Virtually every organisation today realises the need to change in order to succeed. Success can only come through good management which, itself, needs to be driven by leaders. This book illustrates how a leader can systematically create a business that is better at satisfying customers, is more effective at using its human resources and is more rewarding to its owners. The authors achieve this by:
* looking at how a leader can best understand and quantify the pressures on the organisation from customers, shareholders and existing employees
* explaining how the leader can set about formulating a vision and strategy for the business which will respond to these pressures
* providing a prescription for defining the array of management practices needed to foster the organisational culture that is best able to facilitate the strategy.
This book provides the insights and practical tools for any leader to achieve competitive advantage in their organisation.
"This book draws from experience to create a path of light and logic through the most difficult of business territories-the territory of change. The authors maintain careful balance between the academic and the pragmatic, but with the obvious passion for the need to do something to bring the human element back into the world of work." Sir Colin Marshall, Chairman of British Airways and President of the CBI.
"For anyone interested in organizational transformation and the human spirit engaged in that pursuit, this is the book not just to read but to have by one's side. This book has the conceptual depth, the gift of clarity and the practical examples that should make it required reading for every leader." ProfessorWarren Bennis, Distinguished Professor of Business Administration, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA and author of Organizing Genius.

Dieser erste von zwei Sammelbanden zur Bestandsaufnahme von betriebswirtschaftlicher Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung bietet einen Einblick in die Prozesse der Geschlechter(re)produktion der Betriebswirtschaftslehre auf theoretischkonzeptioneller Ebene. Die 10 Beitrage dieses Buches zeigen auf, welche Konstruktions- und Produktionprozesse sowie Reproduktions- und Dekonstruktionsprozesse in den betriebswirtschaftlichen Teildisziplinen Geschlechter diskursiv reproduzieren und damit einhergehend Reprasentationen von Geschlechtern fur die betriebswirtschaftliche Disziplin gestalten.

Amidst the accelerating change of an increasingly competitive global market. Information, Organization and Management demonstrates how business success in the global marketplace depends upon products and services rich in variety, value and instantly responsive to customer needs. This strengthening of the buyer’s position has turned customer service into an important decisive factor for a corporation’s market success. Competitive strategies must, therefore, re-evaluate the business-management goals of flexibility, time, quality and cost. Within the context of the new Information Age, Information, Organization and Management realizes:

• the important role of information in competition and market dynamics
• fundamental models of information and communication
• the potential of information and communication technology for organizational development in the market
• the modularization of the firm
• overcoming organizational boundaries through tele-cooperation
• the new role of the employee

Practical Elements of Safety contains the invited papers presented at the Twelfth annual Safety-critical Systems Symposium, held at Birmingham, UK in February 2004. The papers included in this volume focus on the themes of the identification and analysis of risk - using the UK railway as an industry example; safety-integrity levels; industrial use of formal methods; as well as expanding on the development, assessment and changing face of current safety issues. All the papers are linked within the broad context of safety-critical systems actvities and offer a practical perspective. Papers contain industrial experience, as well as academic research, and are presented under the headings of: Mature and Practical Formality, Managing Risk in the Railway Industry, Safety Integrity Levels, the Human Side of Risk, Assessment and the Derivation of Evidence, and Safety Argument and the Law.

Logistics professionals must utilize a broad array of analytic techniques and approaches for decision-making. Effective use of analytics requires an understanding of both fundamental and advanced logistics decision-making techniques and methodologies. Further, logistics professionals must organize and view these analytics-based decision support tools through well-structured planning frameworks. In this book, we illustrate and explain a wide range of practical logistics strategies and analytic techniques to facilitate decision-making across functions such as manufacturing, warehousing, transportation and inventory management. We also describe how to organize these analytics-based tools and strategies through logistics frameworks that span strategic, tactical and operational planning and scheduling decisions. This book is intended for logistics professionals to use as a reference document that offers ideas and guidance for addressing specific logistics management decisions and challenges, and it will also serve as a valuable resource or secondary text for graduate and advanced undergraduate students.

Cut through information overload to make better decisions faster Success relies on making the correct decisions at the appropriate time, which is only possible if the decision maker has the necessary insights in a suitable format. Mind+Machine is the guide to getting the right insights in the right format at the right time to the right person. Designed to show decision makers how to get the most out of every level of data analytics, this book explores the extraordinary potential to be found in a model where human ingenuity and skill are supported with cutting-edge tools, including automations. The marriage of the perceptive power of the human brain with the benefits of automation is essential because mind or machine alone cannot handle the complexities of modern analytics. Only when the two come together with structure and purpose to solve a problem are goals achieved. With various stakeholders in data analytics having their own take on what is important, it can be challenging for a business leader to create such a structure. This book provides a blueprint for decision makers, helping them ask the right questions, understand the answers, and ensure an approach to analytics that properly supports organizational growth. Discover how to: * Harness the power of insightful minds and the speed of analytics technology * Understand the demands and claims of various analytics stakeholders * Focus on the right data and automate the right processes * Navigate decisions with confidence in a fast-paced world The Mind+Machine model streamlines analytics workflows and refines the never-ending flood of incoming data into useful insights. Thus, Mind+Machine equips you to take on the big decisions and win.

In the e-business economy, managers are faced with too much data and too little meaningful information about markets, customers, products, company operations and finances. Their greatest challenge is to identify, manage and use the right information to compete. Information management is too important to a company’s performance and growth to be delegated primarily to IT, information or financial specialists. This book is based on the idea that information management is the responsibility of every manager. Managers may not be IT specialists, but they must create the conditions for effective information use that creates real business value. Donald Marchand and his colleagues at IMD invite you to learn your information responsibilities, so your company can use information faster, better and smarter than the competition. By using the business framework of ‘strategic information alignment,’ this book shows how information can create business value through delighting customers, being more innovative, managing risks and being the low-cost leader in your markets and industries. Learn the why, what and how of better information use and management in your company. At last, here is a book about managing information written specifically for business managers. Developed from the executive teaching, consulting and real world research of a team of faculty who work with the world’s leading global companies every day, this book provides managers with the mindset and guidance to leverage the company’s capabilities to use and manage information to create business value.

Decision analysis integrates insights and techniques from economics, probability, and cognitive psychology for the purpose of making good decisions. This book presents practical advice for decision making in all these contexts. It offers step-by-step procedures for defining the problem, identifying objectives, identifying alternatives, forecasting each alternative's potential, comparing forecasts, and choosing the most favorable alternative. A student-friendly guide, it incorporates DPL decision support software and practical, balanced coverage.

1 AUK ISMAIL-ZADEH ,2, TOM BEER3 1 International Institute of Earthquake Prediction Theory and Mathematical Geophysics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Warshavskoye shosse 79-2, Moscow 113556, Russia; e-mail: [email protected] 2 Geophysikalisches Institut, Universittit Karlsruhe, Hertzstr. 16, Karlsruhe 76187, Germany; e-mail: [email protected] 3 CSIRO Environmental Risk Network, CSIRO Atmospheric Research, Aspendale, Vic. 3195 Australia; e-mail: [email protected] The world faces major threats to the sustainability of our planet. These threats are accompanied by the immediate dangers of natural and man-made disasters. Our vulnerability to them is greatly magnified with each passing year undermining our ability to maintain a sustainable and productive world into the 21st Century and beyond. Both history and common sense teach us that science has a tremendous potential to find ways to cope with these threats. 1 The EUROSCIENCE working group "Science and Urgent Problems of Society" 2 and the IUGG Commission on Geophysical Risk and Sustainability were initiators of the EUROSCIENCE - IUGG Advanced Research Workshop "Science for Reduction of Risk and Sustainable Development of Society" sponsored by the NATO Science Program. The Workshop was held on 15-16 June 2002 in Budapest, Hungary. More than 40 participants from 17 countries took part in the Workshop. Talks and discussions addressed mainly the question of how science can help in reduction of risk and sustainable development of society.

"Trouble on the Inca Trail" presents you with numerous challenging situations that require you to choose from a set of possible actions that offer the best chance for survival. To begin, you embark on the simulated adventure alone, determining your own choices, and then you take the journey as a team member making the decisions by group consensus. Afterward, compare your choices with what the group selects and determine whether the group performs better than any one individual alone. "Trouble on the Inca Trail" tests your knowledge and survival skills. Through this challenging and fun-filled simulated activity, you will learn how to work with others to solve problems and hone your team synergy and action-planning skills.

Thinking strategically is what separates managers and leaders. Learn the fundamentals about how to create winning strategy and lead your team to deliver it. From understanding what strategy can do for you, through to creating a strategy and engaging others with strategy, this book offers practical guidance and expert tips. It is peppered with punchy, memorable examples from real leaders winning (and losing) with real world strategies.

The Strategy Book focuses on how you can create powerful strategies to deliver success in a competitive world. It answers the following questions:

• What do we know about strategy?
• What can creative strategy do for you?
• How can you effectively create winning strategies?
• How to think and act strategically?
• How can you engage people with strategy?
• How do you avoid pitfalls, problems, and screw-ups?

This book gives managers an integrative approach to project, program, and change management. It describes the differences between change in projects versus programs with case studies in both areas and the different life cycles. While the project and change comprise much of the book, it is up to date with its emphasis on agile, scrum, and benefits. The book also describes methods to both initiate and manage a change and what must be done for success and business value.

In today's competitive environments enterprises face diminishing market life spans, increasing pressure on profit margins and increasingly complex c- tomer requirements. Thus in their operations, modern organizations have to find a high-level balance between dynamics, complexity and precision in order to best utilize their markets. Organization Theory and Industrial En- neering, the disciplines on hand helping industry to cope with this challenge, soon identified process optimizations as the key to possible solutions. Many efforts have been undertaken to provide sound theoretical models to deal with complexity and dynamics and streamline business processes. These efforts on the one hand helped companies to be more precise in carrying out their actions and even provided solutions to produce customized products at near-mass production prices (Mass-Customization). On the other hand it t- ned out to be one of the most difficult tasks to generalize and transfer ex- riences gained in one process-reengineering project to another and put the theoretical models into practice. Not without reason is it the extremely high failure rate of business-process-reengineering projects that today deters most enterprises from entering such adventures. Right at the same time there emerged a new and highly promising scientific branch, Knowledge Management, that attracted many disciplines - among others again Organization Theory and Industrial Engineering. Knowledge was identified as a major production factor. In industrialized countries, value added is mainly raised by the intellectual abilities of a company's workforce.

The Cold War Era left the major participants, the United States and the former Soviet Union (FSU), with large legacies in terms of both contamination and potential accidents. Facility contamination and environmental degradation, as well as the accident vulnerable facilities and equipment, are a result of weapons development, testing, and production. Although the countries face similar issues from similar activities, important differences in waste management practices make the potential environmental and health risks of more immediate concern in the FSU and Eastern Europe. In the West, most nuclear and chemical waste is stored in known contained locations, while in the East, much of the equivalent material is unconfined, contaminating the environment. In the past decade, the U.S. started to address and remediate these Cold War legacies. Costs have been very high, and the projected cost estimates for total cleanup are still increasing. Currently in Russia, the resources for starting such major activities continue to be unavailable."

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.

Robert's Rules for collective decision making
Does your organization strugle with the collective decision-making process? If the answer is yes, this book is for you.
Devoted to group decision making, this guide teaches you:
* A step-by-step process and rules for reaching consensus
* How to run a consensus-management meeting
* The benefits of using a consensus process
* How to facilitate the consensus process...and more!
Learn how to lead your group a group to consensus!

Why does regulation vary so dramatically from one area to another? Why are some risks regulated aggressively and others responded to only modestly? Is there any logic to the techniques we use in risk regulation? These key questions are explored in The Government of Risk. This book looks at a number of risk regulation regimes, considers the respects in which they differ, and examines how these differences can be justified. Analyzing regulation in terms of 'regimes' allows us to see the rich, multi-dimensional nature of risk regulation. It exposes the thinness of society-wide analyses of risk controls and it offers a perspective that single case studies cannot reach. Regimes analysis breaks down the components of risk regulation systems and shows how they interact. It also shows how different parts of the same regime may be shaped by different factors and have to be explained and understood in quite different ways. The Government of Risk shows how such an approach is of high policy relevance as well as of considerable theoretical importance.

Since the dawn of human history people have been facing problems arising from the operations of systems in which they themselves are a part. However, the idea that systematic scrutiny in the spirit of science can help solve them, became widespread only in this century. The Handbook of Systems Analysis brings together in systematic form the core of the systems analysis knowledge and experience it has developed so far. The Handbook of Systems Analysis consists of three volumes: the first offers an overview aimed at a widely varied audience of practitioners and those interested in the problems treated by systems analysis; volume two is aimed at a more technical audience and deals with how a systems analysis study proceeds and resolves the technical and professional issues. Now this third volume exemplifies the general principles and wide variety of practice by means of eight carefully selected cases described by the principal analysts involved. Like the first volume, it is accessible to a wide variety of people professional and non-professional who are interested in how such work is carried out and what its useful effects can be. Features include:

• a comprehensive approach without undue technical detail, giving a clear view of what was done and how it achieved its aims
• an overview discussion drawing together the aspects of the practice exemplified by the cases
• a truly international approach contributors and case studies come from many countries
• complete references to the background and supporting material

In the 1980s and 1990s the world of governance witnessed a far-reaching change from the Weberian model of bureaucracy to the 'new managerialism'-a term used to describe the group of ideas imported from business and mainly brought into government by management consultants. Over the past fifteen years, the British, French, and Canadian governments have spent growing sums of money on consulting services and, as a result, policy-makers inside the state have increasingly been exposed to the business management ideas that consultants bring into the public sector. Nevertheless, there are major differences in the extent to which reformers in the three countries embraced these ideas in the process of bureaucratic reform. Accordingly, this is a book about policy change and variation. It seeks to explain why the changes produced by the new managerialism have been more radical in some countries than in others. Building the New Managerialist State shows that the reception given by states to managerialist ideas depends on the openness of policy-making institutions to outside expert knowledge and on the organization, development, and social recognition of management consultancy.

This book looks at the social aspects of how virtual and geographically dispersed groups work together using information and communication tools (groupware). It introduces the basic concepts and brings together ideas from various disciplines to provide an integrated approach to the evaluation and design of groupware technology. Key topics include: =B7 Why some collaboration technologies succeed and others fail =B7 The conditions needed for successful distributed collaboration =B7 How to take a systematic, user-oriented, design-related approach to the evaluation of computer supported collaboration Primarily intended for undergraduate and postgraduate students studying Information and Communication Technology, Human-Computer Interaction, Communication Sciences, Human Factors, Interface Design and Multimedia Systems, this book will also be of interest to researchers, practitioners and lecturers in social and organisational sciences.

An introduction to quantitative methods delivering the knowledge and skills required to process, utilize and manipulate numerical information of the type and style found in the business environment. The practical application of quantitative methods is emphasized.
An additional unit on basic mathematics is included which is suitable for students enrolling on business studies programs without formal mathematical qualifications.
Contents include: foundation mathematics and business mathematics; data presentation; linear programming; regression and correlation analysis; probability and probability distribution.

As the most comprehensive reference work dealing with knowledge management (KM), this work is essential for the library of every KM practitioner, researcher, and educator. Written by an international array of KM luminaries, its approx. 60 chapters approach knowledge management from a wide variety of perspectives ranging from classic foundations to cutting-edge thought, informative to provocative, theoretical to practical, historical to futuristic, human to technological, and operational to strategic. The chapters are conveniently organized into 8 major sections. The first volume consists of the sections: foundations of KM, knowledge - a key organizational resource, knowledge processors and processing, influences on knowledge processing. Novices and experts alike will refer to the authoritative and stimulating content again and again for years to come.

Risk Management and Business Continuity are essential for the competitive capacity of any international corporation. The temporary unavailability of technology and services can endanger the existence of any company. It is cruical to develop an international strategy to deal with these problems. This book provides theoretical analysis and practical solutions on these topics.