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.

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This book is a pioneering work that maps out the ideological evolution of HRM research and practices, with a particular focus on our contemporary era of multinational corporations. It explores the ideological evolution of Human Resource Management (HRM) from the 1950s to the present day and maps out the development of HRM research and practices from a Critical Theory perspective. Its findings open up avenues for metatheoretical development within the HRM research field and provide employees under modern capitalism with emancipatory awareness. Both the theoretical framework and the empirical findings of this study will be of interest to HRM researchers as well as management researchers of all epistemological backgrounds, particularly those working within Critical Management Studies. This work will also appeal to teachers and students, and it could serve as a textbook for a number of postgraduate level courses, including Organization Theory, Critical Management Studies, Human Resource Management, Business History, Sociology of Management, and Critical Theory.

Exploring the competitiveness and profitability of the agricultural sector in Central Europe, this book argues that the successful management of agricultural enterprises is inconceivable without the knowledge and application of modern forms of management and technology. Organised in an analytical framework and offering comprehensive empirical data, this book focusses on the countries of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. The contributors identify good practices, unresolved problems, and factors influencing profitability. Topics explored include the challenges of increasing sales potential, competitiveness, partnerships and cooperation, human resources issues, and risk management. By constituting a valuable source of knowledge, Managing Agricultural Enterprises is important to those researching the agricultural industry and management, but also to policy-makers and managers of agricultural enterprises.

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.

SWOTed by strategy models? Crunched by analysis? Strategy doesn't have to be this way. Strategy is really all about being different. Thinking about it shouldn't make you reach for the snooze button. Strategy Bites Back brings you a provocative, imaginative and surprising mix of perspectives to help stimulate more creative strategic thinking and more enjoyable strategy making. From voices as diverse as and Lucy Kellaway, Mao Tse Tung and Jack Welch, even Michael Porter and Gary Hamel, you can enjoy exploring the sharper side of strategy. Strategy as a Little Black Dress Forecasting: Whoops! Management and Magic Strategy and the Art of Seduction The Soft Underbelly of Hard Data Strategy as destiny Jack Welch on Planning The Seven Deadly Sins of Planning Strategy One Step at a Time and many, many more. Why not have a good time reading a strategy book for a change?

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.

The book addresses the concept of diversity and inclusiveness (D&I) and brings stories from the corporate, practitioners, think tanks and NGOs. It advocates the need and implementation of the D&I concept to build society of the future. It strives to bring out a focused approach in connecting "Theory to Practice". Every chapter delves into a different area and presents real-time practices as well as the challenges and the way forward. The book explains the various levels at which discrimination can occur such as demographic profiles, regional differences, religious alliances, college pedigree, marital status, sexual preferences, physical disability and health differentiation, pregnancy or returning mothers and technology competence. The book cites examples of inclusion from progressive organizations such as ABB India, Marico, TCS, PNB Metlife and Alsthom. Presenting the business case of D&I, the book emphasizes on creating a robust D&I strategy with a road map and alignment through internal and external frameworks as well as periodic audits. The Responsible, Accountable, Consultant and Informed (RACI) matrix is discussed while setting up the D&I analytics framework within the organization. The book also presents the growing role of artificial intelligence tools that can empower employees to participate in the D&I journey of an organization. It shares how tools such as Balloonr, Glint, Organization View, Planbox, Pluto and Waggl have been specially designed to allow employees to anonymously provide ideas and respond to ideas provided by others. Going forward, the D&I practices will have to be more customized than generalized, and this book brings up real evidences to make its point

The dynamic economic climate invites participants who are grounded in strategic financial management and infrastructure development. Thus, a lack of sufficient infrastructure, in both quality and quantity, often disqualifies developing countries from being key players in the global economy and influences other socioeconomic problems like unemployment, quality of work life, and quality of life. Handbook of Research on Strategic Business Infrastructure Development and Contemporary Issues in Finance discusses the efficiency of good infrastructure and its impact on socioeconomic growth and socioeconomic development in general and addresses contemporary aspects of the strategic financial management essential for accomplishing the objective of wealth maximization in today's challenging and competitive economy. This book is an essential research work for policy makers, government workers and NGO employees, as well as academicians and researchers in the fields of business, finance, marketing, management, accounting, MIS, public administration, economics, and law.

Consumer behavior is becoming increasingly complex in the current global market. A broader understanding of the psychologically-driven motivation of consumers and characteristics of the consumer decision-making process is vital for effective customer engagement in the global economy. The Handbook of Research on Leveraging Consumer Psychology for Effective Customer Engagement provides current research on topics relevant to consumer beliefs, feelings, attitudes, and intentions and how best to utilize this research improving consumer appeal and relationships. Emphasizing critical topics in the field of consumer behavior research, this publication is a comprehensive resource for marketing professionals, managers, retailers, advertising executives, scholars, and graduate-level students in marketing, psychology, and MBA programs.

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.

This book explores three interlinked themes: the models and nature of organizational change; the implementation of Business Process Reengineering (BPR); and the management of contemporary public sector organizations. The authors describe and evaluate a BPR programme in a major NHS teaching hospital - its successes and its shortcomings.

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

Managers and executives know the importance of integrating business strategy and IT strategy for competitive advantage. Via numerous real-world examples and anecdotes, this book investigates myriad issues regarding the application of business strategy and IT strategy. Specifically, it focuses on how business/IT alignment is assessed, the factors that aid or hinder its integration, a maturity assessment and way in which managers can implement strategic information systems within their firms using various constructs and models. Strategic Information Technology: Opportunities for Competitive Advantage provides managers with an understanding and appreciation for the development of business and information technologies strategies to yield competitive advantage.

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.

Strategic innovation dynamically brings about strategic positioning through new products, services and business models. Through detailed reviews of existing dynamic capabilities and in-depth case studies, this book presents a theoretical model of a strategic innovation system to enable a large company to maintain its competitiveness and establish sustainable growth. Companies studied include Apple, Sony, Cisco, SoftBank and Fujifilm. Large corporations have to be innovators that can reinforce their positions through incremental innovation, while constantly renewing or destroying existing business through radical innovation. To achieve this, Mitsuru Kodama presents the concept of 'Capabilities Congruence' - a business factor in large corporations that brings about sustainable growth over the long term by achieving strategic innovation as the corporation enacts dynamic capabilities and strategic innovation capabilities. Sustainable Growth Through Strategic Innovation offers fresh insights to academics, researchers and students in business and management. It is also intended to provide practical guidance to leaders and managers in the broader business environment.

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.

This book develops a general theory of managerial decision making on the basis of a few elementary postulates. It employs logic as the method of reasoning, systems science in general and the systemic YoYo Model in particular, as the intuitive playground. By doing so, the authors take individually background-based guesswork out of processes of decision making. All established conclusions are expected to be generally employable in real-life applications. At the same time, the book is user friendly to a wide range of audience, coincides with people's intuition, and provides applicable results and insights for practical purposes.

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The remote work revolution is here. Even before COVID-19 created the largest remote work experiment in history, the business world was already gravitating toward virtual workplaces. Suddenly organizations as big as Twitter are learning that their employees don’t need an office in order to get great results. How to Thrive in the Virtual Workplace shows how to stay productive, feel like part of a team and make the most of remote working.

Robert Glazer shares the principles, tactics and tools his company has developed in more than a decade of successfully working as a joined-up but 100 per cent remote workforce, as well as interviewing other leaders in the sector about what works for them. As founder and CEO of Acceleration Partners, an organization with 170 employees who all work from home, Glazer has been recognized with dozens of awards for its industry performance and company culture. Here, he shares a step-by-step guide to building a culture of flexibility and trust, hiring and communicating effectively – both internally and externally – as a successful remote business.