ADDITIONALLY Four Laws that Govern Benefits Programs Introductory There are four primary laws with which all HR Practitioners and members of management should be familiar to ensure their organization is operating within legal guidelines. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) HIPPA provides federal protection to keep personal health information private, and was enacted in 1996 to protect employees in two main areas. First, it protects employees with preexisting conditions by lessening an employer's ability to deny coverage for this condition. Secondly, HIPPA protects employees against discrimination on the basis of their health status. Scenario: A woman who is visibly pregnant is hired by an organization whose medical plan offers maternity coverage. The employer tells this employee that she is not entitled to maternity coverage after she completes her 90-day introductory period, because she was pregnant before she started working for the company. Protection HIPPA provides: Under HIPPA, group health plans cannot consider pregnancy a pre-existing condition and cannot exclude coverage for prenatal care, or for the delivery of the baby. There is no federal law that requires health plans to provide maternity coverage, but if the health plan does provide this, then it cannot exclude employees from this type of coverage. Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) COBRA was enacted in 1985 and ensures current and former employees, and their spouses and dependents, that they will have an extension of their healthcare benefits when the coverage is lost due to a qualifying event. All employers with 20 or more employees are required to comply with COBRA guidelines, and employees who elect to continue their benefits under COBRA pay up to as much as 102% of the coverage premium. Scenario: A company who has 180 employees laid off 10 members of their workforce due to a sharp decrease in profits. All of the 10 employees purchase their medical coverage for themselves and their dependents through the company, and want to continue their coverage through COBRA after they are laid-off from the organization. Protection COBRA provides: These former employees and their dependents will be provided the opportunity to continue their medical coverage for 18 months (in some circumstances up to 36 months) after they leave the company. Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) FMLA was enacted in 1993 and was designed to help employees balance their work and family responsibilities by giving them the option to take a leave from work for specific medical or family-related matters. Employers who have more than 50 employees are subject to FMLA guidelines, and to be eligible, employees must have worked for at least 12 months for the employer, and they must have worked at least 1250 hours for the employer during the previous calendar year. Eligible employees are entitled up to 12 weeks of un-paid, job-protected leave each year. An employee who returns from FMLA is guaranteed that he/she will be restored to the same or an equivalent job with equivalent pay, benefits, and all other terms and conditions of employment will be equal as well. Scenario: A full-time employee who has worked for a company for five years requests time off to care for her ill husband. She needs at least two weeks to care for him after surgery, and then will need additional time to take him to his appointments during his recovery period. Protection FMLA provides: This employee is entitled up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for her husband. In certain circumstances, employees may take FMLA leave intermittently or on a reduced leave schedule. This means that this employee can take her leave in blocks of time less than the full amount of the entitlement. The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) ERISA was originally enacted in 1974 and provides federal protection to individuals who participate in voluntarily established pension, welfare, and employee benefit plans in private industry. The guidelines require employers to provide participants with information about plan features, and it also requires those who manage these types of funds to assume fiduciary responsibility. Further, the guidelines require companies to establish a grievance process, and it gives participants the right to sue for any breach in fiduciary responsibility. Scenario: An employee was concerned about his 401k retirement plan because he felt it was underperforming based on market conditions. He elected to have 4% of his pay taken from his biweekly pay, and when he looked into this matter he realized that his pay deductions were being taken from his pay, but they were not being deposited into his 401k account. Protection ERISA provides: ERISA provides employees protections against employers who mismanage funds. Employers are subject to criminal prosecution for the activity described in the scenario above, and the employees have the right to pursue legal remedies for this type of action. Gerhart, Barry, Newman, Jerry M. & Milkovich, George T. (2011). Compensation. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin. Document #1 3-4pages Book- Gerhart, Barry, Newman, Jerry M. & Milkovich, George T. (2011). Compensation. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin. FMLA, COBRA, HIPAA, and ERISA Four actsFMLA, COBRA, HIPAA, and ERISApassed by Congress greatly define the arena of benefits. Briefly define each law and cite one current issue that employers should be or are concerned with for each act. In defining your current issues, describe why this is an issue, include an example of an organization that has violated this law, and describe the violation and the penalties that were imposed. You may reference your text, your current work environment, an interview with a colleague, a head of human resources, an article from a popular business publication, or related information from the Capella library. For the Capella library, the following databases are suggested for conducting research: Business Source Complete. ABI/INFORM Global. Document #2 Family Benefits 200-words The definition of family has changed considerably over the years. Your question for debate in this unit asks: who should be covered under these highly regulated benefits? Should the definition of family be altered or deleted when structuring benefit plans? Much of the rationale is directed at the unfair bias in benefits for traditional families versus nontraditional families. With a divorce rate hovering at 50 percent, an increase in the number of single households adopting children, and the debate over recognizing all committed partnerships, the issues are gaining more attention. For this discussion, consider: 1. Does the current definition of family constitute an unfair bias? 2. Should the law change? 3. What is your opinion on this issue from a business standpoint? Cite and reference a source of support for your opinion. Caution: This is not a debate of moral values. This is a debate of policy and the law. Restrict your discussion to business-related issues. Response Guidelines Debate this issue with at least two of your peers whose positions are different from yours, asking questions and providing counterarguments that address the business-related issues of inclusive benefits offerings. Cite sources to support your statements. Document #1 4-pages only Visual Arts By successfully completing this assignment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and assessment criteria: Competency 1: Describe the historical development of the humanities from the prehistoric era to the present. o Describe how the visual arts developed in the 17th through 20th centuries. Competency 2: Examine the forms of expression that instantiate the arts and humanities. o Explain the aesthetic principles expressed in the visual arts. Competency 3: Integrate the humanities, with everyday life. o Illustrate the use of visual arts in commercial design. o Assess how visual images in advertising influence our buying habits. Competency 4: Communicate effectively in forms appropriate to the humanities. o Write coherently to support a central idea in appropriate format with correct grammar, usage, and mechanics. Assignment Instructions Write an essay in which you explain the aesthetic principles expressed in visual arts and describe how they changed from the Baroque period through the early 20th century. What basic features were preserved through the centuries, and which changed dramatically? How do you think artists choose which styles to employ in their own work? Next, consider how these styles are exemplified in commercial design during our own time. Collect visual images from Web sites and advertisements, like those in the studies, and explain how they incorporate traditional elements of visual design. Are our decisions to purchase items of clothing, jewelry, automobiles, appliances, and services influenced significantly by the visual forms in which they are presented? Although your paper should offer a general thesis about the use of visual arts, much of the support you offer in its defense will involve details chosen from the specific examples you select. As you write, look for ways to tie everything together with your own view of the role that the visual arts continue to play in our everyday lives. Refer to the Visual Arts Scoring Guide to ensure that you meet the grading criteria for this assignment. You are required to submit your assignment to the Turnitin source matching tool. Note: Your instructor may also use the Writing Feedback Tool to provide feedback on your writing. In the tool, click the linked resources for helpful writing information. Other Requirements Written communication: Written communication should be free of errors that detract from the overall message. APA formatting: Your paper should be formatted according to APA (6th edition) style and formatting. Length: 4-6 typed and double-spaced pages. Font and font size: Times New Roman, 12 point. Document #2 discussion 200-words Visual Arts Think back over all of the pictures of paintings and sculptures you have seen in our textbook during this quarter, and select five that you found to be especially interesting. How does each embody the aesthetic principles for visual art that we examined together in this unit? What feelings, thoughts, and motives do your perceptions elicit in each instance? In your initial post, explain what is best about each of your selections and how each challenges your understanding of the world and of yourself. Response Guidelines Review the posts of your classmates and respond to at least two of them. In your responses to classmates, look for chances to explore the different reactions prompted by the same selections. How do your choices make the world a better place? Document #3 150-words Photography and Art The invention of photography during the 19th centuryand its further development in the 20th, with the additional capacity for color and motionmade it possible to capture accurate twodimensional images directly, without the talents of artists and painters. And yet the visual arts continued to thrive. Which elements of the painterly traditions transferred easily into the composition of photographs and which did not? How might the availability of photography have contributed to changes in the style employed by painters during this period? Response Guidelines Review the posts of your classmates and respond to at least two of them. ADDITIONAL Unit 8 Visual Arts In this unit, once again consider the Humanities Roadmap and relationships within the culture. Widespread use of high-power steam engines during the 19th century, along with perfection of processes for the manufacture of steel and the emergent application of electricity for commercial purposes, resulted in the rapid development of industrial progress. European powers expanded their colonial empires in order to secure the necessary raw materials, and even at home the divide between "haves" and "have-nots" grew alarmingly. As downtrodden workers began to revolt, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels addressed the situation directly, with an earnest critique of the capitalist economic system as a whole. Fiction writers like Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, Gustav Flaubert, and Henrik Ibsen drew attention to the practical consequences of social inequality for the dispossessed, especially the working poor and women. Toggle DrawerHide Full Introduction Our topical focus is on the visual arts of the period. We first step back to review what we have already seen in the Romantic erathe appreciation of nature and elevation of heroic individuals by John Constable, William Turner, and Francisco Goya. These themes were largely abandoned in a new wave of realism from artists like Honor Daumier and douard Manet in France and Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins in the United States. Their efforts to record faithfully events from ordinary life, however, soon gave way to the use of photographic equipment that could capture such moments technologically. Painting, on the other hand, soon moved away from this kind of objectivity by employing new chemical pigments to portray light and color in a less formal style that came to be known as Impressionism. Claude Monet used muted but contrasting colors to focus on visual perception of surfaces. Pierre-Auguste Renoir employed similar techniques to capture spontaneous glimpses of life. Mary Cassatt portrayed domestic scenes with vivid color and light. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec pictured Parisian dancers and prostitutes on dramatic posters. Georges-Pierre Seurat's pointillism and Paul Czanne's abstraction further flattened perception of the visual surface. During the 20th century, painters explored a variety of options, from the social realism of Diego Rivera to the unusual choice of colors by Henri Matisse. The dominant figure of this period was Spaniard Pablo Picasso. After early efforts in representational painting and reliance on a restricted palette, especially in muted tones of blue and rose, Picasso created an entirely new approach that came to be known as Cubismthe often disjointed separation of figures into abstract planes. Picasso also introduced the practice of assembling collages that added a third dimension to painted surfaces. In the generations that followed, other artist pursued even more disruptive challenges to tradition: abstract expressionism, dada, surrealism, and pop art. The entire history of the fine arts has provided us with a rich vocabulary with which to analyze and interpret the significance of visual perceptions, which can be applied to natural objects and photographs as well as to paintings in a variety of styles. By studying art, we learn to speak of line, shape, form, color, texture, framing, and design. In our own lives, we see these same elements combined in lively fashion for commercial purposes as well. Advertisements in magazines, newspapers, and Web sites--as well as movies and televisionincorporate the same variety of styles and aesthetic principles. Objectives To successfully complete this learning unit, you will be expected to: 1. Identify cultural developments of industrial revolution. 2. Analyze paintings for their aesthetic qualities. 3. Describe how the visual arts developed in the 17th through 20th centuries. 4. Explain the aesthetic principles expressed in the visual arts. 5. Illustrate the use of visual arts in commercial design. 6. Assess how visual images in advertising influence our buying habits. Learning Activities Collapse All | Expand All Toggle Drawer [u08s1] Unit 8 Study 1 Studies The Effect of Framing Transcript Readings In Landmarks in Humanities: Review from Chapter 10, "Baroque: Piety and Extravagance," pages 267-284. Review from Chapter 12, "Romanticism: Nature, Passion, and the Sublime," pages 337- 345. Read Chapter 13, "Materialism: The Industrial Era and the Urban Scene," pages 355-381. Read from Chapter 14: "Modernism: The Assault on Tradition," pages 394-405. Web Sites Browse through the following (and similar) Web sites for examples of the use of the visual arts in advertising and commercial design: Amazon. Macy's. Target. Walmart. Williams-Sonoma. The virtual tours on the following Web sites provide additional examples from the development of modern art: The National Gallery of Art's tour of Mary Cassatt Selected Paintings. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Timeline of Art History's Marcel Duchamp Collection. The Most's 10 Most Famous Pablo Picasso Artworks. Muse Rodin's sculpture collections. The National Gallery of Art's Van Gogh's Van Goghs Virtual Tour. Multimedia Click The Effect of Framing to launch the interactive. Optional Reading You may find the following helpful: Carl, K. H., & Charles, V. (2009). Baroque art. New York: Parkstone Intermational Unit 9 Managing a Total Compensation Plan Introduction In Unit 5 you analyzed market data to consider a competitive pay position for a job. In these final two units of the course we will look at how to manage a total compensation plan and communicate that plan to employees and to the marketplace. Often the market will select your position through word of mouth from current employees, former employees, or local press coverage through a best employer list. Taking a more proactive approach to managing a market position is the strategy of choice for most employers. Unit 9 assesses what steps an employer must take to actively monitor the firm's position in the market as well as effectiveness of the overall strategy. Tracking turnover rates, inflation, and economic indicators all play into the formula, as does a sense of the market and a company's image and reputation. This is a unit where the numbers and trends tell a huge story. Interpreting that story is the difference between a superior compensation plan and ineffective one. Objectives To successfully complete this learning unit, you will be expected to: Examine a budgeting process for managing labor costs. Compare different approaches to managing labor costs. Identify who should be included in the ongoing decision-making process of managing labor costs. Analyze the ethical dimensions of balancing economic issues with market and personal issues related to a living wage. Learning Activities Studies Reading Use your text to complete the following: Review Chapter 18 to understand the overall process of budgeting with managers for compensation and benefits. Research In preparation for this unit's discussion, locate a minimum of two outside resources that cite data supporting an argument for imbalances between the circles in Exhibit 18.5 to the extent the imbalances are unhealthy to a global economy. DOCUMENT #1 11, 2015 2-3PAGES PARA-4-LINES DUE-DATE-SEPTMEBER BOOK Milkovich, G. T., Newman, J. M., & Gerhart, B. (2013). Compensation (11th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin. ISBN: 9780078029493. Managing Labor Costs The text describes a bottom-up and top-down approach to managing labor costs. For this assignment, complete the following: Describe the components of both approaches and decide which would be most important to use in either your current work environment or one with which you are familiar, and explain your reasoning. Also include a discussion about the approach you did not select, and describe a scenario in which this approach would be most effective. For example, if you choose the top-down approach to describe your workplace, or a workplace with which you are familiar, then in the second part of the assignment you will discuss the bottom-up approach and describe a scenario in which this would be an effective way to manage labor costs. In both parts of your response, imagine that managers will be part of the budgeting process and will amend, revise, or adopt new approaches to compensating, rewarding, and incentivizing the workforce. In your opinion, what are the advantages and disadvantages of this type of management involvement? Your assignment will need to be 2-3 pages in length, and please be sure to cite all information obtained from outside resources. Review the scoring guide for this assignment before submitting your paper. DOCUMENT#2 Discussion 1 - PARA-4 LINES- 200-WORDS- DUE DATE - SEPTEMBER 8, 2015 Balance and Labor Costs. In Chapter 18 of your text, the authors present a useful diagram, Exhibit 18.7 (Three Distinct but Related Concepts and Their Measures) illustrating the relationship between markets, wages, prices, and the cost of living as a dynamic that affects labor costs overall. What the diagram does not illustrate are some of the intangible and ethical issues affecting wages and labor costs. For example, it shows all the factors in equal intersecting circles, but it is clear that at times some factors play a more important role in the market or in a particular industry than others. One could also make an argument for the fact that ethical imbalances may overly distort one's ability to live on a given wage. In this discussion, present instances when you think the circles are out of balance to the extent the imbalances are unhealthy to a global economy. Use any of the information we have studied to this point, and be certain to offer at least one reference that cites data supporting your argument for an imbalance. Please use a minimum of two outside resources in your response, and be sure to include both intext citations and the full resource in APA format at the end of your response. Response Guidelines Respond to the imbalances presented by three of your peers. Suggest potential solutions to correct imbalances. What barriers might impede your proposed solutions, and how might the barriers be overcome? DOCUMENT #3 Discussion 2 para-4 lines-200-words- DUE DATE - SEPTEMBER 8, 2015 Communication In your opinion, why should organizations openly communicate their pay systems to their employees? What is an effective method to use to achieve this? Please describe your experiences related to this and indicate whether you have worked in an environment in which pay systems were communicated effectively to the employees. Response Guidelines Please respond to a minimum of two of your peers' posts. Do you agree or disagree with their perspectives? What can you add to their comments on this issue? HUMANITIES BOOK- Fiero, G. K. (2013). Landmarks in humanities (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Higher Education. ISBN: 9780073376646. DOCUMENT #4 PARA-4-LINES - 200-WORDS- DUE DATE - SEPTEMBER 8, 2015 Modern Architecture Let us begin to wrap up our discourse with each other where it began, with a look at architecture. Consider the modern style expressed by Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier, along with the postmodernism of Sir Norman Foster, Phillip Johnson, and Frank Gehry. How have their designs contributed to our sense of the spaces we inhabit? Response Guidelines Review the posts of your classmates and respond to at least two of them. Unit 9 Modernism Introduction In this unit, once again consider the Humanities Roadmap and relationships within the culture. The 20th century brought remarkable upheaval to human civilization. Two World Wars devastated Europe economically and brought death to millions of its inhabitants, including a determined but unsuccessful effort to exterminate its Jewish population altogether. Political revolutions in Russia and Chinaalong with nationalistic movements in other countries around the worldmostly failed to produce any relief from the social instabilities they sought to address. Intellectual developments were no less disruptive. Max Planck, Albert Einstein, and Werner Heisenberg thoroughly upset older views of the physical world, while Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, and Carl Jung did the same for study of psychology. In the humanities, this era ushered in Modernism, a movement that sought to abstract essential form out of the quotidian expression of values by more traditional means: o Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and William Butler Yeats used poetry to convey intellectual content in highly compressed language. o Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf introduced streamof-consciousness to works of fiction. o Speculation about the social implications of our scientific future drove the fiction of H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and Arthur C. Clarke. o Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, and Alexander Calder advanced the visual abstraction pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Surrealist art from Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Joan Mir, and Frida Kahlo pushed these developments even further. o The "International Style" of architecture used new materials to fashion starkly functional buildings at every scale. Even the performing arts were influenced by this movement. o The plays of Eugene O'Neill, Bertolt Brecht, and Samuel Becket combined classical elements of drama with self-conscious acknowledgement of the artificiality of the medium. o Films by Sergei Eisenstein, Leni Riefenstahl, Jean Cocteau, and Federico Fellini used extravagant visual imagery to evoke direct emotional engagement with their audiences. o Composers like Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg departed from traditional tonalities with inventive twelve-tone and aleatoric music. Worthy of special mention is the growing influence of American culture during the 20th century. Although Aaron Copeland employed some of the modernist compositional techniques, he also made extensive use of melodies from distinctive American religious and folk traditions. In New Orleans, Memphis, and Chicago, charismatic performers drew on African, Caribbean, and Spanish influences to develop the syncopated, improvisational style of music known as jazz, which reached its golden age with the work of Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Edward "Duke" Ellington, and Miles Davis. In literature, writers like Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, W. E. B. DuBois, and Alain Locke gave vivid expression to the experience of African Americans in what has come to be known as the Harlem Renaissance. Objectives To successfully complete this learning unit, you will be expected to: o Identify cultural developments of the early 20th century. o Discuss the social and political implications of modern art. o Differentiate between major artistic movements of the 20th century. o Describe the forms of expression that instantiate the arts and humanities. 2. Learning Activities Studies Personal Significance: Modern Transcript Readings In Landmarks in Humanities: o From Chapter 14: "Modernism: The Assault on Tradition": Read pages 383-393. Review pages 394-405. Read pages 406-415. Multimedia o Click Personal Significance - Modern to learn more about modern applications of the humanities. Optional Reading You may find the following helpful: o Cottington, D. (2005). Modern art: A very short introduction. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Document #1 4-pages only Visual Arts By successfully completing this assignment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and assessment criteria: Competency 1: Describe the historical development of the humanities from the prehistoric era to the present. o Describe how the visual arts developed in the 17th through 20th centuries. Competency 2: Examine the forms of expression that instantiate the arts and humanities. o Explain the aesthetic principles expressed in the visual arts. Competency 3: Integrate the humanities, with everyday life. o Illustrate the use of visual arts in commercial design. o Assess how visual images in advertising influence our buying habits. Competency 4: Communicate effectively in forms appropriate to the humanities. o Write coherently to support a central idea in appropriate format with correct grammar, usage, and mechanics. Assignment Instructions Write an essay in which you explain the aesthetic principles expressed in visual arts and describe how they changed from the Baroque period through the early 20th century. What basic features were preserved through the centuries, and which changed dramatically? How do you think artists choose which styles to employ in their own work? Next, consider how these styles are exemplified in commercial design during our own time. Collect visual images from Web sites and advertisements, like those in the studies, and explain how they incorporate traditional elements of visual design. Are our decisions to purchase items of clothing, jewelry, automobiles, appliances, and services influenced significantly by the visual forms in which they are presented? Although your paper should offer a general thesis about the use of visual arts, much of the support you offer in its defense will involve details chosen from the specific examples you select. As you write, look for ways to tie everything together with your own view of the role that the visual arts continue to play in our everyday lives. Refer to the Visual Arts Scoring Guide to ensure that you meet the grading criteria for this assignment. You are required to submit your assignment to the Turnitin source matching tool. Note: Your instructor may also use the Writing Feedback Tool to provide feedback on your writing. In the tool, click the linked resources for helpful writing information. Other Requirements Written communication: Written communication should be free of errors that detract from the overall message. APA formatting: Your paper should be formatted according to APA (6th edition) style and formatting. Length: 4-6 typed and double-spaced pages. Font and font size: Times New Roman, 12 point. Document #2 discussion 200-words Visual Arts Think back over all of the pictures of paintings and sculptures you have seen in our textbook during this quarter, and select five that you found to be especially interesting. How does each embody the aesthetic principles for visual art that we examined together in this unit? What feelings, thoughts, and motives do your perceptions elicit in each instance? In your initial post, explain what is best about each of your selections and how each challenges your understanding of the world and of yourself. Response Guidelines Review the posts of your classmates and respond to at least two of them. In your responses to classmates, look for chances to explore the different reactions prompted by the same selections. How do your choices make the world a better place? Document #3 150-words Photography and Art The invention of photography during the 19th centuryand its further development in the 20th, with the additional capacity for color and motionmade it possible to capture accurate twodimensional images directly, without the talents of artists and painters. And yet the visual arts continued to thrive. Which elements of the painterly traditions transferred easily into the composition of photographs and which did not? How might the availability of photography have contributed to changes in the style employed by painters during this period? Response Guidelines Review the posts of your classmates and respond to at least two of them. ADDITIONAL Unit 8 Visual Arts In this unit, once again consider the Humanities Roadmap and relationships within the culture. Widespread use of high-power steam engines during the 19th century, along with perfection of processes for the manufacture of steel and the emergent application of electricity for commercial purposes, resulted in the rapid development of industrial progress. European powers expanded their colonial empires in order to secure the necessary raw materials, and even at home the divide between "haves" and "have-nots" grew alarmingly. As downtrodden workers began to revolt, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels addressed the situation directly, with an earnest critique of the capitalist economic system as a whole. Fiction writers like Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, Gustav Flaubert, and Henrik Ibsen drew attention to the practical consequences of social inequality for the dispossessed, especially the working poor and women. Toggle DrawerHide Full Introduction Our topical focus is on the visual arts of the period. We first step back to review what we have already seen in the Romantic erathe appreciation of nature and elevation of heroic individuals by John Constable, William Turner, and Francisco Goya. These themes were largely abandoned in a new wave of realism from artists like Honor Daumier and douard Manet in France and Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins in the United States. Their efforts to record faithfully events from ordinary life, however, soon gave way to the use of photographic equipment that could capture such moments technologically. Painting, on the other hand, soon moved away from this kind of objectivity by employing new chemical pigments to portray light and color in a less formal style that came to be known as Impressionism. Claude Monet used muted but contrasting colors to focus on visual perception of surfaces. Pierre-Auguste Renoir employed similar techniques to capture spontaneous glimpses of life. Mary Cassatt portrayed domestic scenes with vivid color and light. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec pictured Parisian dancers and prostitutes on dramatic posters. Georges-Pierre Seurat's pointillism and Paul Czanne's abstraction further flattened perception of the visual surface. During the 20th century, painters explored a variety of options, from the social realism of Diego Rivera to the unusual choice of colors by Henri Matisse. The dominant figure of this period was Spaniard Pablo Picasso. After early efforts in representational painting and reliance on a restricted palette, especially in muted tones of blue and rose, Picasso created an entirely new approach that came to be known as Cubismthe often disjointed separation of figures into abstract planes. Picasso also introduced the practice of assembling collages that added a third dimension to painted surfaces. In the generations that followed, other artist pursued even more disruptive challenges to tradition: abstract expressionism, dada, surrealism, and pop art. The entire history of the fine arts has provided us with a rich vocabulary with which to analyze and interpret the significance of visual perceptions, which can be applied to natural objects and photographs as well as to paintings in a variety of styles. By studying art, we learn to speak of line, shape, form, color, texture, framing, and design. In our own lives, we see these same elements combined in lively fashion for commercial purposes as well. Advertisements in magazines, newspapers, and Web sites--as well as movies and televisionincorporate the same variety of styles and aesthetic principles. Objectives To successfully complete this learning unit, you will be expected to: 1. Identify cultural developments of industrial revolution. 2. Analyze paintings for their aesthetic qualities. 3. Describe how the visual arts developed in the 17th through 20th centuries. 4. Explain the aesthetic principles expressed in the visual arts. 5. Illustrate the use of visual arts in commercial design. 6. Assess how visual images in advertising influence our buying habits. Learning Activities Collapse All | Expand All Toggle Drawer [u08s1] Unit 8 Study 1 Studies The Effect of Framing Transcript Readings In Landmarks in Humanities: Review from Chapter 10, "Baroque: Piety and Extravagance," pages 267-284. Review from Chapter 12, "Romanticism: Nature, Passion, and the Sublime," pages 337- 345. Read Chapter 13, "Materialism: The Industrial Era and the Urban Scene," pages 355-381. Read from Chapter 14: "Modernism: The Assault on Tradition," pages 394-405. Web Sites Browse through the following (and similar) Web sites for examples of the use of the visual arts in advertising and commercial design: Amazon. Macy's. Target. Walmart. Williams-Sonoma. The virtual tours on the following Web sites provide additional examples from the development of modern art: The National Gallery of Art's tour of Mary Cassatt Selected Paintings. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Timeline of Art History's Marcel Duchamp Collection. The Most's 10 Most Famous Pablo Picasso Artworks. Muse Rodin's sculpture collections. The National Gallery of Art's Van Gogh's Van Goghs Virtual Tour. Multimedia Click The Effect of Framing to launch the interactive. Optional Reading You may find the following helpful: Carl, K. H., & Charles, V. (2009). Baroque art. New York: Parkstone Intermational Unit 9 Managing a Total Compensation Plan Introduction In Unit 5 you analyzed market data to consider a competitive pay position for a job. In these final two units of the course we will look at how to manage a total compensation plan and communicate that plan to employees and to the marketplace. Often the market will select your position through word of mouth from current employees, former employees, or local press coverage through a best employer list. Taking a more proactive approach to managing a market position is the strategy of choice for most employers. Unit 9 assesses what steps an employer must take to actively monitor the firm's position in the market as well as effectiveness of the overall strategy. Tracking turnover rates, inflation, and economic indicators all play into the formula, as does a sense of the market and a company's image and reputation. This is a unit where the numbers and trends tell a huge story. Interpreting that story is the difference between a superior compensation plan and ineffective one. Objectives To successfully complete this learning unit, you will be expected to: Examine a budgeting process for managing labor costs. Compare different approaches to managing labor costs. Identify who should be included in the ongoing decision-making process of managing labor costs. Analyze the ethical dimensions of balancing economic issues with market and personal issues related to a living wage. Learning Activities Studies Reading Use your text to complete the following: Review Chapter 18 to understand the overall process of budgeting with managers for compensation and benefits. Research In preparation for this unit's discussion, locate a minimum of two outside resources that cite data supporting an argument for imbalances between the circles in Exhibit 18.5 to the extent the imbalances are unhealthy to a global economy. DOCUMENT #1 11, 2015 2-3PAGES PARA-4-LINES DUE-DATE-SEPTMEBER BOOK Milkovich, G. T., Newman, J. M., & Gerhart, B. (2013). Compensation (11th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin. ISBN: 9780078029493. Managing Labor Costs The text describes a bottom-up and top-down approach to managing labor costs. For this assignment, complete the following: Describe the components of both approaches and decide which would be most important to use in either your current work environment or one with which you are familiar, and explain your reasoning. Also include a discussion about the approach you did not select, and describe a scenario in which this approach would be most effective. For example, if you choose the top-down approach to describe your workplace, or a workplace with which you are familiar, then in the second part of the assignment you will discuss the bottom-up approach and describe a scenario in which this would be an effective way to manage labor costs. In both parts of your response, imagine that managers will be part of the budgeting process and will amend, revise, or adopt new approaches to compensating, rewarding, and incentivizing the workforce. In your opinion, what are the advantages and disadvantages of this type of management involvement? Your assignment will need to be 2-3 pages in length, and please be sure to cite all information obtained from outside resources. Review the scoring guide for this assignment before submitting your paper. DOCUMENT#2 Discussion 1 - PARA-4 LINES- 200-WORDS- DUE DATE - SEPTEMBER 8, 2015 Balance and Labor Costs. In Chapter 18 of your text, the authors present a useful diagram, Exhibit 18.7 (Three Distinct but Related Concepts and Their Measures) illustrating the relationship between markets, wages, prices, and the cost of living as a dynamic that affects labor costs overall. What the diagram does not illustrate are some of the intangible and ethical issues affecting wages and labor costs. For example, it shows all the factors in equal intersecting circles, but it is clear that at times some factors play a more important role in the market or in a particular industry than others. One could also make an argument for the fact that ethical imbalances may overly distort one's ability to live on a given wage. In this discussion, present instances when you think the circles are out of balance to the extent the imbalances are unhealthy to a global economy. Use any of the information we have studied to this point, and be certain to offer at least one reference that cites data supporting your argument for an imbalance. Please use a minimum of two outside resources in your response, and be sure to include both intext citations and the full resource in APA format at the end of your response. Response Guidelines Respond to the imbalances presented by three of your peers. Suggest potential solutions to correct imbalances. What barriers might impede your proposed solutions, and how might the barriers be overcome? DOCUMENT #3 Discussion 2 para-4 lines-200-words- DUE DATE - SEPTEMBER 8, 2015 Communication In your opinion, why should organizations openly communicate their pay systems to their employees? What is an effective method to use to achieve this? Please describe your experiences related to this and indicate whether you have worked in an environment in which pay systems were communicated effectively to the employees. Response Guidelines Please respond to a minimum of two of your peers' posts. Do you agree or disagree with their perspectives? What can you add to their comments on this issue? HUMANITIES BOOK- Fiero, G. K. (2013). Landmarks in humanities (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Higher Education. ISBN: 9780073376646. DOCUMENT #4 PARA-4-LINES - 200-WORDS- DUE DATE - SEPTEMBER 8, 2015 Modern Architecture Let us begin to wrap up our discourse with each other where it began, with a look at architecture. Consider the modern style expressed by Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier, along with the postmodernism of Sir Norman Foster, Phillip Johnson, and Frank Gehry. How have their designs contributed to our sense of the spaces we inhabit? Response Guidelines Review the posts of your classmates and respond to at least two of them. Unit 9 Modernism Introduction In this unit, once again consider the Humanities Roadmap and relationships within the culture. The 20th century brought remarkable upheaval to human civilization. Two World Wars devastated Europe economically and brought death to millions of its inhabitants, including a determined but unsuccessful effort to exterminate its Jewish population altogether. Political revolutions in Russia and Chinaalong with nationalistic movements in other countries around the worldmostly failed to produce any relief from the social instabilities they sought to address. Intellectual developments were no less disruptive. Max Planck, Albert Einstein, and Werner Heisenberg thoroughly upset older views of the physical world, while Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, and Carl Jung did the same for study of psychology. In the humanities, this era ushered in Modernism, a movement that sought to abstract essential form out of the quotidian expression of values by more traditional means: o Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and William Butler Yeats used poetry to convey intellectual content in highly compressed language. o Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf introduced streamof-consciousness to works of fiction. o Speculation about the social implications of our scientific future drove the fiction of H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and Arthur C. Clarke. o Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, and Alexander Calder advanced the visual abstraction pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Surrealist art from Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Joan Mir, and Frida Kahlo pushed these developments even further. o The "International Style" of architecture used new materials to fashion starkly functional buildings at every scale. Even the performing arts were influenced by this movement. o The plays of Eugene O'Neill, Bertolt Brecht, and Samuel Becket combined classical elements of drama with self-conscious acknowledgement of the artificiality of the medium. o Films by Sergei Eisenstein, Leni Riefenstahl, Jean Cocteau, and Federico Fellini used extravagant visual imagery to evoke direct emotional engagement with their audiences. o Composers like Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg departed from traditional tonalities with inventive twelve-tone and aleatoric music. Worthy of special mention is the growing influence of American culture during the 20th century. Although Aaron Copeland employed some of the modernist compositional techniques, he also made extensive use of melodies from distinctive American religious and folk traditions. In New Orleans, Memphis, and Chicago, charismatic performers drew on African, Caribbean, and Spanish influences to develop the syncopated, improvisational style of music known as jazz, which reached its golden age with the work of Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Edward "Duke" Ellington, and Miles Davis. In literature, writers like Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, W. E. B. DuBois, and Alain Locke gave vivid expression to the experience of African Americans in what has come to be known as the Harlem Renaissance. Objectives To successfully complete this learning unit, you will be expected to: o Identify cultural developments of the early 20th century. o Discuss the social and political implications of modern art. o Differentiate between major artistic movements of the 20th century. o Describe the forms of expression that instantiate the arts and humanities. 2. Learning Activities Studies Personal Significance: Modern Transcript Readings In Landmarks in Humanities: o From Chapter 14: "Modernism: The Assault on Tradition": Read pages 383-393. Review pages 394-405. Read pages 406-415. Multimedia o Click Personal Significance - Modern to learn more about modern applications of the humanities. Optional Reading You may find the following helpful: o Cottington, D. (2005). Modern art: A very short introduction. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press