Describe and discuss how OSHA makes use of Section 5(a)(1) of the Act Assignment

Describe and discuss how OSHA makes use of Section 5(a)(1) of the Act - Assignment Example 1). For the clause to be invoked, there must be a hazard that is existing although there are consensus standards (as agreed upon) which exposes an employee to potential physical injury or even possibly serious harm such as hospitalization or death. Hazard here means danger, and it is quite subjective but as long as there is potential injury or harm, then a hazardous situation exists. The hazard must be recognized or evident, such as a construction worker who is above a scaffold that is ten feet high but working without a safety belt or no rails were being provided by the construction company. The law requires safety measures (belt or rails) for anyone who works at more than six feet in any construction-related project to prevent accidental falls. A fall at more than six feet height is very likely to cause serious physical harm, such as a broken arm, broken leg or a broken neck (resulting in paralysis) or even much worse, death (if the worker happens to fall head first). Just because no accident has happened yet does not mean a hazard does not exist, and the General Duty Clause is precisely intended to prevent accidents. The employer (construction firm) must provide abatement measures that will reduce or eliminate the hazard from an accidental fall, such as issuing safety belts or building those rails. It is feasible or easily doable by the company but may entail some additional expense on its

Becoming agile through mindfulness Dissertation

Becoming agile through mindfulness - Dissertation Example Organizations dealing with information systems development (ISD) have started shifting to agile methods. This has been necessitated by the fact that the previous traditional methodologies, such as waterfall methodology, have been restrictive in terms of processes and extensive planning (Lee & Xia, 2010). The agile manifesto has been derived from the following four main tenets; interactions and individuals over roles and processes, contract negotiation through customer collaboration, response to change over plan following and a working software rather than an exhaustive documentation. Through these four doctrines, the agile manifesto came up with 12 principles that have led to the creation of different other methodologies. Such methodologies as XP (eXtreme Programming), FDD (Feature Driven Development), DSDM (Dynamic System Development Method) and Scrum have had lots of support from leading industry practitioners. Agile practices can be fused with mindfulness to ensure effective deliv ery of software applications to customers. Mindfulness involves attention to changes and the surroundings during the software development process (Argote, 2006). Through mindfulness, it is possible to achieve a certain degree of flexibility that allows an organization to be strategically at an advantage compared to the others. Literature Review Agile Global Information Systems Development (GSD) Many Information Systems Development Companies are migrating to Agile methods as a way of coping with the increased demands placed on such organizations. Most of them have gone further ahead to introduce a substitute solution, Global Systems Development (GSD). This alternative has resulted in numerous benefits including an increased potential for innovations, reduced costs of software development, large pools of talent, reduced proximity to markets or clients, transfer of knowledge, division of work across sites and reduction in duration for developing the software especially due to the effec tiveness in time zones (Conchuir, Agerfalk, Olsson & Fitzgerald, 2009). According to Carmel and Agarwal (2001), firms and organizations should be well aware of challenges posed by the implementation of such methodologies. Just like Agile methodologies this area has not been well researched. The little research that exists on this area represents problem reports rather than extensive research that provide solutions in terms of significant techniques and practices (Smite, Wohlin, Gorschek & Feldt, 2010, p. 91). However, developing distributed or global software development through the use of Agile methods has been an area of great interest (Agerfalk, Fitzgerald & Slaughter, 2009). Such collaboration between distributed development and Agile methods has been conceptualized due to the capability that is produced when the two are fused together (Ramesh, Cao, Mohan & Xu, 2006). According to Turk, France and Rumpe (2002), such collaboration was regarded as highly unlikely. This was largely due to the fact that distributed development methods rely on formal methods while Agile methods are reliant on informal processes. Further research into this area has indicated that apart from the excellent blend that results from this collaboration, it is also possible to address issues of control and communication that arise during development of distributed systems (Ramesh, Cao, Mohan & Xu, 2006). This is an indication that Global Software Development is becoming much popular (Stotts, Nagappan, Baheti, Jen & A J, 2003). Such systems have