The Executive Way

List of Figures and TablesList of CasesPreface and Acknowledgments1: Introduction2: Setting the Scene3: Patterns of Conflict Management in Thirteen Executive Contexts4: Modern Times: Authoritative Conflict Management in a Mechanistic Bureaucracy5: Silent Hives: Minimalistic Conflict Management in an Atomistic Organization6: Brave New World: Reciprocal Conflict Management in a Matrix System7: Conclusion: Orthodoxy, Change, and IdentityAppendix A: Anatomy of an Ethnography of Business ElitesAppendix B: Aggregate Comparative DataAppendix C: Glossary of Native Terms at PlaycoNotesReferencesIndex Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

In just twenty years, Amazon.com has gone from a start-up internet bookseller to a global company revolutionizing and disrupting multiple industries, including retail, publishing, logistics, devices, apparel, and cloud computing.But what is at the heart of Amazon's rise to success? Is it the tens of millions of items in stock, the company's technological prowess, or the many customer service innovations like "one-click"?As a leader at Amazon who had a front-row seat during its formative years, John Rossman understands the iconic company better than most. From the launch of Amazon's third-party seller program to their foray into enterprise services, he witnessed it all-the amazing successes, the little-known failures, and the experiments whose outcomes are still in doubt.In The Amazon Way, Rossman introduces readers to the unique corporate culture of the world's largest Internet retailer, with a focus on the fourteen leadership principles that have guided and shaped its decisions and its distinctive leadership culture.Peppered with humorous and enlightening firsthand anecdotes from the author's career at Amazon, this revealing business guide is also filled with the valuable lessons that have served Jeff Bezos's "everything store" so well-providing expert advice for aspiring entrepreneurs, CEOs, and investors alike.

Ever since Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. used "imperial presidency" as a book title, the term has become central to the debate about the balance of power in the U.S. government. Since the presidency of George W. Bush, when advocates of executive power such as Dick Cheney gained ascendancy, the argument has blazed hotter than ever. Many argue the Constitution itself is in grave danger. What is to be done? The answer, according to legal scholars Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule, is nothing. In The Executive Unbound, they provide a bracing challenge to conventional wisdom, arguing that a strong presidency is inevitable in the modern world. Most scholars, they note, object to today's level of executive power because it varies so dramatically from the vision of the framers. But there is nothing in our system of checks and balances that intrinsically generates order or promotes positive arrangements. In fact, the greater complexity of the modern world produces a concentration of power, particularly in the White House. The authors chart the rise of executive authority straight through to the Obama presidency. Political, cultural and social restraints, they argue, have been more effective in preventing dictatorship than any law. The executive-centered state tends to generate political checks that substitute for the legal checks of the Madisonian constitution.

A collection of evaluation tools and guidance for nonprofit board members as they proceed through the evaluation process with their executive director.