the baggage system at the new Denver International Airport. As of the date of the article, opening of the airport had been delayed four times, for almost a year, at a cost to the airport authority of over $1 million a day. Almost as visible in recent months, and also mentioned in the article, are failures of software development for the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) of the State of California, and for the advanced air traffic control system of the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The DMV project involved attempts to merge existing, separately developed systems that managed drivers licenses and vehicle registrations. As 2 as been pointed out in the press [2], the State of California has had problems with computer projects of over $1 billion in value, and the problems resulted from the acquisition policies of the State of California (how contractors and consultants are selected and managed by the State), and from hardware-software integration difficulties, as well as from causes strictly related to software development. The article identifies the first use of the term software engineering in a 1968 conference of the NATO Science Committee in Garmisch, Germany. (See also the Bauer article in this Tutorial. Many approaches that have been proposed to improve software development are discussed; the author feels that most of these ideas have not lived up to the expectations of their originators. Also discussed is the idea that there are no silver bullets. (See the article by Brooks in this chapter. ) The Scientific American article looks favorably on the use of formal specification methods to solve the problem of software quality, and on software reuse (the ability to use a software product developed for one application again later for another application) to solve the productivity or cost problem. The Software Engineering Institutes Capability Maturity Model was also favorably mentioned (see the article by Paulk, Curtis, Chrissis, and Weber in this Tutorial) as a motivation to software developers to improve their practices. The paper reports an SEI finding that approximately 75 percent of all software developers do not have any formal process or any productivity or quality metrics. Because software development depends on an educated workforce and good communications rather than on a fixed plant of any kind, software is inherently a suitable export product for developing countries. Although the US is still strong in software design and project management, the article notes that third world countries—notably India and Far Eastern countries— are capable of producing many more lines of code per dollar. A sidebar by Dr. Mary Shaw provides a view of software engineerings history, and of how that history may serve as a roadmap for software engineerings future. Finally, the paper urges education of computer science students in software engineering as an essential step toward resolving the software crisis. The second and last article in this chapter, No Silver Bullets: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering, is by Fred Brooks, one of the legendary figures in software engineering. He has been called the father of software engineering project management in the United States. He worked at IBM in the 1960s and was the software project manager for the OS/360 operating system. This paper, which he wrote in 1987, states that no single technique exists to solve the software crisis, that there is no silver bullet. The easy problems (accidents) have been solved and the remaining difficulties are essential. He views the solution to the software crisis as a collection of many software engineering tools and techniques that, used in combination, will reduce or eliminate software problems. Although Brooks sees no single solution to the software crisis, no single technology or management technique, he does see encouragement for the future through disciplined, consistent efforts to develop, pro pagate, and exploit many of the software tools and techniques that are being developed today. In a report, also written in 1987 [3], Brooks states his belief that most software development problems of the US Department of Defense are managerial rather than technical. ) Brooks believes the hard part of building software is the specification and design of a system, not the coding and testing of the final product. As a result, he believes that building software will always be hard. There is no apparent simple solution. Brooks describes the three major advances in software development as: †¢ †¢ The use of high level languages The implementation of time-sharing to improve the productivity of programmers and the quality of their products Unified programming environment Brooks also cites the Ada language, objectoriented programming, artificial intelligence, expert systems, and automatic programming (automated generation of code from system specification and design) as technologie s with the potential for improving software. From the perspective of another eight years, the Al-related technologies for the most part have yet to fulfill the potential that Brooks saw for them in 1987. A central nervous system of some 100 computers networked to one another and to 5,000 electric eyes, 400 radio receivers and 56 bar-code scanners orchestrates the safe and timely arrival of every valise and ski bag. At least that is the plan. For nine months, this Gulliver has been held captive by Lilliputians—-errors in the software that controls its automated baggage system. Scheduled for takeoff by last Halloween, the airports grand opening was postponed until December to allow BAE Automated Systems time to flush the gremlins out of its $193-million system. December yielded to March. March slipped to May. In June the airports planners, their bond rating demoted to junk and their budget hemorrhaging red ink at the rate of $1. 1 million a day in interest and operating costs, conceded that they could not predict when the baggage system would stabilize enough for the airport to open. To veteran software developers, the Denver debacle is notable only for its visibility. Studies have shown that for every six new large-scale software systems that are put into operation, two others are canceled. The average software development project overshoots its schedule by half; larger projects generally do worse. And D some three quarters of all large systems are operating failures that either do not function as intended or are not used at all. The art of programming has taken 50 years of continual refinement to reach this stage. By the time it reached 25, the difficulties of building big software loomed so large that in the autumn of 1968 the NATO Science Committee convened some 50 top programmers, computer scientists and captains of industry to plot a course out of what had come to be known as the software crisis. Although the experts could not contrive a road map to guide the industry toward firmer pound, they did coin a name for that distant goal: software engineering, now defined formally as the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation and maintenance of software. A quarter of a century later software engineering remains a term of aspiration. The vast majority of computer code is still handcrafted from raw programming languages by artisans using techniques they neither measure nor are able to repeat consistently. Its like musket making was before Eli Whitney, says Brad J. Cox, a professor at George Mason University. Before the industrial revolution, there was a nonspecialized approach to manufacturing goods that involved very little interchangeability and a maximum of craftsmanship. If we are ever going to lick this software crisis, were going to have to stop this hand-to-mouth, every-progranrnier-biiflds-everything-from-theground-up, preindustrial approach. The picture is not entirely bleak. Intuition is slowly yielding to analysis as programmers begin using quantitative measurements of the quality of the software they produce to improve Softwares Chronic Crisis by W. W. Gibbs from Scientific American, Sept. 1994, pp. 86-95. Reprinted with permission. Copyright  © 1994 by Scientific American, Inc. All rights reserved. 4 the way they produce it. The mathemat- bedded in light switches, youve got to ical foundations of programming are get the software right the first time besolidifying as researchers work on ways cause youre not going to have a chanc e of expressing program designs in alge- to update it, says Mary M. Shaw, a probraic forms that make it easier to avoid fessor at Carnegie Mellon. serious mistakes. Academic computer The amount of code in most conscientists are starting to address their sumer products is doubling every two failure to produce a solid corps of soft- years, notes Remi H. Bourgoi^Jon, diware professionals. Perhaps most im- rector of software technology at Philips portant, many in the industry are turn- Research Laboratory in Eindhoven. Aling their attention toward inventing the ready, he reports, televisions may contechnology and market structures need- tain up to 500 kilobytes of software; an ed to support interchangeable, reusable electric shaver, two kilobytes.