This monograph provides theoretical and practical perspectives on competency management as a key resource for producing competitive products. The authors develop and substantiate a law of dependence between competencies and emergence of new markets, and describe the practical aspects of developing competencies in high-tech companies. Further, they develop economic and mathematical models for managing the competitive advantages of a company based on competencies. Using these models, they present a method for evaluating and ranking core competencies, as well as for multi-criteria ratings of human potential efficiency. The book also discusses the mechanisms of competitiveness management based on a conceptual model of a competence center network.

This book focuses on the theory and practice involved in the management of innovative activities that enhance the competitiveness of enterprises, industries and economies. It presents a multi-criteria approach to the problem of selecting effective innovative projects and innovative technologies that increase competitiveness in high-tech industries. Further, the book develops a mathematical risk assessment model, and proposes new approaches for systematically identifying and assessing the probability of risk emergence. Lastly, it demonstrates how simulation models can be used to assess the impact of innovative technologies on the competitiveness of high-tech products.

Change is the new norm in society, and it's having a devastating impact on organizations. The proof? Insecure, demoralized employees and the lowest levels ever of employee engagement. North America employee engagement is between 26-30 percent, and in Asia it's between 6-12 percent. That's a lot of untapped employee potential! In Conscious Culture, Joanna Barclay shares thirty years of business transformation experience. Leaders learn how to awaken the life-force energy within values, ethics, and leadership that ignites performance and employee engagement. With the ABCs of culture change, she provides a blueprint for leaders to consciously create a high-performing, values-driven organization. Values energize us-they give us joy when they are lived and frustration when they are not. They embody our heart and soul, calling us to action and helping us perform to our highest potential. Leaders will learn the importance of facilitative leadership and how to tap the wisdom of the group, unify employees, and connect hearts and minds to create a WOW culture. Conscious Culture is for leaders who want to: * become an employer of choice and build a high-performing work environment * learn how to generate greater engagement and increase productivity * build a new culture after a merger or acquisition * transition from personal excellence to organizational excellence How are you consciously investing in your culture-or do you have unconscious, default culture? "In 2011, Joanna was integral in transforming my client engagement network from a loose committee to a strong leadership team. This was achieved through the use of the Barrett's Cultural Transformation Tools. But the best tool of all was Joanna herself." Daniel Leclair, director general, Public Works and Government Services Canada

The challenges facing a solo entrepreneur when calamity strikes are unique in the realm of disaster planning, and the only effective strategy for preventing a business failure after an unexpected major setback is to have a clearly thought-out emergency backup plan. This book guides you to being 100 percent ready for the worst-case scenario. Disasters are sudden, calamitous events that can bring about great loss and failure to a business. Some disasters can be prevented through good judgment and careful planning; others-whether "acts of God" such as flood or fire or a personal health crisis-cannot be. What will happen if the one person responsible for the day-to-day operations of a solo entrepreneurship is suddenly incapacitated and unable to manage the business? In cases of small businesses that do not have a clear backup or disaster recovery plan, the outcome is often the total failure of the business. This book is both a wakeup call and an action plan for small business owners. It will guide readers toward creating a backup system that will enable a business to "run itself" without the immediate presence of its owner-for a week, a month, or even longer. The author presents a tested strategy that has its roots in preparing for natural disasters, and replaces the all-too-common refusal to believe that bad things can and do happen with hard facts and realism. Clearly, solopreneurs cannot afford to take risks of failure when it comes to their businesses-the most important thing in their lives aside from family and health. Asks a critical question: "How prepared is the average solopreneur to withstand a sudden crisis, like a serious medical emergency?", addresses the likely consequences of being unprepared, and provides a practical strategy for building an emergency backup plan Presents guidance for choosing a person or team of people to immediately step in and manage the business during a crisis Stresses the importance of building a comprehensive communication plan that serves to keep people informed on a daily basis Offers information for keeping computers and other vital equipment in good working order and protected from cyber attacks

This book provides a multi-stakeholder perspective on sustainable HRM for the policymakers, managers and academics, addressing issues, approaches, research studies/frameworks and emerging patterns relating to the subject. It discusses various aspects of sustainability, such as making HR more responsible for ensuring sustainability focusing on the triple bottom line, characteristics of sustainable HRM, psychological contracts, emotional intelligence, and psychological capital. The book also explores organizational citizenship behavior, employment relations, employee engagement, sustainable leadership, disruptive HR practices, sustaining employee motivation, educational sustainability, sustainable career management, sustainable environment, employer and employee branding, sustainable organizations, organization culture, training for sustainability, sustainable employee performance, business sustainability and sustainable employability. It provides an update on the concept, processes, issues and emerging paradigms from multidimensional and cross-country perspectives to showcase sustainable HR practices, and appeals to the academics, practitioners and policymakers in the area of HRM.

Advance reviews of "Certain to Win" "Certain to Win" Sun Tzus prognosis for generals who follow his advice] develops the strategy of the late US Air Force Colonel John R. Boyd for the world of business. Robert Coram's monumental biography, "Boyd, the Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War," rekindled interest in this obscure pilot and documented his influence on military matters ranging from the design of the F-15 and F-16 fighters to the planning for Operation Desert Storm to the execution of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Unfortunately Boyd's written legacy, consisting of a single paper and a four-set cycle of briefings, addresses strategy only in war. All Boyds briefings are available on " Defense and the National Interest."] Boyd and Business Boyd did study business. He read everything he could find on the Toyota Production System and came to consider it as an implementation of ideas similar to his own. He took business into account when he formulated the final version of his "OODA loop" and in his last major briefing, "Conceptual Spiral," on science and technology. He read and commented on early versions of this manuscript, but he never wrote on how business could operate more profitably by using his ideas. Other writers and business strategists have taken up the challenge, introducing Boyd's concepts and suggesting applications to business. Keith Hammonds, in the magazine "Fast Company," George Stalk and Tom Hout in "Competing Against Time," and Tom Peters most recently in "Re-imagine " have described the OODA loop and its effects on competitors. They made significan

This book provides up-to-date information on globalisation trends and the transformations taking place in emerging markets. It discusses key themes of relevance to the auto industry, including the environmental impact of the car, adaptation of designs for the needs of emerging markets and the emergence of global mega-suppliers. These issues are placed in the context of more general debates about globalisation and current crises in emerging markets such as Brazil and East Asia.

Successful negotiation requires understanding your counterpart's culture, their feelings, habits and values. When planning to do business with suppliers and other partners in Asia, thorough preparation is essential in order to avoid misunderstandings, confrontations and disappointments, and to ensure the mutually desired success. This book offers a comprehensive guide to communication, argumentation, and negotiation by demonstrating success pathways with a focus on specific types of negotiator or negotiation partner from the different regions of the Asian continent. Readers will learn to negotiate the Chinese, the Indian and the Japanese way, and come to understand how Asians approach negotiations. Written by a truly international author, both academic and practitioner, with extensive experience in both Eastern and Western cultures, this book offers a valuable resource for anyone who relies on successfully negotiating with Asian partners.

The goals of Management and the Gospel: Luke's Radical Message for the First and Twenty-First Centuries may appear to be simple: it describes what management theory and practice looked like in the first century, uses this as a lens to examine what the Gospel of Luke says about management, and draws out implications for today. However, the book is quite profound in finding that management is a dominant theme in the Gospel, that its message is consistently counter-cultural, and that Luke contains a four-phase 'how to' process model to help readers to implement change. Readers will acquire a new way to understand the Gospel as well as the moral foundations of modern management.

This book closely interrogates the construct of identity and the role it plays in career development. It provides guidance for HRD practitioners and researchers who create career development programs through a typology of different categories of identity, such as demographics, life events, and career histories. The book presents a framework for considering and addressing career development from a critically reflective perspective of identity as a result of choice, chance, and adaptation. It offers a comprehensive understanding and awareness of tacit, nuanced, and stigmatized issues that were once shameful but have now become more socially acceptable. As a result, HRD practitioners can design programs and resources that have a richness and relevance that might heretofore be lacking. The book also offers guidance for individuals as they take charge of their own identities and career trajectories in an increasingly complex and unpredictable working environment.

In response to the world's rapidly growing social, economic and environmental challenges, a growing wave of "social intrapreneurs" are harnessing the power of large companies to create new business solutions to address societal problems. Social Intrapreneurism and All That Jazz reveals how these highly creative social innovators are improvizing alliances across, as well as beyond, their companies to create micro-insurance products for low-income people; offer delivery services to millions of small businesses in slums around the world; develop alternative-energy solutions inside a major gas and oil corporation; partner with a Brazilian community to produce new natural care products; establish a green advertising network within a major media company; apply engineering expertise to help alleviate poverty and much more - all while generating commercial value for their companies. Distilling insights from interviews with social intrapreneurs, their colleagues and experts around the world, the authors bring to life how business can be about more than just maximizing profit. They identify the mind-sets, behaviours and skills that have helped successful social intrapreneurs journey from initial idea to roll-out by their company - and some of the pitfalls. Although their journeys may be lonely at times and require considerable hard work while working "against the grain" of large conventional businesses, successful social intrapreneurs are, above all, great communicators who inspire others to join them in achieving a higher purpose beyond the realms of conventional business. Drawing on the metaphors of ensemble jazz music-making, the authors describe how "woodshedding", "jamming", "paying your dues", being a "sideman", joining and building a "band" but, above all, "listening" to what is happening in business and the wider world - are all part of the life of a successful social intrapreneurism project. Whether you're an aspiring social intrapreneur who wants to change the world while keeping your day job, or want to renew the entrepreneurial spirit of your own company, this book is for you.

This book explores how new and small ventures with comparatively fewer financial resources have been able to compete with big banks and financial institutions. It discusses entry, competition, and growth strategies based on new business models enacted by current FinTech ventures. An analysis of strategies for Fintech and of cases from banked as well as non-banked and underbanked customer segments produces a framework based on effectuation, resulting in a final discussion of the broad societal outcomes of FinTech related to financial inclusion, the digital divide, and the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. This book, linking theory with practical application, offers scholars a comprehensive strategic view on FinTech from effectual, causal, and entrepreneurial innovation standpoints.

There is a high demand in our society to adopt emerging technologies in all aspects of business and economic activity. As traditional business practices and economic activity are occurring in a global context, new areas of economic development are being recognized as the key enablers of wealth and income production. International Business Strategy and Entrepreneurship: An Information Technology Perspective discusses innovative solutions to research problems and high performance systems while emphasizing the role of IT and management for sustainable development. This book brings together academics, researchers, entrepreneurs, policy makers and government officers aiming to contribute to the debate of technology related to international business and strategic management.

Social media is becoming the fastest way to communicate ideas and values. Are you using this ever-changing media to effectively communicate your messages? In "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Social Media, but were afraid to ask...," author and public relations professional Hilary JM Topper, MPA provides an understanding of social media.

Designed for marketing professionals, small business owners, and non-profit organization executives, "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Social Media, but were afraid to ask..." is filled with detailed, how-to information on the sometimes complicated online world. Guiding readers through the importance of implementing social media tactics into their marketing mix to increase awareness and maintain visibility, this guide: Describes how to use social media sites, blogs, and microblogs Reviews more than a dozen social networking sites Provides an understanding of the importance of podcasts and video podcasts Discusses what it means to "Go Viral" Gives suggestions for handling crisis situations via the Web "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Social Media, but were afraid to ask..." highlights the power of consumer-generated media and how it can be used effectively to help grow your business.

This book explores the conditions for growth that can create value for shareholders, focusing on the main strategies adopted by firms including horizontal expansion, vertical integration and product diversification. To evaluate whether or not a particular growth strategy is successful, the author examines the economic fundamentals of each strategy and presents analytical models of both internal development and external acquisition. He moves on to present four case studies of successful companies to highlight how a firm chooses and implements a defined growth strategy. This stimulating integrated analysis will appeal to researchers and students in business administration as well as managers, entrepreneurs and consultants involved in strategic management.

This proceedings volume presents the latest on the theoretical approach of the contemporary issues evolved in strategic marketing and the integration of theory and practice. It highlights strategic research and innovative activities in marketing. The contributed chapters are concerned with using modern qualitative and quantitative techniques based on information technology used to manage and analyze business data, to discover hidden knowledge and to introduce intelligence into marketing processes. This allows for a focus on innovative applications in all aspects of marketing, of computerized technologies related to data analytics, predictive analytics and modeling, business intelligence and knowledge engineering, in order to demonstrate new ways of uncovering hidden knowledge and supporting marketing decisions with evidence-based intelligent tools. The chapters from the proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Strategic Innovative Marketing 2016 cover areas such as social media marketing innovation, sustainable marketing, customer satisfaction strategies, customer relationship management, marketing research and analytics. The papers have been written by scientists, researchers, practitioners and students that demonstrate a special orientation in strategic marketing, all of whom aspire to be ahead of the curve based on the pillars of innovation. This proceedings volume shares their recent contributions to the field and showcases their exchange of insights on strategic issues in the science of innovation marketing.

This is a book about the modernization of public governance and the development of strategic states. It focuses on six Gulf countries (United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) and presents research findings from quantitative data analysis and comparative analysis of the trends and developments of the six Gulf states. The book analyses the workings of the governments of the Gulf States, including the way that they have tackled national development since the mid 1990s. This includes how their strategies for economic diversification have been reflected in trends in revenues from "oil rents" and whether they are still rentier states or not. Evidence is presented on key topics such as government strategies and long-term strategic visions. Careful consideration is given to reputational evidence and to the strategic process capabilities of the governments: integration and coordination of government machinery, mobilizing public and private stakeholders, evaluating, and adapting - all defined as strategic process capabilities. This examination of government is also used to study their performance in strategic results areas: the economy, the natural environment, and the happiness of their citizens. The countries emerge from this analysis as far from identical in terms of capabilities or in term of performance.

This groundbreaking book investigates the religious issues that businesses confront as they expand their global activity and proposes that corporations can become instruments of peace. Timothy Fort discusses the newly emerging idea of "peace through commerce," and he argues powerfully that today's businesses have the capacity to foster both peace and religious harmony. Fort asks and answers important questions: How might businesses integrate spirituality into corporate affairs? How can spirituality contribute to the production of high-quality goods and services? What can be done to promote a spiritual connection between employees and their work? Can this be done without provoking religious animosities? What business practices might encourage an atmosphere in which constructive dialogue among spiritual traditions could proceed? The author concludes that by implementing the peaceful practices advocated by religions at their best, businesses can both nurture religious harmony and strengthen their communities.

This book examines healthcare innovation processes, shedding light on the controversies endemic to innovation, which make such processes notoriously challenging. While, in the heat of action, controversies may be seen as barriers to innovation, observations reported in this volume point to controversies also having an energizing role. Students and academics studying innovation, organization, and health management and economics will find this book a valuable read as it provides empirical case studies on innovation processes in practice. Controversies in Healthcare Innovation will also appeal to practitioners of health care management, innovation project managers and policy-makers in the health care sector.

This book provides scholars and practitioners in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) with a solid foundation for further research. M&As continue to shape the economic landscape across the globe. While there is already a huge body of scholarly work on the subject, findings appear contradictory and academics and practitioners often struggle to understand what factors make M&As successful. Due to the lack of an agreed-upon definition, research findings appear contradictory, while in fact they are often simply not comparable. To address this, the book rethinks how we measure key umbrella constructs. It specifically focuses on the conceptualization phase of the measurement process, often taken for granted in the current research.

While it is possible for a company achieve short-term profit, it is much more difficult to sustain corporate success over time. This book is intended for those who run, or want to run, a business whatever its size or activity, with the objective of making it sustainable so that it will be a legacy for future generations. Indeed, the real purpose of corporate strategy is not only to make quick profits, but more importantly to create an organization that will endure. There is much to learn from the experience of established firms that have existed for a hundred years or more. They provide the material for this clear and concise book, which details the main elements of corporate strategy. Recognizing that each firm is unique, the book resists the temptation of quick fixes, instead offering lessons to be pondered and used on a case-by-case basis.