Position
Essays

Managerial styles reflect the culture in which they developed. It is not surprising that the work experiences and values of American and Japanese managers differ in a number of aspects.

In his article "Playing God' and Invoking a Perspective," Allen Verhey examines not just the advisability of humans "playing God," but the essential meaning of the term itself. He opens his argument rather convincingly…

Overall since the U.S. Supreme Court's rulings on affirmative action in 2003, colleges have had to reconsider how they give preference to students according to race, ethnicity, sex and age not only in admissions, but in…

Taking over the least profitable sales region in a company accustomed to exceptionally high margins despite the commodity-like status of their products is one of the most challenging sales management roles anyone can…

All Marketers Tell Stories Book Review and Analysis

I am writing to propose an exploration. The trip would go south, down the coast of Africa. This trip does highlight some technological barriers, but there are potential economic and other benefits that may result.

To set up the meeting, I first wanted to identify a good candidate company. I decided upon Dunkin' Donuts. I had a couple of choices with respect to my initial contact. I investigated a regional head office but…

If there is ever a major disaster in the United States, it will be very important for the American public to be aware of what the US military can and cannot do. Knowing who to listen to and what orders to follow could save many lives. That is worth consideration, but it also helps to avoid an abuse of power when a disaster strikes and orders seem to come from everywhere. This paper answers the question of whether the US military has quarantine power during a disaster.

One cannot ignore the fact that the globe has penetrated into the age of industrial revolution where the technological and scientific advancements and innovations are at the peak. In this era of progression, social issues and concerns have simultaneously been escalating at an unprecedented rate. Crime, indeed, organized crime has become one of the increasingly growing issues for not only specific nations but for the entire world. In other words, the transnational organized crime that has become a growing concern on a universal basis has elevated the threat and risk to the stability of the nations in terms of political, economic and social (Madsen, 2009).

In the first month of this year, 2012, online shoe retailer Zappos' now a business unit of Amazon, experienced a security breach that was initiated from a distribution center located in Kentucky. The nature of the breach shows how vulnerable the retailer's systems are to employees who choose to break in and attempt successfully to gain access to customer records. It also showed how vulnerable the entire Amazon.com e-commerce system is attacks originating from internal servers. The hacker, an employee, gained access to over 24 million Amazon.com and Zappos' customer records. Despite having sophisticated 128-bit encryption on these systems, the hacker was able to bypass internal systems with knowledge of how the distribution center staff had constructed firewalls and password conventions. The last four digits of the customers' credit cards were taken, their names, addresses, complete customer histories and approval credit limits of they had obtained Amazon.com credit cards (Letzing, 2012). The security systems had not been upgraded since 2010 when Zappos had been purchased for $800 million by Amazon.com and made a core part of the overall company network (Hsieh, 2010). As Zappos' had superior technologies for logistics planning and execution, supply chain planning and execution, and the ability to orchestrate fulfillment with 3rd party logistics providers, Jeff Bezos made the decision to standardize on Zappos' technologies and websites (McDonald, 2011). Zappos' had also created a unique series of technologies that allowed for consumers to inspect entire series of items online and evaluate how they will look in them (Tsuruoka, 2012). Zappos' had also created an entire corporate culture predicated on delivering exceptionally positive, memorable experiences for anyone purchasing online from them, empowering customer service teams to do whatever it could within the boundaries of profitability and legality to exceed customers' expectations (Tsuruoka, 2012). The theft of 24 million records was even more surprising given how strong of a culture the company has, one known for promoting worker autonomy and giving them as much freedom as they need to do their jobs (Shine, 2012). The theft had been motivated by the potential to sell the names on the black market for tens of thousands of dollars, a temptation even the relatively well-paid employees of Amazxon.com could not pass up (Letzing, 2012). The breach was discovered within the Amazon Web Services (AWS) team's audits were completed of transactions across all subsidiaries, including a reconciliation of accesses by role (Letzing, 2012). If Amazon was not able to track the access points and roles of associates looking at data online, chances are this breach would have not been fully found. Given the highly analytical nature of the Amazon.com culture within the AWS business unit, the discovery and reaction to the breach within hours highlights why e-commerce companies need to consider partnering with cloud platform providers for the long-term (Tsuruoka, 2012). If Zappos' had been in the position of hosting their own website and relying on their own infrastructure, the breach may potentially have never found to the extent to which it happened (Letzing, 2012).