The ability to successfully procure built assets is at the heart of the construction process and in turn at the heart of the procurement process is identifying the constantly evolving needs of the construction client. Despite client criticism and a mountain of reports and statistics, spanning both the public and private sectors, until now the construction industry has failed to transform the diverse and often separate and inefficient processes of design and procurement of built assets into one single integrated production process. There are now signs however that the construction industry is beginning to transform its approach to built asset procurement and client care. This book draws heavily on the experiences and best practice of other industries and market sectors who have, just as construction is now having to do, taken a critical look at their procurement practices and techniques and the inherent waste in many traditional systems. The text includes practice-based case studies, from both the public and private sectors, to demonstrate how new procurement approaches are delivering value for money over the life cycle of built assets. This book is recommended reading for a range of students in the field of the built environment from quantity surveyors and commercial managers to architects and an essential and comprehensive guide to all construction procurement professionals seeking to familiarise themselves with the latest approaches to procurement.

The book addresses the concept of knowledge in a work and organizational context, professional or knowledge work, and knowledge-intensive firms. It provides a critical, moderate social constructivist understanding of these themes and the current interest in knowledge management, organization and the "knowledge economy". Professional service as well as science and high-tech work and firms are treated, reporting case studies of IT and management consultancy firms, advertising agencies and life science based companies. The concepts of knowledge and knowledge management are discussed and dominant functionalist thinking debunked. The ambiguity of knowledge in the input, process and output of professional work is emphasized. It is suggested that we should be careful in assuming too much about the nature, role and effects of "knowledge" in business life and instead take the constructed nature of knowledge seriously and scrutinize knowledge claims. Knowledge talk and claims may frequently be key elements in marketing and identity work as much as they inform us about key activities of professionals and knowledge-intensive firms. The book covers a fairly broad set of management, organization and working life aspects are addressed, including HRM themes and different forms of control including client control and regulation of identity. From a perspective emphasizing the ambiguity of social and business life, rhetoric, symbolism, image, politics of knowledge claims, identity and identity work are viewed as crucial for the understanding and management of professional/knowledge work and organizations. The book is provocative and challenges key assumptions in dominant knowledge and organization thinking, suggesting a novel theoretical approach. The book is intended for third year level undergraduates upwards, and aims to say things also of relevance for scholars. It mixes textbook and research ambitions. As a (moderately) constructivist text with a relatively broad focus, the book may have some potential as a text complementing more conventional textbooks also in general organization and management courses.

Processes of multi-scalar regional urbanization are occurring worldwide. Such processes are clearly distinguishable from those of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries due to the shifting concepts of both the city and the metropolis. International literature highlights how what we have historically associated with the idea of cities has long been subjected to consistent reconfiguration, which involves stressing some of the typical features of the idea of "cityness". Post-Metropolitan Territories: Looking for a New Urbanity is the product of a research project funded by the Italian Ministry for Education, Universities and Research (MIUR). It constitutes a thorough overview of a country that is one of Europe's most diverse in terms of regional development and performance: Italy. This book brings together case studies of a number of Italian cities and their hinterlands and looks at new forms of urbanization, exploring themes of sustainability, industrialization, de-industrialization, governance, city planning and quality of life. This volume will be of great interest to academics and students who study regional development, economic geography and urban studies, as well as civil servants and policymakers in the field of spatial planning, urban policy, territorial policies and governance.

The book explains how Gravitational Distance and the System of Cities influence transnational construction-related firms when they venture overseas. The study presented in the book internalizes the characteristics of home and foreign cities, and of transnational firms, to develop situational business strategies and organization designs in terms of Strategy, Structure, Systems, Leadership Style, Firm's Skills, Staff's characteristics, Shared Values and Supply Chain. The book presents the findings of surveys and interviews with managers and professionals in eight different Asian cities stretching from Singapore to China. The findings are then used to develop business solutions in the form of a Decision Support System (DSS) for transnational construction firms, helping them to adopt an appropriate organization design strategy when they venture into overseas markets. Issues relating to globalization, competitiveness, risk management, communications, networks, government interference, business strategies, organization structures and systems in the context of international construction business are discussed together with corresponding recommendations for implementation. Although construction-related firms were used as the basis for the field studies, the lessons learned are equally applicable for organizations in other industries.

Tourism looks set to replace oil as the most important global industry. James Elliot explores the ways in which governments of both developed and developing countries manage this increasingly diverse and volatile industry, providing a historic and economic overview as well as the reasons why and how governments are involved in tourism management. Using case studies from the UK, Australia and the Third World this wide ranging book covers: policy-making and planning; local governments; airlines and airports; and environmental control and sustainable development. Detailed information boxes and excerpts of official documents illustrate government management of the tourism system and provide critieria for evaluation

Drawing on detailed empirical data and a range of case studies, Managing Voluntary and Non-Profit Organizations, first published in 1990, demonstrates how voluntary organizations formulate strategies for securing funds, providing services, and dealing with other non-profit bodies, public agencies, and the private sector. The central theme is organizational change and how managers have responded, strategically and structurally, to changes to their environment. Using original data, and writing from the broad perspectives of current organization theory, the authors increase our understanding of strategies, structures and designs currently in use in the voluntary sector. Their authoritative text will make essential reading for practising managers in non-profit organizations and for an international audience of academics and students of management, organization theory, and strategy.

The concepts of social networks, social capital and trust play an increasingly central role in the social sciences. They have become indispensable conceptual tools for the analysis of post-industrial/late-modern societies, which are characterized by such features as the relative decline of formal hierarchies, the development of flexible social arrangements in the sphere of production and the extreme mobility of capital. This is the first book to study the interrelationships between these important concepts both theoretically and empirically. Drawing on empirical investigations from a range of diverse European social contexts, the contributors develop an economic sociology that builds on and extends established theoretical perspectives. The book opens with an introduction to the theoretical ideas: relating social capital to reciprocity, trust and social networks in line with current debates. The authors go on to discuss the concept of social embededdness, addressing the economic effects of social capital by examining the network and trust foundations of labour markets and investigating the structural limits of trusting networks. They conclude with an exploration of the impact of networking and the functioning of trust and social capital on the economic arrangements and performance of nascent capitalist economies in post-Communist Europe. This thematically unified collection by a team of distinguished contributors from across Europe provides an innovative and distinctive contribution to an expanding area of research.

Over 20 years ago Philip Sadler, then head of a leading British business school, wrote Managerial Leadership in the Post-Industrial Society. In it he predicted that business would experience the most radical transformation since the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. This transformation has now taken place. In his latest book, Sustainable Growth in a Post-Scarcity World, Sadler charts developments once envisaged by Keynes, Chase, Galbraith and Packard, and more recent radical thinkers such as Chris Anderson. Sadler describes how many goods and services have moved from relative scarcity to relative abundance, and asks how this trend can be reconciled with the global issues of population growth and climate change. He assesses the impact of new technologies, new energy sources, new materials and the development of artificial intelligence, on business, government and economics, and discusses the challenges ahead - the creation of new business models, the need to meet people's legitimate expectations of improved living conditions while avoiding environmental catastrophe, and the need to adapt ideas developed in scarcity to conditions of abundance. Why is it that in countries foremost in creating post-scarcity conditions, millions are still in poverty, and billions, worldwide, still lack basic necessities of life? Philip Sadler agrees with those who say the relief of global poverty cannot rely on aid and corporate philanthropy. He explores the idea of re-engineering products and delivering them into bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) markets, and concludes that the more global companies take this route, as some are already doing, the more profitable they will find it, and this will in turn help the poorest people who currently pay more for goods and services - the 'poverty penalty' - than the rich.

Prevailing wage laws affecting the construction industry in the United States exist at the Federal and State levels. These laws require that construction workers employed by contractors on government works be paid at least the wage rates and fringe benefits 'prevailing' for similar work where government contract work is performed. The federal law (Davis-Bacon Act) was passed in 1931. By 1969 four fifth of States had enacted prevailing wage legislation. In the 1970s, facing fiscal crises, States considered repealing their laws in an effort to reduce construction costs, and since 1979 nine States have repealed their laws. These repeals at State level along with unsuccessful attempts to repeal the Davis-Bacon Act have pushed prevailing wages to the forefront of public policy and controversy. This book, for the first time, brings together scholarly research in the economics of prevailing wages placed in historical and institutional context.

The pharmaceutical industry faces a well-documented perfect storm: on the one hand, the patent cliff; the lack of new blockbusters and, on the other, economic pressure on pricing from markets with growing expectations and shrinking budgets. In the face of such pressure, traditional health economics models no longer seem appropriate and yet what do we have to replace them? The growing focus on 'value' and 'cost effectiveness' are evidence of new emerging thinking although, even here, with the shift from medicine as cure to medicine as palliative, as a treatment for chronic illness and with the growing emphasis on preventative approaches, the landscape is complex and challenging. The Future of Health Economics offers a window into some of the most influential emerging issues in pharmacoeconomics; issues such as risk-sharing and alternative pricing models or the potential impact of radical new approaches such as personalized medicine; as well as exploring the changing role of government and regulators. Ulf Staginnus and Olivier Ethgen, themselves two of the most well-regarded practitioners in this field, have brought together some leading-edge thinkers from industry and academia around the world to provide the industry, policy-makers, regulators, health practitioners and academics with the raw material for their future scenarios.

Until the 1990s, industrialization was the dominant development paradigm for the Asia-Pacific region. Since then, advanced services (finance, business or 'producer services', information and creative services) have become deeply embedded in the processes of economic growth and change in the region. This rapid tertiary expansion is fundamentally restructuring national and regional economies and urban form in line with the introduction of advanced production systems, national modernization programmes and the globalization strategies of governments. Services are being actively deployed as instruments of metropolitan reconfiguration and land use change. This book explores various aspects of the relationship between service industries and economic development in Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Singapore, India, Australia and New Zealand. It provides new sector-oriented and regional and national perspectives on services and development.

Addressing a number of 'missing links' in the analysis of labour and its geographies, this volume examines how theoretical perspectives on both labour in general and the organizations of the labour movement in particular can be refined and redefined. Issues of agency, power and collective mobilizations are examined and illustrated via a wide range of case studies from the 'global north' and 'global south' in order to develop a better and fuller appreciation of labour market processes in developed and developing countries.

The aim of this book is to consider theoretically the notion of the global competitiveness of regions, as well as giving attention as to how such competitiveness may be empirically measured. With this in mind, the book has three specific objectives: first, to place the concept of regional competitiveness within the context of regional economic development theory; second, to present a rationale and method for quantifying the global competitiveness of regions; and, third, to undertake the most geographically widespread analysis of regional competitiveness differences across the globe. With regard to the third goal, the analysis incorporates more than 500 regions across Europe, North and South America, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and the so-called BRIC economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The importance of the concept of competitiveness has increased rapidly in recent years, with the issues surrounding it becoming, at the same time, more empirically refined and theoretically complex. The focus on regions reflects the growing consensus that they are the primary spatial units that compete to attract investment, and it is at the regional level that knowledge is circulated and transferred, resulting in agglomerations, or clusters, of industrial and service sector enterprises. This growing acknowledgement of the region's role as a key spatial unit of organisation has led to attention turning to competitiveness at a more regional level. The book explores the results of the World Competitiveness Index of Regions (WCIR), covering the rankings and results of the 2014 edition. The WCIR provides a tool for analysing the development of a range of regional economies across the globe. It enables an illustration of the changing patterns of regional competitiveness on the international stage to be generated. In fundamental terms, the WCIR aims to produce an integrated and overall benchmark of the knowledge capacity, capability, and sustainability of each region, and the extent to which this knowledge is translated into economic value and transferred into the wealth of the citizens of each region.

This book investigates the basic theoretical framework and conducts a logical analysis of China's new supply-side economics, while also providing a strategic path to remedy the plight of China's economic development. From the perspective of connotation, theory and methods, China's structural reform differs both from that proposed by the Western supply-side school or supply-side economics, and from that proposed by structural economists. The theoretical basis of supply-side structural reform falls under socialist political economics with Chinese characteristics, and the new supply-side economics represent an important component of socialist political economics with Chinese characteristics.

The break-up of BAA and the blocked takeover of Bratislava airport by the competing Vienna airport have brought the issue of airport competition to the top of the agenda for air transport policy in Europe. Airport Competition reviews the current state of the debate and asks whether airport competition is strong enough to effectively limit market power. It provides evidence on how travellers chose an airport, thereby altering its competitive position, and on how airports compete in different regions and markets. The book also discusses the main policy implications of mergers and subsidies.

When originally published in 1986, this book was one of the first to deal solely with the urban and regional incidence and development implications of new firm formation in particular EU countries. It reviews the extent of and reasons for geographical variation in numbers of new firms, examines the nature of such firms and assesses the regional impact and policy implications in various EC countries.

Electricity Economics: Production Functions with Electricity studies the production output from analyzing patterns of electricity consumption. Since electricity data can be used to measure scenarios of economic performance due to its accuracy and reliability, it could therefore also be used to help scholars explore new research frontiers that directly and indirectly benefits human society. Our research initially explores a similar pattern to substitute the Cobb-Douglas function with the production function with electricity to track and forecast economic activities. The book systematically introduces the theoretical frameworks and mathematical models of economics from the perspective of electricity consumption. The E-GDP functions are presented for case studies of more than 20 developed and developing countries. These functions also demonstrate substantial similarities between human DNA and production functions with electricity in terms of four major characteristics, namely replication, mutation, uniqueness, and evolution. Furthermore, the book includes extensive data and case studies on the U.S., China, Japan, etc. It is intended for scientists, engineers, financial professionals, policy makers, consultants, and anyone else with a desire to study electricity economics as well as related applications. Dr. Zhaoguang Hu is the vice president and chief energy specialist at the State Grid Energy Research Institute, China. Zheng Hu is a PhD candidate at the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, University of Delaware, USA.

Airline E-commerce Book Structure

Book Description

Online travel is big business and has become one of the most popular items purchased by consumers on the internet. According to one estimate, in 2012, approximately $313 billion or over one third of total B2C travel was spent on online travel products with air travel alone accounting for 61% or $191 billion. A variety of contributing factors is responsible for this development:

• the emergence of the commercial internet in the mid-1990s;
• a change in the behavior of consumers who through inexpensive internet access and growing familiarity with easy-to-use technology today shop 24/7 from anywhere in the world;
• airline companies use the internet not only as a new platform to service, sell and market but by cutting traditional supply channels and reaching directly to the end consumer - also to realize cost savings in their sales and distribution value chains;
• the arrival of new intermediaries in the form of online travel agencies, meta search engines, network affiliates, and other mass sales and marketing websites that distribute travel products to the public;
• the growing prevalence of mobile platforms and social media allowing for new unprecedented forms of interactivity with shoppers of travel products.

Airline companies everywhere have integrated electronic commerce or e-commerce into their business operations in various shapes and forms. Today, it is no longer a question of 'if' for an airline company but 'how' to deal with e-commerce and leverage it to enhance its competitiveness. With plenty of references to and examples of leading companies from the airline industry and beyond, this book discusses the critical success factors for an airline e-commerce strategy and the role of e-commerce in sales & distribution, marketing, and customer service. Furthermore, explored are the various organizational structures to manage e-commerce, the handling of day-to-day web site operations like site content management and security, the growing concerns surrounding web site privacy, emerging social media and mobile trends, and the role of e-commerce in managing airline emergency situations. This book is an introduction to the business & technology cross-over topic of airline e-commerce and could be of interest to students and practitioners alike - from the airline travel industry and beyond.

Table Of Contents

Part I. Introduction to Airline E-commerce

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: The Fundamentals of Airline E-commerce

Chapter 3: Airline Web Site Product Overview

Part II. Airline E-commerce Strategy & Applications

Chapter 4: Airline E-commerce Strategy

Chapter 5: Airline Web Marketing

Chapter 6: Airline E-Sales & Distribution

Chapter 7: Airline Customer Service in Cyberspace

Part III. Airline E-commerce Operation

Chap 8: The Airline E-commerce Organization

Chap 9: Airline Web Site Management

Chap 10: Crucial Airline E-commerce Issues

- Web Site Privacy

- Social Media & Mobile

- Emergency Response Planning

A compelling profile of an emerging Chinese competitor Chinese firms are reinventing their business models, their corporate cultures, and themselves, becoming global competitors who increasingly offer knowledge rather than cheap labour in their quest to join the ranks of the "world's best" companies. This book offers a compelling profile of the most ambitious of these emerging Chinese competitors, the Haier Corporation (the world's largest manufacturer of home appliances), and shares insights on how one organization has repeatedly reinvented its business model and corporate culture in an effort to sustain its success. Reinventing Giants provides an exclusive look within the Haier Corporation and shows how managerial accountability and responsibility have been repositioned at every level of the organization, with the core value of market-centricity, while aligning strategy on each level of management. It includes actual work reports that show this process in detail from the ground up. The authors emphasize how a belief in the liberation of employee talent has consistently been the driving force underlying Haier's success. * Includes the remarkable story of Haier's turnaround and how these lessons can be applied to other organizations * Contains information for any company grappling with competition in the global marketplace * Shows how to liberate employees' talent to drive business success * Written by Bill Fischer, Professor of Innovation Management at IMD in Switzerland, Umberto Lago, Professor of Management at Bologna University, Italy, and Fang Liu, Research Associate of IMD Reinventing Giants helps global managers rethink their own business models and accompanying corporate cultures in order to be able to apply Haier's lessons directly to their own organizations.

Published in 1985, "The Economics of Industries and Firms" is a vaulable contribution to Economics.

This book founds its main argument on the fact that the Industrial Revolution socio-economic models are now irrevocably shifting towards a new order (whatever the naming for it). Old notions with Growth as a chief example have by now become corroded , i.e. altered by a changing global environment. The dominant thinking of the past decades (and centuries) are analyzed, with a view to angle the core subject topic of new growth more adequately. A design-based approach backed by theory is favored with the remarkable capacity of opening new avenues for thinking growth in our society. This favorably supersedes previous systems dynamics methodologies as the relevant knowledge of impending parameters is lacking and the appropriate models depicting new growth ways are still unknown.

This book looks at two-stage industrial cluster theory and new innovation models in the context of the IT-ization and servitization of products. The formation of industrial clusters, such as export processing zones and special economic zones, has been the preferred mechanism for developing countries to boost their industrial development and export performance for the past several decades. Existing literature related to development economics cites numerous benefi ts of industrial clusters, and several countries have demonstrably reaped such benefits. The book goes beyond an evaluation of the development of traditional industrial clusters by promoting the idea of the formation of two-stage clusters. Moreover, it takes into consideration new innovation models, with ideas promoted that are based on empirical evidence available through evaluations of Chinese and Taiwanese firms in the consumer electronics and automobile sectors. Finally, the book looks at company strategies in a new business environment dominated by the servitization of industrial products. It proposes that firms integrate manufacturing and services to a greater extent, and, to substantiate these arguments, presents empirical evidence from India, Taiwan, and Bangladesh. Furthermore, the study contends that innovation and knowledge acquisition strategies are infl uenced not only by the size of fi rms but that they also vary with market preferences.

Published in 2002, Housing Policy and Economic Power is a valuable contribution to the field of Human Geography.

What role do transitional justice processes play in determining the gender outcomes of transitions from conflict and authoritarianism? What is the impact of transitional justice processes on the human rights of women in states emerging from political violence? Gender Politics in Transitional Justice argues that human rights outcomes for women are determined in the space between international law and local gender politics. The book draws on feminist political science to reveal the key gender dynamics that shape the strategies of local women's movements in their engagement with transitional justice, and the ultimate success of those strategies, termed 'the local fit'. Also drawing on feminist doctrinal scholarship in international law, 'the international frame' examines the role of international law in defining harms against women in transitional justice and in determining the 'from' and 'to' of transitions from conflict and authoritarianism. This book locates evolving state practice in gender and transitional justice over the past two decades within the context of the enhanced protection of women's human rights under international law. Relying on original empirical and legal research in Chile, Northern Ireland and Colombia, the book speaks more broadly to the study of gender politics and international law in transitional justice.

In its Fourth Edition, this textbook explores how economic activity is organised from a new institutional economics perspective. Using transactions costs as a continuing theme, the book delivers the necessary skills to understand the evolution of organisational forms and the strengths and weaknesses of different varieties of private and public governance. The importance of entrepreneurship is emphasised throughout. Public policy concerning competition, regulation and the public utilities is used to illustrate the involvement of subjective judgements about transactions costs in all types of organisational choice. Key features of the Fourth Edition: ? Using impartial analysis, Martin Ricketts evaluates business enterprise through Neoclassical, Austrian and Evolutionary economics, allowing students to learn the strengths and weaknesses of each methodological perspective? Using a clear conceptual framework, the author explains principal-agent theory and the transaction cost paradigm in detail? The chapters are designed around a set of classic papers, giving students an understanding of the historical development of the discipline? Updated examples emphasise the applicability to different technological circumstances and the dynamic nature of studying economic organisation? Additional examples are included for teachers to further discussion or create extended seminar work. A key resource for advanced undergraduate courses or an excellent introductory text at graduate level, this Fourth Edition will provide students of economics, business and political economy with a greater awareness of how business enterprises operate and adapt in response to technological change and competition.