Capital Punishment Justice Or Murder Philosophy Essay

Capital Punishment Justice Or Murder Philosophy Essay Capital Punishment has been around since ancient civilizations. According to the Public Broadcasting Service the first recorded death penalty was in the 16th Century BC where a man was accused of using magic, and ordered to take his own life. Different forms of the death penalty where used back in ancient times including stoning, hanging, beheading, crucifixion, throwing the criminal from a rock, and sawing asunder. Later, the form of punishment was stoning where heavy rocks where placed on the convicted or they would be hanged. Beheading was the form used for the upper-class (Reggio). In the article Capital Punishment it states that The forms of capital punishment in ancient China were varied and ran the gamut from boiling and burning to beheading and burying alive (2). PBS says the electric chair was brought to life in the late 1800s when an electric company, that used direct current, made videos killing animals to show how dangerous alternating current was, which was used by their rivals. The public figured if it could kill animals it could kill humans. Today the most accepted form of the death penalty is by lethal injection, but some states still use electrocution, hanging, firing squad, and lethal gas (Reggio). Attempts have been made to abolish capital punishment and it will most likely never be completely abolished. Although capital punishment can be said as legalized murder, it needs to be an option of punishment referred to more often and not get abolished. The death penalty is said to be a cruel punishment, but in reality it is not as cruel as one may think. Capital Punishment reduces the chances of offenders returning to society indefinitely. Future offenders will be deterred from murdering in order to live. Families of victims will gain closure for their lost one and will not have to go to court more than what they have to. All of the citizens in the United States have to pay taxes and a large amount of those tax dollars go into our prison system. The death penalty is the appropriate punishment for the offender of serious crimes. In the bible it says criminals should be killed for several different acts of crime. Capital punishment is said to kill innocent people though. Despite one negative side of capital punishment it still needs to be used more often in the United States justice system. When capital punishment is brought up to someone opposed to it their number one argument will be that innocent people are being put on death row. The way the justice system works in the United States is that a jury decides whether or not the defendant is innocent or guilty. A jury is said to not be one hundred percent accurate since they did not witness the crime and are deciding just based on what they are told. Lie detector machines also cannot be used as a way to convict people since they are not always completely accurate. There have been several people that have been wrongfully convicted in the past, but the number of people getting wrongfully convicted has dropped since years past. In the process of gathering evidence to convict criminals investigators will gather DNA evidence from the crime scene. Once the police have arrested suspects, the police will then gather DNA taken from the suspect. New technology has allowed the investigators to compare the DNA taken from the crime s cene and from the suspect. If the DNA does not match then the police know they do not have the person who committed the crime. Aronson says that DNA evidence is more accurate and reliable than any other forensic science (603). If the DNA does match then the police know they have the right person since nobody in the world has the same exact DNA and that DNA cannot be false. According to Aronson DNA profiling is based on the fundamental premise that, with the exception of identical twins, no two human beings have exactly the same genetic make-up (612). The chances of putting a criminal on death row are not entirely impossible but are very close thanks to new DNA technology. If the death penalty does end up killing a few innocent people it is not a reason to completely abolish the death penalty. In Ted Gottfrieds book he says many desirable social practices cannot avoid killing innocents by accident. For instance, ambulances save many lives, but they also run over some pedestrians. We do not abolish ambulances, because they save more innocent people than they kill. So does the death penalty (57). If people want to abolish the death penalty due to the fact of killing innocent people then nearly everything will have to be abolished since anyone can be killed anything. The 8th Amendment of the United States Constitution prohibits the use of cruel and unusual punishment. At first thought some may say the death penalty is a cruel punishment. The death penalty today is a lot less cruel than previous forms of the death penalty. The point of the death penalty in years past was literally to torture the person. When getting beheaded sometimes the ax would miss and hit a different part of the body or the ax would not go all the way through and the person would remain alive until another swing occurred. Even the electric chair took a few minutes before the person would be killed. Lethal injection is the most common form of the death penalty used today. The person being injected feels no pain and passes away peacefully with no side effects. The US Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty is not cruel per se and is not in conflict with the 8th amendment of the US constitution (Zivot). Many will say that it is wrong to kill someone for any punishment. In the article White Paper On Ethical Issues Concerning Capital Punishment it states that You can say that the human life is so valuable that we do not have any right to take it away. But you can also say the opposite: that it is so valuable that he who wastes his life has lost his right to live (84). It may be wrong for killing people in some instances but the death penalty needs to be necessary for serious crimes such as mass murder or pre-meditated murder, but does not need to for small less harmful crimes. Steven and Naomi Shatz say that death sentence rates demonstrate that prosecutors and jurors consider certain kinds of murders to be more aggravated (i.e., more death-worthy) than others (95). Mass murders and pre-meditated murders are two types of murders that are more death-worthy than other types. The reason they are more death-worthy is because they are planned out. The person who is committing the crimes wa nted to kill people for some reason. If the murders are not planned out and just happened then putting the person to death does not fit the crime. The fact that the murder is planned out is what gives it the possibility to have a death sentence with it. Even if a judge and jury do accidently put someone on death row that is innocent in the long run the death penalty will have saved more innocent people than killing them. The death penalty will have saved more people because after spending some time in prison, convicts can get released from prison on parole even if they have a life sentence. If someone in prison has good behavior they will usually get released on parole. Even if the criminal has good behavior in prison that does not mean he or she will never commit another crime once they are back out in society. Criminals also escape from prisons very occasionally. Once a prisoner has escaped they will most likely kill again. A person who testified against the prisoner is at danger from an escaped convict or just another person that the prisoner did not like. When someone escapes from a prison it raises a huge threat to the public putting everyone in a state of fear and hundreds of law enforcement officers have to be called out to s earch. Having that many officers in a man hunt requires valuable resources and a lot of tax payer dollars. The death penalty will always make sure that the prisoner will not commit any more crimes from either being released on parole or from escaping the prison they are being held at. The criminal would not even be able to return to society since they will no longer be alive. During trials for capital punishment the defendant will usually always try to plead guilty due to insanity. If the jury thinks that the person really is insane then they cannot put him or her on death row and instead be put into a mental hospital. Claiming to be insane is the only way to get out of being put to death. A lot of the time the defendant will act to be insane even when they really are not. People will act like these because they want to live and not be put to death. Ted Gottfried exclaims that the psychological truth that people want to live instead of die will deter people from committing crimes. The convicted and their attorney will always plea for life in prison instead of death showing that capital punishment brings fear. If executions where faster than the deterrence of crimes would increase even more. Prisoners themselves even think the death penalty should be the most feared punishment (41). People will stop committing serious crimes because they do not want to be put to death. If the death penalty did not exist then there would be no serious punishment to deter people from committing crimes. Criminals could kill as many people as they wanted and not be seriously punished for it. Some criminals do not mind being in prison for their whole life so they could commit a mass murder and all that would happen would them spend time in prison. The death penalty will show criminals that these crimes are serious and are not taken lightly. People that are thinking of committing a crime that is serious enough to have the death penalty as a punishment will think again before committing the crime since they would rather live than be put to death. When a family member is murdered or a victim of a serious crime it is one of the most heartbreaking things that could ever happen. The family of the victim may never be able to return back to a normal state of feeling secured. In the back of their mind they are thinking what if this criminal comes after me next. The trial for serious crimes can take years to get complete. The family will have to be put through all of these trials which will take them on an emotional rollercoaster having to relive the crime all time. Even when the convict is in prison the family would still have to go to more court dates for whenever the convict would try to get an appeal to his crime by coming up with new evidence that he or she is innocent or to get out of prison on parole. In the article Facing Facts on the Death Penalty it says because of the appeals and occasional re-trials, the families are forced for years to relive the grisly details of their loved ones death-over and over again (Gray). If he or she does get out of prison there is that chance that they might come back after the family. With the family knowing that the previous prisoner was back in society they would be living with a fear and have no sense of security. If the prisoner was sentenced to death in the first place the family would have known that justice was served for the crime committed. Also if the convict was sentenced to death in the first place it would prevent the family from trying to get revenge on him or her when they got out of prison. Another death would then put more people in prison and inflict more pain on more people. Ted Gottfried says that closure can mean several different things, but putting an end to the nightmare of the crime is common in all of the definitions of closure (44). The death penalty will give closure to the family of lost ones and will help to prevent more deaths from revenge. All of the prisons in the United States are run by either the state or federal government. The way the government gets the money to pay for these prisons is by using the money that innocent citizens pay through taxes. It is not fair that the innocent people in this country have to basically pay to let criminals still live. Why should innocent people have to pay to take care of the people who put everyone in fear or even pay to house the person that may have killed a friend or a relative? David Bender proclaims the thought that the man who cruelly and deliberately slaughtered your child for fun or profit is entitled peacefully to live out his days at tax payers expense, playing tennis or baseball or enjoying the prison library, is hard to stomach (55). Citizens should not have to pay for people to live such a peaceful life when they ended anothers life and destroyed a family. Ted Gottfried states in his book that the cost to take care of someone in prison for fifty years will cost alm ost 3.01 million dollars per inmate. It will only cost 1.88 million dollars total per inmate to take care of someone on death row (45). 1.13 million dollars would be saved if inmates were put on death row instead of being in prison for life. The cost of using the death penalty may be more upfront, but the cost of a person with life in prison will eventually be a considerably larger amount. An inmate on death row would have to be housed for a few years tell their execution compared to someone with life in prison that could be locked up for nearly one hundred years if convicted at a young age. Our government would be able to spend the saved money from using the death penalty on other services that will be more useful to all of the taxpayers. Life in prison is not as cruel as many people think it is. Big prisons have different activities for inmates to do such as basketball, weight lifting, and several other activities. Getting life in prison is not a serious enough punishment for someone who committed such a horrendous crime. Why should a criminal get such a nice and peaceful punishment? The death penalty needs to be mandatory for serious enough crimes since life in prison is not near as bad as the pain he or she inflicted on the family of the victim. On the Public Broadcasting Service website it says that the most infamous execution of history occurred approximately 29 AD with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ outside Jerusalem (Reggio). Berns says that The first man and woman violated Gods commandment and were banished (1). The death penalty is talked about in several different books of the bible. Murder, kidnapping, and bestiality are discussed in the book of Exodus. The Bible says he that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death (KJV, Exodus 21.12). A few verses later it says And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death (KJV Exodus 21.15). Sarah Roberts-Cady declares punishment should be like an eye for an eye principle. That is, if a person steals, that person ought to have an equivalent amount of personal belongings taken from them. If a person murders, that person ought to be killed (186). The way the bible describes all of the punishments for every crime is with the eye for a n eye or tooth for a tooth principle. Since the bible says that if someone commits a crime then that same punishment should also be inflicted on them then the death penalty needs to be used for murder cases. The death penalty has been a topic of debate for several years on whether or not it is a good form of punishment or if it is murder. There will most likely never be a clear answer for which one will be completely socially accepted. The death penalty may kill some innocent people, but the number is being constantly reduced thanks to new advances in DNA. The death penalty is not a cruel and unusual punishment so it does not break the 8th amendment of the United States Constitution. Offenders will not return to society since they will be dead. People who are contemplating of committing crimes will be scared away from actually committing the crime in order to stay alive. Families will not have to endure an emotional roller coaster ride by having to go to several court dates. Tax payers do not want to spend valuable money on people who bring fear to everyone in the country. The death penalty needs to always be a form of punishment in certain serious crimes. The bible also even talks about how people should be killed for committing certain criminal acts. It will most likely never be completely abolished, but does need to be used for certain circumstances.

Wish Fulfillment in Mary Shellys Gothic Novel, Frankenstein Essay

Wish Fulfillment in Mary Shelly's Gothic Novel, Frankenstein Everyone stores hidden desires, ambitions, fears, passions and irrational thoughts in his or her unconscious mind, according to Freud's psychoanalytical theory. These secret feelings, often stemming from a person's childhood, can manifest themselves in odd and sometimes extreme ways. This phenomenon is called wish fulfillment. We do not always fully understand why we make the decisions that we do in life, but a certain amount of these choices can be accredited to wish fulfillment. Mary Shelly's gothic novel Frankenstein illustrates several accounts of wish fulfillment through the actions of Robert Walton and Victor Frankenstein in an effort to satisfy their various needs. Robert Walton was raised by his uncle after his father died. On his deathbed, Walton's father entreated his brother not to allow Robert to pursue a seafaring life. Robert instead became a poet so that he "might obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated" (Shelley 16). Unfortunately, Robert was very unsucce...

Dickens Ideas On Gentility As Shown Through Great Expectations :: Great Expectations Essays

Dickens criticized the world of his own time because it valued the status of being a gentleman over someone doing a useful job. Those who thought they were gentlemen often mocked ordinary citizens. Show how he achieved these aims through the language used and his description of the way Pip and the other characters behaved in the novel. In his numerous literary works, Dickens strong sense of right and wrong, and his recognition of the many injustices present in Victorian Society are clearly displayed. There is no better an example of these strong set of ideals then those portrayed in his novel, Great Expectations, which tells the story of Pip, a young boy who is initially fooled into believing that material wealth is a substitute for the real moral values a gentleman should posses. However, through the many trials and tribulations he is forced to go through, he is finally able to identify what it means to be a "true gentleman", one that has acquired true wealth and value. It is only then that he is able to see the real meaning behind Matthew Pocket’s wise words, that: "No man was not a true gentleman at heart, ever was since the world began, a true gentleman in manner." (page 175) In Dickens novel, society’s idea of a gentleman is perceived as someone of great affluence and breeding, who did not necessarily posses the moral values and graces a true gentleman should have. After his initial visit to Satis House, Pip was infatuated by Estella’s beauty, wealth, and self importance. He allowed himself to be degraded by her scornful references to his "coarse hands", and "thick boots", not realizing at this point that these factors are unimportant on the route to becoming a true gentleman. At that very moment, he deludes himself into believing that if he were to meet Estella’s interpretations of gentlemanly conduct, that she would regard him as her equal. Unfortunately, he completely fails to recognize the true moral values present in Joe and Biddy, and is attracted instead by a fantasized version of Miss Havisham’s and Estella’s lifestyles. He sees his visit to Satis House as the first link in the long chain of events which will lead to his eventually becoming a gentleman. Dickens leaves the reader with no doubt that position and rank were major contributory factors as to how a person was regarded in Victorian society.

Relationships and Love in Frosts, Wind and Window Flower Essay

Relationships and Love in Frost's, Wind and Window Flower In "Wind and Window Flower" Frost explores a love too fragile for the lovers to pursue. The lovers in this poem are enticed by one another but remain worlds apart. This tale of love is one of temptation, excitement, and disappointment. The window flower is an image of beauty and warmth. The flower is protected from the outside world and is safe inside the warm, firelit house, as is the woman. In contrast, the image of the winter breeze is cold, fierce, and impersonal. The man knows little of the things of love. The unknown is the attraction between the lovers, it is strong, and in the end will prove superficial. The wind took notice of the flower as she becomes unveiled through the frosty window. The woman's beauty is the attraction which leads the man to her. At this point little is known of her. He is unsure of how to respond to her so he passes by, only to return later. This represents his fear of the unknown, and possibly that of commitment. The man is a stranger to the ways of love. This is see...

Cold Blood :: Character Analysis, Perry Smith

In Truman Capote’s non-fiction novel In Cold Blood, the Clutter family’s murderers, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, are exposed like never before. The novel allows the reader to experience an intimate understanding of the murderer’s pasts, thoughts, and feelings. It goes into great detail of Smith and Hickock’s pasts which helps to explain the path of life they were walking leading up to the murder’s, as well as the thought’s that were running through their minds after the killings. Perry Smith was a short man with a large torso. At first glance, â€Å"he seemed a more normal-sized man, a powerful man, with the shoulders, the arms, the thick, crouching torso of a weight lifter. [However] when he stood up he was no taller than a twelve-year old child† (15). What Smith lacked in stature, he made up in knowledge. Perry was â€Å"a dictionary buff, a devotee of obscure words† (22). As an adolescent, he craved literature and loved to gain insight of the imaginary worlds he escaped into, for Perry’s reality was nothing less than a living nightmare. â€Å"His mother [was] an alcoholic [and] had strangled to death on her own vomit† (110). Smith had two sisters and an older brother. His sister Fern had committed suicide by jumping out of a window and his brother Jimmy followed Fern’s suit and committed suicide the day after his wife had killed herself. Perry’s sister, Barbara, was the only normal one and had made a good life for herself. These traumatic events left Perry mentally unstable and ultimately landed him in jail, where he came into acquaintance with Dick Hickock, who was in jail for passing bad checks. Dick and Perry became friends and this new friendship changed the course of their lives forever. Hickock immediately made note of Perry’s odd personality and stated that there was â€Å"something wrong with Little Perry. Perry could be such a kid, always wetting his bed and crying in his sleep. And often [Dick] had seen him sit for hours just sucking his thumb. In some ways old Perry was spooky as hell. Take, for instance, that temper of his of his. He could slide into a fury quicker than ten drunk Indians. And yet you wouldn’t know it. He might be ready to kill you, but you’d never know it, not to look at it or listen to it† (108). Perry’s short fuse and dysfunctional background were the two pieces to Perry’s corrupt life puzzle that soured and tainted the final â€Å"picture†.

Paper Critique: “Airavat: Security and Privacy for Mapreduce” Essay

1. (10%) State the problem the paper is trying to solve. This paper is trying to demonstrate how Airavat, a MapReduce-based system for distributed computations provides end-to-end confidentiality, integrity, and privacy guarantees using a combination of mandatory access control and differential privacy which provides security and privacy guarantees against data leakage. 2. (20%) State the main contribution of the paper:   solving a new problem, proposing a new algorithm, or presenting a new evaluation (analysis). If a new problem, why was the problem important? Is the problem still important today? Will the problem be important tomorrow? If a new algorithm or new evaluation (analysis), what are the improvements over previous algorithms or evaluations? How do they come up with the new algorithm or evaluation? The main contribution of the paper is that Airavat builds on mandatory access control (MAC) and differential privacy to ensure untrusted MapReduce computations on sensitive data do not leak private information and provide confidentiality, integrity, and privacy guarantees. The goal is to prevent malicious computation providers from violating privacy policies a data provider imposes on the data to prevent leaking information about individual items in the data. The system is implemented as a modification to MapReduce and the Java virtual machine, and runs on top of SELinux 3. (15%) Summarize the (at most) 3 key main ideas (each in 1 sentence.) (1) First work to add MAC and differential privacy to mapreduce. (2) Proposes a new framework for privacy preserving mapreduce computations. (3) Confines untrusted code. 4. (30%) Critique the main contribution a. Rate the significance of the paper on a scale of 5 (breakthrough), 4 (significant contribution), 3 (modest contribution), 2 (incremental contribution), 1 (no contribution or negative contribution). Explain your rating in a sentence or two. This system provides security and privacy guarantees for distributed computations on sensitive data at the ends. However, the data still can be leaked in the cloud. Because multiple machines are involved in the computation and malicious worker can sent the intermediate data to the outside system, which threatens the privacy of the input data. Even not to this extent, temporary data is stored in the workers and those data can be fetched even after computation is done. b. Rate how convincing the methodology is: how do the authors justify the solution approach or evaluation? Do the authors use arguments, analyses, experiments, simulations, or a combination of them? Do the claims and conclusions follow from the arguments, analyses or experiments? Are the assumptions realistic (at the time of the research)? Are the assumptions still valid today? Are the experiments well designed? Are there different experiments that would be more convincing? Are there other alternatives the authors should have considered? (And, of course, is the paper free of methodological errors.) As the author’s stated on page 3 â€Å"We aim to prevent malicious computation providers from violating the privacy policy of the data provider(s) by leaking information about individual data items.† They use differential privacy mechanism to ensure this. One interesting solution to data leakage is that they have the mapper specify a range of its keys. It seems like that the larger your data set is, the more privacy you have because a user affects less of the output, if removed. They showed results that were really close to 100% with the added noise, it seems this is viable solution to protect the privacy of your data input c. What is the most important limitation of the approach? As the authors mention, one computation provider could exhaust this budget on a dataset for all other computation providers and use more than its fair share. While there is some estimation of effective parameters, there are a large number of parameters that must be set for Airavat to work properly. This increases the probability of misconfigurations or configurations that might severely limit the computations that can be performed on the data. 5. (15%) What lessons should researchers and builders take away from this work. What (if any) questions does this work leave open? The current implementation of Airavat supports both trusted and untrusted Mappers, but Reducers must be trusted and they also modified the JVM to make mappers independent (using invocation numbers to identify current and previous mappers). They also modified the reducer to provide differential privacy. From the data provider’s perspective they must provide several privacy parameters like- privacy group and privacy budget. 6. (10%) Propose your improvement on the same problem. I have no suggested improvements.

Sir Richard Branson, Chairman, Virgin Group, Ltd. Case Study

Sir Richard Branson, Chairman, Virgin Group, Ltd. Case Study Sir Richard Branson, Chairman, Virgin Group, Ltd. Case Study By: Katrina Robinson Bus520 Leadership and Organizational Dr. Leonardo Serrano Sir Richard Branson, Chairman, Virgin Group, Ltd. Case Study Outline the Leadership Style of Branson and its effectiveness to the U. S today Richard Branson and Effective Leadership Incorporation of Branson’s Leadership at School or Work. The Leadership Style of Branson and its effectiveness to the U.S today Richard Branson, the chairman and CEO of the Virgin Group has come up with a type of leadership centered on employees. He has embraced transformational leadership model as a style of leadership. Transformational leadership is a leadership style that focused on effecting revolutionary change in organizations through a commitment to the organization’s vision. Transformational leadership includes engendering trust, admiration, loyalty, and respect amongst followers throug h application of charismatic vision and behavior.Transformational leadership encourages change through intellectual stimulation aimed at self-reflective change of values and beliefs. Vision is critical for transformational leadership because employees are more comfortable when they understand the vision and direction of the company going forward. Transformational leadership impacts individuals' self-growth. Transformational leadership develops followers who can perform beyond their own and others' expectations.Transformational Leadership starts with the development of a vision, a view of the future that will excite and convert potential followers. This vision may be developed by the leader, by the senior team or may emerge from a broad series of discussions. Transformational leadership focuses on social values and appears in times of distress and change. Sir Richard Branson has empowered his employees to attain a given vision of the company. This has led to the rise in productivity and the morale of the worker.It has also increased utility and the wide professional and individual growth of the company. Sir Richard Branson is an iconic and legendary figure within business circles. His Virgin companies span the globe, while his thirst for brand domination and sense of adventure tell a story of an intriguing and thought provoking life sprinkled with danger, high risk tactics, pushing the boundaries of the possible and an encompassing purpose that is built upon fairness and change. In terms of leadership model addressed in Chapter 10 and 11, Branson exemplifies a transformational leader.Transformational leadership involves anticipating future trends, inspiring followers to understand and embrace a new vision of possibilities, developing others to be leaders or better leaders, and building the organization or group into a community of challenged and rewarded learners. Visionary, inspiring, daring, and ethical are words that describe transformational leaders. They a re risk takers who seize or create new opportunities. They are also thoughtful thinkers who understand the interactions of technology, culture, stakeholders, and external environmental forces (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2011, page 329).He is not as much concerned about industry-specific expertise as he is with recruiting employees with strong communication and teamwork competencies that mesh with the Virgin culture. He truly feels that getting other peoples input and listening to what people have to say are a core value to him. He carries a notebook in his pocket all the time just in case he hears something interesting from people that he interacts with on any level. He loves to take high-risk decisions if in the end he feels it's worthwhile. According to the authors, passion is essential for task accomplishment.Passion is often more present in entrepreneurial leaders and Sir Richard Branson should be regarded as a passionate leader. On the Virgin group website (5) the company mentions â €Å"giving birth† to companies and â€Å"holding their hand† through the organizational development. This is by all means a supportive standpoint, far away from the quarterly run businesses of many. An example of his courage might be when he under heavy competition in the US decided to sell out Virgin Records to save the financials of Virgin Atlantic.In that deal he also decided to switch bank due to poor support and advice for Virginia Records. An example of Branson’s willingness to take risk is his venture into space tourism with Virgin Galactic. That business is by no doubt regarded as extremely courageous and risky but at the same time driven by the same reasons as any other business, profit. Branson has worked closely with Scaled Composites to develop a tourism spacecraft (9). As he puts it, it was a very risky act that could have gone totally wrong (10), (13).However Branson is not a stranger to risk management, according to an article in Time (6). He comm only starts out small and shares the risk with other investors. His companies are also loosely connected according to the article, to minimize risk for each party. Richard Branson’s ventures portray creativity, venturing into airliners using new creative measures such as touch-screen ordering of food and comfortable planes. This comes in an era where most other airliners are figuring out how to remove the last remaining frills to cut costs.Another developed skill is the possibility of delegating work to his colleagues and management staff and taking a step back. He spends a lot of time in the early days of a new business, drawing the big picture and helping the management setting the business plan and the way forward. When this is done he takes a step back and lets the management get a stake in the business and drive it forward. †The company must be set up so that it can continue without me†. Sir Richard is very thorough in hiring the right people. He is known for bringing in good managers and getting them to stay.If they don’t perform at an existing assignment he brings them into another venture where the person is more likely to perform according to his capabilities. †Look for the best and you’ll get the best†, is his words. Firing people is seldom an option to Sir Richard. This situational leadership model would combine both directive and supportive behaviors. Directive behavior would influence the culture by explaining what needed to be done; helping to organize the how, where, and when of getting it done, and ensuring a more hands on approach to the tactical nature of the plan.Supportive leadership, in combination, would provide both encouragement and coaching, and would act to facilitate problem solving and the large amount of issues that require change management. Both approaches could be used by Virgin, some more often than others, but would be a variable model of directive (high and low) depending on the pa rticular situation at hand. Essentially, this style chooses the right leadership style for the right person – and varies depending upon that individual’s ifts, views, background, and personality (The Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership Theory, 2012) If this model were adopted by Branson, he would have both the responsibility and ethical requirement to continually assess situations at hand, find the most appropriate placement on the above grid for that issue, and then act accordingly. Of course, at his level the â€Å"issues† would likely remain strategic and rather broad, and it would not always be possible to â€Å"never† direct change, or â€Å"always† direct change.Instead, it would be the appropriateness of individual situations and people that would place this model into Virgin’s strategic and tactical locus of operation (Farrington, 2012). Let us imagine for a moment that the technology has improved enough in aeronautics and space travel that it is possible to develop regular trips to a Space Station, or, at the very least, a launch and trip on a shuttle that would orbit the earth and allow passengers to experience space, a view of the planet, and an educational experience. It is quite natural to assume that the Virgin group might be seminal in the development of this type of new tourist activity.The easiest way to integrate some of Branson’s leadership qualities into the daily job would be to first and foremost examine the job and find the most exciting possibilities and potential for it and then to communicate that to colleagues, staff, and management. If in a managerial position, allow employees to come up with creative solutions to problems meet as a group and indicate a goal or challenge, ask for ideas, and then take some time to consider them, allowing employees to participate in this effort and help them feel empowered and part of the team.Part of being a good leader, according to Branson, is al so the ability to know when to back away from a task. â€Å"As much as you need a strong personality to build a business from scratch, you also must understand the art of delegation,† he says. â€Å"I have to be good at helping people run the individual businesses, and I have to be willing to step back. The company must be set up so it can continue without me. † In my opinion, the most important factor of good leadership is relating to other people. If you’re good with people†¦and you really care, genuinely care about people†. Leadership teams are generally composed of management brought together to span the boundaries between different functions in the organization. In order for a product to be delivered to market, the heads of finance, production, and marketing must interact and come up with a common strategy for the product. At top management levels, teams are used in developing goals and a strategic direction for the firm as a whole. Technology is impacting how teams meet and function.Collaborative software and conferencing systems have improved the ability for employees to meet, conduct business, share documents, and make decisions without ever being in the same location. While the basic dynamics of other types of teams may still be relevant, the dynamics and management of virtual teams can be very different. Most theories view leadership as grounded in one or more of the following three perspectives: leadership as a process or relationship, leadership as a combination of traits or personality characteristics, or leadership as certain behaviors or, as they are more commonly referred to, leadership skills.In virtually all of the more dominant theories there exist the notions that, at least to some degree, leadership is a process that involves influence with a group of people toward the realization of goals. I will say on the front end that, in my opinion, leadership is a dynamic and complex process, and that much of what is written these days tends to over-simplify this process. Trait theory postulates that people are either born or not born with the qualities that predispose them to success in leadership roles.Skills theory states that learned knowledge and acquired skills/abilities are significant factors in the practice of effective leadership. Situational theory states that is, to be effective in leadership requires the ability to adapt or adjust one’s style to the circumstances of the situation. Contingency theory states that a leader’s effectiveness is contingent on how well the leader’s style matches a specific setting or situation.The underlying beliefs of path-goal theory (grounded in expectancy theory) are that people will be more focused and motivated if they believe they are capable of high performance, believe their effort will result. The key in transformational leadership is for the leader to be attentive to the needs and motives of followers in an attempt to help th em reach their maximum. Transactional theory is a theory that focuses on the exchanges that take place between leaders and followers.It is based in the notion that a leader’s job is to create structures that make it abundantly clear what is expected of his/her followers and also the consequences (i. e. rewards and punishments) for meeting or not meeting these expectations. References Hellriegel, D. , ; Slocum, J. (2007). Organizational Behavior. Mason, OH: Thompson Higher People and Planet. (2012, January). Retrieved from Virgin. com: http://www. virgin. com/people-and-planet/our-vision The Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership Theory. (2012, January). Retrieved from Mind Tools: http://www. mindtools. com/pages/article/newLDR_44. htm