The Contracting Organization offers a clear and accessible guide to the theory and practice of contracting. Well supported by numerous case studies and examples, it is ideal for academics, students and practitioners wanting to understand `make or buy' decisions. Domberger looks at the way in which organizations throughout the world are increasingly contracting out - `outsourcing' - many activities traditionally done in-house. Deregulation, cost reduction, a focus on core activities, and the growth of the service economy all drive this process and are examined within this enlightening text.

As organizations seek to reduce costs, there has been a growth in service sector offshoring and outsourcing, notably to developing countries. However, despite a burgeoning literature on this phenomenon, little attention has been given to the working and employment that exist in the growing number of business process outsourcing/IT-enabled services' workplaces in developing countries.
 
The authors Ghosheh and Messenger address this by examining and providing an historical context of the development of the industry, with case study analysis in four countries where the industry is large or growing, and give policy advice from employers to policy makers on how the growth of 'good quality' jobs can be ensured as these industries grow and mature around the world.

Companies that have survived the perils of startup face an entirely new and different set of challenges as the firm prospers and grows. For owners, executives, managers, and employees alike, the evolution of an enterprise from entrepreneurship to maturity is aruduous and requires a talent for managing constant change, both in the marketplace and in the company itself. Setting your company on a trajectory of profitable growth-and getting past that crucial break-even point-requires fundamentally different strategies, skills, and techniques from what worked in startup mode. Any forewarning puts entrepreneurial leaders ahead in coping with the obstacles over the next hill. Leading Your Business to the Next Level provides that forewarning and offers practical management approaches that will make the growth journey less hazardous and more rewarding. Drawing from the authors' combined 70+ years of experience working in and consulting to high-growth organizations, the book provides a toolkit for navigating the transition from the chaos, intensity, and informality of the startup to the relative order of the more established firm. Through illustrative case examples and interactive elements, including checklists and diagnostics, they demonstrate how mastery of six core disciplines is the key to achieving and sustaining profitable growth: * enhancing customer loyalty; * dynamic planning and budgeting; * executing the business plan; * maximizing leadership effectiveness; * changing the emphasis from sales/revenue to margin/profit; * positioning human resource management as a strategic asset. In an environment where over 50% of small businesses fail in the first year and 95% within five years, Leading Your Businesss to the Next Level will help you and your organization make the critical transition from startup to mature and growing business. Illustrative case examples and many interactive elements, including diagnostic assessments, the book provides a toolkit for navigating such challenges as: setting the right pace for growth extending product and service lines shifting from sales and revenue generation to margins and profits reinforcing customer loyalty making the transition from informal to more process-oriented management practices

Having a team that knows how to adapt and innovate quickly can make all the difference in these challenging and competitive times -- for your organization and you personally as a leader. Leaders as coaches are crucial for a true learning organization, and high-performance teams need and want their leader to coach -- not tell. But not just any kind of coaching! Coaching that is enabling and inspiring because it increases adaptiveness and creativity -- with each individual and the whole team -- so they achieve important goals together. That's what the Coaching Kata helps leaders to learn. Take a fresh look at this five-phase, dual-purpose coaching model, become the leader you always wanted to be, and your team needs you to be. This business novel will transform the way you see and lead your team.

Traditionally, company experts and outside collaborators innovate by developing the knowledge map. Success or failure of incremental innovation hinges on this path. The Role of Creative Ignorance suggests the knowledge map should be abandoned and replaced with a new methodology, that of creative ignorance. With over 30 years of experience in international economics and entrepreneurship, Piero Formica explores the concept of creative ignorance in combination with path creation and its disruptive effect on entrepreneurship. Using narrative examples of innovators and companies worldwide, he introduces the characteristics of successful path creators that overstep the boundaries set by knowledge maps to open up new, unprecedented routes and connect them each other. In doing so, path creators reveal latent, unexpressed needs of consumers and drive innovation forward.

Usually, a country brand is not focused, resulting in unsuccessful place branding. It is possible to successfully raise your national identity to the level of an attractive brand. Building a country brand is an investment, with strong positive returns. This book will guide you along the path to building a successful brand.

For businesses large and small, investment in digital technologies is now a priority essential for success. Digitizing Government provides practical advice for understanding and implementing digital transformation to increase business value and improve client engagement, and features case studies from the private and public sectors.

Strategic analytics is a relatively new field in conjunction with strategic management and business intelligence. Generally, the strategic management field deals with the enhancement of the decision-making capabilities of managers. Typically, such decision-making processes are heavily dependent upon various internal and external reports. Managers need to develop their strategies using clear strategy processes supported by the increasing availability of data. This situation calls for a different approach to strategy, including integration with analytics, as the science of extracting value from data and structuring complex problems. Using Strategy Analytics to Measure Corporate Performance and Business Value Creation discusses how to tackle complex business dynamics using optimization techniques and modern business analytics tools. It covers not only introductory concepts of strategic analytics but also provides strategic analytics applications in each area of management such as market dynamics, customer analysis, operations, and people management. It unveils the best industry practices and how managers can become expert strategists and analysts to better measure and enhance corporate performance and their businesses. This book is ideal for analysts, executives, managers, entrepreneurs, researchers, students, industry professionals, stakeholders, practitioners, academicians, and others interested in the strategic analytics domain and how it can be applied to complex business dynamics.

Building Corporate IQ - Moving the Energy Business from Smart to Genius gives a clear outline of organizational intelligence and provides a framework for practitioners of good leadership. The synthesis starts with an overview of the fundamental skills and competencies mastered by leaders and team members in organizations. Building Corporate IQ - Moving the Energy Business from Smart to Genius also includes a corporate IQ test that is designed to help leaders gain insight into how their organization can stay at the competitive frontier. Illustrated with case studies from the energy sector, Building Corporate IQ - Moving the Energy Business from Smart to Genius explains the guiding principles of organizational learning, with the goal of developing better organizational intelligence. It is intended as an indispensable guide for managers at all levels to help them meet and recognize new challenges in the corporate innovation process. For the third millennium, with the increase in depersonalized electronic communication, business leaders, especially in the energy industry, must quickly develop organizational intelligence in their organizations to survive. This book sets out the modus operandi. (Crispian McCredie, former Managing Director and Publisher, The Petroleum Economist). MBA graduates and seasoned professionals will find this executive guide a powerful reference during their careers. (Ken Graham, former Head Global Leadership Development, Shell).

This first volume in The Palgrave Series on Global Sustainability addresses the pressing need to align business practices with the requirements of a sustainable world. The book's authors address new models for conducting business, the implications of undertaking new approaches to business practice, and the ways businesses are transforming and being transformed by their environments.

A strong business model is the bedrock to business success. But all too often we fail to adapt, clinging to outdated business models that are no longer promising the results we need. This new edition builds on the well-known methodology of the first edition to allow you to innovate, test and implement new business models within your industry. Discover the idea of business model innovation, from structuring the process of innovation of a company's business model to encouraging outside-the-box thinking. With expert authors, The Business Model Navigator combines learning research with evidence of high practical impact, allowing you to master the transformation journey and lead your business to success.

'CRM Systems in Industrial Companies' contributes new knowledge on customer relationship management (CRM) in the field of industrial marketing. Based on an in-depth case study, this book highlights the complexity and challenges in the development, implementation and use of CRM. The volume proposes an alternative conceptualization of CRM: relying on the industrial marketing and purchasing (IMP) perspective, CRM becomes a socio-technical 'resource' which needs to be connected to the other resources before it can create effects on customer relationships.

In many ways, the process of innovation is a constant social dance, where the best dancers thrive by adapting new steps with multiple partners. The systematic and continuous generation of value in any innovation system relies on collaboration between different groups, who must overcome multiple, often competing agendas and needs to work together fruitfully over the long term. Featuring contributions from leading researchers, business leaders, and policymakers representing North America, Europe, India, Africa, and Australasia, this volume investigates different combinations of collaborative arrangements among innovation actors, many of which are changing conventional expectations of institutional relationships. Collectively, the authors demonstrate that no particular combination has emerged as the most dominant, or even resilient, model of innovation. Several authors expand on our understanding of the triple helix model, with both academics and practitioners looking to the quadruple helix (encompassing business, academic, government, and civil society) as the new standard. Other authors address aspects of open innovation, co-creation, and user-centered design-all testaments to the rapidly shifting landscape. At the same time, many businesses, academics, and governments, not to mention non-profit organizations, foundations, and society at large, are active in conversations about how to pursue a more sustainable model of innovation. The pursuit of this holy grail of innovation is both facilitated and complicated by an ever-accelerating technological environment in which social networking and mobile tools are emerging as new dance arenas.

This book examines how firms adapt to the pressures of increasing international competition by testing the arguments on "strategy specialization" proposed in the competitiveness literature in general, and by contributors to the "varieties of capitalism" debate in particular. If different economies are characterized by distinct institutional arrangements, successful firms would be those that exploit the related comparative advantages and specialize in the competitive strategies facilitated by national institutions.
One Political Economy, One Competitive Strategy? begins with an assessment of how many pharmaceutical firms in Germany, Italy, and the UK pursue strategies facilitated by national institutions governing the financial markets, antitrust activities, and the labor market. Quantitative analyses reveal that deviant firms, competing through institutionally unsupported strategies, outnumber conforming firms by far. Not only does this finding run counter to the expectations of the competitiveness literature, it brings up a whole new line of inquiry. How can firms compete through strategies that are not supported by national institutions? The book addresses this question and illustrates that firms do not necessarily exploit comparative institutional advantages, but that they can also circumvent institutional constraints. International markets and individual collaboration on a contractual basis allow firms to compete despite comparative institutional disadvantages. These findings suggest that trade liberalization does not lead to strategy specialization but to strategy diversification, depending on the inventiveness of entrepreneurs to develop individual approaches to compete.

Sickness absenteeism is a widely researched workplace health problem that has long been seen as a cost to employers. However, recent literature indicates that the counterpart of absenteeism - termed as 'presenteeism' which refers to the practice of coming to work despite health complications, such as illness, injury or anxiety - often results in reduced productivity. Although presenteeism is much more costly compared to absenteeism, it is not yet common practice in organizations to measure the costs and use it as one of the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
The author presents the important issues related to the nature and extent of presenteeism and cites examples from different studies. The book discusses in depth why employees come to work despite being sick, strategies to manage presenteeism behavior and who should be taking the lead in managing such employee behavior. In addition, the author also includes three studies conducted in Singapore on the different aspects of presenteeism. The book offers a chapter on how to measure the cost of presenteeism to aid readers in measuring the cost of presenteeism in their own respective organizations.

Now in its third edition, this core textbook for advanced undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate students combines analytical rigour and managerial insight on the functioning and strategy of large multinational enterprises (MNEs). Verbeke and Lee develop an original conceptual model that supports student learning by providing an integrated perspective, rooted in theory and practice. The discussion also includes unique commentaries on seventy-four seminal articles published in the Harvard Business Review, the Sloan Management Review, and the California Management Review over the past four decades, demonstrating how the key insights can be applied to real businesses engaged in international expansion programmes, especially as they venture into high-distance markets. This third edition has been thoroughly updated and features new sections on multinational entrepreneurship, strategic challenges in the new economy, and international business strategy during globally disruptive events, including the COVID-19 pandemic. Students will benefit from updated case studies, improved learning features, and a wide range of online resources.

There can be no growth in a business without change. Learning how to cope with change and capitalize on new developments is pivotal to organizational growth. Enterprise Resiliency in the Continuum of Change: Emerging Research and Opportunities is a critical reference source that discusses the components of business-related change and how organizational leaders can progress their company through such alterations rather than fail during turbulent times. Highlighting important topics such as enterprise schemata, change triggers, company resiliency, and intervention theories, this scholarly publication is designed for business owners, enterprise leaders, professionals, and researchers interested in learning more about how to make an organization resilient during times of change.

This book offers insights on effective policies that can be applied to other economies in terms of using technology financing to foster technological innovations. It outlines the role of government in accelerating the nation's innovative capacity by promoting technology investments that will achieve successful and sustainable economic development.

This study focuses on fifty years of evolution in the tobacco industry from the vantage point of the strategic actions taken by its member firms in response to the anti-smoking environment. It details the growth of the industry from a collection of old-style single-brand companies to its modern status as a strategic group of diversified multi-brand competitors. The work of management guru Michael Porter provides the framework for the study. The strategic choices made by the six companies are examined in light of Porter's management theories by focusing on the firms' attempts at both product and market diversification. The book is a timely and instructive overview of an industry successfully operating in an increasingly hostile business and social environment.

Interpartner Dynamics in Strategic Alliances is a volume in the book series Research in Strategic Alliances that will focus on providing a robust and comprehensive forum for new scholarship in the field of strategic alliances. In particular, the books in the series will cover new views of interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks and models, significant practical problems of alliance organization and management, and emerging areas of inquiry. The series will also include comprehensive empirical studies of selected segments of business, economic, industrial, government, and non-profit activities with wide prevalence of strategic alliances. Through the ongoing release of focused topical titles, this book series will seek to disseminate theoretical insights and practical management information that will enable interested professionals to gain a rigorous and comprehensive understanding of the field of strategic alliances. Interpartner Dynamics in Strategic Alliances contains contributions by leading scholars in the field of strategic alliance research. The 13 chapters in this volume cover a number of significant topics that speak to the critical issues in the interactions between partner firms in strategic alliances. The chapter topics cover both the broader issues, such as relational mechanisms in alliances, role of interpersonal networks, parental control of joint ventures, conflict management, interpartner diversity, and multilevel embeddedness in multilateral alliances, and the more focused problems of alliance competence, roles of third parties, accounting for partner trust, relationship quality in construction alliances, and how natural resources may impact alliance formation. The chapters include empirical as well as conceptual treatments of the selected topics, and collectively present a wideranging review of the noteworthy research perspectives on interpartner dynamics in strategic alliances.

This comprehensive book responds to the growing demand to study entrepreneurship as a key driver of innovation and competitive advantage. Challenging the existing idea that technological entrepreneurship exists predominantly in SMEs and as a result of market demands, the author argues that a commitment to entrepreneurship remains the most effective strategy for sustaining wealth generation for both organisations and entire nations. The aim of Technological Entrepreneurship is to provide the reader with additional knowledge and understanding of the concepts associated with the exploitation of technological entrepreneurship, and to demonstrate how associated management principles are somewhat different to those utilised in market-driven entrepreneurship. Validation of presented theoretical concepts is achieved through coverage of processes and practices utilised by real world organisations seeking to achieve maximum wealth generation, with specific emphasis on how technological entrepreneurship is the source of disruptive innovation within service sector organisations and how the philosophy is causing fundamental change in the provision of healthcare.

This book argues that ethical leadership without a theological foundation is lacking a firm foundation. It begins with a critical assessment of ethical leadership as a leadership theory, showing how ethics and theology became separated, creating the space for ethical leadership outside of theology. Nevertheless, the author argues that ethical leadership without a biblical basis is weak, though one need not be religious to embrace the leadership principles of biblical theology. Unfolding Christology, anthropology, eschatology, and contextualized leadership as four key aspects of biblical theology for ethical leadership, this book will appeal to those studying leadership, business, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

In this book the authors create a statistically validated scale measuring the display of each of the nine fruit of the spirit in employees. The authors will discuss how biblical values are applicable to contemporary organizational leadership and management. These nine virtues span a wide breadth of important personal and organizational attributes including benevolence, affection, gladness, relational harmony, tranquility, perseverance, helpfulness, caring for the welfare of others, adherence to the beliefs and value of others, power used soberly, and mastering one's desires. While diverse in nature, the list also suggests a holistic development of personal and organizational character. Understanding the manner in which these traits can be measured will be a significant benefit to HRM and HRD scholars conducting research in Christian servant leadership.

Why are some leaders effective, many ineffective, and only a very few exceptional? Chandler and Chandler argue that four common elements drive leadership effectiveness across all domains, cultures, and eras. Three of them are skills, and the fourth is the degree of a leader's selflessness. To illustrate the power of these elements, On Effective Leadership examines sixteen case studies of leaders in a range of fields, cultures, and historical settings. It concludes with the implications for followers, leaders, and leadership development.