Making Big Decisions Better is leading a global movement to equip present and next generation leaders with proven strategy tools that enable agile thinking that ignites stronger, more predictable, direct paths to profit. No more academic theories. These are real tools and a system that enables improved strategic thinking and leadership. This book bridges an unspoken gap in strategy thinking that until now, only provided leaders with just SWOT and Porter's 5 Forces as the language of strategy. By using the decision making tools in Making Big Decisions Better, you'll finally remove the mystique of those you manage up to, and lead those that report to you. You will standout and have a transportable set of tools for any role or industry. There's never been a better time to break away from the outdated, mainstream strategy planning process that misused scarce resources, burned out its leaders and never delivered the results. It's your turn to learn and lead!

Diversity and inclusion (D&I) isn't just an HR exercise - it can make a real different to your team performance too. By making everyone in your team feel like they belong, you'll be able to boost motivation and productivity. Everyone Included helps you make inclusion, belonging and wellbeing central to your team. By helping everyone feel that they belong, your team will foster genuine inclusion and be ready to adapt and evolve in the future. With a step-by-step plan to design and implement a diversity and inclusion plan that brings results: Where are you now? - Understand your team profile now by conducting a belonging Audit to identify your how inclusive your team is. What do I do next? - Design a D&I plan, including a business case to win support, and identify key metrics to measure its effectiveness How do I keep going? - Ensure your programme continually improves and remains relevant by creating measurements and feedback loops Everyone Included is your comprehensive, step-by-step guide to creating a diversity and inclusion strategy that delivers results for your team.

Despite intense research on decision-making in action, we still know little about when decision-makers rely on deliberate vs. intuitive decision-making in decision situations under complexity and uncertainty. Building on default-interventionist dual-processing theory, this book studies decision-making modes (deliberate vs. intuitive) in complex task environments contingent on perceived complexity, experience, and decision style preference. We find that relatively inexperienced decision-makers respond to increases in subjective complexity with an increase in deliberation and tend to follow their decision style preference. Experienced decision-makers are less guided by their decision preference and respond to increases in subjective complexity only minimally. This book contributes to a developing stream of research linking decision-making with intra-personal and environmental properties and fosters our understanding of the conditions under which decision-makers rely on intuitive vs. deliberate decision modes. In doing so, we go one step further towards a comprehensive theory of decision-making in action.

Discover how to Be Decisive - Now! This 2-in-1 guide is designed to help you become a more effective decision maker in an instant, whilst giving you the deeper knowledge to ensure long-lasting results. With the unique 2-in-1 approach, you can learn your way. Use the seven Speed Read tips immediately, then take your time exploring the Big Picture chapters. * Make the right decisions quickly and effectively * Understand the problem properly and work out your priorities * Ensure your decision is the right one and avoid the common mistakes * Know the value of risk planning and how to do it successfully * Look back to learn lessons on better decisions next time As an ambitious manager, you need the right information at the right time to help you advance in your career. The 2-in-1 Manager will ensure you improve and succeed in business, right now and in the future.

Global virtual teams (GVTs) have evolved as a common work structure in multinational corporations due to their efficiency and cost-effectiveness. The cultural differences can produce great benefits in terms of perspective, creativity, and innovation, but can also exacerbate interpersonal tensions, miscommunications, and clashing decision-making behaviors. This book outlines cultural competencies specific to GVTs and sheds light on management strategies for creating an optimal inter-cultural GVT environment. It covers theory, decision making strategies, and activities for cultural competence and problem resolution, all told through vignettes and lessons-learned.

In our increasingly globally interconnected world, understanding and appreciating the sociocultural context within which individuals make their decisions is critical to developing successful partnerships. The collection of chapters in this volume illustrates how advances in information and social media technologies, as well as modeling and simulation tools, combined with the social sciences, can be leveraged to better understand how sociocultural context influences decision making. The chapters in this volume were contributed by leading experts from academia, industry, and government and provide: Insights into cross-cultural decision making based on recent international events, with grounding in an historical context Discussions of cutting-edge modeling techniques used today by professionals across multiple organizations and agencies Descriptions of specific cross-cultural decision making tools designed for use by laypeople and professionals Case studies on the role of cross-cultural decision making grounded in current events and (in many cases) military applications.

A KMCI Press book - a definitive title from the leading, standard-setting KM organizationOnly book to describe fundamental KM concepts and theoriesApproach roots theory in current state of the procession/discipline

Intelligent IT Outsourcing enables practitioners to focus in on the essential issues that need to be addressed so that the fundamental structure of their sourcing strategy and its implementation is sound. The authors provide insight into the challenges likely to be faced and give detailed advice on how to pre-empt and manage these. IT and outsourcing continue to be problematic, not least because fundamental learning about this subject fails to be applied systematically, and because IT is inherently difficult to manage. The economics are not obvious and emerging technologies have to be addressed, therefore IT goes to the heart of many enterprises and interfaces with multiple business units and processes, and there are continuous skills shortages. Unfortunately complexities are not removed in outsourced situations where additional problems come into play, for example the supplier's capabilities, whether the IT is right for an outsourcing solution, and whether the contract is robust but flexible enough to allow for outsourcing to take place. Objectives need to be realistic, and factors such as whether the internal management is mature and capable enough in this field, and the impact of prohibitive switching costs on behaviour once an outsourcing deal has been signed all have to be taken into account. The authors have built up over two decades of research, advisory and practitioner experience that enables them to distil the fundamental challenges in IT and outsourcing and demonstrate how these can be addressed.

This book, originally published in 1996, develops a model of information gathering for small businesses. Whilst all small business owners gather and process some information, the quality and types of information gathered is limited. Size and resource constraints force small business owners to make difficult decisions related to the research that they conduct. The model developed in this book is tested in part through a study of the information gathering practices of small owners/managers in the landscaping industry in Wisconsin, USA.

Develop the mindset and presence to successfully manage others for the first time. If you read nothing else on becoming a new manager, read these 10 articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you transition from being an outstanding individual contributor to a great manager of others. This book will inspire you to: * develop your emotional intelligence * influence your colleagues with the science of persuasion * assess your team and enhance its performance * network effectively to achieve business goals and for personal advancement * navigate relationships with employees, bosses, and peers * get support from above * view the big picture in your decision-making * balance your team's work and personal life in a high-intensity workplace

Risk Analysis in Finance and Insurance, Second Edition presents an accessible yet comprehensive introduction to the main concepts and methods that transform risk management into a quantitative science. Taking into account the interdisciplinary nature of risk analysis, the author discusses many important ideas from mathematics, finance, and actuarial science in a simplified manner. He explores the interconnections among these disciplines and encourages readers toward further study of the subject. This edition continues to study risks associated with financial and insurance contracts, using an approach that estimates the value of future payments based on current financial, insurance, and other information. New to the Second Edition Expanded section on the foundations of probability and stochastic analysis Coverage of new topics, including financial markets with stochastic volatility, risk measures, risk-adjusted performance measures, and equity-linked insurance More worked examples and problems Reorganized and expanded, this updated book illustrates how to use quantitative methods of stochastic analysis in modern financial mathematics. These methods can be naturally extended and applied in actuarial science, thus leading to unified methods of risk analysis and management.

Discover recent powerful advances in the theory, methods, and applications of decision and risk analysis Focusing on modern advances and innovations in the field of decision analysis (DA), Breakthroughs in Decision Science and Risk Analysis presents theories and methods for making, improving, and learning from significant practical decisions. The book explains these new methods and important applications in an accessible and stimulating style for readers from multiple backgrounds, including psychology, economics, statistics, engineering, risk analysis, operations research, and management science. Highlighting topics not conventionally found in DA textbooks, the book illustrates genuine advances in practical decision science, including developments and trends that depart from, or break with, the standard axiomatic DA paradigm in fundamental and useful ways. The book features methods for coping with realistic decision-making challenges such as online adaptive learning algorithms, innovations in robust decision-making, and the use of a variety of models to explain available data and recommend actions. In addition, the book illustrates how these techniques can be applied to dramatically improve risk management decisions. Breakthroughs in Decision Science and Risk Analysis also includes: * An emphasis on new approaches rather than only classical and traditional ideas * Discussions of how decision and risk analysis can be applied to improve high-stakes policy and management decisions * Coverage of the potential value and realism of decision science within applications in financial, health, safety, environmental, business, engineering, and security risk management * Innovative methods for deciding what actions to take when decision problems are not completely known or described or when useful probabilities cannot be specified * Recent breakthroughs in the psychology and brain science of risky decisions, mathematical foundations and techniques, and integration with learning and pattern recognition methods from computational intelligence Breakthroughs in Decision Science and Risk Analysis is an ideal reference for researchers, consultants, and practitioners in the fields of decision science, operations research, business, management science, engineering, statistics, and mathematics. The book is also an appropriate guide for managers, analysts, and decision and policy makers in the areas of finance, health and safety, environment, business, engineering, and security risk management.

Praise for Comprehensive Intellectual Capital Management

"The ‘Comprehensive Intellectual Capital Management’ (CICM) approach Ms. Al-Ali has developed is truly groundbreaking in that it effectively addresses one of the most significant challenges in the intellectual capital management (ICM) arena today: the ability to directly link ICM to bottom line business value. The integration of innovation processes with knowledge management (KM) and intellectual asset management (IAM), combined with a robust portfolio management discipline are the most critical and unique components of the CICM approach. Additionally, the fact that CICM can be customized to fit the strategic direction, operational structure, and culture of a company is also a very appealing aspect of this bottom line—based approach. This book speaks to every person in the ICM chain, the inventor, market manager, patent attorney, finance manager, IA manager, research manager, business manager, production manager, and most importantly, the CFO."
–David Near, Director of Business Excellence, Polyurethanes Business
The Dow Chemical Company

"This is a seminal work in that vast wilderness where law merges with business. It should be dog-eared and underlined with notes in the margin by any lawyer or business leader who cares about how intellectual capital is valued and how it should be managed to maximize growth and profit. This is the critical knowledge for the next decade and beyond."
–John D. Hutson, Dean & President, Franklin Pierce Law Center

"Management and reporting of Intellectual Capital has become one of the most important issues facing business and society in the knowledge economy. Much work has been done around the world trying to develop general acceptable solutions. Nermien Al-Ali presents in her book a unique and very inspirational contribution to the search for ways of better managing and reporting Intellectual Capital."
–Jan V.K. Hoffmeister, Vice President, Intellectual Capital Management
Skandia Insurance Company

This book analyzes the impact of the digital economy on customer satisfaction, shopping experience, resistance to change, script theory, and loyalty. The model introduced assumes that online markets have led to a redefinition of the concepts of loyalty and shopping scripts as a way to reduce customers' cognitive effort, by optimizing purchase time and increasing the speed and satisfaction of the shopping experience. It describes the utility function of the script by retaining customer loyalty and making the customer more reluctant to abandon his regular supplier. It also explores the difficulty faced by the higher churn rate on the Internet and the minimization of search costs, by integrating more functionality to achieve the ultimate goal of behavioral and cognitive loyalty. The authors provide an analysis in a "digital" view of the economic theory of switching costs and the resulting lock-in mechanisms which, in a classical economy, are often a barrier to disloyalty. It is a useful and effective tool for online businesses, their main managerial and strategic implications, and the adaptability to existing contexts.

"The best education in grand strategy available in a single volume . . . a book that should be read by every American leader or would-be leader."-The Wall Street Journal A master class in strategic thinking, distilled from the legendary program the author has co-taught at Yale for decades John Lewis Gaddis, the distinguished historian of the Cold War, has for almost two decades co-taught grand strategy at Yale University with his colleagues Charles Hill and Paul Kennedy. Now, in On Grand Strategy, Gaddis reflects on what he has learned. In chapters extending from the ancient world through World War II, Gaddis assesses grand strategic theory and practice in Herodotus, Thucydides, Sun Tzu, Octavian/Augustus, St. Augustine, Machiavelli, Elizabeth I, Philip II, the American Founding Fathers, Clausewitz, Tolstoy, Lincoln, Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Isaiah Berlin. On Grand Strategy applies the sharp insights and wit readers have come to expect from Gaddis to times, places, and people he's never written about before. For anyone interested in the art of leadership, On Grand Strategy is, in every way, a master class.

How do managers and leaders know what to do when they are caught off guard or taken by surprise? How do they create when they do not know what to do next? These are challenges of an organizational world of existential uncertainty; one where the future does not conform to but challenges our expectations and assumptions. Steven Segal demonstrates that creating in a world of existential uncertainty requires a new understanding of the relationship between management inquiry and the lived experience of organizing. Using existential philosophy he demonstrates how moods of concern serve as a framework to integrate management theory and practice, thereby providing a framework for managers, management educators, and consultants to share a common framework. In a globalized free market characterized by unexpected disruptions management inquiry is not a science conducted from an objective distance. The book advocates an existentially reflexive and participant observer perspective to management inquiry. By participating in managing, a felt sense of being a manager develops. Through existential observation new ways of organizing are made possible. It is inquiry from within rather than from an objective distance. Such inquiry opens new doors and opportunities. Existential hermeneutic phenomenology and the free market phenomenon of creative destruction are linked to each other. The former provides a framework to work through the breakdown in conventions of organizing that occur in creative destruction.

This book is designed to assist industrial engineers and production managers in developing procedural and methodological engineering tools to meet industrial standards and mitigate engineering and production challenges. It offers practitioners expert guidance on how to implement adequate statistical process control (SPC), which takes account of the capability to ensure a stable process and then regulate if variations take place due to variables other than a random variation. Powerful engineering models of new product introduction (NPI), continuous improvement (CI), and the eight disciplines (8D) model of problem solving techniques are explained. The final three chapters introduce new methodological models in operations research (OR) and their applications in engineering, including the hyper-hybrid coordination for process effectiveness and production efficiency, and the Kraljic-Tesfay portfolio matrix of industrial buying.

Where should I live? Is it time to get a new job? Which job candidate should I hire? What business strategy should I pursue? We spend the majority of our lives making decisions, both big and small. Yet, even though our success is largely determined by the choices that we make, very few of us are equipped with useful decision-making skills. Because of this, we often approach our choices tentatively, or even fearfully, and avoid giving them the time and thought required to put our best foot forward. In Smart Choices, John Hammond, Ralph Keeney, and Howard Raiffa--experts with over 100 years of experience resolving complex decision problems--offer a proven, straightforward, and flexible roadmap for making better and more impactful decisions, and offer the tools to achieve your goals in every aspect of your life. Their step-by-step, divide-and conquer approach will teach you how to: * Evaluate your plans * Break your potential decision into its key elements * Identify the key drivers that are most relevant to your goals * Apply systematic thinking * Use the right information to make the smartest choice Smart Choices doesn't tell you what to decide; it tells you how. As you routinely use the process, you'll become more confident in your ability to make decisions at work and at home. And, more importantly, by applying its time-tested methods, you'll make better decisions going forward. Be proactive. Don't wait until a decision is forced on you--or made for you. Seek out decisions that advance your long-term goals, values, and beliefs. Take charge of your life by making Smart Choices a lifetime habit.

This book offers an advanced introduction to the models of credit risk valuation. It concentrates on firm-value and reduced-form approaches and their applications in practice. Additionally, the book includes new models for valuing derivative securities with credit risk, focussing on options and forward contracts subject to counterparty default risk, but also treating options on credit-risky bonds and credit derivatives. The text provides detailed descriptions of the state-of-the-art martingale methods and advanced numerical implementations based on multi-variate trees used to price derivative credit risk. Numerical examples illustrate the effects of credit risk on the prices of financial derivatives.

Creativity directly impacts results and productivity, yet few of us understand how it happens or how to put it into practice. This book shows you not only how to get things done, but how to do them better and more creatively. The Creative Thinking Handbook provides the correct application for creative thinking and action, by offering clear, practical tools and strategies so that you can develop creative thinking skills and help find brilliant solutions for any professional challenge. Based on research and proven-to-work creative thinking models, Chris Griffiths and Melina Costi present a clear introduction to what creative thinking is, explain why we all need to do it and will help you generate ideas and make better decisions. The Creative Thinking Handbook gets you to think differently by thinking creatively.

Comparative Causal Mapping: The CMAP3 Method, by Mauri Laukkanen and Mingde Wang, is an introduction to the conceptual backgrounds of causal (cognitive) mapping and to the typical methods in comparative and composite causal mapping, based on either interview or questionnaire primary data or on secondary documentary data. The discussed CCM research is supported by CMAP3, a freely downloadable (www.uef.fi/cmap3) Windows software platform for CCM studies. The book has three parts. The first discusses the theoretical underpinnings and methodological issues in causal mapping including the target phenomena and different interpretations of causal maps/mapping, the motives for using CCM methods and the criteria of method selection. The second part focuses on the technical aspects of using CMAP3 in typical CCM research. The third part presents three CCM study cases: a classical document-based study; a semi-structured interview-based (SIM) study; and a methodological study comparing SIM with an electronically administered structured hybrid CCM approach. In addition to demonstrating CCM practices, they suggest that different methods produce divergent results and are thus not substitutable. The research task should determine which CCM approach is appropriate. The book will appeal to both academic and professional audiences, in particular to doctoral students and experienced researchers looking for new topics and method approaches, but also to practitioners in fields such as management and organization studies, organizational development, public policy and education, and knowledge management.

This book aims to assess what the changes of the Treaty of Lisbon envisaged and whether these ambitions have materialised since the Treaty entered into force. It offers analyses of the past, as well as what might be the future (because some provisions will only enter into effect in the years to come). To what extent has the current decision-making process been able to address the shortcomings and challenges of the past? What has been the impact of aspects of the Lisbon Treaty that clarified pre-existing norms and structures, in some cases formalizing them, rather than introducing new changes? The authors of this book look at the interaction between formal rules and informal practices, seeking to point to the interaction between the two. They find that informal practices to date typically still dominate formal rules. This book was published as a special issue of West European Politics.

Run every project smoothly, successfully and on time This book contains a range of essential checklists for busy project managers, each one of which has been developed, tested and proven to work. Brilliant Checklists for Project Managers quickly provides hundreds of practical tips, techniques and strategies, based on proven insider knowledge and expertise to help you to deliver brilliant projects. Complete your projects successfully, on time and within budget Understand and master all aspects of any project Run any type of project, no matter what size Quickly find the answers you need just when you need them Everything you need to know, think about and do to run your project successfully and efficiently.

As we get caught up in the quagmire of Big Data and analytics, it remains critically important to be able to reflect and apply insights, experience, and intuition to your decision-making process. In fact, a recent research study at Tel Aviv University found that executives who relied on their intuition were 90 percent accurate in their decisions. Bursting the Big Data Bubble: The Case for Intuition-Based Decision Making focuses on this intuition-based decision making. The book does not discount data-based decision making, especially for decisions that are important and complex. Instead, it emphasizes the importance of applying intuition, gut feel, spirituality, experiential learning, and insight as key factors in the executive decision-making process. Explaining how intuition is a product of past experience, learning, and ambient factors, the text outlines methods that will help to enhance your data-driven decision-making process with intuition-based decision making. The first part of the book, the "Research Track", presents contributions from leading researchers worldwide on the topic of intuition-based decision making as applied to management. In the second part of the book, the "Practice Track," global executives and senior managers in industry, government, universities, and not-for-profits present vignettes that illustrate how they have used their intuition in making key decisions. The research part of the book helps to frame the problem and address leading research in intuition-based decision making. The second part then explains how to apply these intuition-based concepts and issues in your own decision-making process.