Mexican American War Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Mexican American War - Essay Example D. Eisenhower, Frederick Merk, and David M. Pletcher in three important works on the Mexican American war. These works are, respectively: So Far From God: The U.S. War With Mexico, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History, and The Diplomacy of Annexation. The paper begins by discussing each author's thesis, arguments and evidence provided to support the thesis one at a time. It then discusses the works in a comparative fashion. While this author agrees most strongly with Merk's argument that U.S. expansionism-Manifest Destiny was not some unique strategy that was only pursued by Americans, there are merits to the arguments presented in the two other works. The paper ends with a conclusion summarizing the major points covered. John S. D. Eisenhower's book, So Far From God: The U.S. War With Mexico is a narrative history of the Mexican American war. Eisenhower has a distinctly "top down" militaristic, traditional historgraphy approach. It is one that emphasizes the VIPs of the war such as presidents and generals - essentially a "great men" view of history. The book is peppered with military details such as battle actions and tactics. One of Eisenhower's contentions is that the great military man, Santa Anna y Perez de Lebron (Santa Anna), who fought for Mexican independence from Spain was just an indiscreet popular figure. Eisenhower argues that these indiscretions in his pleasures and private life of Santa Anna's effectively barred him from belonging to the elite of Mexican society.2 However, Eisenhower doesn't discuss the possibility of a person being able to be both a populist and a member of this elite at the same time. Eisenhower used primarily books as his sources, though some of the books contain collections of primary resources such as letters and official government documents of the day.3 He also used newspapers and periodicals, though again, the majority of these are not primary or contemporary sources4. This is perhaps a reflection of his preference for traditional, "great men" history, in respecting the opinions of other already published historic works. First hand anecdotes are frequently used when Eisenhower discusses the details of events from the battlefields. There are maps included both assist the reader in following and understanding the text, as well as serve to emphasize the author's "headquarter's history" approach.5 The full title of the book So Far From God: The U.S. War With Mexico 1846-1848 suggests that the book is from the U.S. Side of the war. Substantial sections are written based on earlier writing by North American historians. The breath of research is limited to English sources and, with the exception of three sources, all of non-Mexican origin.6 One of the 'non-Mexican sources is of Fanny Caldern de la Barca's memoirs and de la Barca was born in Scotland7. Eisenhower attempts to be unbiased towards Mexico and Mexicans. This is especially evident in his references to Mexican soldiers who, he concludes, had to fight an unbalanced war just to maintain their national pride. Eisenhower frequently draws attention to their courage as well, especially in reference to the poor, rough leadership they were under. It is rare that a work is completely unbiased, however, and that is the case for So Far From God. Eisenhower's biasis is revealed through the language he uses to refer

Case analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Case analysis - Essay Example So mergers take place when two or more existing companies decide to wipe out their business identities and activities and assumes a new identity jointly as a single entity. The topic of current discussion is the merger of two companies, that is England’s Royal Biscuit Company and Germany’s Edeling. According to Sir John Callaghan, Chairman of the London based, Royal Biscuit Company, there is no evidence available to suggest that both these executives, Mr. Michael Brighton, Head of HR of Royal Biscuits Ltd., and Mr. Dieter Wallach, his counterpart of Edeling worked together on this leadership development plan. The new company ‘Royal Edeling’ which would amicably blend both those existing companies, that is the merger of equals. By taking the two sides-one which is an entrepreneurial Powerhouse that had veritably single- handedly transformed British Snack food industry, and the other, a 120- year old, Munich based family, with a German brand. In this particular Case Study, it is the Royal Biscuits’ proposed merger with German Biscuit-maker major. The major problem for mergers are of integration planning, which was dreadfully behind schedule and merger of the leadership between the two Companies. Seven out of the 10 seats in the new Company’s Management Board of Directors would be held by Royal Biscuits. Regarding the composition of the executives, less than half of the positions on the Supervisory Board would go to Edelings stockholder. However, it was felt that in a merger of equals, leadership assignments should be shared equally. Should the merger take place, according to laws in Germany, the new company would be managed by a Management Board, that would look after operations and also by a Supervisory Board that would supervise the management and would represent all stakeholders Then, the national differences between both British and German

Leadership - Bill Russell Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Leadership - Bill Russell - Essay Example However, the mentioned accolades do not exonerate the fact that just likes any other leader and human, he had his failures too. The only difference is that he did not turn his neck off his goals. In this regard, several leadership attributes can be identified from the splendid career of Russell as derived from his book the second wind. From his strengths and weaknesses, four outstanding leadership attributes can be emulated from Brussels lessons and experiences (Russell 67). These include team work and collaboration, managing change, communication, readiness to learn or agility and growth mindset and finally judgment. In addition, personal integrity, commitment and success are also captured in Brussels splendid career span. Russell’s accomplishments and failures are captured in his rules of success. His first rule is on life mission and daily learning experiences. For example he says that â€Å"we work to become, not acquire†Leardership entails learning and he recommend s that the more a person learns the more, the more he realizes that he still has a lot to learn. This rule is evident in his basketball career after he made several attempts to be included in the junior team with no success. He gives the example that he improved on his skills by regularly watching the past matches that he played. Watching the films made him identify his weakness and improve on them on subsequent matches. Some of his failures he attributed to lack of practice which sometimes fails miserably in some matches. The concept of team work is also one of his major accomplishments (Falkner and Russell 51-55). In a broader sense, he says that whenever he played well, it helped his team mates to even get better results. His key interest was not on personal achievements but using individual skills to uplift team performance. The driving factor behind his commitment he says was not to emerge the best in the entire country but to become astute to their best. Symbolically and to dr ive his message home, he explains that the basketball was his laboratory, workroom and classroom. Among the activities he cites and which formed the major aspects of his accomplishments included shooting at a rebound angle. Russell (78) notes that learning on the probability of player behavior in certain situations on how they are likely to respond are some of the things they greatly learnt. Commenting on his various awards, he says that quality and craftsmanship never happen by accident. He attributes his success in his entire basketball stint to principled intentions, intelligent directions, skillfull execution and sincere effort. He summarizes that craftsmanship in itself represents the best choice out of several alternatives. On the other hand, he cites his failures to several misjudgments and assumptions that he made during his career as a player and a coach. For example he registered several failures during his academic stint which he attributes to lack of commitment. Most of leadership strengths and weaknesses of Russell are intertwined and inclined to his accomplishment and failures. For example one his lessons outlines that craftsmanship is contagious and those players of any great team should always learn from one another. This was contrary to his personality which seemed to be so much introverted. He rarely took time to talk to his teammates and was always withdrawn (Russell 91). Despite being a great asset to

HR Competencies Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

HR Competencies - Assignment Example Secondly, the competence of data interpretation skills helps to take the assessment process to a step further as it ensures that the HR professional makes decisions based on the assessment outcomes (Becker, Huselid & Ulrich, 2001). Based on the discussion above, there are several values that the competencies can be said to bring to the organization. Most importantly, the competences help in making the idea of strategic partnership feasible. Meanwhile, when the HR professional becomes a strategic partner, it can be expected that the organization’s strategy will be applied in a more efficient manner to make the achievement of the HR goals easier. Again, as part of the strategic partnership that will be created, the concepts of shared responsibility and cross-functional teams are expected to be formed. Meanwhile when these concepts are made practical in the organization, they ensure that all parties and entities within different departments of the organization are aided in the performance of their roles so that there can be a form of effectiveness that betters the value created within the organization. For future purposes, it is expected that the competence of intrinsic motivation will be developed. This c ompetence will help employees fuel their personal commitment towards organization growth in general and strategic partnership in