Dr. David L. Snead s Thesis Statement - 952 Words

I believe that the author: Dr. David L. Snead’s thesis statement is as follows: How did George Browne, an American enlistee fair during World War I, along with his relationship with his sweetheart. I shall show during this book review through several points of how Dr. David L. Snead shows this. First, we shall look at how he sets up the events in the book. Followed by, how Dr. David L. Snead, has put to wonderful use the letters that were sent between Browne and Marty (his sweetheart). Then lastly, how he portrayed the American cause through the eyes of Browne. Dr. David L. Snead, sets up his book like a diary of sorts. The table contents for chapters states as follows: Mobilization and Training in the United States; From the States to a Quiet Sector in France; Training and Action in a Quiet Sector; Champagne and the Battle of the Ourcq River; Rest and the Battle of Saint-Mihiel; The Meuse-Argonne Offensive and the End of the War. Which would be like a series of entries that w ould be listed during moves by a soldier in a log. Secondly, Dr. David L. Snead, also puts information about the current action or move prior to the letter entry or after, to set the stage of events. Lastly, the book is written mostly in first person, through the eyes of Browne, with some input from a narrator/outside source. Now, let us take a look at the second part of my argument; of how, Dr. David L. Snead, uses letters to portray the actions taking place to marvelous use. â€Å"July 20, 1918Show MoreRelatedDr. David L. Snead s Thesis Statement938 Words   |  4 Pages I believe that the Author: Dr. David L. Snead’s thesis statement is as follows: How did George Browne, an American enlistee fair during World War I, with his sweetheart and himself. I shall show during this book review through several points of how Dr. David L. Snead shows this. First, we shall look at how he sets up the events in the book. Followed by, how Dr. David L. Snead puts to good use letters sent between Browne and Marty (his sweetheart). Then lastly, how he portrayed the American cause

The Role of Transnational Corporations and NGOs in International Relations Free Essays

The recent increase in the international activities of transnational corporations and nongovernmental organisations has challenged state-centric models of international relations to explain the apparent contribution that non-state actors make to the international political system. NGOs influence the international system by introducing principles into discussions on the legitimacy of states’ behaviour, while TNC capital movement affects states’ policy decisions more directly. Accordingly, one-dimensional state-centric theories are ill-equipped to account for our multi-dimensional world with its various actors and their interests. We will write a custom essay sample on The Role of Transnational Corporations and NGOs in International Relations or any similar topic only for you Order Now The 50 largest transnational corporations (TNCs) have an annual sales revenue greater than the gross national product of 132 member countries of the United Nations, and many non-governmental human rights advocacy organisations (NGOs) now count their members in the millions while at least 40 UN countries have fewer than a million citizens (Willetts, 2001). The involvement of such large transnational corporations and NGOs in international politics suggests that state-centric models of international relations, which propose states as the primary international actors, are outdated. The aim of this paper is to describe the involvement of TNCs and NGOs in international relations and to show that state-centric models are unable to explain many of the changes in the international political system. The International Activities of NGOs Numerous recent changes in the international system can be traced directly back to NGO activities. In the 1970s Amnesty International led an extensive worldwide campaign against state torture, which culminated in the 1984 signing of the international convention against torture. A second example is a group of NGOs and governments that campaigned for the banning of the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of landmines and cluster munitions. This process eventually resulted in theOttawamine ban treaty and the convention on cluster munitions that have now been signed by 160 and 108 countries respectively. A third example involves Child Soldiers International, a group of transnational NGOs that managed to bring about the 2000 UN â€Å"Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict†, currently signed by 129 countries. These three cases, among very many others, demonstrate that transnational NGOs contribute many changes to the international system and that they are, thus, important international actors. Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye (1971), Richard Mansbach (1976, 1981) and James Rosenau (1990) reached a similar conclusion following extensive quantitative analyses of the amount of NGO involvement in international decisions. Kenneth Waltz, on the other hand, argues that NGOs sometimes do play a role, but that the capabilities and power of states render them so much more significant that the international system can be understood without reference to non-state actors (1979). The most powerful actors determine the structure of the international system and regulate the roles that others can play. States operate to ensure their survival in an insecure international environment, so when â€Å"the crunch comes, states re-make the rules by which other actors operate (Waltz, 1986). Accordingly, almost all countries use torture when they experience a substantial loss of security, employ landmines if no better weapons are available (Evans and Leigh, 2010) and utilise child soldiers if no other option presents itself (Human Rights Watch, 2011). This implies that NGOs can make contributions to international policies, but only to policies that governments are willing to change. Those policies that states are strongly attached to cannot be changed by non-state actors, and will be altered only when those states discover new methods to obtain the same benefits or avert the same threats. This state-centric view captures the foundational elements of the international inter-state security milieu, but cannot account for the international interactions that shape it. NGOs are gradually affecting a shift in the types of policies that states can legitimately and publically adopt without widespread mutiny. Between the 1950s and 1970s, theUnited Statescould persuade most of its citizens that the war inVietnam, with its tens of thousands of American and millions of Asian deaths, was crucial to American in terests. With much lower damage, the majority of Americans quickly opposed their wars inAfghanistanandIraq. Similarly, in 2006 and 2009,Israelreceived a more hostile civil society response to their killing of 1,100 Lebanese and 1,417 Palestinians than it received to the killing of 20,000 Lebanese in the 1980s. Even the Russian conduct inGeorgiain 2008 was more measured than its carpet-bombing of Afghan villages in the 1980s. Similarly, concerned reports of sanctions-related Iranian civilian suffering have already appeared in the European press. It is doubtful that civil society will tolerate thousands of deaths, let alone the hundreds of thousands of sanction-related deaths thatIraqsuffered during the 1990s. Over time, transnational NGOs have contributed to the debate on what can qualify as a security problem and what can pass as an acceptable response to it. By introducing information, norms and the language of rights into international policy debates, their contribution is tangibl e through their influence over those upon whom governments rely to carry out state policies. The International Activities of TNCs Transnational corporations exercise their influence in the international system through the movement of capital from states that curb their profits to states that do not. Accordingly, states tend to conceive of corporate interests as national interests and often implement business-friendly policies without being explicitly pressured (Korten, 1995, Ohmae, 1995, Willetts, 2001). The current reluctance of Europe and theUSto regulate the financial sector stems partly from the fear that large investors will transfer their investments from countries that do regulate to countries that do not. The same dilemma is noticeable in African debates about investors with poor human rights records. For example, while the trade unionists in the South African government opposed Walmart’s investment in the country, they were outvoted by ministers who argued that the country needed the investment. While Andrew Walter argues that academic literature often over-states the case for corporate influenc e, he cites only a few East Asian states as examples of states that manage to resist it successfully (Walter, 1999). A detailed investigation of the question is beyond the scope of this paper, but the prima facie case is certainly strong that corporate capital mobility has affected the contours of the international system. Conclusion While the state-centric model of international relations may have been appropriate to capture the post-world war II international system, it lacks the ability to account for a world where state security has to compete with human rights and financial profits for importance on the international stage. While it is true that states champion security issues, it is also true that NGOs promote human rights and that TNCs advance the goal of financial profit. A one-dimensional world fit for a one-actor theory has given way to a complex world of multiple issues and the multifarious actors that promote them. References Evans, R. Leigh, D. (2010) WikiLeaks Cables: Secret Deal Let Americans Sidestep Cluster Bomb Ban. The Guardian. London. Human Rights Watch (2011) U.S., Don’t Fund Child Soldiers. New York. Keohane, R. O. Nye, J. S. (1971) Transnational Relations and World Politics, Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press. Korten, D. (1995) When Corporations Rule the World, San Francisco, Berrett-Koehler. Mansbach, R. W., Ferguson, W. Y. Lampert, D. (1976) The Web of World Politics: Non-State Actors in the Global System, New Jersey, Prentice Hall. Mansbach, R. W. Vasquez, J. A. (1981) In Search of Theory: A New Paradigm for Global Politics, New York, Columbia University Press. Ohmae, K. (1995) The End of the Nation State, New York, Free Press. Rosenau, J. N. (1990) Turbulence in World Politics, New York, Harvester Wheatsheaf. Walter, A. (1999) Globalization and policy convergence: the case of direct investment rules. IN HIGGOTT, R. BEILER, A. (Eds.) Non-State Actors in the Global Economy. London, Routledge. Waltz, K. (1979) Theory in International Politics, Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley. Waltz, K. (1986) Political Structures† and â€Å"Anarchic Orders and Balances of Power. IN KEOHANE, R. O. (Ed.) Neorealism and its Critics. New York, Columbia University Press. Willetts, P. (2001) Transnational Actors and International Organizations in Global Politics. IN BAYLIS, J. B. SMITH, S. (Eds.) The Globalisation of World Politics. New York, Oxford University Press. How to cite The Role of Transnational Corporations and NGOs in International Relations, Essay examples

Disruptive Technology free essay sample

Disruptive Technology Abstract The objective of this project is to explain the emergence of disruptive technology in the IT industry that will enable and help the organizations growth in a cost effective manner. One of the hottest topics in today’s IT corridors is the uses and benefits of virtualization technologies. IT companies all over the globe are executing virtualization for a diversity of business requirements, driven by prospects to progress server flexibility and decrease operational costs. InfoTech Solutions being dominant IT solution provider can be broadly benefited by implementing the virtualization. This paper is intended to provide the complete details of virtualization, its advantages and strategies for SMEs to migrate. Introduction 2009 IT buzz word is ‘Virtualization’. Small, medium and large business organizations seriously started to re organize their e-business strategy towards the successful disruptive technology of virtualization. Virtualization of business applications permits IT operations in organizations of all sizes to decrease costs, progress IT services and to reduce risk management. The most remarkable cost savings are the effect of diminishing hardware, utilization of space and energy, as well as the productivity gains leads to cost savings. In the Small business sector virtualization can be defined as a technology that permits application workloads to be maintained independent of host hardware. Several applications can share a sole, physical server. Workloads can be rotated from one host to another without any downtime. IT infrastructure can be managed as a pool of resources, rather than a collection of physical devices. Disruptive Technology Disruptive Technology or disruptive Innovation is an innovation that makes a product or service better by reducing the price or changing the market dramatically in a way it does not expect. Christensen (2000) stated that ‘‘disruptive technologies are typically simpler, cheaper, and more reliable and convenient than established technologies’’ (p. 192). Before we do any research on disruptive technology it is useful and necessary to summarize the Christensen’s notion of disruptive technology. Christensen was projected as â€Å"guru† by the business (Scherreik, 2000). His work has been broadly referred by scholars or researchers working in different disciplines and topics like the development of new product, strategies like marketing and management and so on. In his book â€Å"The Innovator’s Dilemma,† (Christensen 1997) Christensen had done significant observations about the circumstances under which companies or organizations that are established lose market to an entrant that was referred as disruptive technology. This theory became extremely influential in the management decision making process (Vaishnav, 2008). Christensen’s arguments, from the academic references (Christensen 1992; Christensen and Rosenbloom 1995; Christensen, Suarez et al. 1996) instead of looking in to his famous paperbacks (Christensen 1997; Christensen and Raynor 2003), explains that the entrant might have more advantage then the incumbent and it requires the understanding of three important forces: technological capability (Henderson and Clark 1990), organizational dynamics (Anderson and Tushman 1990), and value (Christensen and Rosenbloom 1995). He argued further that company’s competitive strategy and mainly its earlier choices of markets to serve, decides its perceptions of economic value in new technology, and improves the rewards it will expect to obtain through innovation. Christensen (1995) classifies new technology into two types: sustaining and disruptive. Sustaining technology depends on rising improvements to an already established technology, at the same time Disruptive technology is new, and replaces an established technology unexpectedly. The disruptive technologies may have lack of refinement and often may have performance problems because these are fresh and may not have a verified practical application yet. It takes a lot of time and energy to create something new and innovative that will significantly influence the way that things are done. Most of the organizations are concerned about maintaining and sustaining their products and technologies instead of creating something new and different that may better the situation. They will make change and minor modifications to improve the current product. These changes will give a bit of new life to those products so that they can increase the sales temporarily and keeps the technology a bit longer. Disruptive technologies generally emerge from outside to the mainstream. For example the light bulb was not invented by the candle industry seeking to improve the results. Normally owners of recognized technology organizations tend to focus on their increased improvements to their existing products and try to avoid potential threat to their business (Techcom, 2004). Compared to sustaining products, disruptive technologies take steps into various directions, coming up with ideas that would work against with products in the current markets and could potentially replace the mainstream products that are being used. So it is not considered as disruption, but considered as innovation. It is not only replacing, but improving ahead what we have now making things enhanced, quicker, and mostly cooler. Either it may be disruptive or innovative; technologies are changing the â€Å"future wave† in to reality and slowly started occupying the world. On one hand, the warning of disruption makes incumbents suspicious about losing the market, while emerging new entrants confident of inventing the next disruptive technology. Perhaps, such expects and worries produce more competition in the market place. It seems that every year there is a laundry list of products and technologies that are going to â€Å"change the world as we know it. † One that seems to have potential to achieve the title of a disruptive technology is something that has been around for a while now: virtualization. Gartner (2008) describes disruptive technology as â€Å"causing major change in the accepted way of doing things, including business models, processes, revenue streams, industry dynamics and consumer behaviors†. Virtualization is one of the top ten disruptive technologies listed by Gartner (Gartner. com). This virtualization technology is not new to the world. As computers turn into more common though, it became obvious that simply time-sharing a single computer was not always ideal because the systems can be misused intentionally or unintentionally and that may crash the entire system to alt. To avoid this multi system concept emerged. This multi system concept provided a lot of advantages in the organizational environment like Privacy, security to data, Performance and isolation. For example in organization culture it is required to keep certain activities performing from different systems. A testing application run in a system sometimes may halt the system or crash the syst em completely. So it is obvious to run the application in a separate system that won’t affect the net work. On the other hand placing different applications in the same system may reduce the performance of the system as they access the same available system resources like memory, network input/output, Hard disk input/output and priority scheduling (Barham, at,. el, 2003). The performance of the system and application will be greatly improved if the applications are placed in different systems so that they can have its own resources. It is very difficult for most of the organization to invest on multiple systems and at times it is hard to keep all the systems busy to its full potential and difficult to maintain and also the asset value keeps depreciating. So investing in multiple systems becomes waste at times, however having multi systems obviously has its own advantages. Considering this cost and waste, IBM introduced the first virtual machine in 1960 that made one system to be as it was multiple. In the starting, this fresh technology allowed individuals to run multiple applications at the same time to increase the performance of person and computer to do multitask abilities. Along with this multi tasking factor created by virtualization, it was also a great money saver. The multitasking ability of virtualization that allowed computers to do more than one task at a time become more valuable to companies, so that they can leverage their investments completely (VMWare. com). Virtualization is a hyped and much discussed topic recently due to its potential characteristics. Firstly it has capacity to use the computer resources in a better potential way maximizing the company’s hardware investment. It is estimated that only 25% of the total resources are utilized in an average data center. By virtualization large number older systems can be replaced by a highly modern, reliable and scalable enterprise servers reduce the hardware and infrastructure cost significantly. It is not just server consolidation, virtualization offers much more than that like the ability to suspend, resume, checkpoint, and migrate running Chesbrough (1999a, 1999b). It is exceptionally useful in handling the long running jobs. If a long running job is assigned to a virtual machine with checkpoints enabled, in any case it stops or hangs, it can be restarted from where it stopped instead of starting from the beginning. The main deference of today’s virtualization compared to the older mainframe age is that it can be allocated any of the service’s choice location and is called as of Distributed Virtual Machines that opens a whole lot of possibilities like monitoring of network, validating security policy and the distribution of content (Peterson et, al, 2002). The way virtual technology breaks the single operating system boundaries is what made it to be a significant part of technology that leads in to the disruptive technology group. It allows the users to run multiple applications in multiple operating systems on a single computer simultaneously. (VMWare. com, 2009) Basically, this new move will have a single physical server and that hardware can be made in to software that will use all the available hardware resources to create a virtual mirror of it. The replications created can be used as software based computers to run multiple applications at the same time. These software based computers will have the complete attributes like RAM, CPU and NIC interface of the physical computers. The only different is that there will be only one system instead of multiple running different operating systems (VMWare. com, 2009) called guest machines. Virtual Machine Monitor Guest virtual machines can be hosted by a method called as Virtual Machine Monitor or VMM. This should go hand-in-hand with virtual machines. In realty, VMM is referred as the host and the hosted virtual machines are referred as guests. The physical resources required by the guests are offered by the software layer of the VMM or host. The following figure represents the relationship between VMM and guests. The VMM supplies the required virtual versions of processor, system devices such as I/O devices, storage, memory, etc. It also presents separation between the virtual machines and it hosts so that issues in one cannot effect another. As per the research conducted by Springboard Research study recently, the spending related to virtualization software and services will reach to 1. 5 billion US dollar by the end of 2010. The research also adds that 50% of CIOs interested in deploying virtualization to overcome the issues like poor performance system’s low capacity utilization and to face the challenges of developing IT infrastructure. TheInfoPro, a research company states that more than 50% of new servers installed were based on virtualization and this number is expected to grow up to 80% by the end of 2012. V irtualization will be the maximum impact method modifying infrastructure and operations by 2012. In reference to Gartner, Inc. 008, Virtualization will renovate how IT is bought, planed, deployed and managed by the companies. As a result, it is generating a fresh wave of competition among infrastructure vendors that will result in market negotiation and consolidation over the coming years. The market share for PC virtualization is also booming rapidly. The growth is expected to be 660 million compared to 5 million in till 2007. Virtualization strategy for mid-sized businesses Virtualization has turn out to be a significant IT strategy for small and mid-sized business (SMEs) organizations. It not only offers the cost savings, but answers business continuity issues and allows IT managers to: †¢Manage and reduce the downtime caused due to the planed hardware maintenance that will reduce the down time resulting higher system availability. †¢Test, investigate and execute the disaster recovery plans. †¢Secure the data, as well as non-destructive backup and restore Processes †¢Check the stability and real-time workloads In these competitive demanding times, SME businesses organizations require to simplify the IT infrastructure and cut costs. However, with various storage, server and network requirements, and also sometimes might not have sufficient physical space to store and maintain systems, the company’s chances can be restricted by both less physical space and budget concerns. The virtualization can offer solutions for these kind issues and SMEs can significantly benefit not only from server consolidation, but also with affordable business continuity. What is virtualization for mid-sized businesses? In the Small business sector virtualization can be defined as a technology that permits application workloads to be maintained independent of host hardware. Several applications can share a sole, physical server. Workloads can be rotated from one host to another without any downtime. IT infrastructure can be managed as a pool of resources, rather than a collection of physical devices. It is assumed that the virtualization is just for large enterprises. But in fact it is not. It is a widely-established technology that decreases hardware requirements, increases use of hardware resources, modernizes management and diminish energy consumption. Economics of virtualization for the midmarket The research by VMWare. om (2009) shows that the SMEs invested on virtualization strategy has received their return of investment (ROI) in less than year. In certain cases, this can be less than seven months with the latest Intel Xeon 5500 series processors http://www-03. ibm. com/systems/resources/6412_Virtualization_Strategy_-_US_White_Paper_-_Apr_24-09. pdf [accessed on 04/09/09] The below image explains how the virtualization simplified a large utility company infrastructure with 1000 systems with racks and cables to a dramatically simpler form. Source : http://www-03. ibm. om/systems/resources/6412_Virtualization_Strategy_-_US_White_Paper_-_Apr_24-09. pdf [accessed on 04/09/09] Virtualization SME advantages 1. Virtualization and management suite presents a stretchable and low -cost development platform and an environment with high capability. 2. Virtualization provides the facility to rotate virtual machines that are live between physical hosts. This ability numerous advantages like business continuity, recovery in disaster, balancing of workload, and even energy-savings by permitting running applications to be exchanged between physical servers without disturbing the service. . Virtualization can help you take full advantage of the value of IT Pounds: †¢Business alertness in varying markets †¢A flexible IT infrastructure that can scale with business growth †¢ High level performance that can lever the majority of d emanding applications †¢ An industry-standard platform architecture with intellectual management tools †¢ Servers with enterprise attributes—regardless of their size or form factor 4. Virtualization can help you to advance IT services: †¢The provision to maintain the workloads rapidly by setting automatic maintenance process that can be configured to weeks, days or even to inutes. †¢Improve IT responsiveness to business needs †¢Down times can be eliminate by shifting the †¢To a great extent decrease, even eliminate unplanned downtime. †¢Reducing costs in technical support, training and mainte ¬nance. Conclusion: This is the right time for Small and mid-sized businesses like InfoTech Solutions to implement a virtualization strategy. Virtualization acts as a significant element of the IT strategy for businesses of all sizes, with a wide range of benefits and advantages for all sized businesses. It helps InfoTech Solutions to construct an IT infrastructure with enterprise-class facilities and with a with a form factor of Return Of Investment. It is expected that more than 80% of organizations will implement virtualization by the end of 2012. So SME organizations like InfoTech Solutions should seriously look in to their E-business strategy for considering the virtualization or they may be left behind the competitors. References 1. Adner, Ron (2002). When Are Technologies Disruptive? A Demand- Based View of the Emergence of Competition. Strategic Management Journal 23(8):667–88. . Anderson, P. and M. L. Tushman (1990). Technological Discontinuities and Dominant Designs a Cyclical Model of Technological-Change. Administrative Science Quarterly 35(4): 604-633. 3. Barham, B. Dragovic, K. Fraser, S. Hand, T. Harris, A. Ho, R. Neugebauer, I. Pratt, and A. Warfield. Xen and the art of virtualization. In Proc. 19th SOSP, October 2003. 4. Chesbrough, Henry (1999a). Arrested D evelopment: The Experience of European Hard-Disk-Drive Firms in Comparison with U. S. and Japanese Firms. Journal of Evolutionary Economics 9(3):287–329. 5. Chintan Vaishnav , (2008) Does Technology Disruption Always Mean Industry Disruption, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 6. Christensen, Clayton M. (2000). The Innovator’s Dilemma. When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press. 7. Christensen, C. M. (1992). Exploring the limits of technology S-curve: Architecture Technologies. Production and Operations Management 1(4). 8. Christensen, C. M. and R. S. Rosenbloom (1995). Explaining the Attackers Advantage -Technological Paradigms, Organizational Dynamics, and the Value Network. Research Policy 24(2): 233-257. . Christensen, C. M. , F. F. Suarez, et al. (1996). Strategies for survival in fast-changing industries. Cambridge, MA, International Center for Research on the Management 10. Christensen, C. M. (1992). Exploring the limits of technology S-curve: Component Technologies. Production and Operations Management 1(4). 11. Christensen, C. M. (1997). The innovators dilemma : when n ew technologies cause great firms to fail. Boston, Mass. , Harvard Business School Press. 12. Christensen, C. M. and M. E. Raynor (2003). The innovators solution : creating and sustaining successful growth. Boston, Mass. , Harvard Business School Press. 13. Cohan, Peter S. (2000). The Dilemma of the ‘‘Innovator’s Dilemma’’: Clayton Christensen’s Management Theories Are Suddenly All the Rage, but Are They Ripe for Disruption? Industry Standard, January 10, 2000. 14. Gartner Says; http://www. gartner. com/it/page. jsp? id=638207 [ accessed on 04/09/09] 15. Henderson, R. M. and K. B. Clark (1990). Architectural Innovation – the Reconfiguration of Existing Product Technologies and the Failure of Established Firms. Administrative Science Quarterly 35(1): 9-30. 16. MacMillan, Ian C. nd McGrath, Rita Gunther (2000). Technology Strategy in Lumpy Market Landscapes. In: Wharton on Managing Emerging Technologies. G. S. Day, P. J. H. Schoemaker, and R. E. Gunther (eds. ). New York: Wiley, 150–171. 17. Scherreik, Susan (2000). When a Guru Manages Money. Business Week, July 31, 2000. 18. L. Peterson, T. Anderson, D. Culler, and T. Roscoe, A Bluep rint for Introducing Disruptive Technology into the Internet, in Proceedings of HotNets I, Princeton, NJ, October 2002. 19. VirtualizationBasics. VMWare. com. http://www. vmware. com/virtualization/ [Accessed on 04/09/09]