This unique book unveils an invaluable paradigm for companies wishing to create new knowledge. Mitsuru Kodama's new theoretical framework is achieved using a combination of approaches including knowledge sharing, knowledge integration, strategy, organization, corporate culture and leadership. The author presents his new theoretical framework using two models which demonstrate the means for actors both within and outside the company to formulate and implement micro strategies through the structure of dynamic strategic human networks. Detailed case studies are then used to support the theoretical framework. These include specific applications of knowledge innovation from networked strategic communities including large corporations, joint ventures, customer-oriented solution businesses and IT-based management. Research and managerial implications arising from these theoretical frameworks are also explored. Bridging theory and practice and providing international scope, this book will be invaluable to academics and students with an interest in business and management, and to managers in the IT, telecommunications, and electronics industries.

Participation and social responsibility in innovation is the core theme of this book. Both are issues of organization and not of ethics, or the enforcement of other forms of obligations on individual actors. The need is for a democratization of innovation that can make innovation open to broad participation.

Drawing on the author's recent and ongoing research this book explores how to build the organizational capability to realise the strategic potential of information technology. It tackles the gap between theory and practice and how to gain wider adoption of successful socio-technical and benefits-driven approaches to investments in IT.

This book discusses how systems thinking and approaches can aid management consultants in navigating the complexities of client advisory in current realities. It thereby brings to the forefront aspects of holism, flexibility and responsibility - the keys to success in today's world. Management consultants are called in to offer an independent expert view of an organisation/ a situation and are expected to address some of the most pressing problems businesses face. The client does not exist in a silo, but in a complex environment that lies at the intersection of a range of internal and external factors that are often unseen and unpredictable. The organisation itself presents an alien territory that the consultant is expected to acclimatise to within a very short period of time, and come up with solutions that "insiders" would not have been able to visualise. The book presents a range of ideas, concepts and reference cases that are relevant and topical for consultants in their daily work. It argues that systems thinking allows holism and flexibility in management consulting - while holism is about the ability to encompass the environmental and organisational complexity, flexibility is about the ability to think creatively and adopt different approaches to accommodate this complexity. With commentaries, case studies, conceptual models and perspectives that cut across multiple industries, sectors and countries, this book is a valuable resource for academics and professionals alike. The book's inner pages and its page on Springer.com contain additional comments providing perspectives of clients, industry experts and academia.

The impact of political lobbyists remains highly controversial. No-one has explored when they matter. This book tells readers when lobbyists count and analyzes the relationship between lobbying, policy outcomes and the impact of external factors to reveal the professional lobbyist's limited effect on policy. On most policy issues lobbyists simply do not matter. But, on rare occasions lobbyists can make a difference and this book explains when they matter and why.

This book investigates the EU's regional growth dynamics and, in particular, the reasons why peripheral and socio-economically disadvantaged areas have persistently failed to catch up with the rest of the Union. It shows that the capability of the knowledge-based growth model to deliver its expected benefits to these areas crucially depends on tackling a specific set of socio-institutional factors which prevents innovation from being effectively translated into economic growth. The book takes an eclectic approach to the territorial genesis of innovation and regional growth by combining different theoretical strands into one model of empirical analysis covering the whole EU-25. An in-depth comparative analysis with the United States is also included, providing significant insights into the distinctive features of the European process of innovation and its territorial determinants. The evidence produced in the book is extensively applied to the analysis of EU development policies.

This book provides a general overview of the challenges of economic development for the five billion people living in developing countries. While they constitute over 80 percent of the world's population, they account for only 40% of the world's output, and are home to 2.6 billion people living on less than $2.00 per day. Thinking on economic development has shifted over time. Early theories that stressed capital formation and a heavy reliance on the public sector proved inadequate. Gradually, economists began to see that development was a complex, multifaceted problem that combined economic issues with problems of poverty and income distribution, insititution building and governance. While there have been many failures, there have also been many successes. Countries such as China, Chile, Ghana, and Korea demonstrate that good policies and strong institutions can result in remarkable progress. However, many poor countries, particularly those in Africa continue to lag behind. Closing this gap remains a major challenge for the world, particularly as the growing population and output of developing countries accelerate tensions in such areas as trade, immigration and financial flows.

At this critical time in history, the imperative to reimagine our economies and companies could not be more urgent. Yet division and discord risk undermining our response.

Fortunately, many in the business community are helping to solve our most profound challenges, deploying long-term, purpose-led business models that put people and planet first. The key question has flipped from “Why would you do sustainability?” to “Why wouldn’t you?”

In this paradigm-shifting book, former Unilever CEO Paul Polman and sustainable business guru Andrew Winston provide a model to help leaders build companies that contribute more to the world than they use or take—that is, net positive companies. Net Positive outlines the principles and practices for surviving and thriving based on the experience of one world-leading company, Unilever, and other ground-breaking global organizations.

This essential book is for leaders, executives, managers, and professionals who want to succeed but know that winning requires caring deeply about serving the world.

The diversity of the workforce and the implications for management continue to be the focus of a great deal of interest. This is partly because of the importance and urgency of the issues that diversity entails and also because of a growing recognition that many of the dilemmas of diversity management are not proving amenable to easy solutions. Indeed, recent research demonstrates that Britain and the US are, in many ways, becoming more, rather than less unequal societies. This book suggests that metaphor and dialectic play a powerful role in shaping our understandings of ourselves and each other. It draws on original research in organizations and in management education to explore how we can become more aware of these processes within ourselves and challenge those assumptions and stereotypes that contribute to maintaining people in disadvantaged positions.

Based on his diverse personal experiences and two decades of interdisciplinary research, Dr. Ehin unveils the "mysteries" and shows the practicality of tapping into the ever evolving, yet extraordinarily powerful, informal networks present in all social groups. What this book reveals is the extraordinarily dynamic and tight linkage between three "hidden" organizational success factors responsible for most work accomplished in both for profit and nonprofit ventures, especially in the development of new innovations. The book shows why in a knowledge economy it is essential to design organizations that facilitate the fundamental collaborative and creative qualities of human nature rather than unconsciously suppressing them. In doing so, it is made obvious why most mergers and change efforts fail and the reasons why an average employee only works at two-thirds of his/her capacity.

This work clearly demonstrates how "smart" institutions can harness, rather than manage, these invisible emergent forces and in the process avoid the dismal record of past organizational transformation initiatives. Hidden Assets is a must read not only for top executives, knowledge professionals, and organizational scholars, but for everyone associated with private, public, or voluntary social institutions.

The authors advance a new theory of the firm that incorporates behavioural and economic theories with cognitive theory. The book makes a case for predicting strategic change in firms.

This book deals with the concepts of leadership and communication in business organizations, initially on a general level and then in detail through an analysis of specific cases. First the book provides a contextual framework to explain the role and importance of the topic. The foundation is provided by selected behavioural and situational theories. Then 15 different leadership models and their respective communication strategies are specified. The interaction of leadership and communication is examined explaining organizational communication and its tools. In the third part the book looks in detail at the glass, textile and confection industries. It examines the relationship between socio-demographic variables of employees, leadership types and communication styles and systems of managers in these sectors. The results of this study provide researchers and professionals with a number of suggestions for more effective organizational communication and better leadership practice.

This book explores corporate purpose--a company's expressed overriding reason for existing--and its effect upon strategy, executive leadership, employees, and, ultimately, on competitive performance. Sharply challenging the conventional wisdom that corporations should be dedicated to shareholder wealth creation, the author presents a compelling argument that the path to competitive advantage and outstanding long-term financial performance lies instead in a customer-focused corporate purpose.
The book is in four parts. Part I shows how corporate purpose exerts a powerful effect on strategy, management, and the meaning employees derive from their work. A customer-focused purpose harmonizes these critical factors and enables leaders to push strategic thinking deeper into the organization and at the same time to grant employees a greater degree of autonomy. In contrast, a goal of maximizing shareholder wealth sows the seeds of conflict among the market-oriented purpose, product-focused strategies, and the individual values of employees.
Part II critiques the logic of "value-based management" and the relationship of the firm to the equity markets. It explores the validity of extending traditional concepts of property rights to share ownership, concluding that the separation of stock ownership from the responsibility for, and managerial control over, corporate actions makes traditional property rights arguments inapplicable to the underlying assets of a corporation.
Part III examines the functioning of corporate purpose in a global economy. When a firm operates globally, purpose needs to retain its motivational power across national boundaries, which a shareholder-focused purpose does not do.
Part IV explores the implications of corporate purpose for leaders, arguing that infusing an organization with a worthy purpose is an essential responsibility of leadership. Purpose is the foundation for the shared values that define organizational character, raise moral aspirations, and enhance performance. Drawing upon a wide range of thought from the world of business as well as from historical studies, cultural anthropology, philosophy, theology, and psychology, "Leading with Purpose" is sure to be an essential text as businesses move into the twenty-first century.

Confronting the wide range of factors that management face in relation to global changes, this volume focuses on the implication of these changes for all organizations. By presenting its case using a variety of analytical tools ranging from formal game theoretical systems to inductive models based on case studies, this volume concentrates on three main areas: the implications of global change on the competitive environment for employment and working practices; the influence of the international business environment in decision-making; and the importance of cultural and institutional diversity. Through its comprehensive approach, this book aims to stimulate business managers, academics and students to clarify, develop and extend the many complex scenarios that are integral to the debate on how business organizations may benefit from the challenges produced by global change.

This study synthesizes and summarizes the theoretical arguments and empirical evidence that suggest that competition works remarkably well to reduce costs and improve efficiency and innovation, even in an arena where competition has typically been ignored--government-financed services. The arguments and data marshaled here, drawn primarily from the American experience, portray the substantial benefits to consumers and taxpayers that can result from efforts to increase competition in commercial services previously operated as government monopolies.

Competition in Government-Financed Services will help fortify the efforts of competition advocates, both in the United States and in the emerging market economies of Eastern Europe and the developing world, to get on with the job of strengthening competition and opening their systems to market forces.

In capital investing, as in life, you always have options. In today's extremely turbulent world, managers recognize how risky the most valuable investment opportunities often are, and how useful a flexible strategy can be. That's why they want to know all their options. Yet many current financial assessment tools fail to identify what investors can do to capitalize on future uncertain events. Martha Amram and Nalin Kulatilaka suggest a smarter new way to think about strategic investments in terms of real options. By applying options thinking--the concept behind the recent Nobel Prize-winning work on financial options--to the evaluation of nonfinancial assets, this innovative approach brings a financial market discipline to the evaluation of a company's opportunities. Using real options theory, managers can more effectively target crucial opportunities to redeploy, delay, modify, or even abandon capital-intensive projects as events unfold. Corporate executives in finances, investments, and project management should share this book with decision makers in information technology, strategic planning, corporate restructuring, venture capital, and law. Through timely case studies, the authors show managers how to use real options to evaluate investments and create exit strategies in R&D, product design, contracts, and information technology. By linking strategic vision and tactical project decisions, Real Options helps to improve capital investment planning and results.

This book provides managers, leaders and practitioners with a dynamic framework that links several variables associated with performance management which can be applied across organizations and industries worldwide. Based on empirical evidence and experiences, this book provides a critical understanding of the interrelationship of organizational culture with performance management process (PMP) planning and implementation. The elements of the framework are approached from a macro-level-view and are balanced with conciseness and realism based on applied success studies, making this book a valuable educational, training and development resource tool for leaders and managers at all levels. The topic of performance in organizations is like the weather-everyone likes to talk about it, but few understand what is truly happening-or understand why? Individuals and organizations are no different when it comes to performance, regardless of performance level of focus: individual, team, unit, or organization-wide. Teams and organizations often miss opportunities to not only improve performance, but also leverage and sustain high performance. Organizational performance, organizational culture and organizational success are interrelated and should reinforce one another. This can be achieved through an effective performance management process (PMP) that lives, functions and thrives at multiple levels within institutions. This book will help organizations and institutions achieve performance management success by identifying comment elements, along with some patterned variation, that are applicable to a successful PMP. Featuring hands-on resource reference tools for immediate use and application, this book is useful for leaders, managers, scholars, students and policy makers in management, leadership, and organizational culture.

A book on the path dependent and path creating structures and attitudes of business interest associations in a world of Europeanization and internationalization of markets. It includes empirical data on relational information used for network analytic purposes - drawn from hundreds of interviews with CEOs.

Despite how much is written about strategy, and money spent on it, reports of chronic failures persist. Two causes dominate. Strategy is still not fully defined and strategy practice is still largely based on a planned view of the world. Change and innovation, however, are not wholly planned but emerge from the myriad interactions of the players involved some by design, many not. This science of complex adaptive systems must provide the bedrock on which strategy is built.The Emergent Approach to Strategy is the first book to derive the definition, theory, and practice of strategy from adaptive systems. Aimed at corporate business and functional leaders, but broadly applicable, the approach includes an agile method for strategy framework design that replaces familiar stepwise "chevron" methods and presents new tests of strategy called the Five Disqualifiers. This book offers no promise of easy "transformations." Change and innovation are hard, sometimes ugly, with no guarantees. But with the right principles and discipline, organizations can efficiently raise the probability of success.

The focus of this book is upon the implementation of new technology, strategy, business models, and new innovations. It takes a social-psychological perspective on the management of change and technology/strategy implementation and crosses the boundaries of change management, technology implementation, and organizational strategy.

This book addresses the multi-facet competitiveness of firms in China from an angle of strategic management of technology and innovation. The Chinese vanguard companies have been excellent in identifying strategic position and appropriately making strategic decisions, and effectively making strategy in action.

This volume of selected articles is being released in light of the new economic, social and environmental challenges Europe and the United States have been faced with following the end of the Cold War and in the evolving era of globalization. National security, immigration and the provision of health and other key social services call for a radically different outlook in terms of policy discussions. The contributors of this book focus on seven key policy issues and challenges that currently affect the United States and Europe: income distribution, the gender pay gap, crime and security, unemployment, health care, the demographic question and environmental regulation. The purpose of this volume is to analyze how public policy within the European context is responding to the challenges posed by this new global era.

In this volume, Dean Shepherd focuses on the varying topics of entrepreneurship unified through conjoint analysis. Although the topic of entrepreneurial decision making is broad, in doing so, he reveals the mechanisms that come into play during the entrepreneurial decision-making process. Scholars of entrepreneurship and organizational behavior will find this collection an essential resource for understanding how decision making is achieved in entrepreneurial settings.