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

Brings together concepts across software engineering with a management perspectiveUse of case material to illustrate points madeIncludes checklists and working templates

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.

Many, if not most, of one's important decisions are made in the context of one's work. However, because workplace decisions cover such a broad range of issues, it often is difficult to detect underlying commonalities in how they are made, and in how things go wrong when they do go wrong. As a result, there are nearly as many different descriptions of workplace decisions as there are decisions themselves. In this volume, the best features of these diverse descriptions are unified in a new, intuitively compelling view of decision making called "Image Theory." The result is a clear picture of real-life, day-to-day workplace decision making that allows us to think constructively about how such decisions are made and about how to improve them when improvement is necessary.

Offering an approach outside the mainstream of Management of Technology (MOT) thought, the objective of this text is to inform decision-makers, policy-makers and educators/students about the range of management technology, policies and programmes in each region.

Offering an approach outside the mainstream of Management of Technology (MOT) thought, the objective of this text is to inform decision-makers, policy-makers and educators/students about the range of management technology, policies and programmes in each region.

This book takes a fresh look at safety decision-making by documenting and examining stories told by front-line managers in three different high-hazard industries: a chemical plant, a nuclear power station and an air-navigation service provider. From Piper Alpha to Deepwater Horizon, accident analysis has stressed the importance of excellent decision-making by those in charge out in the field. Organizations rely critically on the judgement and experience of such senior operations personnel and yet these qualities are undervalued in a business environment that emphasises documentation and measurement. Whilst operational managers are guided by rules, they also draw on their own long experience and can formulate a situation-specific 'line in the sand' to apply the experience of the operating team to complex, real-world situations that rule writers may not have foreseen. This volume refocuses our attention on the people who make these important decisions and the organizational processes that support the best choices. Jan Hayes uses her multi-disciplinary experience to draw together an account of safety decision-making that is both technically robust and yet accessible to academics, practitioners and regulators alike. Readers will see that the stories retold in this book provide a way for operational managers to share their knowledge, experience and expertise - with each other and with us.

This volume brings together the best-known and most influential articles on sensemaking by one of its most distinguished exponents, Karl Weick.

Weick explores the process of how organizations discover that they face important decisions. Often organizations have discussions in order to see what they think, or act in order to see what they want - before they are even aware that a decision has to be made. The effective organization is one that understands this process of sensemaking and learns to manage it with wisdom. The ways in which people do that are demonstrated in chapters of this book.

This important collection provides a valuable addition to the international literature on organization theory and will be welcomed by students and researchers alike.

The fun and simple problem-solving guide that took Japan by storm
Ken Watanabe originally wrote "Problem Solving 101" for Japanese schoolchildren. His goal was to help shift the focus in Japanese education from memorization to critical thinking, by adapting some of the techniques he had learned as an elite McKinsey consultant.
He was amazed to discover that adults were hungry for his fun and easy guide to problem solving and decision making. The book became a surprise Japanese bestseller, with more than 370,000 in print after six months. Now American businesspeople can also use it to master some powerful skills.
Watanabe uses sample scenarios to illustrate his techniques, which include logic trees and matrixes. A rock band figures out how to drive up concert attendance. An aspiring animator budgets for a new computer purchase. Students decide which high school they will attend.
Illustrated with diagrams and quirky drawings, the book is simple enough for a middleschooler to understand but sophisticated enough for business leaders to apply to their most challenging problems.

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.

First published in 1994. Mission Statements: A Guide to the Corporate and Nonprofit Sectors offers the most exciting opportunities for advancing the study of organization direction in the four decades that it has been actively pursued. The study of missions of organizations has remained on the "back burner" of scholarly pursuits because of the great difficulty that researchers have faced in gathering appropriate formal statements from corporations and nonprofit organizations. As a result, the importance of missions to distinguish among organizations and to guide the development and execution of implementing strategies has become a nearly universally endorsed but unenthusiastically practiced element in organizational planning activities. This information laden new book by John Graham and Wendy Havlick invites managers and academic researchers to undertake the study of missions with greater expectations that much can be learned about the organizations, their leaders, and their strategies through a comprehensive assessment of their written statements of values and priorities.

Originally published in 1963, this book was one of the first to explore group process and working with groups. The introductory chapter tells us that working with groups requires three skills: and understanding of theory, a knowledge of its application, and trained experience in its use. It goes on to discuss these points, helping the reader towards an understanding of group processes and making decisions in groups. This title is an early example of author's explorations of groups and group work, which were to be a major factor in the establishment of group-work practice in Britain over the following years.

The author covers fourteen tools to help you find the information you need and offers step-by-step instructions for constructing each one. He shows you how these tools can be combined with a set of simple problem-solving steps that can act as a powerful change agent to help reduce or eliminate process problems.

Five-Step Problem-Solving Process

Identify the problem: Clearly state what needs improvement.

Analyze: Determine what causes the problem to occur. Evaluate Alternatives: Identify and select actions to reduce or eliminate the problem. Test Implement: Implement these actions on a trial basis to determine their effectiveness. Standardize: Ensure that useful actions are preserved.

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.

Artificial Intelligence is a seemingly neutral technology, but it is increasingly used to manage workforces and make decisions to hire and fire employees. Its proliferation in the workplace gives the impression of a fairer, more efficient system of management. A machine can't discriminate, after all. Augmented Exploitation explores the reality of the impact of AI on workers' lives. While the consensus is that AI is a completely new way of managing a workplace, the authors show that, on the contrary, AI is used as most technologies are used under capitalism: as a smokescreen that hides the deep exploitation of workers. Going beyond platform work and the gig economy, the authors explore emerging forms of algorithmic governance and AI-augmented apps that have been developed to utilise innovative ways to collect data about workers and consumers, as well as to keep wages and worker representation under control. They also show that workers are not taking this lying down, providing case studies of new and exciting form of resistance that are springing up across the globe.

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.

Part of the series Exploring Effective Leadership Practices through Popular Culture, Urick examines mentorship and learning, transformational and servant leadership, culture, bases of power, leader emergence, teams, motivation, and more. Leadership in Middle-Earth explores J.R.R. Tolkien's exemplary leadership and management examples evident in his tales such as 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of the Rings', examining mentorship, team dynamics, mindfulness, servant leadership, influence and ethical leadership through solid academic theories and management practices. Readers will become familiar and comfortable with academically supported leadership concepts to adjust their own behaviors, becoming more successful in the process. By examining leadership theories through the context of popular culture, the book encourages readers to think creatively about how they might adjust their own management approach. The series aims to bring examples, theory and methodology of leadership to life by analysing academic concepts through popular culture examples that will appeal to a broad range of readers.

Provides an introduction to decision analysis. This book is based upon a number of papers and articles taken from the Operational Research Society's journal and other publications. However, the book is not simply a 'collection of reprints': Professor French has provided extensive notes and commentary to weave the extracts into a coherent whole. Although techniques are presented, the main thrust is to convey the purpose of decision analysis and the interpretation that should be placed upon its output: vital topics, but ones seldom discussed in introductory texts. The writing is aimed at the non-technical reader.

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.

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.

The effectiveness of a good strategy well implemented determines a business' future success or failure. Yet history is full of strategic decisions, big and small, that were ill-conceived, poorly organised and consequently disastrous. This updated guide looks at the whole process of strategic decision-making - from vision, forecasting, and resource allocation, through to implementation and innovation. Strategy is about understanding where you are now, where you are heading and how you will get there. There is no room for timidity or confusion. Although the CEO and the board decide a company's overall direction, it is the managers at all levels of the organisation that will determine how the vision can be transformed into action. In short, everyone is involved in strategy. But getting it right involves difficult choices: which customers to target, what products to offer and the best way to keep costs low and service high. And constantly changing business conditions inevitably bring risks. Even after business strategy has been developed, a company must remain nimble and alert to change, and view strategy as an ongoing and evolving process. The message of this guide is simple: strategy matters, and getting it right is fundamental to business success - this book will show you how.

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.

Rooted in the study of chaos and complexity, Adaptive Action introduces a simple, common sense process that will guide you and your organization into reflective action. This elegant method prompts readers to engage with three deceptively simple questions: What? So what? Now what? The first leads to careful observation. The second invites you to thoughtfully consider options and implications. The third ignites effective action. Together, these questions and the tools that support them produce a dynamic and creative dance with uncertainty. The road-tested steps of adaptive action can be used to devise solutions and improve performance across multiple challenges, and they have proven to be scalable from individuals to work groups, from organizations to communities. In addition to laying out the adaptive action framework and clear protocols to support it, Glenda H. Eoyang and Royce J. Holladay introduce best practices from exemplary professionals who have used adaptive action to meet personal, professional, and political challenges in leadership, consulting, Alzheimer's treatment, evaluation, education reform, political advocacy, and cultural engagement-readying readers to employ this new toolkit to meet their own goals with a sense of ingenuity and flexibility.

With over 30 years' experience as a management teacher and consultant, Mike Pidd provides the tools for thinking that will help us to think through the consequences of decisions before we act.

The third edition of Tools for Thinking builds on the successes of the previous two editions. It creates a bridge between the soft and hard (Operations Research) OR schools of thought and provides an empirically based framework in which to place them. Focusing on modelling as an activity, rather than on models and techniques, Mike Pidd shows how models can be employed to explore possible future scenarios and to make sense of managerial vision.

This third edition has been fully revised and updated without changing its focus. It features a new chapter on Decision Analysis and includes up-to-date examples using popular softwares, such as Precision Tree, @Risk and Micro Saint Sharp, to illustrate how these help in developing and using management science models as tools for thinking.

Best-selling author Cass R. Sunstein examines how to avoid worst-case scenarios The world is increasingly confronted with new challenges related to climate change, globalization, disease, and technology. Governments are faced with having to decide how much risk is worth taking, how much destruction and death can be tolerated, and how much money should be invested in the hopes of avoiding catastrophe. Lacking full information, should decision-makers focus on avoiding the most catastrophic outcomes? When should extreme measures be taken to prevent as much destruction as possible? Averting Catastrophe explores how governments ought to make decisions in times of imminent disaster. Cass R. Sunstein argues that using the "maximin rule," which calls for choosing the approach that eliminates the worst of the worst-case scenarios, may be necessary when public officials lack important information, and when the worst-case scenario is too disastrous to contemplate. He underscores this argument by emphasizing the reality of "Knightian uncertainty," found in circumstances in which it is not possible to assign probabilities to various outcomes. Sunstein brings foundational issues in decision theory in close contact with real problems in regulation, law, and daily life, and considers other potential future risks. At once an approachable introduction to decision-theory and a provocative argument for how governments ought to handle risk, Averting Catastrophe offers a definitive path forward in a world rife with uncertainty.