TOPIC: ISSUE70 - "In any profession-business, politics, education, government-those in power should step down after five years. The surest path to success for any enterprise is revitalization through new leadership."
WORDS: 492 TIME: 00:45:00 DATE: 2008-8-4 13:18:38
Should those in power in any profession-business, politics, education, government-step down after five years and let new leadership revitalize the enterprise to guarantee the success for it, as the speaker contends? As far as I am concerned, whether a leader should step down or not depends on the need of the profession and the leaser's ability, which is different in different realm.
In the realm of politics, a limited time of leadership can prevent corruptions and keep the purity of the politics. During the first few years of a leadership, the leader usually keep honest and commits himself or herself to the welfare of the people to indicate that it is their right choice to make him or her the leader. However, as Lord Acton had said (and I paraphrase)"Absolute power leads to absolute corruption", when a political leader considers he or she has the absolute power to decide everything in control the inherent nature of human beings-pursuing individual interests may emerge and causes the corruptions. An example illustrates this point clearly. American present Richard Nixon who had been in power for six years abused his power to manipulate the election in order to keep his leadership, which is the so called Watergate scandal. This kind of corruptions can be prevented by clearly limiting the time of leadership and reelecting new leaders. In order to be elected for a second time the leader in power has to devote himself or herself to the work honestly and constantly.
However, in the realm of business, a long and continuing leadership is usually what an enterprise needs. Not like the realm of politics, business world is naturally full of interests-pursuing activities. The best leader is the one who can maximize the profits of the company. And the most important factor to insure high profits is a right and effective way of managing the company, which requires the leader's rich experience in this work. The more experience you have, the more likely you will bring the company success. The example of Ford Company well demonstrates this point. Henry Ford was in charge of the company for about forty years since the found of the company. And due to his leadership an automobile empire-Ford company has been dominating the car-making industry for such a long time. Besides, the same comes to the example of Microsoft Company that found by Bill Gates and his friend. It is not until recently that Bill Gates has retired from his leadership. From the two examples we can see that in the realm of business, a long and continuing leadership usually guarantees the enterprise successes.
When it comes to the realm of education, different conditions lead to different results of the discussing about the issue. When a college is founded for few years, everything of it is new and so is the leadership. Under this circumstance, a long leadership is needed because the person in power has to gather experience in this certain new conditions and help set the college on the right path of development. Yet this is a long and hard way requiring enough time. Once the continuing leadership is cut down due all the work may have to be back to the beginning. However, if it is college that has a long history and conventions and old regulations of it quell innovations and revolutions of education systems, a new leadership can bring fresh blood to the college and revitalize it. Hence, when to change the leadership in the realm of education needs a case by case discussion.
In the final analysis, whether there is a need to change the leadership now is determined by how the leader's ability and characters meet the requirement of the profession. In the realm of politics a limited time of leadership is necessary while in the business world it is usually the opposite. However, when it comes to education, a more detail discussion is needed to decide whether the profession needs to change its leader or not.
TOPIC: ARGUMENT127 - The vice president for human resources at Climpson Industries sent the following recommendation to the company's president.
"In an effort to improve our employees' productivity, we should implement electronic monitoring of employees' Internet use from their workstations. Employees who use the Internet from their workstations need to be identified and punished if we are to reduce the number of work hours spent on personal or recreational activities, such as shopping or playing games. By installing software to detect employees' Internet use on company computers, we can prevent employees from wasting time, foster a better work ethic at Climpson, and improve our overall profits."
