When the performance of an employee is evaluated, ideally there are no externalities to complicate the analysis. If the employee has a computer that is constantly freezing up - or the servers in the company frequently operate slowly - the employee's performance data will reflect the functionality and effectiveness of these systems. If the company occupies a highly competitive market, declining sales data is attributable at least in part to competition rather than the behaviours of employees.…

When I returned to university to do a graduate degree, I was interested to discover how certain terms are subject to "intellectual interpretation." A word that I was asked to explain during one of my earliest classes was "ontology." Since this term was absent from my dictionary, I originally confused it with "oncology." I faintly recall that oncology involves the study of tumors. After consulting a few sources, I said that ontology is the study of how things come to exist or into being. I…