China and India have in recent years seen a change in leadership, with each wanting to make an impact on their respective societies by bringing about significant changes in governance. This book looks at the impact of major institutional disruptions on large-, medium- and small-sized enterprises in China and India. The book endeavours to systematically assess the impact of major institutional policy changes that seek to transform and overhaul the status quo at institutional, social and business levels. It also provides a holistic understanding of the impact of a major and turbulent policy shift on Asia's two giant economies. This book is a must-read for those interested in gaining insights into the two dominant powers in Asia.

In a world where entrepreneurial success often seems deceptively accessible, it is not always clear what makes a person entrepreneurial. In this book, Dimo Dimov offers a reflective insight into the entrepreneurial journey, striking up a conversation about entrepreneurship in order to challenge and untangle existing preconceptions. A discussion of challenges and tensions such as idea versus opportunity, genius versus lunatic, and skill versus luck forms the foundation of the book, while the second part offers actions and considerations which can help the reader to seek opportunities in a fractious environment. The final part of the text focuses on the collective spirit in entrepreneurship, arising from the interplay between participation and outcomes. The author brings a succinct diversity to the field, making this book essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students on entrepreneurship courses, as well as scholars, researchers, and practitioners looking for a new perspective on entrepreneurship.

The separation between ownership and control has become common practice over the last century, in most medium and large firms across the world. Throughout the twentieth century, the theory of the firm and the theory of industrial organization developed parallel and complementary views on managerial firms. This book offers a comprehensive exposition of this debate. In its survey of strategic delegation in oligopoly games, An Economic Theory of Managerial Firms is able to offer a reinterpretation of a range of standard results in the light of the fact that the control of firms is generally not in the hand of its owners. The theoretical models are supported by a wealth of real-world examples, in order to provide a study of strategic delegation that is far more in-depth than has previously been found in the literature on industrial organization. In this volume, analysis is extended in several directions to cover applications concerning the role of: managerial firms in mixed market; collusion and mergers; divisionalization and vertical relations; technical progress; product differentiation; international trade; environmental issues; and the intertemporal growth of firms. This book is of great interest to those who study industrial economics, organizational studies and industrial studies.

Designed as a companion to The Economist Style Guide, the best-selling guide to writing style, The Economist Numbers Guide is invaluable for everyone who has to work with numbers, which in today's commercially focussed world means most managers. In addition to general advice on basic numeracy, the guide points out common errors and explains the recognised techniques for solving financial problems, analysing information of any kind, forecasting and effective decision making. Over 100 charts, graphs, tables and feature boxes highlight key points, and great emphasis is put on the all-important aspect of how you present and communicate numerical information effectively and honestly. At the back of the book is an extensive A-Z dictionary of terms covering everything from amortisation to zero-sum game. Whatever your business, whatever your management role, for anyone who needs a good head for figures The Economist Numbers Guide will prove invaluable.

What is the role of culture in the innovation dynamic of small firms within the context of their territorial environments? How do shared values, beliefs and practices underpin the knowledge production process that leads to innovation? In what way do symbolic aspects of social life shape European SMEs' innovation processes? This volume gives an extensive insight into the complex links between culture and innovation in one of the key agents of economic life: SMEs and micro firms. The chapters employ different analytical and methodological strategies in regions of Europe to identify dimensions of culture, especially values, norms, skills and institutions, and to scrutinize which specific components of culture are relevant to firm innovation and to the more general dynamics of regional innovation. The original research presented shows how small firms learn, interact, compete and collaborate with other key agents of the innovation system. Taken as a whole, the volume points the way towards a more comprehensive framework for understanding the nature of innovation in SMEs and micro firms. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of European Planning Studies.

The book illustrates the inter-relationship between several data management, analytics and decision support techniques and methods commonly adopted in Cybersecurity-oriented frameworks. The recent advent of Big Data paradigms and the use of data science methods, has resulted in a higher demand for effective data-driven models that support decision-making at a strategic level. This motivates the need for defining novel data analytics and decision support approaches in a myriad of real-life scenarios and problems, with Cybersecurity-related domains being no exception. This contributed volume comprises nine chapters, written by leading international researchers, covering a compilation of recent advances in Cybersecurity-related applications of data analytics and decision support approaches. In addition to theoretical studies and overviews of existing relevant literature, this book comprises a selection of application-oriented research contributions. The investigations undertaken across these chapters focus on diverse and critical Cybersecurity problems, such as Intrusion Detection, Insider Threats, Insider Threats, Collusion Detection, Run-Time Malware Detection, Intrusion Detection, E-Learning, Online Examinations, Cybersecurity noisy data removal, Secure Smart Power Systems, Security Visualization and Monitoring. Researchers and professionals alike will find the chapters an essential read for further research on the topic.

The world changes like the patterns in a kaleidoscope: trends expand, contract, break up, melt, disintegrate and disappear, while others are formed. Change - as opposed to stasis - is our normal condition, the only certainty in our lives, hence the need to create tools that provide organizations with the means to tackle change and navigate complexity. We must accept the reality of constant change and be prepared for a heavy shift in perspective: interconnection versus separation, acceleration versus linearity and discontinuity versus continuity. Anticipating the future requires more than the traditional predictive models (forecasting) based on the forward projection of past experiences. Advanced methods use anticipation logic (foresight) and build probable scenarios taking into account weak signals, emerging trends, coexisting presents and potential paths of evolution. Corporate foresight is fundamental to interpret and lead change. The two cornerstones of foresight are organization and management. As concerns organization, the authors advocate the separation of research (oriented to the market of tomorrow) from development (oriented to the market of today), the establishment of a foresight unit and the concentration of research activities mainly on the acquisition and recombination of external know-how. As regards management, after an overview of state-of-the-art literature on forecasting methods, the authors propose the implementation of a "future coverage" methodology, which enables companies to measure and verify the consistency between trends, strategic vision and offered products. These organizational and managing tools are then tested in a case study: the Italian company Eurotech SpA, a leader in the ICT sector.

The GCBME Book Series aims to promote the quality and methodical reach of the Global Conference on Business Management & Entrepreneurship, which is intended as a high-quality scientific contribution to the science of business management and entrepreneurship. The Contributions are expected to be the main reference articles on the topic of each book and have been subject to a strict peer review process conducted by experts in the fields. The conference provided opportunities for the delegates to exchange new ideas and implementation of experiences, to establish business or research connections and to find Global Partners for future collaboration. The conference and resulting volume in the book series is expected to be held and appear annually. The year 2019 theme of book and conference is "Transforming Sustainable Business In The Era Of Society 5.0". The ultimate goal of GCBME is to provide a medium forum for educators, researchers, scholars, managers, graduate students and professional business persons from the diverse cultural backgrounds, to present and discuss their research, knowledge and innovation within the fields of business, management and entrepreneurship. The GCBME conferences cover major thematic groups, yet opens to other relevant topics: Organizational Behavior, Innovation, Marketing Management, Financial Management and Accounting, Strategic Management, Entrepreneurship and Green Business.

This book utilizes historical evidence to describe the development of the Toyota Production System (TPS). The development of TPS typifies the transformation of production control in interchangeable industries in the twentieth century. Much of the extensive literature available on TPS has been geared toward describing TPS from a number of different perspectives. Many researchers consider TPS distinct from American mass-production systems. Although TPS (and, more generally, the production control systems in the Japanese assembly industry) has differentiated itself from similar US production systems, the evolution of TPS is largely attributable to attempts to learn from, imitate, and modify pre-World War II US production methods. Through these efforts, TPS has achieved levels of efficiency in Japan comparable to those of US production systems. Additionally, a reliance on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in relation to production control has facilitated the development of TPS. The literature on TPS, however, has largely ignored the vital relationship between ICT and production control due to an inordinate focus on "Kanban." Kanban translates to "signboard" in Japanese but is used to refer to an organic linkage between work in preceding and subsequent production processes. This book sheds light on the development of a fully digitalized Bill of Materials (BOM) at Toyota, behind its Kanban and production control.

This book offers a fresh method of assessing and managing risks in SMEs, by adopting a multidisciplinary approach. In small and medium companies, the risk management process cannot be often formalised and procedures are usually integrated unconsciously into the decision-making process. Therefore, to enhance the flexibility of these companies, increase their market share and allow them to grow and manage risks more effectively, the first step is to improve the way decisions are made. Consequently, it is fundamental for those companies to improve the awareness about the way reasonable decisions are made, which can be achieved only through a proper knowledge and the definition of the Risk Appetite Framework. Therefore, by improving knowledge, the risk appetite and awareness in the decision making, companies will implicitly start developing a risk consciousness, which can be translated into a sound risk approach. SMEs need to understand the importance of an effective internal control system. Hence, the central point is the necessity to start reconsidering the company as a unique entity, by adopting a holistic approach. The book explores whether small and medium companies should adopt a formalised risk management process and, more importantly, the role that the development of an appropriate risk mindfulness and approach to expand existing functions plays in these entities. It suggests an appropriate way of thinking about risk, starting with the amalgamation of both past and present theories, and enabling SMEs to find a solution to improve the effectiveness of their risk management strategies.

This book illustrates the role of software architecture and its application in business. The author describes enterprise architecture along with business architecture to show the role of software architecture in both areas. The place of software architecture in business is outlined from many perspectives in this context. The book outlines quality attributes and how managers can use software architecture to build high quality products. Topics include business software architecture, dealing with qualities, achieving quality attributes, managing business qualities, software product line, Internet of Things (IOT), and Service Oriented Business Architecture. The book is intended to benefit students, researchers, software architects, and business architects. Provides quick and easy access to all the important aspects of software architecture in business; Highlights a wide variety of concepts of software architecture in a straightforward manner, for students, practitioners, or architects; Presents different applications of software architecture in business.

"Performance begins with focusing on outcomes instead of activities. In my experience, most people in most organizations most of the time do the reverse. They concentrate their efforts on the pursuit of activities instead of outcomes. As a result, they rarely set or achieve performance results that matter."

Today's performance challenges demand outcomes—both financial and nonfinancial—that must simultaneously benefit customers, shareholders, employees, and management. Therein lies a cycle of sustainable performance that functions as a framework to ensure your organization's goals are set, met, and balanced for today's business world.

Make Success Measurable! enables you to avoid activity-based goals that can go on indefinitely, and articulate aggressive outcome-based goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

This is a how-to book, emphasizing outcomes as opposed to actions in setting goals. You'll learn how to: Set goals that matter to customers, shareholders, and funders. Set nonfinancial as well as financial goals and link them together. Understand and use outcome-based goals that support success while avoiding activity-based goals that produce failure. Select and use management disciplines needed to achieve your goals. Smith provides the what's and why's behind today's performance challenges and shows how to convert them into measurable concrete achievements.

Using an innovative approach, Smith divides each chapter into an explanatory Mindbook section and a practice Workbook section. The Mindbook sections provide descriptions and explain key concepts, frameworks, tools, and techniques. They seek to build your intellectual understanding of how to set and achieve the performance goals that matter.

The Workbook sections include detailed examples and exercises that you and your colleagues can use to practice the concepts, tools, and techniques put forth in the Mindbook section. Workbook exercises allow you to convert understanding into action—and action into results! "Doug Smith's work on performance and measurement has been an invaluable management resource for us. We believe that if you can't measure it, you can't improve it. Thanks to Doug, we can focus on the right measures to drive performance against today's many new and different challenges throughout our enterprise."—Leon Gorman, President, L.L. Bean, Inc.

"Make Success Measurable! is a practical and powerful step-by-step guide to setting and achieving the goals we all need to accomplish in a constantly changing and challenging world."—Charles Dolan, Chairman, Cablevision Systems Corporation.

"No one writes as clearly about today's key management issues as Doug Smith. Whether you're in a small eCommerce startup or a large, already established organization, the frameworks, tools, techniques, and exercises contained in this book are the only things you'll need to manage the performance that matters to your customers, your people, and your shareholders."—Steve Goldstein, CEO, eChores and former CEO, American Express Bank.

"Achieving results that matter—to donors and clients—is the true measure of success for any nonprofit organization. This book provides a thoughtful and extremely practical guide for setting goals and effectively meeting them. It is an absolutely indispensable tool for leaders and a model for good management."—Jenna Dorn, President, National Museum of Health.

This book shows the patterns of the fuzzy front end of innovation and how it can be managed successfully. Topics in this book cover traditional instruments and processes such as technology monitoring, market-oriented research management, lead-user developments, but also modern approaches such as frontloading, user community-driven innovation, crowdsourcing, anthropological expeditions, technological listening posts in global R&D settings, cross-industry innovation processes, open innovation, and IP cycle management. Contributions are based on latest research and cases studies on this new paradigm. The authors investigate this phenomenon, linking the practice of the early innovation phase to the established body of innovation research. Conceptional articles complement case studies to provide the reader with insight on managing the fuzzy front end of innovation.Lessons learned with success factors and checklists complement each chapter. "

Structuring, or, as it is referred to in the title of this book, the art of structuring, is one of the core elements in the discipline of Information Systems. While the world is becoming increasingly complex, and a growing number of disciplines are evolving to help make it a better place, structure is what is needed in order to understand and combine the various perspectives and approaches involved. Structure is the essential component that allows us to bridge the gaps between these different worlds, and offers a medium for communication and exchange. The contributions in this book build these bridges, which are vital in order to communicate between different worlds of thought and methodology - be it between Information Systems (IS) research and practice, or between IS research and other research disciplines. They describe how structuring can be and should be done so as to foster communication and collaboration. The topics covered reflect various layers of structure that can serve as bridges: models, processes, data, organizations, and technologies. In turn, these aspects are complemented by visionary outlooks on how structure influences the field.

This book provides a conceptual framework for systemic flexibility and business agility, drawing on a basis of research/case applications in various types of flexibility and agility in business. The selected papers address a variety of issues concerning the theme of systemic flexibility and business agility and are organized into following five parts: (i) Systemic and Strategic Flexibility; (ii) Information and Business Agility; (iii) Flexibility, Innovation and Business Excellence; (iv) Flexibility in Value and Supply Chains; and(v) Financial Flexibility and Mergers & Acquisitions. Flexibility and agility in business are emerging as key dimensions of business excellence that encompass the requirements of both choice and speed. The two concepts, flexibility and agility, have been used in multiple ways and often interchangeably, both in literature and in practice. The growing need for flexibility/agility in business can be seen from reactive as well as proactive perspectives. A business enterprise is expected to possess reactive flexibility/ agility (as adaptability and responsiveness) in order to cope with the changing and uncertain business environment. It may also endeavor to intentionally generate flexibility/agility as a strategic change in a variety of ways, such as leadership change, reengineering, innovation in products and processes, use of information and communication technology, and learning orientation.

When Innovation is considered one of the key drivers of corporate success, why do organisations struggle to implement it? Research suggests that innovations fail due to a lack of acceptance by employees; therefore an understanding of potential adopters and the factors influencing their decisions is essential. Despite much research on adoption of innovation by an organization, very little is known about its acceptance by individuals within it. Managing Innovation Adoption is about managing technological innovation implementation at work in an effective way by presenting a new theoretical framework. Based on the theory of reasoned action (TRA), the technology acceptance model (TAM) and other conceptual frameworks, Dr Talukder's enhanced model combines factors from existing and original models to create a coherent new model. The data collected proves that it can be used to assist a broader understanding of how people in an organization adopt and use innovations. As well as contributing to academic knowledge, the author's discoveries have practical implications for organizations, managers, administrators and employees.

The emergence of China as a major world economy is of great importance to the global political economy and to international business. There has been much research on the macro level of institutional reform but little detailed work on the grassroots level of entrepreneurship in China. This innovative book addresses this gap by investigating how an economic system dominated by central plans, communist ideologies and suppressing bureaucracies could generate such energy from the bottom of society, fuelling the country's economic growth. Keming Yang's theory of entrepreneurship is based on two interrelated concepts: double entrepreneurship and institutional holes. He argues that the two concepts bridge a gap between the neo-classical institutionalism of economic development and entrepreneurship studies that emphasize individual choice. The rigorous theoretical framework is supported by substantial empirical research, offering statistical analyses of survey data as well as detailed case studies. This timely book will appeal to an interdisciplinary readership in sociology, economics, business studies and Chinese and Asian Studies.

For over a century, creativity has unfolded as a valuable field of knowledge. Emerging from disciplines like psychology, management and education, the field of creativity is making strides in others including the arts and engineering. Research and education in this field helped it establish an identity as evidenced by a growing number of courses and specialised journals. However, this progress has come with a price. In a domain like management, institutionalisation of creativity in learning, research and practice has left creativity subordinated to concerns with standardisation, employability and economic growth. Values like personal fulfilment, uncertainty, improvement and connectedness which could characterise systemic views on creativity need to be rescued to promote more and inclusive dialogue between creativity stakeholders. The author aims to recover the importance of creativity as a systemic phenomenon and explores how applied systems thinking, or AST, can further support creativity. This demonstrates how creative efforts could be directed to improve quality of life for individuals as well as their environments. The book uses the systems idea as an enquiring device to bring together different actors to promote refl ection and action about creative possibilities. The chapters offer conceptualisations, applications and refl ections of systems ideas to help readers make sense of the field of creativity in academia and elsewhere. Complemented by the author's own personal, conceptual and practical journey, the insights of the book will act as a vital toolkit for management researchers, career-driven students, practitioners and all creators to define and pursue creative ideas and thrive through their journeys to benefit themselves, other people and organisations.

The modern application server is a complex platform that is the linchpin of an enterprise environment that includes a very wide range of technologies-web document formatting, web protocols, server-side scripts, servlets, applets, programming languages, distributed object technologies, security capabilities, directory and naming services, load balancing, system management, and others. As such, it can be a daunting task to try to comprehend these systems. Application Servers for E-Business helps you understand the use of application servers in e-business. The book presents a comprehensive overview of the technologies related to application servers in their facilitation of E-business. These technologies include CORBA, Java, Enterprise Java Beans, Java 2, web servers, and legacy systems. It explores the role these servers play in the modern enterprise IT infrastructure and the environment in which they operate. The material also includes implementation considerations for application servers, including security, scalability, load balancing, and fault tolerance. Chapter one provides an overview of application servers, the evolution of computing that took us from hierarchical, mainframe-centric environments to the web model of computing, and the rationale for E-commerce and E-business. Chapters two through five cover specific technologies, from web browsers and servers to applets and servlets. Chapter three provides an overview of Java technologies, and chapter four covers CORBA. Chapter five discusses application servers in detail. Since application servers are increasingly supporting the key mission-critical processes of an enterprise, it is critical that organizations deploying them build in "enterprise-class" facilities for security, scalability, load balancing, fault tolerance, and management. Chapter six discusses these deployment design issues. The book concludes with chapter seven, a chapter that presents several examples of the advantages of application ser

Prevailing models of organisation divide people into owners, managers and employees, forcing especially the latter to obey, to behave, and to function well within a hierarchical and managerial pecking order. However, there is no natural law suggesting the need for such organisations, not in market economies and definitely not in modern democratic societies - and there is no justification for such types of organisation. Arguing that most current organisations are orthodox, hierarchical, anti-democratic, oppressive, unfair, and unjust, this book presents a viable alternative, a better type of organisation - the democratic organisation. Diefenbach develops and provides step by step a systematic, comprehensive, thorough, and detailed general model of the democratic organisation. He describes the democratic organisation's fundamental principles, values, governance, management, structures, and processes, and the ways it functions and operates both within the organisation and towards others and the environment. Crucially, and most importantly, the democratic organisation provides the institutions and organisational context for individuals to maintain and pursue their fundamental freedoms, inalienable rights, and dignity; to manage organisations in democratic, participative, and cooperative ways; and to conduct business in considerate, balanced, and sustainable ways. This book will be of interest to researchers, academics, practitioners, and students in the fields of management, organisation studies, strategic management, business ethics, entrepreneurship, and family business.

This timely book offers rare insight into the field of cybersecurity in Russia -- a significant player with regard to cyber-attacks and cyber war. Big Data Technologies for Monitoring of Computer Security presents possible solutions to the relatively new scientific/technical problem of developing an early-warning cybersecurity system for critically important governmental information assets. Using the work being done in Russia on new information security systems as a case study, the book shares valuable insights gained during the process of designing and constructing open segment prototypes of this system. Most books on cybersecurity focus solely on the technical aspects. But Big Data Technologies for Monitoring of Computer Security demonstrates that military and political considerations should be included as well. With a broad market including architects and research engineers in the field of information security, as well as managers of corporate and state structures, including Chief Information Officers of domestic automation services (CIO) and chief information security officers (CISO), this book can also be used as a case study in university courses.

Computational intelligence has a long history of applications to business - expert systems have been used for decision support in management, neural networks and fuzzy logic have been used in process control, a variety of techniques have been used in forecasting and data mining has become a core component of customer relationship management in marketing. While there is literature on this field, it is spread over many disciplines and in many different publications, making it difficult to find the pertinent information in one source. ""Business Applications and Computational Intelligence"" addresses the need for a compact overview of the diversity of applications in a number of business disciplines, and consists of chapters written by leading international researchers. Chapters cover most fields of business, including: marketing, data mining, e-commerce, production and operations, finance, decision-making, and general management. ""Business Applications and Computational Intelligence"" provides a comprehensive review of research into computational intelligence applications in business, creating a powerful guide for both newcomers and experienced researchers.

Improve clinical performance and demonstrate value to health care purchasers and insurers by becoming a "data detective" within your organization. Health Data Quest is the practical guide to the most current and promising emerging measurement tools, and provides guidance for effectively and efficiently finding, interpreting, presenting, and using data.

This much-needed book is filled with the essential information, instructive models, and useful tools managers and executives need to create a program that can clearly demonstrate how a health care organization offers quality care in a cost-effective manner, including how to build a data warehouse.

When this book was originally published in 1988, this book was the first to include a large number of reports on British and US companies' experience with computers in company training in such areas as banking, finance, insurance, manufacturing, IT, the retail industry, transport, telecommunications and energy. It provided a critical analysis of the situation and discusses company experiences, development, testing and implementation as well as cost-effectiveness and future trends.

Originally published in 1976, this book discusses the management skills needed to evaluate, implement and control computer-based operation. Every chapter contains detailed check lists which guide the reader to formulate policies to deal with real situations. It provides a practical look at an indispensable tool of management, with a set of guidelines to help get the most out of the available technology.