Customer and Business Analytics: Applied Data Mining for Business Decision Making Using R explains and demonstrates, via the accompanying open-source software, how advanced analytical tools can address various business problems. It also gives insight into some of the challenges faced when deploying these tools. Extensively classroom-tested, the text is ideal for students in customer and business analytics or applied data mining as well as professionals in small- to medium-sized organizations. The book offers an intuitive understanding of how different analytics algorithms work. Where necessary, the authors explain the underlying mathematics in an accessible manner. Each technique presented includes a detailed tutorial that enables hands-on experience with real data. The authors also discuss issues often encountered in applied data mining projects and present the CRISP-DM process model as a practical framework for organizing these projects. Showing how data mining can improve the performance of organizations, this book and its R-based software provide the skills and tools needed to successfully develop advanced analytics capabilities.

This book mainly introduces some techniques of decision-making, uncertain reasoning and regression analysis under the hesitant fuzzy environment and expands the applications of hesitant fuzzy sets in solving practical problems. The book pursues three major objectives: (1) to introduce some techniques about decision-making, uncertain reasoning and regression analysis under the hesitant fuzzy environment, (2) to prove these techniques theoretically and (3) to apply the involved techniques to practical problems. The book is especially valuable for readers to understand how hesitant fuzzy set could be employed in decision-making, uncertain reasoning and regression analysis and motivates researchers to expand more application fields of hesitant fuzzy set.

Using a wide range of operational research (OR) optimization examples, Applied Operational Research with SAS demonstrates how the OR procedures in SAS work. The book is one of the first to extensively cover the application of SAS procedures to OR problems, such as single criterion optimization, project management decisions, printed circuit board assembly, and multiple criteria decision making. The text begins with the algorithms and methods for linear programming, integer linear programming, and goal programming models. It then describes the principles of several OR procedures in SAS. Subsequent chapters explain how to use these procedures to solve various types of OR problems. Each of these chapters describes the concept of an OR problem, presents an example of the problem, and discusses the specific procedure and its macros for the optimal solution of the problem. The macros include data handling, model building, and report writing. While primarily designed for SAS users in OR and marketing analytics, the book can also be used by readers interested in mathematical modeling techniques. By formulating the OR problems as mathematical models, the authors show how SAS can solve a variety of optimization problems.

This book offers a process for conceiving solutions to complex, wicked, messy, swampy or socio-technical problems. When charged with complex problem solving, a useful set of concepts needs to emerge, be agreed, and acted upon. Using relevant examples and solution mapping, Mike Metcalfe explains how pragmatic philosophy can be used as a process for solving such issues.To explain why and how to formulate reflective, pragmatic, or concept driven problem-solving, this book uses the concepts of: - Pragmatic inquiry - Stakeholders' concerns - Idea networking - Solution concepts - Paradoxical outcomes, and - Intent (with related actions). This innovative book will be of interest to academics, postgraduate students and managers charged with solving complex social or managerial problems. Contents: Preface 1. Reflective Thinking 2. Problem-solving as Pragmatic Inquiry 3. Concerns as Default Concepts 4. Collaborative Planning 5. Idea Networking 6. Solution Concepts 7. Concepts as Dialectic Decision Criteria 8. Solution Action Plans 9. Paradoxical Consequences 10. Questioning Action Plans 11. Solutions Mapping 12. Conclusion Appendix 1: Networking Statements

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.

Why do organisations decline, and what happens when they do? Strategy and Managed Decline: London Transport 1948-87 is a historical case study looking at how London Transport, a world beater in 1948, declined from being an international exemplar to dilapidation in 30 years. Strategy and Managed Decline considers the inheritance left by the founders of London Transport and subjects their legacy to a strategic and political audit. In three sections, the book examines archival data from the Transport for London (TfL) Archive covering the car revolution, strategic political clashes and the performance of the chairmen to challenge existing theory and extant histories. It offers hypotheses situated in management, leadership, politics and strategy which explain the decades of deterioration followed by a dramatic revival in the late 1980s. Examining the turbulent politics of the long conflict between London Transport, municipal and national government in detail, Strategy and Managed Decline: London Transport 1948-87 offers novel interpretations of events by objectively analysing the strategic stories that politics created about London's transport. It concludes by asking whether a shift in managerial strategy away from maximising utility and towards cost minimisation caused, or was just coincident with, resurgence and explores what lessons there are for TfL today.

Quantitative Methods for Business has been thoroughly revised and updated for this 5th edition, and continues to provide a simple and practical introduction to an area that students can find difficult. The book takes a non-threatening approach to the subject, avoiding excessive mathematics and abstract theory. It shows how to apply quantitative ideas to the real problems faced by managers.

The book includes numerous exercises and examples that help students understand the relevance of quantitative ideas to business. Assuming no previous knowledge, the text provides complete coverage for a first course in quantitative methods.

Retaining top talent is a universal concern that is increasingly global. However, the context, meaning, and mechanisms for changing jobs varies around the world. Global Talent Retention: Understanding Employee Turnover Around the World provides the first context-specific global perspective on retaining talent. Although extensive research informs understanding of why employees decide to leave or remain with organizations, the bulk of theory and research adopts a U.S.-centric perspective, problematic because most employees do not work for firms that are U.S.-owned or based. Global Talent Retention addresses the need for turnover theory and research to give more careful consideration to global and cross-cultural perspectives on employee retention, and includes contributions from a global range of scholars in differing cultural contexts in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. The chapters represent many of the largest and most dynamic economies in the world, including Bulgaria, China, Denmark, Germany, India, Mexico, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Turkey, and the UK. Each chapter provides a description of the institutional, legal, and cultural context as it relates to employee mobility, a review of context-specific research leading to a description of how the mechanisms of prominent turnover theories may operate differently in particular contexts, and the implications for research and practice related to employee turnover and retention.

The rise of game theory has made bargaining one of the core issues in economic theory. Written at a theoretical and conceptual level, the book develops a framework for the analysis of bargaining processes. The framework focuses on the dynamic of the bargaining process, which is in contrast to much previous theoretical work on the subject, and most notably to the approaches stemming from game theory. Chapters include: * Decision-Making and Expectations in Theories of Bargaining * Decision-Making and Expectations in a Game Theory Model * Limitations of the Environment Concept * Game Theory as a Basis for a Theory of Bargaining * The Decision/Expectation/adjustment Approach * The Adjustment Process * Direct Interdependence and the Consistency of Decisions

Security Metrics Management, Measuring the Effectiveness and Efficiency of a Security Program, Second Edition details the application of quantitative, statistical, and/or mathematical analyses to measure security functional trends and workload, tracking what each function is doing in terms of level of effort (LOE), costs, and productivity. This fully updated guide is the go-to reference for managing an asset protection program and related security functions through the use of metrics. It supports the security professional's position on budget matters, helping to justify the cost-effectiveness of security-related decisions to senior management and other key decision-makers. The book is designed to provide easy-to-follow guidance, allowing security professionals to confidently measure the costs of their assets protection program - their security program - as well as its successes and failures. It includes a discussion of how to use the metrics to brief management, build budgets, and provide trend analyses to develop a more efficient and effective asset protection program.

What do you do when the algorithm doesn't have the answer? Countless tools and frameworks claim to make decisions objective and bias-free. But in reality, the defining decisions that leaders face are complex ones with subjective information sources and conflicting courses of action. That's why the toughest choices are left to the leaders, and that's why formulas won't answer them. In Difficult Decisions: How Leaders Make the Right Call with Insight, Integrity, and Empathy, leadership expert and CEO of YSC Consulting, Eric Pliner, delivers a set of practical tools for readers to make sense of these complex, subjective decisions quickly and with integrity. It presents a path to understanding your own subjectivity, and how your morals, ethics, and responsibilities affect how leaders make the most important decisions. Difficult Decisions is ideal for executives, managers, and business leaders to examine their own intuition and navigate the most conflicted choices they make. It's a challenging read and an indispensable resource to help readers develop self-reflection, clarify their values, and ultimately make the choice that is most "right" to them.

Human decisions, especially in management and personnel selection, are based on making judgments about people analytically and intuitively. Yet in business and scientific contexts, judgments are expected to be based on a rational analysis rather than intuitions or emotions. Intuition is often seen as something mystical that should not be trusted and thus eliminated from human decision-making. Our empirical and theoretical research shows that this is impossible when people are dealing with people. Instead, intuitions and emotions have significant power in the decision-making process. Neuroscience even shows that humans are incapable of switching off their emotions or intuitions when making decisions. Therefore, intuition and emotions as evolutionary achievements of human beings should be looked at more closely to use the wisdom they offer. This book provides an insight into the current state of research on rational-analytical procedures in personnel selection and complements this with research on intuitions and emotions in personnel diagnostics. By integrating scientifically verifiable rational-analytical decision-making procedures with the inner experiential knowledge of people, this book bridges two complementary ways of recognizing and making good decisions. It demonstrates how intuitions are developed and used in different fields of practice and cultures and how scientific research results from rational-analytical and intuitive-emotional selection procedures are successfully integrated by practitioners.

The world is increasingly turbulent and complex, awash with disruptions, tipping points and knock-on effects exemplified by the implosion of financial markets and economies around the globe. This book is for business and organizational leaders who want and need to think through how best to deal with increasing turbulence, and with the complexity and uncertainty that come with it. The authors explain in clear language how future orientation and, specifically, modern scenario techniques help to address these conditions. They draw on examples from a wide variety of international settings and circumstances including large corporations, inter-governmental organizations, small firms and municipalities. Readers will be inspired to try out scenario approaches themselves to better address the turbulence that affects them and others with whom they work, live and do business. This second edition extends the use of scenarios planning and methods to tackle the risk and uncertainty of financial markets and the potentially massive impacts on businesses of all kinds, providing powerful tools to give far thinking executives an advantage in these turbulent times.

Making important business decisions is usually a difficult and complicated task. In the modern economy where businesses have to solve increasingly complex decision-making problems, it is important to learn and use methods and techniques including the analysis of behavioral data to support decision-making in practice. This book presents various methods and solutions to problems in modern data acquisition techniques and practical aspects of decision making. In particular, it addresses such important issues as: business decision making, multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA), multidimensional comparative analysis (MCA), decision games and data acquisition techniques for decision making (declarative techniques and cognitive neuroscience techniques). Important topics such as consumers' rational behavior, environmental management accounting, operational research methods, neuroscience including epigenetics, DEA analysis etc., as well as case studies related to decision making in management are also included.

This book presents the human, cultural, and scientific contributions of professor Eliano Pessa, who recently passed away. His research interests and activities were varied, some of which included quantum physics, cognitive science and psychology, systems science, artificial intelligence, and alpinism. They were never disciplinary-separated issues, but rather some coherent dimensions of his interests in life. He lived and not only practiced interdisciplinarity and multiple dimensions; he considered it unacceptable to do only one thing in life. The contributors in this volume consider, discuss, interpret, and represent the multiplicity and interdisciplinarity experienced, lived and applied by Pessa. The chapters are inspired by, rebuild, and retrace such networked interests lived by him from the personal, cultural, and scientific points of view of the authors. This is true interdisciplinarity and usage of non-equivalences, honoring the richness of Pessa's contributions.

This book presents an integrated framework for risk measurement, capital management and value creation in banks. Moving from the measurement of the risks facing a bank, it defines criteria and rules to support a corporate policy aimed at maximizing shareholders' value.

Parts I - IV discuss different risk types (including interest rate, market, credit and operational risk) and how to assess the amount of capital they absorb by means of up-to-date, robust risk-measurement models. Part V surveys regulatory capital requirements: a special emphasis is given to the Basel II accord, discussing its economic foundations and managerial implications. Part VI presents models and techniques to calibrate the amount of economic capital at risk needed by the bank, to fine-tune its composition, to allocate it to risk-taking units, to estimate the "fair" return expected by shareholders, to monitor the value creation process. Risk Management and Shareholders' Value in Banking includes:
* Value at Risk, Monte Carlo models, Creditrisk+, Creditmetrics and much more
* formulae for risk-adjusted loan pricing and risk-adjusted performance measurement
* extensive, hands-on Excel examples are provided on the companion website www.wiley.com/go/rmsv
* a complete, up-to-date introduction to Basel II
* focus on capital allocation, Raroc, EVA, cost of capital and other value-creation metrics

Tap into the wisdom of experts to learn what every engineering manager should know. With 97 short and extremely useful tips for engineering managers, you'll discover new approaches to old problems, pick up road-tested best practices, and hone your management skills through sound advice. Managing people is hard, and the industry as a whole is bad at it. Many managers lack the experience, training, tools, texts, and frameworks to do it well. From mentoring interns to working in senior management, this book will take you through the stages of management and provide actionable advice on how to approach the obstacles you'll encounter as a technical manager. A few of the 97 things you should know: "Three Ways to Be the Manager Your Report Needs" by Duretti Hirpa "The First Two Questions to Ask When Your Team Is Struggling" by Cate Huston "Fire Them!" by Mike Fisher "The 5 Whys of Organizational Design" by Kellan Elliott-McCrea "Career Conversations" by Raquel Velez "Using 6-Page Documents to Close Decisions" by Ian Nowland "Ground Rules in Meetings" by Lara Hogan

Praise for "Carbon Finance"

"A timely, objective, and informative analysis of the financial opportunities and challenges presented by climate change, including a thorough description of adaptive measures and insurance products for managing risk in a carbon constrained economy."
--James R. Evans, M. Eng. P. Geo., Senior Manager, Environmental Risk Management, RBC Financial Group

"Climate change will have enormous financial implications in the years to come. How businesses and investors respond to the risks and opportunities from this issue will have an enormous rippling effect in the global economy. Sonia Labatt and Rodney White's insights and thoughtful analysis should be read by all who want to successfully navigate this global business issue."
--Andrea Moffat, Director, Corporate Programs, Ceres

"In "Carbon Finance," Labatt and White present a clear and accessible description of the climate change debate and the carbon market that is developing. Climate change is becoming an important factor for many financial sector participants. The authors illustrate how challenges and opportunities will arise within the carbon market for banking, insurance, and investment activities as well as for the regulated and energy sector of the economy."
--Charles E. Kennedy, Director and Portfolio Manager, MacDougall, MacDougall & MacTier Inc.

"Climate change is the greatest environmental challenge of our generation. Its impact on the energy sector has implications for productivity and competitiveness. At the same time, environmental risk has emerged as a major challenge for corporations in the age of full disclosure. "Carbon Finance" explains how these disparate forces havespawned a range of financial products designed to help manage the inherent risk. It is necessary reading for corporate executives facing challenges that are unique in their business experience."
--Skip Willis, Managing Director Canadian Operations, ICF International

"In this timely publication, Labatt and White succeed in communicating the workings of carbon markets, providing simple examples and invaluable context to the new and changing mechanisms that underpin our transformation to a carbon-constrained world. "Carbon Finance" will be the definitive guide to this field for years to come."
--Susan McGeachie, Director, Innovest Strategic Value Advisors, Graduate Faculty Member, University of Toronto; and Jane Ambachtsheer, Principal, Mercer Investment Consulting, Graduate Faculty Member, University of Toronto

The book introduces readers to some of the latest advances in and approaches to decision-making methods based on thermodynamic characters and hesitant fuzzy linguistic preference relations. By investigating the decision-making methods with thermodynamic parameters based on different information representatives, the book offers readers a novel perspective for solving problems under uncertainty. By exploring the consistency and consensus of hesitant fuzzy linguistic preference relations, the book gives readers efficient ways for preference analysis under uncertainty, chiefly intended for researchers and practitioners working in operations research, multi-attribute decision making, preference analysis, etc. The book can also be used as supplementary material for postgraduate and senior-year undergraduate students of the relevant professional institutions.

Information is not taken seriously. Much is said about the information age, the information economy, the information society, and particularly about information technology, but little about information itself. If these are important, then so is information. But information is not as other goods: it has some peculiar characteristics. It cannot be displayed for sale without giving it away in the process. Sold, it goes to the buyer but still remains with the seller. Buying entails expressing demand in ignorance for buyers who do not know just what it is that they do not know. Such characteristics have long been recognised by economists, but it is not generally economists who have most to say about the importance of information. This privilege is exercised by senior managers, who speak passionately about knowledge-based, learning organizations; by politicians and public servants, anxious to compensate with policy and programme for the information failure of organization and market; and by specialists in telecommunications and information technology, bent on adding value to what they treat as just a commodity. Information usually requires new information. Finding, acquiring, and mixing

Have you ever come up with an idea for a new product or service but didn't take any action because you thought it would be too risky? Or at work, have you had what you thought could be a big idea for your company--perhaps changing the way you develop or distribute a product, provide customer service, or hire and train your employees? If you have, but you haven't known how to take the next step, you need to understand what the authors call the innovator's method--a set of tools emerging from lean start-up, design thinking, and agile software development that are revolutionizing how new ideas are created, refined, and brought to market. To date these tools have helped entrepreneurs, designers, and software developers manage uncertainty--through cheap and rapid experiments that systematically lower failure rates and risk. But many managers and leaders struggle to apply these powerful tools within their organizations, as they often run counter to traditional managerial thinking and practice. Authors Nathan Furr and Jeff Dyer wrote this book to address that very problem. Following the breakout success of The Innovator's DNA--which Dyer wrote with Hal Gregersen and bestselling author Clay Christensen to provide a framework for generating ideas--this book shows how to make those ideas actually happen, to commercialize them for success. Based on their research inside corporations and successful start-ups, Furr and Dyer developed the innovator's method, an end-to-end process for creating, refining, and bringing ideas to market. They show when and how to apply the tools of their method, how to adapt them to your business, and how to answer commonly asked questions about the method itself, including: How do we know if this idea is worth pursuing? Have we found the right solution? What is the best business model for this new offering? This book focuses on the "how"--how to test, how to validate, and how to commercialize ideas with the lean, design, and agile techniques successful start-ups use. Whether you're launching a start-up, leading an established one, or simply working to get a new product off the ground in an existing company, this book is for you.

Innovation is central to business success, yet no other aspect of business is as frustrating and out of control. Instead of occurring in fits and starts and strokes of genius, innovation needs to become an all-the-time event that's measurable, reliable, predictable, streamlined, and effective. Asserting that every innovation objective has a finite set of possible solutions given its unique constraints, TRIZ, the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving, is a structured system for making innovation more manageable and profitable. Divided into five parts, Insourcing Innovation: How to Achieve Competitive Excellence Using TRIZ demonstrates how the applicationof a consistent, systematic approach will render innovative problem solving a dependable reality rather than an enigmatic phenomenon. Part I provides a framework for thinking about business excellence and the case for why TRIZ is a world-class approach for achieving perpetual innovation with existing resources. Part II covers the tactical aspects of TRIZ, with a central focus on the TRIZ methodology (DMASI) and its primary constructs, techniques, and components. Part III provides implementation case examples, including an in-depth breakdown of how TRIZ was used to create a self-heating beverage container. This part also summarizes how TRIZ was applied to innovate parts of the International Space Station, the Cassini Saturn orbiter, and even hospital triage. Part IV transitions from the tactical aspects of TRIZ to its strategic aspects, which show you that no single innovation stands alone. All tap into one or more of eight evolutionary forces to become what they are. This part describes these forces with related examples. Part V discusses how structured innovation is part of the larger system of "total performance excellence." Highlighting their interdependence, it shows how key aspects of business excellence enable structured innovation, and at the same time are enabled by structured innovation.

In recent years leading figures in a variety of fields - political, financial, medical, and organizational - have become acutely aware of the need to effectively incorporate aspects of risk into their decision-making. This book addresses a wide range of contemporary issues in decision research, such as how individuals deal with uncertainty and complexity, gender-based differences in decision-making, what determines decision performance and why people choose risky activities. The book presents results from academic research carried out over the last twenty years. A common theme is the study of decisions made in horserace betting markets, a research medium which offers a rich insight into decision-making in general and one which enjoys particular methodological advantages over laboratory-based simulations. This set of naturalistic studies explores the variety of individual motivations for betting, how people perceive and respond to the presence of uncertainty, the challenges of complex and turbulent information and the use of heuristics as a response, how decision-making performance is affected by structural or process-related features of the decision environment, and how men and women differ in their decision behaviour. The authors' interesting and novel findings offer a richer understanding of the psychological and economic underpinnings of betting behaviour which should inform practitioners, policymakers and regulators in an industry which is undergoing unprecedented global growth. The book is also relevant to courses covering subject areas such as financial markets, decision-making and behavioural finance.