This book provides an in-depth analysis of industrial consultancy on a variety of issues and aspects including operations and services. This book: Looks at both individual-level consultancy and consultancy for firms, companies, or institutions. Uses observations, examples, and case studies to bring together key themes: consulting approach; production operations vs. services consulting; location and facilities criteria; human-machine interaction; lead time objective; outsourcing decisions and management; and infrastructure influence along with consultancy objectives, strategic considerations, and conflict resolution. Presents a comprehensive understanding of industrial consultancy and services offered to a wide range of industries, across type, size, and scale, including manufacturing, pharmaceutical, fabrication, and transformer industries. The first of its kind, this book will be a useful resource for industry and management professionals as well as scholars and researchers of business management, business economics, operations, entrepreneurship and organizational behaviour, and engineering.

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.

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.

Action Research for Professional Selling by Peter McDonnell and Jean McNiff is for people working, or hoping to work in sales, who wish to improve their capacity for selling, and who may be involved in providing or participating in a structured sales training programme. It provides a basis for professional selling that connects the sales process to different philosophical models for understanding human interactions and contains much practical advice for selling in a tough economic environment. Action research is used across the professions as a powerful methodology for improving performance and outcomes and will enable sales practitioners to generate their practical theories of selling. The book answers calls for evidence-based practice in sales education, placing special emphasis on the strength of a values-based approach over the outmoded manipulative models of the past (many of which are still in evidence). It is essential to develop your understanding of what you are doing, and be able to explain it, and the book shows you how to do this through researching your practice in action. It focuses seriously on selling as a field of research offering an innovative, practical approach to selling, underpinned by strong theoretical and philosophical frameworks.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Companies across all industries are leveraging digital technologies to transform outdated processes and build new business models to compete in the information age. For all the publicity and hype, successful digital transformation has proven to be elusive. Numerous studies have found more than half of all digital transformation efforts fail. Digitally Deaf explores the obstacles and inhibitors that derail transformation efforts and outlines the steps organizations should take to establish an environment for success. Written by a highly experienced CIO, Digitally Deaf illustrates symptoms and underlying issues through the author's experiences at large, Fortune 250 organizations. Digitally Deaf establishes a framework for digital transformation execution beginning with the development of a common definition and language for transformation. Learn the roles of the board of directors and leadership in establishing the appropriate messaging, governance, and organizational structure to drive digital efforts. Realize how digital transformation efforts amplify common problems encountered in typical technology projects. Discover how the IT organization must transform to enable the agility needed to fuel new digital business models. Finally, learn to spot the symptoms of issues that undermine transformation success and how to address them. "On the topic of digital transformation, Steve addresses the mind set shift that is needed to be successful, leveraging relatable examples across multiple industries. Digitally Deaf offers a very relevant perspective on what it takes to move a traditional organization into the digital age." Boris Sherman, CTO Tailored Brands "Stone, as a former CIO, accurately outlines the challenges associated with new technologies and the benefits of implementing a digital-first culture. This book helps business and technology leaders understand the landscape and how to embrace digital to create new sources of value in their organizations." Jonathan Brassington, Head, Capgemini Invent North America

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.

This successful book provides in its second edition an interactive and illustrative guide from two-dimensional curve fitting to multidimensional clustering and machine learning with neural networks or support vector machines. Along the way topics like mathematical optimization or evolutionary algorithms are touched. All concepts and ideas are outlined in a clear cut manner with graphically depicted plausibility arguments and a little elementary mathematics.The major topics are extensively outlined with exploratory examples and applications. The primary goal is to be as illustrative as possible without hiding problems and pitfalls but to address them. The character of an illustrative cookbook is complemented with specific sections that address more fundamental questions like the relation between machine learning and human intelligence.All topics are completely demonstrated with the computing platform Mathematica and the Computational Intelligence Packages (CIP), a high-level function library developed with Mathematica's programming language on top of Mathematica's algorithms. CIP is open-source and the detailed code used throughout the book is freely accessible.The target readerships are students of (computer) science and engineering as well as scientific practitioners in industry and academia who deserve an illustrative introduction. Readers with programming skills may easily port or customize the provided code. "'From curve fitting to machine learning' is ... a useful book. ... It contains the basic formulas of curve fitting and related subjects and throws in, what is missing in so many books, the code to reproduce the results.All in all this is an interesting and useful book both for novice as well as expert readers. For the novice it is a good introductory book and the expert will appreciate the many examples and working code". Leslie A. Piegl (Review of the first edition, 2012).

In recent years, exchanges on both sides of the Atlantic have been extensively reengineered, and their organizational structures have changed from non-profit, membership organizations to for-profit, demutualized organizations. Concurrently, new alternative trading systems have emerged and the traditional functions of broker/dealer firms have evolved. How have these changes affected the delivery of that mission? How has the efficiency of capital raising in the IPO market been impacted? These are among the key questions addressed in this book, titled after the Baruch College Conference, The Economic Function of a Stock Market. Featuring contributions from a panel of scholars, academicians, policymakers, and industry leaders, this volume examines current issues affecting market quality, including challenges in the marketplace, growth opportunities, and IPO capital raising in the global economy. The Zicklin School of Business Financial Markets Series presents the insights emerging from a sequence of conferences hosted by the Zicklin School at Baruch College for industry professionals, regulators, and scholars. Much more than historical documents, the transcripts from the conferences are edited for clarity, perspective and context; material and comments from subsequent interviews with the panelists and speakers are integrated for a complete thematic presentation. Each book is focused on a well delineated topic, but all deliver broader insights into the quality and efficiency of the U.S. equity markets and the dynamic forces changing them.

This proceedings volume presents the latest scientific research and trends in experimental economics, with particular focus on neuroeconomics. Derived from the 2016 Computational Methods in Experimental Economics (CMEE) conference held in Szczecin, Poland, this book features research and analysis of novel computational methods in neuroeconomics. Neuroeconomics is an interdisciplinary field that combines neuroscience, psychology and economics to build a comprehensive theory of decision making. At its core, neuroeconomics analyzes the decision-making process not only in terms of external conditions or psychological aspects, but also from the neuronal point of view by examining the cerebral conditions of decision making. The application of IT enhances the possibilities of conducting such analyses. Such studies are now performed by software that provides interaction among all the participants and possibilities to register their reactions more accurately. This book examines some of these applications and methods. Featuring contributions on both theory and application, this book is of interest to researchers, students, academics and professionals interested in experimental economics, neuroeconomics and behavioral economics.

The impact of the global financial crisis is still being felt today and the deeply unethical behaviour of the top level leaders at those economic and financial organizations, that were at the heart of the crisis, has served to highlight the importance of integrity, and in particular the need for servant leadership, if we are to avoid another major catastrophe in the management of both commercial and non-profit organizations. Servant leadership has many features in common with transformational leadership but is primarily focused on caring about employees and their personal development. Ethical behaviour is one of the most important components of successful leadership yet this remains insufficiently investigated, especially from an interdisciplinary perspective. With the help of theory, empirical analysis and the relevant methodological apparatus, the authors fill the gap in the analysis of integrity and its impact on leadership and locate the significant factors which affect integrity in general. They develop and assess the forces that impact Servant Leadership style, as well as the ability to engender trust. As a starting point they make two assumptions: An important element in leading is the ethical dimension of leadership; The ratio of factors that affect leading and the servant leadership style is complex, but the integrity of leaders is the most important among them. The authors examine four integrated scientific areas: ethics and business ethics, human resource management and psychology and focus on the analysis of the process of leadership and the factors within that process of leading that influence its success and its ethical dimension.

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

This book presents research in artificial techniques using intelligence for energy transition, outlining several applications including production systems, energy production, energy distribution, energy management, renewable energy production, cyber security, industry 4.0 and internet of things etc. The book goes beyond standard application by placing a specific focus on the use of AI techniques to address the challenges related to the different applications and topics of energy transition. The contributions are classified according to the market and actor interactions (service providers, manufacturers, customers, integrators, utilities etc.), to the SG architecture model (physical layer, infrastructure layer, and business layer), to the digital twin of SG (business model, operational model, fault/transient model, and asset model), and to the application domain (demand side management, load monitoring, micro grids, energy consulting (residents, utilities), energy saving, dynamic pricing revenue management and smart meters, etc.).

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.

Drawing on an impressive range of archival material, this monograph delves into the careers of two businessmen who worked for Nordic chartered monopoly trading companies to illuminate individual entrepreneurship in the context of seventeenth-century long-distance trade. The study spans the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, examining global entanglements through personal interactions and daily trading activities between Europeans, Asian merchants and African brokers. It makes an important contribution to our understanding of the role of individuals and their networks within the great European trading companies of the early modern period. This unique book will be of interest to advanced students and researchers of economic history, business history, early modern global history and entrepreneurship.

This handbook offers comprehensive coverage of recent advancements in Big Data technologies and related paradigms. Chapters are authored by international leading experts in the field, and have been reviewed and revised for maximum reader value. The volume consists of twenty-five chapters organized into four main parts. Part one covers the fundamental concepts of Big Data technologies including data curation mechanisms, data models, storage models, programming models and programming platforms. It also dives into the details of implementing Big SQL query engines and big stream processing systems. Part Two focuses on the semantic aspects of Big Data management including data integration and exploratory ad hoc analysis in addition to structured querying and pattern matching techniques. Part Three presents a comprehensive overview of large scale graph processing. It covers the most recent research in large scale graph processing platforms, introducing several scalable graph querying and mining mechanisms in domains such as social networks. Part Four details novel applications that have been made possible by the rapid emergence of Big Data technologies such as Internet-of-Things (IOT), Cognitive Computing and SCADA Systems. All parts of the book discuss open research problems, including potential opportunities, that have arisen from the rapid progress of Big Data technologies and the associated increasing requirements of application domains. Designed for researchers, IT professionals and graduate students, this book is a timely contribution to the growing Big Data field. Big Data has been recognized as one of leading emerging technologies that will have a major contribution and impact on the various fields of science and varies aspect of the human society over the coming decades. Therefore, the content in this book will be an essential tool to help readers understand the development and future of the field.

This edited collection brings together a series of interdisciplinary contributions in the field of Information Technology Law. The topics addressed in this book cover a wide range of theoretical and practical legal issues that have been created by cutting-edge Internet technologies, primarily Big Data, the Internet of Things, and Cloud computing. Consideration is also given to more recent technological breakthroughs that are now used to assist, and - at times - substitute for, human work, such as automation, robots, sensors, and algorithms. The chapters presented in this edition address these issues from the perspective of different legal backgrounds. The first part of the book discusses some of the shortcomings that have prompted legislators to carry out reforms with regard to privacy, data protection, and data security. Notably, some of the complexities and salient points with regard to the new European General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR) and the new amendments to the Japan's Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) have been scrutinized. The second part looks at the vital role of Internet intermediaries (or brokers) for the proper functioning of the globalized electronic market and innovation technologies in general. The third part examines an electronic approach to evidence with an evaluation of how these technologies affect civil and criminal investigations. The authors also explore issues that have emerged in e-commerce, such as Bitcoin and its blockchain network effects. The book aims to explain, systemize and solve some of the lingering legal questions created by the disruptive technological change that characterizes the early twenty-first century.

This book gathers carefully selected works in Mathematical Economics, on myriad topics including General Equilibrium, Game Theory, Economic Growth, Welfare, Social Choice Theory, Finance. It sheds light on the ongoing discussions that have brought together leading researchers from Latin America and Southern Europe at recent conferences in venues like Porto, Portugal; Athens, Greece; and Guanajuato, Mexico. With this volume, the editors not only contribute to the advancement of research in these areas, but also inspire other scholars around the globe to collaborate and research these vibrant, emerging topics.

The contents of this volume focuses on the economic issues such as income inequality, foreign direct investment, world income classification, business issues such as customer churn analysis, internal branding, human resources issues among others. The papers were presented during the 11th Annual Research Conference of Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies (SIMSARC2020). The book also focuses on the information technology and its application for the business in the form of social media, role of artificial intelligence etc. The contents of the volume are highly relevant, consisting of recent data and results, and based on strong research and statistical analysis. They widely cover the business, society and environmental issues faced in the present times, and the challenges faced by India to reach its goal of a trillion dollar economy. The papers not only discuss the issues but also come up with research based solutions and will be of interest to scholars, corporates, policy makers, and academics alike.

Entrepreneurial Complexity: Methods and Applications deals with theoretical and practical results of Entrepreneurial Sciences and Management (ESM), emphasising qualitative and quantitative methods. ESM has been a modern and exciting research field in which methods from various disciplines have been applied. However, the existing body of literature lacks the proper use of mathematical and formal models; individuals who perform research in this broad interdisciplinary area have been trained differently. In particular, they are not used to solving business-oriented problems mathematically. This book utilises formal techniques in ESM as an advantage for developing theories and models which are falsifiable. Features Discusses methods for defining and measuring complexity in entrepreneurial sciences Summarises new technologies and innovation-based techniques in entrepreneurial sciences Outlines new formal methods and complexity-models for entrepreneurship To date no book has been dedicated exclusively to use formal models in Entrepreneurial Sciences and Management

Corporate success has been changed by the importance of new developments in Business Analytics (BA) and furthermore by the support of computational intelligence- based techniques. This book opens a new avenues in these subjects, identifies key developments and opportunities. The book will be of interest for students, researchers and professionals to identify innovative ways delivered by Business Analytics based on computational intelligence solutions. They help elicit information, handle knowledge and support decision-making for more informed and reliable decisions even under high uncertainty environments.Computational Intelligence for Business Analytics has collected the latest technological innovations in the field of BA to improve business models related to Group Decision-Making, Forecasting, Risk Management, Knowledge Discovery, Data Breach Detection, Social Well-Being, among other key topics related to this field.

ECMI, the European Consortium for Mathematics in Industry, is the European brand associated with applied mathematics for industry and organizes highly successful biannual conferences. In this series, the ECMI 2010, the 16th European Conference on Mathematics for Industry, was held in the historic city hall of Wuppertal in Germany. It covered the mathematics of a wide range of applications and methods, from circuit and electromagnetic device simulation to model order reduction for chip design, uncertainties and stochastics, production, fluids, life and environmental sciences, and dedicated and versatile methods.

These proceedings of ECMI 2010 emphasize mathematics as an innovation enabler for industry and business, and as an absolutely essential pre-requiste for Europe on its way to becoming the leading knowledge-based economy in the world.