Journal 4 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 4

Journal 4 - Essay Example This paper provides insight into the engineering concept of green buildings, by analyzing Lipu, Jamal and Karim’s journal article titled â€Å"An approach towards sustainable energy performance by green building: a review of current features, benefits and barriers.† Just like the title suggests, the article examines how green buildings work towards increasing energy conservation and sustainability. This journal article also outlines characteristics of green buildings, their benefits and the hurdles that engineers encounter when constructing them. A principal point noted from the article is that global warming and potential depletion of resources is a major concern for engineers. This is especially in the construction industry, since buildings make up the greatest percentage of engineering works. According to Lipu, Jamal and Karim (180) construction of buildings consumes more than one-third of global resources. This includes approximately 40 percent energy and 12 percent freshwater usage. In terms of pollution and contribution to global warming, buildings produce about 40 percent of greenhouse gases and the same proportion of landfill waste (Lipu et al. 181). These figures clearly show that it is not only industries and cars that contribute to the problem of rising global temperatures and climate change, but buildings as well. Construction of green buildings and refurbishing old ones to enhance sustainability holds significant potential to save energy, while reducing emission of greenhouse gases. Further, green buildings create a comfortable and healthy indoor setting for building tenants. This is because green buildings provide proper indoor conditions in regard to ventilation, air quality and thermal comfort. By making maximum use of day lighting and natural ventilation, which is supported by many operable windows, green buildings save energy that would otherwise have been used to sustain artificial lighting and air conditioning systems. Further, green

Leadership and Management Issues Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Leadership and Management Issues - Assignment Example Some famous quotations are even written about the meaning of leadership like Warren Bennis saying that â€Å"leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality,† (Corocran 2008, p. 3). The image is very important in leadership as it guides the core values of the leader and the activities and strategies to turn the vision or goal into reality (Anthonissen 2008, p. 48). Another way of defining leadership is according to Gardner that President Harry Truman defines leadership as to â€Å"get other people do what they don’t want to do and like it,†. It means that a good leader should be able to understand his members in the team or organization and he knows how to deal with them. If problems arise, he can think quickly of ways on hot to solve them. He really understands human motivation. It is defined by Hoy and Miskel as cited in Chelladurai (2006, p. 100) as the â€Å"activating forces [†¦] within individuals† which consist of â€Å"memory, aff ective responses, and pleasure-seeking tendencies† as they affect human behaviors and actions with â€Å"a goal orientation.† It can be said that together with leadership and motivation comes management. Management is an old concept. It originated from the Latin word manus which means by hand or power. Management may also come from the Italian word managers are pertaining to officers in charge of a certain production facility. It evolved then into the French manager and later on, it became the English term management.... In the concept of English people, management pertains to business organizations with people working as guides and to supervise the performance of others (Witzel 2004, pp. 1-2). American Management Association in 1980 defined the concept of management and according to the group, â€Å"management is getting things done through other people,† (Montana and Charnov 2008, p. 2). It means the efforts of other people are involved and the management is just the supervision and guidance on the efficiency of the whole group. Currently management can be defined as â€Å"working with and through other people to accomplish the objectives of both the organization and its members† (Montana and Charnov 2008, p. 2). According to Montana and Charnov (2008, p.2), there are three key differences between the two definitions: the employees play the great part in the organization, the focus is the result to be obtained and personal goals are aligned with the organizational goals. The practice of managing people in the organization is called the management process. The management process has six fundamental functions: planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating and controlling. Planning is the most basic function of management. It is concerned with what, how and when the activities or performance be carried out by an organization. The course of actions is created in the process of planning. It involves the identification of long-term and short-term objectives, creation of strategies and formation of policies and rules to be followed by the members of the organization. Usually the top management creates the initial planning and identification of long-range objectives but the planning function is being done by all managers from all