Leadership
Essays

Leadership theory is under constant change, especially in today's volatile business atmosphere. This discussion offers an assessment of leadership theory in the face of multiculturalism, globalization, recession and transformation. A literature review and account of firsthand leadership experiences precede the delineation of a personal leadership plan.

This is a ten page paper about Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which covers Equal Opportunity. The paper includes background information about the situations leading up to the passage of the Civil Rights Act, including the counterculture and Black Power movements. In addition, the paper talks about how the Title VII provisions remain important and where we stand today.

The objective of this study is to analyze the incident of the earthquake tsunami of March 2011, in Japan and to propose three important lessons that might be learned from this incident by those wishing to improve the quality of emergency response and recovery of those affected by such an event. This work will discuss the issues related to mental health and societal consequences and what the impact was to the citizenry and finally, why it is important to understand these issues. This work will identify possible lead agencies for such a catastrophe in the United States and discuss possible roles of Non-Governmental Agencies (NGOs).

This paper identifies and discusses five emerging ethical issues for business organizations in the twenty-first century. The forces of globalization have increased the degree to which diverse groups in society have grown dependent on one another. Hence, their expectations influence the freedoms and responsibilities of other groups. The expectations of various stakeholders have placed greater responsibilities on business organizations to be ethical in their communication with their stakeholders. Business organizations are under growing pressure to be ethical in their employment practices and in the sourcing of raw materials and labour for their operations. In addition, they are expected to recognize their responsibility towards the economic and social development of the communities where they operate and those that they influence through their operations. Hence, business organizations are also responsible to act ethically in relation to their use of the resources of the environment and to the extent that they influence it in adverse ways, such as by polluting it.

This essay examines different kinds of organizational loss, and how the security manager can prevent and respond to these losses. While the particular circumstances may vary, the underlying theoretical concepts are the same. By paying attention to surveillance, communication, symbiosis, and directed autonomy, the security manager can prevent and respond to organizational loss regardless of the context or degree of loss.

Amazon's remarkable ascent as one of the top online global retailers can be attributed to the foresight they had in creating a comprehensive distributed order management, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM) and e-commerce series of systems. The many other e-commerce sites that rose quickly with massive infusions of venture capital just as quick exited the market, flaming out due to a lack of system and process scalability, lack of understanding of customer dynamics, and a complete loss of focus on scalable business models. All of these factors are what caused competitors to Amazon to exit the e-commerce market either through acquisition, merger or complete exist from the market. When starting Amazon, Jeff Bezos invested heavily in the distributed order management, ERP, SCM and e-commerce integration points to book distributors initially, and then expanded into a broader product mix. This allowed the enterprise to quickly scale as volumes increased during the first five years of the company's existence. Having creating this reliable, scalable and secure platform, Mr. Bezos and the Amazon founders concentrated on creating an analytics layer throughout their architecture that could quantify customer, distributor, dealer and even competitor activity on the site (Amazon Investor Relations, 2012). This reliance on analytics also gave Amazon executives and technical staff the insight they needed to launch quickly into entirely new product categories, get the complex and often confusing task of localization right, and also create a highly popular and profitable Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing platform and hosting platform for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications (Mitchell, 2012). From a technology standpoint the performance of Amazon today can be directly attributed to the insightful decisions made in 1994 and 1995 when the company founders prioritized the development of enterprise-wide platforms and a strong focus on analytics over spending all their time on the front-end website and its façade (Lindic, Bavdaz, Kovacic, 2012). As Jeff Bezos would later remark in interviews, by investing to create a truly world-class enterprise back-end system first, his company was freed up to fast track the actual user interface of the e-commerce sites globally at a pace that left comp[editors far behind in terms of functionality and product breadth (Amazon Investor Relations, 2012). Mr. Bezos chose in 2007 to also institute a culture of metrics that also capitalized on the nearly two decades of investment in their infrastructure (Amazon Investor Relations, 2012). Combining the global e-commerce, enterprise-tested infrastructure and the most robust set of analytics that any e-commerce provider had, Amazon was ready to begin expanding their product strategies, start offering greater options in their Amazon Web Services initiative which today is expected to be a $1B by 2015, even by conservative forecasts (Amazon Investor Relations, 2012) and also invest heavily in their state-of-the-art recommendation engine technology that seeks out products and services customers may be interested in and present them during shop[ping sessions in real-time (Sun, 2012). It's important to appreciate just how vast of an e-commerce infrastructure Amazon has in completing this analysis of their e-strategy. They have greater agility, flexibility and capability to execute than any other online retailer globally today. How they choose to use these technologies to attract new customers and keep existing ones loyal, a point the case study makes in greater detail, is predicated on the ability to get the most value from this infrastructure while still staying focused on delivering a world-class customer experience in each transaction. Based on the analysis undertaken for this case analysis, it is abundantly clear that Jeff Bezos and the executive management team are passionate about keeping the company as customer-focused as possible, including the continual selective use of technology to accentuate and strengthen the user experience online and off (Murphy, Narkiewicz, 2010). With these foundational aspects of Amazon defined, the seven areas of focus in this analysis are next presented. The overarching objective of this analysis is to understand the value of e-strategies in organizations, with Amazon being the organization of interest in the analysis. Specifically concentrating on the benefits of having an e-strategy at Amazon, defining how e-strategies contribute to Amazon's broader accomplishments, and an analysis of how Amazon aligns their e-strategy to the overarching organizational strategy as well., The analysis continues with an analysis of the key business factors that are the catalysts of the e-strategy at Amazon, followed by a suggested strategic plan for ensuring e-strategy initiatives at the company continue to lead to profitable growth. The final section of this analysis provides an assessment of the technical infrastructure needed to accomplish the proposed strategic plan. As Amazon has continually evolved its position as a global force in online retailing, its command of supply chains globally has also evolved very quickly. In the latest rankings of the highest-performing supply chains completed by Gartner, a leading research consultancy, Amazon has ranking within the top twenty five for five years running (Amazon Investor Relations, 2012). What this signals is that Amazon has progressed from relying on enterprise-wide infrastructure to compete and is now on the growth trajectory of making supply chain processes their competitive advantage.

Introduction Workplace training is vitally important for any company – whether the company has mostly native-born experienced workers or a culturally diverse workforce including recent immigrants. But when it comes to training needs for culturally diverse employees there are strategies that should be applied and fine-tuned, and this paper addresses those strategies and tactics. Thesis: Old training models – used by HR departments and in business colleges – that are linear and simplistic should be considered outdated and irrelevant. The up-to-date training strategies do not stereotype cultures based on national cultural generalizations, but rather they approach cultural training based on individuals and their values and their ability to adjust to values in the new work environment.

People are influenced by leaders. Leaders cannot affect people without understanding why people behave the way they do. Successful and effective leaders are, therefore, learners of human behavior. Good leader not only try to understand the personalities and psychology of their subordinates but they also consistently evaluate and assess themselves in order to be productive (Clawson 2001). Till date, no studies have produced a clear profile of an ideal leader; his authoritative styles, distinctive characteristics or personality traits. This makes it crystal clear that authentic leaders know who they are. They don't imitate or become replicas of others. On the other hand, they "demonstrate a passion for their purpose, practice their values consistently, and lead with their hearts as well as their heads" (George, Sims, McLean & Mayer 2007).

The modern day economic agents function in a more and more dynamic business environment, in which they have to simultaneously serve the growing needs of numerous categories of stakeholders, such as customers, employees, business partners, the general public and so on. In such a setting, the firms devise and implement a wide array of methods and strategies by which to serve these needs and to also maximize their chances of attaining their pre-established business goals.

Amron International Inc. is a division of Amtec and manufactures ammunition for the U.S. military. Amron is located in Antigo, Wisconsin. Amron also manufacturer's mechanical subsystems including fuses for rockets and other military ammunitions as well as producing TNT, a highly explosive substance used in bombs. This work in writing has examined the security plans for Amron International Inc. located in Antigo, Wisconsin. The security plans set out for the manufacturing facilities are sufficient and address properly all areas of potential concern and possible breach of security. The manager of security and personnel ensures that the objectives of these plans are met in coordination with the other security personnel that work in achieving these objectives for Amron International Inc.