Risk and quality management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Risk and quality management - Essay Example Tutor Signature: Date: Task 1 Introduction The following report includes the description of the term quality management and the term risk management. The report also includes the description of importance of these concepts at different stages of a project. The report also includes the description of BS ISO 10006-2003 and its adequacy with respect to the different stages of a project. The report also includes the suggestion as how this standard can be improved. Finally a conclusion has been drawn on the basis of the overall analysis. Quality management Quality management can be said to be the process of management of the quality of the project under consideration. Quality management has different definitions with respect to different businesses and processes. A project can be said to be a temporary endeavour having a defined beginning and end, which is undertaken with predefined objectives and goals, so it is vital for the effective attainment of objectives to manage the quality of th e project. The main aim behind quality management is to attain all the project objectives and goals by effectively honouring the preconceived constraints of the project and managing the quality of the objectives or results under consideration (Kerzner, 2010). ... Risk management Risk management can be said to be a simple process of identifying, analyzing, and responding to the factors associated with risks during the life of the project under consideration. Risk management, in simpler terms, can be said to be the controlling of the risk factors and the possibilities of the risky events and handling them in a proactive manner rather than in a reactive manner. Risk management includes two steps: the assessment of risks and the control of risks. The risk assessment is the process performed at each level of the project; the control of the processes is performed at stages when the implementation is done and the performance is derived from the standards set. Risk management is the vital step which needs to be performed at each stage of the project, so that the project can be accomplished with the available resources and so that the prescribed objectives can be achieved (Maylor, 2003). Prince 2 (Projects in Controlled Environment) This is a process- based method, which is highly effective in the management of projects. This is a de facto standard, which is extensively utilized by the government of UK and is also used in the private sectors for the management of the projects. The PRINCE2 provides greater control of resources, and this also helps manage the project risks and business risks in a more effective manner. PRINCE2 aids in several areas of project management: the justification of the business or project purpose; defining of the organization structure which aids the project management team; planning-based approach; emphasis on the project by dividing it into manageable and controllable stages and by outlining its specified structure. This method is highly

The Sonoco Products Company Business Essay

The Sonoco Products Company Business Essay The analysis of this case study is about Sonoco Products Company, a leading manufacturer of industrial and consumer packaging. The company was adversely affected by the financial crisis in the mid 1990s. Due to the financial crisis companies sales came down by 6% during the period from 1995 to 1999. The company re designed its strategy towards industrial packaging industry which brought them the growth through large no of acquisitions. Companys strategies and the working systems changed drastically due to the impact had with the changes happened considering the needs of the consumers. Due to the notable outcomes of globalization Sonoco also felt the high competitiveness in the industry, uncertainty of jobs of employees and innovations in products which had them think of other avenues to improve on. Further the shareholders of the company also called for a new strategic HR approach in order to increase effectiveness, acquire new set of skills and competencies and HR has to be a more s trategic business partner. At the initial stage company made a hit back on to these external challenges by changing the paternalistic culture (which ensured jobs for life and allowed the underperformers to stay in the company ) and also through tightening the performance management system and transforming HR into a more proactive and strategic function changing many HR policies and processes. Due to the changes occurred in the company they had the privilege of making a more integrated marketing approach which reflected the demanding needs of the end consumer. Further, during tough economic conditions, organisations must continually improve their performance by reducing costs, innovating products, improving quality, productivity and speed to the market in order to enhance the organisational performance. (Becker Gerhart, 1996). Thereafter the Sonoco Company improved and they started reviewing their procedures and internal structures without being product oriented in order to gain maximum competitive advantage in the industry. The major changing point of Sonoco was the appointment of their Senior Vice President of Human Resources, Cindy Hartley. She changed the whole Human Resources system with some radical and significant changes which were studded into the firm as highly decentralized and which was not consistent at all. They believed the HR as a strictly back room operation (Sonoco Products case study). Traditionally Human resources function was viewed as a cost to be minimised (Becker and Gerhart, 1996). Initially Hartley discovered that most of the sections or the departments had their own way of doing things. The corporate human resources had very little work to do in the company as a whole, they were another mere department in the organisation which had little influencing power and authority. The main objective of taking Cindy Hartley was to streamline the Human resources function of Sonoco, in order to achieve the goals of creating competitive advantage, to promote best internal practices and reduc e the duplication of work. She was identified as the Change Maker of the firm (Sonoco Products case study). The change makers were interventionists with a strategic agenda focused on both the hard realities of business performance and the softer HR interventions designed to enhance employee commitment and motivation. It was this new role that perhaps most clearly differentiated HRM from traditional personnel management (Guest, 1987, pp. 505-9; Storey, 1992, p. 180). Under the leadership and guidance of Hartley, Sonoco had the luxury of changing its strategy focusing mainly on three areas such as performance management which will directly reflect the contributions made by the employees. She stressed the importance of this as performance management and compensation were HR fundamentals (Sonoco Case Study, p5). Thereafter Hartley focus was on Sonocos talent development and management system in order to refine employees skills and to identify and develop deficient skills. Final was the succession planning that needed to be integrated into business as usual in order to identify and prepare the next generation of leaders. (Sonoco Case Study, p4) Two business models were presented by Hartley to the Sonoco Companys executive committee. One was a centralised model which will target, in reducing the cost of administration and increase process improvements in order to gain a $3.1million worth of savings for the company. In this model most of the HR services will be handled by four centres of expertise. The main disadvantages of implementing this model was restricting opportunities to align directly with individual businesses needs and interests would make other objectives more complicated. (Sonoco Case Study, p6) Second option was the hybrid model where the divisions of the firm would retain some direct involvement in staffing, succession planning, personnel programmes, compensation and benefits. The main advantage of this model was that it would leave intact a divisional HR presence on which GMs could rely on, where by creating a strategic link between corporate HR functions and the businesses (Sonoco Case Study page 6). This model would generate savings of $2.7million for the Sonoco Company. The main question that arose in implementing this model was whether the changes could be effectively driven across the company. More changes were seen in Sonoco since the appointment of Harris DeLoach, Sonocos new Chief Executive Officer. His main ambition was to implement a new business model that would generate a significant growth in the company as well as it will reduce the functional cost which will keep the company more globally competitive among the other firms in the industry. The new model must also reduce the functions costs by 20% or by $ 2.8 Million (Sonoco Case Study page 1). Further, DeLoach gave the task to Hartley with devising two alternative organisational structures for HR that would cost less and support three ambitious objectives, Firstly to increase General Managers (GM) accountability for talent management, Secondly to distribute HR talent and support more evenly across the companys divisions and make HR systems and processes consistent and Finally to optimise HRs ability to provide customised , strategic support to the GMs business (Sonoco Case Study page 1). Also he made the objective s clear saying You can have the best strategy in the world but if you dont have effective execution by people, its going to fail. Thereafter Hartley focused on the two models described and Both of Hartleys alternatives are improvements in the structure of the firm which will change the traditional way of working at Sonoco. Due to these changes the most important change was the high involvement of human resouses personal in the areas which were handled mostly by the GMs. Therefore, the human resourses fulfilled their objective of controlling HR functions in the firms divisions. Further, its understanded that most of the advantages of the centralise solution are disadvantages of the hybrid one vice versa. Due to this one can argued that the centralized model is more suitable for short term progress, since it can help the firm to reduce more than the expected cost cut of 20% which was the wish of CEO, DeLoachs. However, it implies potential dangers for future operation in longer term. In the other hand this morel (centralize) is not that flexible in nature and also not suitable to implement as it will make a consi derable change in the structure of the difficult in a highly challenging market. In addition other disadvantage is that the restriction of opportunities to directly align individual businesses needs and demands, which would make other objectives of Sonoco more difficult. In terms of hybrid model, on the other hand looks like not attractive which is not meeting the requirement of expense deduction and may lead to redundancy mainly due to large set of HR personnel being involved, which will lead to an additional expense to the firm. However, if you take the two models the difference in budget is not that significant at all. Its Just $100,000 where less than 5% as a whole. But in the hybrid model, the potential for longer term is much better than the centralized model. Sonoco will also feel higher flexibility and can adjust to the change of market easier. Also Sonoco operates in 32 countries with different sets of cultural dimensions (Hofstede, 2010). Further, in the hybrid structure, with the feature of decentralization, which will help the company to be more flexible in terms of implementing HR activities which are suitable for each country or territory and by selecting hybrid model cultural conflicts will be minimised. Due to those reasons and also by compairing the advantages and disadvantages, the hybrid model seems to be a better option for Sonoco rather than the centralized structure. In implementing either of these models would have a bigger impact and risk involved to the firm but given CEOs main objective of making best use of employees, the most suitable choice seems to be the hybrid model. After the arrival of Hartley, Sonoco implemented a new performance management system and where individuals are accountable for their failures. Accordingly, Performance Management is a process which contributes to the effective management of individuals and teams in order to achieve high levels of organisational performance (Armstrong and Baron, 2004). Furthermore, performance management makes a culture in the firm where employees as individuals and also as teams take responsibilities for the continuous improvement of business processes and of their own skills, behaviours and contributions (CIPD, 2011). Therefore, Hartley changed the working culture of Sonoco by bringing in a new HR system. Sonoco made the Setting up the new system was mainly due to achieving of organisational objectives and targets, with individual performance metrics in line with the corporate targets. The targets set out by Sonoco can be measured using number of performance management tools such as, 360degree feedb ack, learning and development , performance appraisal, setting performance objectives and performance related pay like wise. Major changes were injected into the Sonoco company. After the introduction of the cyclical model to the firm, it ensured that individual performance objectives and the targets will reflect the organisational goals of the business. Further, in this senario Supervisors and the employees will agree on personal objectives and targets during the performance appraisals. Thereafter the targets will be measured considering their divisional targets. If you take as an example, in division one, each plant manager would have a set of metrics like quality, customer returns ,plant profit, machine downtime and safety. In division two, metrics might be on scrap reduction and to drive productivity (Sonoco Case Study Page 5). Sonoco case study stresses the importance in the foundations of performance management of motivation theory, especially goal setting and expectancy theory. The acceptance of goals by employees and the increasing of difficulty levels of such goals can lead to increased motivation and performance (Locke Latham, 1984). Further several HR tools were used by Sonoco to drive employee and organisational performance which was MBO. This is a goal orientated management tool in which managers and employees come together to agree upon a set of objectives to contribute to organisational performance, Drucker (1954). Additionally in this system individual employees development needs and personal training and development schedule will be agreed upon. (Sonoco Case Study Page 5). Further, Sonocos changed the previous eighteen salary grades and it was changed into a very simple and easy system of five salary bands in order to enhance managerial flexibility in differentiating among employees and awarding merit increases (Sonoco Case Study Page 5) These changes were implemented by Hartley in the new performance management system at Sonoco Products also stressed the importance of an universal compensation system within the firm. Also with the implementation of performance related pay system, it gave an incentive for the high performing individuals at Sonoco Products. The main objective of this was to benefit or reward to individual contributions while within the market guidelines (Sonoco Case Study Page 5). Further, apart from the individual financial benefits, they also permitted managers at Sonoco to think of the contributions that the employees are making in order achieve the desired business objectives (Sonoco Base Study Page 5). Nevertheless, in order to be successful, effective arrangements must be in place to define measure, appraise and manage performance (CIPD, 2011). As mentioned in the case study, reward or compensation strategies has to be divided into both intrinsic rewards and extrinsic rewards. It is very important for Sonoco to implement a variety of compensation strategies, not only focusing on performance related pay where it will help the firm in order meet employee and organisational performance objectives successfully. Due to the new performance management system, Sonoco Company is experiencing some radical changes in its firm currently. Its notable to say that the firm needs more changes or improvements in order to sustain in the competition with the others in the global market. In terms of improvements Sonoco needs attention in the areas of talent management and succession planning for them to get the best in terms of growth. More importantly hybrid model has to be developed and implemented successfully for the firm to get the intended growth and the reducing of cost. Therefore in order to gain the expected organisational performance, engagement with the GMs and line managers has to be strengthened. , Engaged employees have a sense of personal attachment to their work and organisation; they are motivated and able to give of their best to help it succeed and from that flows a series of tangible benefits for organisation and individual alike (MacLeod Clarke 2009). Further its important that Hartl ey interact with the entire workforce rather than engaged only with the managers to get the best out of the employees. Because, in reality without a motivated and engaged workforce, whatever the best HRM practices used you cant generate a high performing culture. Therefore the importance of employee engagement is a vital factor in a high performance culture within the workplace. It is important for organisations to implement a thorough and inclusive policy of employee engagement to create a high performance culture. Reflection and summary By learning The Managing Human Resources module has provided me a very strong foundation and useful insight into the key components and practices which are in the world of Human Resources. It gave me a total understanding of both the techniques and theory behind some of the critical themes within HR. Also it gave me a competitive advantage over some of my colleagues who do not possess a HR related qualification. I believe that it is very important for any future leader to obtain a comprehensive programme of study that relates to the field of HRM as it has demonstrated how important the HR function is in contributing to both organisational and employee performance. This module has certainly enhanced my performance as it has enhanced my knowledge on HR, improved my critical analysis skills, enriched my knowledge of both soft and hard HRM models and also improved my verbal dialogue by having some useful, interesting, stimulating, debating sessions during seminars. Further, it has also i nformed my judgement on how important employee participation is to the success of the organisation. Engaging with employees is a crucial component in generating a high performing culture. It is this concept that has influenced my analysis of the Sonoco case study, as HRM practices and models cannot be successfully implemented without a motivated and engaged workforce. In my personal view, the HRM module, at first, stresses the importance of managing people which I have to do when running a business of my own or working for a firm. Unlike financial management, inventory management etc., in HRM I should not rely on machine or outsourcing but to act flexibly on my own, especially when dealing with skilful and knowledgeable employees. However, thanks to HRM module, I will know how to choose and apply best HR models on their organizations.HRM will help me to identify potential strengths and weaknesses of staffs. A variety HR tools can provide a comprehensive understanding about peoples c apabilities and desires etc. in order to provide them with suitable environments, and through this, fully exploit their contributions. Moreover, to have best use of staffs, I will know how apply development methods to increase their productivity. An organization is more a community than a group of separated persons. Through researching organizational behaviour, I can be aware of relations and interactions among all staffs. Organizational behaviour is not only for providing necessary skills training, but also for allocating people in teams in order to achieve their synergy. Compensation and reward management, in connection with performance management, help me to comprehend the working motivation and know how to promote it for the benefit of both employees and organization. Finally, I believe that this module has provided me with the foundations of becoming a future leader in my organisation.

Class Distinction in Pygmalion Essay -- essays research papers

The play Pygmalion offers the readers a view on the theme of class distinction, and the problem of the barriers separating classes and people. Shaw reveals to us the truth about the artificiality of classes and how anybody can overcome them, He also shows us that society puts up high standards and that people are distinguished by their way of speaking, and their appearance alone and of course that's wrong. In the first act of Pygmalion, Shaw chooses a setting that really helped shedding light on this theme, for he chose the st. portico square between the church and the theatre, a setting that embraced everybody from different classes and made them all clash under one place for shelter. The gathering of all those different characters, and the way Shaw introduced everybody not by their real names, but by other names, show us that society puts artificial barriers for the differentiation between the rich and the poor. But as the play progresses each character's point of view about the classes is presented in different situations. Henry Higgins the phonetician sees the difference between the rich and the poor through their outside appearance, how they talk, walk, dress and eat. Professor Higgins sees that the barriers between classes could be over come in six months, and that changing somebody's looks and their way of pronouncing words means upgrading them to a higher social class, but in spite of this, he treats people equally, and his behavior is absolute rudeness to all. Professor Higgins' rudeness is an embarrassment to his mother Mrs. Higgins, who knows how to treat everybody with respect, and who isn?t fooled by Eliza's good looks and ways of talking. Mrs. Higgins can stil... ... first act they are seen dressed in elegant clothes and waiting for a taxi just like any rich person would do. When they meet Eliza in Mrs. Higgins' house, they are fooled by her appearance and they mistake her for a lady, Clara gets very impressed by Eliza's "new small talk" and Freddy falls for her. So its true, looks can be deceiving, but looks shouldn?t be the one thing that separates classes. Shaw wanted to show people how artificial the barriers are and he succeeded in that, Eliza the poor cockney girl goes to the ambassador's party and is mistaken for a duchess, and her father Alfred Doolittle, he is seen in the last act all well dressed and was considered by people as a middle class man. All that leads us to the conclusion that barriers can be crossed and that society is truly a fool.

Dispute on Employee Motivation

Arnold Bright is the Director of Human Resources at Company XYZ, in the same industry as Company ABC. John Chaplin has recent joined Company XYZ as Human Resources Manager. A recent graduate with a major in Organizational Behavior, he presents new ideas to Bright almost everyday. But, Chaplin has a speech disorder. He stammers, and cannot make himself clear at all times. A week back, Bright and Chaplin began to argue about employee motivation. Bright informed Chaplin that their company has the budget to enhance employee motivation with the best motivation enhancement program in the industry.He was referring to the use of Company ABC’s motivation enhancement program for its employees. Company ABC happens to be a leader in the industry, after all. Yet, Chaplin asserted that Company XYZ should develop its own employee motivation enhancement program with new research on the needs of employees at Company XYZ in particular. The argument turned into a dispute because Bright refused t o agree with Chaplin. The latter was threatened that he would be fired if he fails to follow Bright’s instructions to implement Company ABC’s program. The Problem:Chaplin would lose his job if he does not agree to implement Company ABC’s program for employee motivation enhancement in Company XYZ. He knows, however, that his boss has an amenable personality. Thus, Chaplin would like to provide further information to Bright. He firmly believes that Bright has to be explained why it is best for Company XYZ to develop its own employee motivation enhancement program based on new research on its employees’ needs. After all, Chaplin is aware of latest research in the field of Organizational Behavior. Should Company XYZ implement Company ABC’s motivation enhancement program?Organizational behavior theories are known to differ as to what motivates employees, but not necessarily because the essential characteristics of all employees are varied across organiz ations and industries. Rather, the motivational needs of employees differ from organization to organization because separate work situations, ethics and settings, in addition to their interaction with individual personalities, teams, and managements call for different employee needs to be prioritized. Employee motivation is simply referred to as an organizational method to satisfy employees in areas where they feel unsatisfied.Whereas poor health and safety conditions might be the Number One challenge to encounter in Company ABC, it is possible that the employees of Company XYZ would be more motivated by higher salaries. Moreover, the employees of Company XYZ may hold a collective opinion that their working conditions are the best in the industry. Given that job performance is a function of ability and motivation, it is appropriate to inquire into the needs of workers in order to employ the correct mix of employee motivation strategies to boost job performance, company-wide (â€Å" Employee Motivation†).As an example, the employees of the Piketon Research and Extension Center and Enterprise Center were asked about the main motivating factors at their particular workplace. According to research findings, the employees believed themselves to be motivated by the following in the order of importance: â€Å"a) interesting work, (b) good wages, (c) full appreciation of work done, (d) job security, (e) good working conditions, (f) promotions and growth in the organization, (g) feeling of being in on things, (h) personal loyalty to employees, (i) tactful discipline, and (j) sympathetic help with personal problems† (Lindner).Contrary to these findings, a peer reviewed study on employee motivation found that most employees across various organizations believe the following to be the chief motivators at the workplace: â€Å"enjoyment of the work; work/life balance; pay satisfaction; link between pay and performance;† and â€Å"adequate staffing level s† (Katcher). Thus, it appears essential to increase employee motivation only after inquiring into the main motivators in a specific organization.Also within a single organization, the blue collar workers are expected to be more motivated by an increase in pay, while the white collar employees might believe that enjoyment of work is most essential. In this case, the organization would have to divide up its employees in two separate groups to inquire into the particular motivators for the blue collar workers as opposed to the white collar employees.It is best, therefore, for employee motivation strategies to be based on group by group studies. Chaplin should write a memorandum to Bright with latest research on the subject. It is possible that the latter has misunderstood Chaplin because of his speech disorder. Chaplin knows that Company XYZ has the budget to conduct new research on its employees’ needs to enhance their motivation.He should also mention in his note to Bri ght that implementation of Company ABC’s employee motivation program may possibly waste the resources of Company XYZ. After all, it may very well be that employees at Company ABC have a different set of needs altogether. So, even though Company ABC is a business leader, Company XYZ should refrain from blindly following its programs without a scientific inquiry into its own business processes and workplace culture.

Coin

I was born in the fires of an ancient forge in the hilss of the Hindu Kush. Amid the clatter of hammers and the chatter of Greek, I paused on a battered anvil for the final pangs of my creation. Beneath me lay a hardened die bearing the image of my king; atop me pressed another, etched with horsemen and some mirror-image words. Then the hammer struck, hard and heavy, ringing out the news of my nativity. With each belo the dies dug deeper into my flesh, stamping their images as father and mother of a freshly minted coin.As I look back across two millennia for these earliest memories, I marbel at my long, now legendary, journey from mine to mint to market to museum. I remeber Rome as a rising power, a century before the first Caesars; I recall the early days of Emperor Asoka's moral conquests and the builing of China's Great Wall. I have outlived six of the seven wonders of the ancient world. (I am told the Great Pyramid still stands) Yet I am no mute ruin: money talks. Mine is the voi ce of history, recorded by numismatists trained to hear my ancient stories of art, industry, worship, and war.My eloquence youth, when legends traced my origins to a colony of giant ants. Most gold in ancient times was mined by condemned criminals and slaves whose lives meant little to their taskmasters. In my days, the mines of Egypt were legendary hives of human misery. But it was said that gold in great abundance could be found near India, where giant ants piled gold-bearing dust at the entrances of their tunnels. These ants–nearly the size of dogs, the legend said–defended their burrows fiercely against men who dared to steal the spoils of their digging.But such danger was trivial given the normal costs of ancient mining, and so the legend spread as far as Greece. When Alexander the Great invaded the Indus Valley in the fourth century BC, his Greek soldiers eagerly searched for this legendary lode. Local guides displayed for them the dappled skins of the ants thems elves, but the invaders could not find a single mound of precious gold Only a few generations later, however, Greek settlers were gathering large quantities of gold in this very region.These descendants of Alexander's warriors created a wealthy kingdom called Bactria, famous for its beautiful silver and gold coins like me. (See Aramco World, May/June 1994) Where, scholars have long wondered, did the Greek kings of Bactria find so much precious metal? International trade constitutes one obvious source, but giant â€Å"ants† might be another. Two thousand years after I was born, explorers discovered that burrowing marmots on the remote Dansar Plateau, near the borders of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and China, do indeed heap mounds of gold-bearing earth at the mouths of their burrows.These stocky rodents, called â€Å"mountain ants† by the Persians who passed the legend on to the Greeks, grow to the size of small dogs and pitch up meter-high hills of auriferous subsoil. Even in modern times, local tribes harvest this gold in an age-old tradition that recalls the legends of my youth. It is possible, after all, that inhuman marmots, rather than inhuman misery, brought my gold to the forges of man. From the moment I left the royal mint of my king Eucratides, eager hands grasped for me. I was a beauty then, the envy of every monarch and merchant from the Indus to the Euphrates.Great artists had carved my parent dies in mirror-image, etching tiny Greek words and figures backward so that these negative forms would produce positive impressions on my two faces. The result, when smashed into 8. 5 grams (0. 3 oz) of gold, is a splendid coin called a stater — a treasure of art as well as riches. My obserse (the â€Å"heads† face produced by the lower, anvil die) boasts a once-brilliant portrait of King Eucratides, framed in a circle of small dots. Behind the king's neck trails the royal diadem, a ribbon tied around his head as the unmistakble em blem of his office.His cloak, engraved in high relief, is that of a cavalry commander, and his great crested helmet resembles a Boeotian design lauded by the historian Xenophon as the best headgear for cavalrymen. Attached to my king's helmet is a frontlet that sweeps back and ends in bull's horns and ears. Some consider this a symbolic evocation of Alexander the Great's war-horse Bucephalus (â€Å"Ox-head†), who had horns according to some accounts, and who had been buried by Alexander near my own birthplace. Like Alexander, my king rode with valor at the head of his elite cavalry and conquered with an aggressive Greek spirit.In fact, Eucratides called himself â€Å"the Great† long before that title was given to Alexander by the Romans. On my reverse (the â€Å"tails† side produced by the upper, punch die), you can still read the exalted caption â€Å"King Eucratides the Great. † No Greek had ever put such words on his coinage before, but modesty was nev er my king's style. The armed horsemen who gallop within the inscription are Castor and Pollux. In Greek mythology, they were the sons of Zeus who would suddenly appear in a crisis to save the day, much like Eucratides himself, who wrestled the Bactrian throne from a faltering dynasty.These twins carry palms, brandish spears, and wear felt caps topped with stars. Behind the rear legs of the trailing horse, you can discern a Greek monogram, W. This mark identifies either the mint or the magistrate responsible for my creation. Nearly every gold and silver coin minted in Bactria carries such a birthmark, but the exact meaning of the many symbols has long been lost. For example, some scholars think that my monogram indicates the city of Balkh or Aornus; others see only the initials of some unknown Greek official who served a few months as midwife in the delivery of my king's new money.If you look past the scars of my long life, I am as beautifully Greek as the Parthenon itself, though I was born 5000 kilometers (3000 mi) east of Athens. I am the mind of the West imprinted on the precious metal of the East. The implications haunt me. Am I propaganda etched on plunder, or the product of a peaceful integration? Do I personify apartheid or a partnership? The design and distribution of currency are deliberate, official acts, so money can never be neutral in the struggles of any society.Look at a nation's coins and you will see the scatter-shot of its cultural canon: even a melting-pot like America has a partisan coinage, its message overwhelmingly white, male, European, and Christian. In ancient Bactria, I was no less biased. My milieu is entirely Mediterranean, and my intrinsic value kept me beyond reach of the marginalized poor of the non-Greek population. Gold circulated over the heads of these farmers and servants, who relied upon small denominations of bronze of silver for their meager purchases.My king minted for them some square, bilingual issues struck on an In dian weight standard, but I belonged to colonial Greek aristocrats, the ruling elite of Bactria. Unlike small bronze and silver coins which travel swiftly but never far, my gold brothers and I ranged into territories quite distant from our monarch's own marketplaces. Throughout the Middle East, Hellenistic states were quick to accept gold coins struck on a common Greek standard with recognizable types. I, for example, would be recognized in any market from the Balkans to Bactria.I had no restrictive local features, as did my square bilingual cousins, and my denomination conformed to the Attic Greek system used nearly everywhere in Alexander's old empire. The range of my travels can be easily documented: In Mesopotamia, for example, another Greek king so admired my design that he shamelessly stole every detail for his own coinage. But globe-trotting gold cannot be too careful, for everywhere, insatiable melting pots stand ready. My parent dies produced as many as 20,000 siblings iden tical to me; now, of them all, only I have survived the gauntlet that gold runs.The most critical moment in any money's life is the day it ceases to be currency. Once a coin can no longer circulate in a given place or time, human hands are quick to convert it into some more useful form. Most of my brothers became bullion again, their identities soon lost in the issues of other, less ancient kings. Some may exist still as a statue's thumb or a goblet's lip, but I would not recognize them. I carry the last known imprint of our shared dies because an unusual circumstance spared my life. Painful and defacing though it was, that occasion added 2000 years to my story and gave me an unexpected career.A sturdy loop of my metal was fused to my reverse side, right across my galloping horsemen. The attachment was sized to fit a finger, and I became a sinet ring. This ancient operation changed the whole pattern of my life. My surfaces no longer wore evenly; instead my obverse suffered horribly as it rode that band exposed to daily bumps and bruises, while my reverse design was now shielded from the whold. I lived a strange new life on the wrong side of the humand hand, banished from the palm where coins enjoy the camaraderie of active currency. Who had done this to me?The Greeks, as far as I could determine, were gone. Shortly after my king's reign, Bactria fell to successive waves of nomadic invaders. Some of them later settled in the region and created the Kushan empire, astride the famous Silk Roads that linked the empires of Rome and China. One Kushan ruler so exceeded my own king's ambitions that he proclaimed himself not only â€Å"the Great†, but also â€Å"King of Kings, Son of Heaven, Caesar† — a title that is simultaneously Iranian, Indian, Chinese, and Roman. Although I finally found myself outside the closed world of my Greek makers, I felt welcome among these eclectic Kushans.They borrowed freely from my past. One of their graves containe d a magnificent cameo imitating my design, and signet rings of Greek style were common elements in their elaborate gold-spangled costumes. Eventually lost or interred — I cannot recall which — I reluctantly returned beneath the soil of Central Asia. For twenty centuries I slept; you cannot imagine the burden of time. My gold kept its luster while all around me the corrosive poisons of earth ate away the baser metals. Above me, kings gave way to caliphs and khans as new realms dawned and died.Other gold shone for the civilizations of Muslims, Mongols, and Mughals while I lay undiscovered, underground, my fame forgotten. Neither man or marmot rescued me — until modern times. Then, I suddenly awoke and saw myself reflected in the wide dark eyes of a jubilant discoverer. My new guardian considered the expedient of the melting pot, but my unusual appearance gave him pause. Not just another antique coin, I was a warrior's signet, well-suited to his own station. He was an Afghan officer, and I found a new home on his hand. There I was schooled in the long history I had missed.I learned that Bactria had become Afghanistan, where the weapons were new but the wars unchanged. Great powers still converged upon this rugged and remote bastion in order to control the gateways between Europe, Asia and India. Now, however, this struggle was called â€Å"the Great Game. † Intrepid spies from czarist Russia and imperial Britain crept along the snow-filled passes of Central Asia, and tired armies clashed in places called Kabul, Kandahar and the Khyber Pass. Rudyard Kipling and others romanticized the struggle, but brave men did not bleed the less for all this talk of games. I saw the fight firsthand