![]() |
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
||
|
Books > Business & Economics > Business & management > Business mathematics & systems > General
This unique new textbook on Information Systems (IS) provides an answer to a few basic questions in the field: What is the scientific nature of IS? How do we design IS in today's connected world? What is the relationship between IS and innovation in knowledge economies? Whereas mainframe corporate computers tended to dominate the thinking in the 1980s, the dominating factor today is personal digital devices that connect the world as one whole IS. Network science is emerging to describe these digital connections (e.g., social networking), and service science is similarly emerging to describe service value networks.This book therefore synthesizes the emerging network science and service science with the classic IS theory, resulting in a new set of principles for IS strategic planning. It also reviews the standard IS topics of system analysis and database design, covering the whole spectrum of databases and all the major methods and techniques of database design. The role of IS as a technological innovation in the knowledge economy is also analyzed. In doing so, new concepts such as basic values of IS, systems of IS, sustainability of IS, IS as a service system, IS as a human value network, and the hyper-network model for innovation by IS, are developed.
Foundations of Family Resource Management uses the lenses of consumer science, management, and economics, and beyond to help students make intelligent decisions about resources, time, and energies at the individual and family level. It has a strong interdisciplinary, global, and multicultural focus. This sixth edition brings in new material on millennials, delayed marriage, household composition, neuroscience, behavioral economics, sustainable consumption, technology, and handling crises. It has been updated in line with the latest census data and academic literature. The text contains lots of features to support student learning, including chapter summaries, "Did You Know?" questions, glossary of key terms, examples and cases, critical thinking activities, and review questions for discussion and reflection. Lecture slides and an instructor manual are available as digital supplements. This textbook meets the standards and criteria for the Certified Family Life Educator (CFLE) designation of the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) and will be suitable for resource management courses in family and consumer science, human ecology, and human environmental science programs.
This practical guide is written for organisations that are implementing a business continuity management system and certification in line with ISO 22301. The development of a BCMS requires commitment, time, resourcefulness and management support. This book will fully equip those new to business continuity management or to management systems with survival skills for the ups and downs of the journey. Enriched with checklists, worksheets and invaluable top tips.
The rapid success of for-profit colleges and universities (FPCUs) only recently has caught the attention of scholars in academe. The continuing expansion of the proprietary higher education sector has lead to fundamental questions regarding the purpose and function of FPCUs. As new technologies continue to emerge, education is becoming of increasing import to employees seeking to upgrade their skills and employers in search of individuals who possess the necessary expertise and training to help their organizations succeed. For-profit institutions challenge traditional notions of the academy--such as shared governance, tenure, and academic freedom--by utilizing administrative practices that more aptly apply to the corporate arena. Moreover, they exclusively employ non-tenure-track faculty members. This study provides a framework for understanding faculty roles and responsibilities at for profit colleges and universities. The author employs a series of in-depth interviews with 53 faculty members, from four for-profit institutions. Utilizing a cultural framework, the study explores the attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions of faculty work with particular consideration given to faculty member's non-tenure-track status, participation in decision-making activities, and academic freedom. The study examines the culture of the faculty work by asking how the profit-seeking nature of the institution affects their efforts inside and outside of the classroom. The author introduces a new component to the cultural framework that illustrates how the close ties between FPCUs and business and industry affect the nature of faculty work.
How to Account for Sustainability offers an inspiring and practical framework for building your company's sustainability efforts. It takes you from concept to innovation and back to action for all aspects of sustainability. Each chapter has four sections: (1) a specific description of a sustainability challenge, (2) an example of a business making a profit by confronting the challenge, (3) an exercise to tease out a range of possible business solutions for you and your company, and (4) simple and memorable takeaways. This short, expert guide is structured around the world's most accepted guidelines for sustainability reporting: the Global Reporting Initiative. By the time you've finished it you'll have a framework for measuring, managing and accounting for sustainability in your business -- in clear, simple and feasible steps.
Analytics is one of a number of terms which are used to describe a data-driven more scientific approach to management. Ability in analytics is an essential management skill: knowledge of data and analytics helps the manager to analyze decision situations, prevent problem situations from arising, identify new opportunities, and often enables many millions of dollars to be added to the bottom line for the organization. The objective of this book is to introduce analytics from the perspective of the general manager of a corporation. Rather than examine the details or attempt an encyclopaedic review of the field, this text emphasizes the strategic role that analytics is playing in globally competitive corporations today. The chapters of this book are organized in two main parts. The first part introduces a problem area and presents some basic analytical concepts that have been successfully used to address the problem area. The objective of this material is to provide the student, the manager of the future, with a general understanding of the tools and techniques used by the analyst.
From authors used to operating between the commercial, public and independent sectors of the mixed cultural economy, Understanding Creative Business bridges the gap between creative practice and mainstream business organisation, entrepreneurship and management. Using stories, case studies and exercises it discusses the positioning of creative practice within professional and business development, cultural policy-making and the wider cultural economy, and suggests what the broader field of business and management studies can learn from the informal structure and working practices of creative industries networks. Consideration is given to how ethical and moral value orientations animate creative practice and how they play into the wider debate about social responsibilities within business and public policy. The authors also explore the way creative business practices often coalesce around emergent and self-organized networks and how this signals alternative approaches to management, entrepreneurship, business organisation and collaboration. Above all else this book is about relationships; the practical examples expose the ways creative business can professionalise research, develop and sustain routes to growth through 'open' collaborative innovation and the lessons this holds for more general business innovation and policy engagements with the public domain. Written in accessible language, this book will be useful to researchers, students, educators and practitioners within the creative industries; to those working within cultural policy, arts and cultural management; and to all with an interest in management and leadership.
This is a book about creating information systems within firms that will truly give managers the information they need to make informed business decisions. The author contends that information is part of an ecological system in which it undergoes a process of evolution and adaptation to the requirements of the local users. The book explains ecological planning tools that guide managers to develop information systems to meet their changing needs.
Designed for use by professionals and graduate-level students in public administration and not-for-profit management, this is a comprehensive, clearly written guide to the use of statistical analysis in the management of nonprofit organizations. The volume emphasizes statistical models that use more than one variable and is unique in presenting multivariate statistics specifically with the public and nonprofit manager in mind. Examples throughout have been chosen to be relevant to the not-for-profit organization and each chapter contains several real-life illustrations of how statistical techniques can be used in actual practice. In addition to explaining statistical methods and techniques in detail, the author focuses on why statistics should be used and helps the reader obtain an intuitive grasp of the rationale behind the statistics. Because she stresses the logic of proofs and the limitations of results rather than the pure mathematics of statistical derivation, the volume is accessible to students and managers with only a little statistical background. Following a chapter that introduces the concept of multivariate analysis, Stiefel explains simple and multiple regression models in detail. Later chapters discuss other techniques that are becoming widely used in not-for-profit organizations: logit and probit analysis, time-series models, and simultaneous equation models. Two types of examples are used to make the material immediately relevant to the not-for-profit manager: real-world examples culled from professional journals and reports in a variety of fields including health care, education, finance, budgeting, and administrative science; and examples of results obtained using statistical programs run on a personal computer. Thus the book enables the reader to understand and interpret both the statistics used in professional articles and statistical results as they appear on computer printouts. Four appendixes review basic statistical methods such as simple summation operators, the Pearson Correlation Coefficient, and hypothesis testing for the sample mean.
Twenty years after the first publications and books on enterprise architecture, the domain is evolving from a technology-driven towards a more business-driven approach, thus empowering decision makers to adapt and transform an enterprise in order to keep up with changing business needs. At the same time the discipline of enterprise architecting has matured, leading to a better understanding of the profession of an enterprise architect. With this book, the authors aim to provide an overview of enterprise architecture including the process of creating, applying and maintaining it, thus taking into account the perspectives of CxOs, business managers, enterprise architects, solution architects, designers and engineers. They explore the results that are produced as part of an enterprise architecture, the process by which these are produced, and the role the architect plays in this process. As such, they do not describe a specific method for developing an enterprise (IT) architecture, nor do they define a specific modeling language for enterprise architecture, rather they offer the reader a fundamental way of thinking about enterprise architecture, which will enable him to select and apply the right approach, architecture framework and tools that meet the objective and context of the architecture work at hand. This approach is emphasized by discussion statements at the end of each chapter, sparking thoughts about benefits, shortcomings, and future research directions. Covering both theoretical foundations and practical use, and written in close collaboration between industry professionals and academic lecturers, Enterprise Architecture thus offers an ideal introduction for students in areas like business information systems or management science, as well as guidance and background for professionals seeking a more thorough understanding of their field of work.
This book is the Proceedings of the International Workshop on Finance 2011, held in Kyoto in the summer of 2011 with the aim of exchanging new ideas in financial engineering among researchers from various countries from both academia and industry. The workshop was held as a successor to the Daiwa International Workshop (2004-2008), and the KIER-TMU International Workshop (2009-2010). This workshop was organized by the Center for Advanced Research in Finance (CARF), Graduate School of Economics, the University of Tokyo, and Graduate School of Social Sciences, Tokyo Metropolitan University - and co-organized by Life Risk Research Center, Doshisha University.The workshop serves as a bridge between academic researchers and practitioners. This book contains about fifteen papers, all refereed, representing the presentations at the workshop. The papers address state-of-the-art techniques in financial engineering.
Over the past decade, innovative technologies have resulted in an extensive growth of new services. Each new service requires a number of management and marketing decisions to be made well in advance of its launch and throughout its entire life cycle. This book develops mathematical models to facilitate decision-making dealing with technologically innovative services. Specifically, it develops (i) models for optimal pricing strategies of subscription services on monopolistic and duopolistic markets; (ii) an analytical model for optimal investment and optimal pricing strategies for innovative maintenance service contracts; and (iii) a model for targeting customers in marketing campaigns. In addition, the models (i)-(iii) can also be used to forecast an aggregate demand for a new service as well as the service demand for each individual customer.
Seventy percent of all IT projects fail - and scores of books have attempted to help firms measure and manage IT systems and processes better in order to turn this figure around. In this book, IT experts Peter D. Weill and Jeanne W. Ross argue that the real reason IT fails to deliver value is that companies have no formal system in place for guiding and monitoring IT decisions. Their research shows that firms with explicit IT governance systems have twice the profit of firms with poor governance, given the same strategic objectives. Just as corporate governance systems aim to ensure quality decisions about corporate assets, the authors show, companies need IT governance systems to ensure that IT investments are made wisely and effectively. Based on a study of 250 enterprises worldwide, IT Governance shows how to design and implement a customized system of decision rights that will ensure that all employees invest in and use IT only in manners that achieve the company's strategic and financial goals. Practical and proven in practice, this book will help firms transform IT from an expense to a profitable investment.
Information technology has come to play an important role in organizations over the last few decades. Though it began as an entity dealt with by specialists, IT has evolved to become an everyday tool with both operational and strategic impacts. Most modern organizations have adopted different forms of IT, and become dependent on their computer-based information systems and their peripherals for everyday operations. Information technology offers opportunities to increase efficiency, customer value, and competitiveness. Given the financial investment in IT required by organizations to remain competitive, IT has become a resource that needs to be managed. Management and Information Technology evaluates organizations? utilization of IT including knowledge management and e-learning, accounting, and business relationships. Presenting theories to help the reader understand the varying roles IT can occupy in different organizations, this volume illustrates the ways in which IT has become a key strategic tool.
This book collects high-quality papers on the latest fundamental advances in the state of Econophysics and Management Science, providing insights that address problems concerning the international economy, social development and economic security. This book applies the multi-fractal detrended class method, and improves the method with different filters. The authors apply those methods to a variety of areas: financial markets, energy markets, gold market and so on. This book is arguably a systematic research and summary of various kinds of multi-fractal detrended methods. Furthermore, it puts forward some investment suggestions on a healthy development of financial markets.
Cybercrime and Espionage provides a comprehensive analysis of the sophisticated patterns and subversive multi-vector threats (SMTs) associated with modern cybercrime, cyber terrorism, cyber warfare and cyber espionage. Whether the goal is to acquire and subsequently sell intellectual property from one organization to a competitor or the international black markets, to compromise financial data and systems, or undermine the security posture of a nation state by another nation state or sub-national entity, SMTs are real and growing at an alarming pace. This book contains a wealth of knowledge related to the realities seen in the execution of advanced attacks, their success from the perspective of exploitation and their presence within all industry. It will educate readers on the realities of advanced, next generation threats, which take form in a variety ways. This book consists of 12 chapters covering a variety of topics such as the maturity of communications systems and the emergence of advanced web technology; how regulatory compliance has worsened the state of information security; the convergence of physical and logical security; asymmetric forms of gathering information; seven commonalities of SMTs; examples of compromise and presence of SMTs; next generation techniques and tools for avoidance and obfuscation; and next generation techniques and tools for detection, identification and analysis. This book will appeal to information and physical security professionals as well as those in the intelligence community and federal and municipal law enforcement, auditors, forensic analysts, and CIO/CSO/CISO.
Plenty of software testing books tell you how to test well; this one tells you how to do it while decreasing your testing budget. A series of essays written by some of the leading minds in software testing, How to Reduce the Cost of Software Testing provides tips, tactics, and techniques to help readers accelerate the testing process, improve the performance of the test teams, and lower costs. The distinguished team of contributors-that includes corporate test leaders, best paper authors, and keynote speakers from leading software testing conferences-supply concrete suggestions on how to find cost savings without sacrificing outcome. Detailing strategies that testers can immediately put to use to reduce costs, the book explains how to make testing nimble, how to remove bottlenecks in the testing process, and how to locate and track defects efficiently and effectively. Written in language accessible to non-technical executives, as well as those doing the testing, the book considers the latest advances in test automation, ideology, and technology. Rather than present the perspective of one or two experts in software testing, it supplies the wide-ranging perspectives of a team of experts to help ensure your team can deliver a completed test cycle in less time, with more confidence, and reduced costs.
- Structured thematically to align with the process and project-driven nature of professional designers, in academia and practice - Identifies and articulates new forms of practice that are increasingly unbound by conventional territories, procedures, and strategic objectives - Includes open-ended set of activities, charts, worksheets, and discussion questions to foster entrepreneurial thinking in formative projects and practices - Includes curated selection of contemporary examples of entrepreneurship around the world and interviews from leading entrepreneurs and design professionals
- Structured thematically to align with the process and project-driven nature of professional designers, in academia and practice - Identifies and articulates new forms of practice that are increasingly unbound by conventional territories, procedures, and strategic objectives - Includes open-ended set of activities, charts, worksheets, and discussion questions to foster entrepreneurial thinking in formative projects and practices - Includes curated selection of contemporary examples of entrepreneurship around the world and interviews from leading entrepreneurs and design professionals
Multicriteria analysis is a rapidly growing aspect of operations research and management science, with numerous practical applications in a wide range of fields. This book presents all the recent advances in multicriteria analysis, including multicriteria optimization, goal programming, outranking methods, and disaggregation techniques. The latest developments on robustness analysis, preference elicitation, and decision making when faced with incomplete information, are also discussed, together with applications in business performance evaluation, finance, and marketing. Finally, the interactions of multicriteria analysis with other disciplines are also explored, including among others data mining, artificial intelligence, and evolutionary methods.
Praise for The Business-Oriented CIO A Guide to Market-Driven Management "A must-read for CIOs and senior IT executives. George
Tillmann's Market-Driven Management techniques are an outstanding
addition to the CIO's arsenal, full of insights for IT
organizations wanting to generate real added value from IT
investments and services." "The Business-Oriented CIO: A Guide to Market-Driven Management
is an exciting proposition for CIOs and CEOs trying to make IT more
responsive to their organizations' needs. Tillmann's formula for
running the IT department as a business within a business can
transform a costly, slow-to-respond, always-playing-catch-up
function into vibrant, efficient, responsive internal
partner." "Tillmann delivers a thoroughly insightful guide to navigating
and managing IT through his market-driven and customer-focused
approach to business alignment through governance, strategy, and
planning. A must-read for the entire executive suite focused on
value-driven information technology." "Both experienced and relatively new CIOs can learn a great deal
from George's insightful pragmatic guide on the biggest challenge
facing CIOs today. Namely, how to position IT, and the CIO, as an
integral part of the business. Keep it in your desk drawer for
handy reference: you will go to it often." Every CIO's playbook . . . Written by industry expert George Tillmann, The Business-Oriented CIO offersyou important guidance on how to bring IT into the mainstream of your business and how you can make the transition from technical guru to a full member of the executive team. This essential book contains insights from business leaders including Michael Porter on strategy, Harry Markowitz on portfolio theory, C. K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel on core competencies, Robert Kaplan and David Norton on scorecards, and Christian Gronroos on customer service. It reveals the winning formula to take your IT department from a reactive cost center to a proactive business partner.
Whether it's because of a lack of understanding, poor planning, or a myriad of other things, 50 to 60 percent of the IT effort in most companies can be considered waste. Explaining how to introduce Lean principles to your IT functions to reduce and even eliminate this waste, Lean Management Principles for Information Technology provides the tools and understanding to make better decisions, increase efficiencies, and make IT a major force in delivering sustainable improvements to your supply chain. The proven Toyota Production System principles described in this book have already helped many IT organizations double and triple their output. It introduces some of the most powerful Lean tools and techniques-including Six Sigma, value stream mapping, and spaghetti charting-and provides a methodology for implementing them to reduce waste in your IT environment. Discussing information production processes, IT systems, and change management through the lens of Lean principles, the book:
The text reviews the major management challenges facing IT and illustrates solutions with stories, examples, and case studies of how Lean IT has led to unprecedented improvements in the private and government sectors. Demonstrating how to structure the components of your IT system in accordance with Lean, the book details the measures required to achieve and sustain a world-class Lean IT supply chain management system.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) will change the lives of people and businesses more fundamentally than many people can even imagine today. This book illustrates the importance of AI in an era of digitalization. It introduces the foundations of AI and explains its benefits and challenges for companies and entire industries. In this regard, AI is approached not just as yet another technology, but as a fundamental innovation, which will spread into all areas of the economy and life, and will disrupt business processes and business models in the years to come. In turn, the book assesses the potential that AI holds, and clarifies the framework that is necessary for pursuing a responsible approach to AI. In a series of best-practice cases, the book subsequently highlights a broad range of sectors and industries, from production to services; from customer service to marketing and sales; and in industries like retail, health care, energy, transportation and many more. In closing, a dedicated chapter outlines a roadmap for a specific corporate AI journey. No one can ignore intensive work with AI today - neither as a private person, let alone as a top performer in companies. This book offers a thorough, carefully crafted, and easy to understand entry into the field of AI. The central terms used in the AI context are given a very good explanation. In addition, a number of cases show what AI can do today and where the journey is heading. An important book that you should not miss! Professor Dr. Harley Krohmer University of Bern "Inspiring, thought provoking and comprehensive, this book is wittingly designed to be a catalyst for your individual and corporate AI journey." Avo Schoenbohm, Professor at the Berlin School of Economics and Law, Enterprise Game Designer at LUDEO and Business Punk
This book explores the premise that organizations are significantly influenced by their inter-organizational relationships; moreover, these relationships may generate important externalities, both positive and negative, impacting the environment at several levels. The advent of the Internet era, on the other hand, has resulted in disruptive changes in traditional inter-organizational networks, and some completely new inter-organizational settings are now arising. In its first part the book reviews the most commonly cited theories explaining inter-organizational phenomena: transaction costs economics, agency theory, resource dependence theory, game theories, collaborative networks theory, institutional theories, organizational ecology, resource-based / relational-based view of the firm, and knowledge network / social network theories. In Part II it thoroughly reviews the literature on a number of key IT-enabled inter-organizational systems currently on the rise, such as virtual organizations, e-intermediators and e-marketplaces. Lastly, Part III presents the case of the Yoox Group, a leading firm offering e-commerce services for fashion and design products. A framework is proposed for systematically linking the different possible types of inter-organizational relationships to specific, suitable sets of theories. The range of possible inter-organizational relationships is described on the basis of three pairs of opposites: conformism-breach, exploitation-exploration, and cooperation-competition. This results in a model that makes it possible to combine different theories in order to study the effects of inter-organizational ambidexterity and dynamism on performance.
Enterprise architecture requires an understanding of all technologies, strategies, and data consumption throughout the enterprise. To this end, one must strive to always broaden knowledge of existing, as well as emerging trends and solutions. As a trade, this role demands an understanding beyond the specificities of technologies and vendor products. An enterprise architect must be versatile with the design and arrangement of elements in an extended network enterprise. Intended for anyone charged with coordinating enterprise architectural design in a small, medium, or large organization, Sustainable Enterprise Architecture helps you explore the various elements of your own particular network environment to develop strategies for mid- to long-term management and sustainable growth. Organized much like a book on structural architecture, this one starts with a solid foundation of frameworks and general guidelines for enterprise governance and design. The book covers common considerations for all enterprises, and then drills down to specific types of technology that may be found in your enterprise. It explores strategies for protecting enterprise resources and examines technologies and strategies that are only just beginning to take place in the modern enterprise network. Each chapter builds on the knowledge and understanding of topics presented earlier in the book to give you a thorough understanding of the challenges and opportunities in managing enterprise resources within a well-designed architectural strategy. Emphasizing only those strategies that weather change, Sustainable Enterprise Architecture shows you how to evaluate your own unique environment and find alignment with the concepts of sustainability and architecture. It gives you the tools to build solutions and policies to protect your enterprise and allow it to provide the greatest organizational value into the future. |
You may like...
|