This book helps business leaders see how employees, companies, and missions all interact with each other, as well as with society at large, in systems and subsystems at various levels. It helps leaders learn how to connect the dots, becoming customer-centric in everything they do and then spreading the same goals down to their supply chains. The book discusses what is, and what is not, leadership, covering such topics as statistics-based management, process-improvement, and human resources. The author accomplishes this through a blend of Lean culture and managerial theory, as well as his military experience. In addition, the author contrasts many opposing subjects, such as efficiencies of scale versus efficiencies of build, automation versus process improvement, process innovation versus product innovation, technical versus tactical proficiency, and pull versus push production. With most books focused on Lean initiatives, there is a tremendous amount of benefit involved in creating customer value while reducing waste, but this book takes a holistic approach, blending in modern managerial theory, team leadership skills, and economics. The result is a book that changes how the reader approaches business. Essentially, the purpose of this book is to blend modern management theories with the culture of Lean (and perhaps a sprinkling of economics) to show current business leaders how to create organizations that are as customer-oriented and highly efficient in delivering value as possible. If one thinks of each role in an organization as a spot on an assembly line, where everything each person does creates output someone else uses, the question becomes whether or not each person's activities maximize the effectiveness of others. Do we, as organizations, set ourselves up for success or for failure? Most companies, if they answer honestly, would say, "A little bit of both." This book is about helping those companies improve.

The Encyclopedia of Services is a ground-breaking resource that offers a unique overview of what constitutes the main source of wealth and employment in our contemporary economies, namely services. Divided into five thematic parts, the Encyclopedia thoroughly examines services from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. It provides a pedagogical state of the art review of 283 topics falling within the scope of the major streams of service studies, such as services in economic thought, services management and services innovation. Each entry describes, synthesizes and discusses the main dimensions of the given topic, highlighting key research areas and literature. This Encyclopedia will be particularly invaluable for researchers and students in the economics, sociology, political science and management fields as well as practitioners in the private and public sector. Key Features: First encyclopedia of service studies covering the key topics in the field Entries written by 241 leading scholars and practitioners from 39 different countries Fully supported by The European Association for Research on Services (RESER) Multi-disciplinary approach across the fields of economics, management, sociology, geography, but also political science and history.

This book offers research geared toward understanding culture and its influence on the success of global businesses. Divided into two parts that look at the leveraging culture cultural diversity from an organizational as well as national perspective, the chapters investigate the effects of technology on culture, the role of leadership in corporate culture, and communicating and managing change across cultures. The book emphasizes that embracing cultural and subcultural differences alongside instilling organizational culture are the keys to successful modern business. With contributions from authors from academic as well as professional backgrounds, this book will serve as a valuable resource to researchers interested in cultural studies generally as well as those studying the importance of culture to managing modern organizations.

This timely book investigates the importance of national culture as it applies to the strategic management of multinationals. The author focuses on backward linkage strategies within US, Japanese, Taiwanese and Korean microcomputer multinationals investing in Europe. In particular, both market-driven and resource-driven strategic orientations are depicted in new and established firms. The main premise of the book is concerned with the backward linkage strategy of US and Asian Pacific firms, and is therefore based on a specific set of relevant core cultural values rather than a universal set of values. The material in this volume is derived from directly and indirectly collected data, and in addition, unstructured face-to-face interviews with representatives from multinational firms headquartered across different cultures. This volume will provide academics, researchers, students, business consultants and strategists a new perspective on business strategy as well as an up-to-date source of industry material.

This book distinctively presents nine thematic discussions with real examples of small and large companies across the geographic destinations. Among many points of interest crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, decision-processes, technology, leadership, consumer behavior, crowd-based services designing, future perspectives in the context of crowd-based business modelling, and collective intelligence are central to the discussions in the book. This book argues that crowd is the pivot of marketing. It fills the knowledge gap in people-led enterprises by integrating the customer ideation process and developing crowd-based business models to achieve performance with purpose. This book proposes crowd-based business strategies in the emerging markets and significantly contributes to the existing literature.

There are numerous trends taking place around the world and especially in the U.S. with implications for organizations, the workplace, leaders, and supporting organizations like Human Resources. How organizations and their leadership react and proactively address these changes will be difference between positioning themselves for success in the future or for disappearing as other organizations have disappeared. The critically important issue of these trends is that they are occurring simultaneously. The trends consists of constant and consistent change driven by advancing technology, challenges with education with implications for a future workforce, an aging population and workforce, four generations in the workforce with a growing millennial workforce, changing expectations from the workforce with an emphasis on employee engagement, and leadership development opportunities. This perfect human capital storm addresses these very important and relevant issues in a succinct fashion while also providing some systemic recommendations for organizations and its leadership to consider as they work to differentiate themselves from their competition, to look to reinvent themselves, while also creating a great place to work in the 21st century. In addition, the book provides an assessment to use as a guide and to serve as a starting point for discussion and planning among the organization's leadership team for the organization.

The applied nature of the field of entrepreneurship means it is crucial for scholars and researchers to connect with practitioners to ensure that their work has an impact on real-world activity. This insightful book examines the need to bridge the gap between scientific rigour in entrepreneurship research and its practical relevance to external stakeholders, and demonstrates clearly how this can be achieved in practice. Featuring cutting-edge research, Rigour and Relevance in Entrepreneurship Research, Resources and Outcomes presents and evaluates current critical approaches in the field, analysing their theoretical value and their relevance to policy and practice. Chapters examine these approaches through the lens of specific issues and circumstances such as intrapreneurship, freelancing, crowdfunding, family firms and technology-based start-ups, providing a variety of perspectives and exemplifying how pragmatic questions can productively influence research agendas. This book's up-to-date analysis and practical insight will prove invaluable to scholars and researchers in entrepreneurship as well as other business and management academics. Students at all levels in these fields will also find it useful for considering future research.

This book deals with the complex social process of managing an innovative organization. Jon Sundbo presents an original sociology-based theory of innovation in firms which combines developments in markets and other environments with internal organizational processes. The fundamental concept of this theory is understanding innovation processes in the context of strategy. The author regards strategy as both an interpretation of environmental developments and an instrument for managing the innovation process. The book takes an evolutionary perspective and combines an 'out-in' approach (the market situation determines innovations) with an 'in-out' approach (internal organizational processes and entrepreneurship determine innovations). In both cases the implementation of strategy is closely studied and its role as a social process within the firm is emphasised. Significantly, the author combines economic and sociological factors and presents a series of models of the innovation process which are based on empirical studies. The book concludes with a model of macro-innovation factors. Presenting an original theory of innovation within a strategic paradigm, this book will be required reading for all students and academics of economics and business, as well as management consultants and those interested in industrial organization.

A volume in Research in Strategic Alliances Series Editor T. K. Das, City University of New York Strategic Alliances for Value Creation 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. Strategic Alliances for Value Creation contains contributions by leading scholars in the field of strategic alliance research. The 14 chapters in this volume cover a number of significant topics that encompass value creation through strategic alliances in recent times. The chapters cover both the broader topics, such as multi-partner alliances, technology parks, intellectual property rights, knowledge management and culture, portfolio theory, learning in alliances, and open innovation, and the more focused problems of transparency in interfirm accounting, local partner perspective of management control, knowledge in intra-district networks, and alliance partners for entrepreneurial firms. The chapters include empirical as well as conceptual treatments of the selected topics, and collectively present a wide-ranging review of the noteworthy areas of research on employing strategic alliances for value creation.

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences, business and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. Focussing on radical and breakthrough innovation, Joe Tidd provides a crucial insight into over 50 years of research and experience, and illustrates how the pioneering work on innovation dynamics can offer a deeper understanding of radical innovation to inform future research, policy and practice. The book also identifies the distinct sources, organization, processes and outcomes of radical innovation, in contrast to conventional incremental business and management approaches. Key Features: draws upon a distinct interdisciplinary body of knowledge on radical innovation illustrates conceptual models and practical methods to better understand and manage radical innovation goes beyond business school incremental approaches to innovation, such as marketing and design-thinking provides an argument for an iterative coupling process, between knowledge-push and demand-pull challenges and opportunities The practical approach in this Advanced Introduction will provide an excellent resource for scholars and researchers in innovation management and policy, as well as managers responsible for creating, resourcing and managing radical innovations.

What is the secret to organizational success? Whether the goal is developing a new product, establishing a new location, launching a new initiative, starting a new team, or improving your existing one, what will determine its success? The leaders! For any team, small business, large corporation, non-profit organization, or government entity, the key to accomplishing today’s goals and achieving tomorrow’s success depends on its present and future leaders.

Few people know more about developing leaders than John C. Maxwell, the bestselling leadership author in history. In the last twenty-five years, he has grown from equipping a handful of leaders in one organization to developing millions of business, government, and non-profit leaders in every country around the world.

In The Ultimate Guide to Developing Leaders: Invest In People Like Your Future Depends On It, Maxwell teaches everything leaders need to know about how to develop leaders in their team or organization.

Readers will learn how to:

• Become developers of people
• Identify people with leadership potential
• Recruit, train, and motivate emerging leaders
• Empower new leaders to lead
• Coach new and existing leaders to higher levels of achievement
• Teach their leaders how to develop other leaders

Anyone frustrated by leadership limitations in their organization needs to read The Ultimate Guide to Developing Leaders. If they follow the practical steps it offers, they will create a leadership pipeline that will never run dry.

This is the third of a series of research volume of papers from the Business and Information Technologies global research network. The group includes 20 partners from 16 countries, who conduct studies on the impact of new information and communication technologies on business practice, industry structure, and economic change. The book presents a unique longitudinal and cross-sectional view of technology adoption and business practice across a diverse set of countries and economies. It appears that there are some commonalities with respect to patterns of technology adoption , but also significant differences across countries. Furthermore, innovative practices can arise in every country, and have the potential to be applied in other countries. The identical survey carried out in different countries enables benchmarking and accurate comparisons across those markets. It is also extremely broad in its coverage of business practice in terms of functions and performance.

In this revised second edition, Hans Jansson develops and applies an international business and marketing strategy framework to contemporary complex global markets. This cutting-edge textbook explores the major challenges associated with doing business in complex and turbulent emerging markets, stressing the strategic importance of the natural environment. Taking a holistic perspective that integrates stakeholder and shareholder views, this textbook employs an innovative network institutional framework to achieve sustainable competitive advantages by creating economic, social and ecological values with stakeholders. This updated edition includes: The international network strategy (INS), offering a framework for connecting MNCs and multinational exporters with parties in new economic, social and natural environments, and the international matching strategy (IMS), dealing with how MNCs achieve legitimacy An overview of the historical development of the supranational environment, structured as three waves of the internationalization of firms, including the integration of foreign direct investment into the global value chain Dedicated chapters outlining the development of research on international business, strategy, marketing, networks and institutions A methodology for analysing the institutional context of foreign local markets. Insightful and enlightening, this textbook is ideal for postgraduate students of international business, strategy and marketing. This book will also offer frameworks and strategic tools for managers, consultants and practitioners confronting strategic issues in complex markets.

Tackling innovation as an endogenous process, this groundbreaking new book builds upon the Schumpeterian creative response by implementing the tools of complexity economics. This reappraisal of the Schumpeterian legacy allows the author to apply complexity economics to endogenous knowledge externalities and consequently move away from the Darwinistic and biological accounts of evolutionary economics. This approach proves that firms, in out-of-equilibrium conditions, try and react by means of introducing innovations. The success of this reaction is contingent upon access conditions to knowledge externalities. Cristiano Antonelli demonstrates that the consequent introduction of innovations may, in turn, knock firms further out of equilibrium and cause positive changes in the system's properties that feed the introduction of further innovations. In addition, this can also engender the decline of the system's properties and push firms to adaptive response that drive the system towards an equilibrium without growth and change. This path dependent loop of interactions between the system properties and the individual actions of firms is central to this book. Paving the way to a new phase of evolutionary economics, the book's prime readership will be students and scholars who study and teach evolutionary economics, the economics of innovation and/or the economics of growth.

This book offers an integrated and contextualised framework for learning and development (L&D) effectiveness that addresses both the nature of L&D and its antecedents and outcomes in organisations. Scholars and practitioners alike have recognised the important role that L&D plays in organisations, where the development of human capital is an essential component of individual employability, career advancement, organisational performance, and competitive advantage. The development of employees' knowledge, skills, and attitudes constitutes one of the most important HR challenges that organisations face. The evidence indicates that organisations continue to invest in L&D programmes as part of their HR strategy. In addition, there has been an enormous growth in research on L&D in organisations; however, there is some ambiguity concerning the effectiveness of these activities and it largely remains unclear how they can be best implemented. This book seeks to address this gap in the literature. The authors propose a framework for L&D effectiveness based on key findings from reviews, empirical research, and meta-analyses, as well as previously established theoretical frameworks within the field. Combining theory and practice, the new framework this book offers provides key guidance for L&D practitioners and researches interested in the area.