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Books > Business & Economics > Business & management > Management & management techniques > Management decision making > General
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Decision makers interested in going beyond their own personal and professional interests and involving themselves in humanising their organization, community and society should read Remaking Ourselves, Enterprise and Society. This book is about adherence to human values at an institutional level, and its starting point is the belief that human beings have basic goodness, which in turn is reflected in the desire to be of help to others and to do good. Professor Rao introduces the Indian concept of 'Spandan' (Heartbeat). Spandan is operationalized through a process of diagnosis, discovery and development enabling organizations to achieve an optimal balance between what are defined as transactional, transformational, and terminal human values. This leads to management and organizations developing sensitivity to the needs of others, which they come to understand. When such sensitivity becomes integral to its work ethic and culture, an organization is able to temper its commitment to task with humanity and it becomes functionally humane. Experience suggests, not surprisingly, that organizations that can achieve this optimal balance between results and relations achieve higher employee commitment and productivity and increased accommodative spirit that better equips them to deal with difficult times. This exciting addition to Gower's Transformation and Innovation Series will enlighten business leaders, governmental and non-governmental policy makers, management educators, organization developers, and researchers.
In recent years, there has been increasing implementation of group and team decision-making within organizations, much of it managed electronically, between members of what are "virtual" groups or teams. Recent research into effective team implementation emphasizes "trust" as an intermediary process, and trust must be a part of any account of team decision-making. This book provides an integrated framework that represents process in decision-making by interactive groups and teams. This framework furthers both our understanding of process and our capabilities in implementation, based on an account of group decision-making that differentiates the information types contributing to decision quality and relates them to process in interactive groups and teams. Author Steve Silver emphasizes the social structure that is inherent in the interaction of decision-makers as group or team members and effects on the information they exchange.
This book examines discourses of knowledge and innovation in post-industrial societies and knowledge-based organizations. The author investigates the value of knowledge and the question of innovation management in a fully commercial environment for a technology company. In contrast with most of the mainstream approaches to knowledge and innovation management this volume chooses as its starting point a critical examination of these assumptions before proceeding with further suggestions on how to manage knowledge. Using brand new empirical research, the author argues for the significance of addressing the political games and power struggles enacted in managing innovation processes, which result from the opportunity certain groups seek to acquire or extend their control over valuable resources. Again, in contrast to mainstream approaches that reduce power to the ability of individuals to negotiate in order to promote their ideas, the analysis adopts an extended view on power, and seeks to reveal the ambiguities and challenges of innovation management. This work will be of most interest to researchers and students of knowledge and innovation management, namely postgraduates and second degree students, as well as managers in knowledge-based organisations.
This is how it’s done. This is why it’s done this way. This is the result you can expect if you do it. These three pieces of information inform a conclusion about every part of each of our lives. Yet it is these three pieces of information that most often set an insidious trap—a trap that has held the imaginations of generations captive to the belief that because they are doing the best they can do, they are accomplishing the best that can be done. And while each of these three statements are true, not one of them is the truth. Dive deeper with bestselling author Andy Andrews as he shares his unique philosophy regarding foundational thinking. Through his unique and captivating storytelling, Andy helps you search for the reality that lies beyond the boundaries established in the name of “best practices,” “industry standards,” or “the way things are done.” For it’s at the bottom of the pool that you discover a pathway to extraordinary results that most people in your position do not even know are possible.
In this present internet age, risk analysis and crisis response based on information will make up a digital world full of possibilities and improvements to people's daily life and capabilities. These services will be supported by more intelligent systems and more effective decisionmaking. This book contains all the papers presented at the 4th International Conference on Risk Analysis and Crisis Response, August 27-29, 2013, Istanbul, Turkey. The theme was intelligent systems and decision making for risk analysis and crisis response. The risk issues in the papers cluster around the following topics: natural disasters, finance risks, food and feed safety, catastrophic accidents, critical infrastructure, global climate change, project management, supply chains, public health, threats to social safety, energy and environment. This volume will be of interest to all professionals and academics in the field of risk analysis, crisis response, intelligent systems and decision-making, as well as related fields of enquiry.
Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring Everyone negotiates. Whenever any person, company, or country needs someone else to accomplish something, they must negotiate. Negotiation is essential for peace and international relations, but also for economically efficient trades and bargains in business, and for problem solving skills in workplaces, families, and interpersonal interactions. This Very Short Introduction provides a comprehensive and accessible review of both conceptual and behavioural approaches to the human process of negotiation. Carrie Menkel-Meadow draws on research in constituent fields of human psychology, diplomacy, law, business, anthropology, game theory, decision making, international relations, sociology, public policy, and economics, suggesting models for creative problem solving to often intractable problems. Considering that most people are tense and frightened of what they perceive to be scarce resource confrontations with opponents and competitors, Menkel-Meadow offers different ways to plan for and approach others to solve human problems and seek solutions that satisfy both parties. Alongside this, Menkel-Meadow summarises recent research on the variations of human behaviour, providing vivid examples from history and current affairs to solve some of the most difficult problems. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Making decisions is a critical part of every executive's job. However we know so little about the often subliminal processes that shape the decisions we make. The Secret Life of Decisions exposes the unchallenged myths and distortions that impact our reasoning ability, raising our awareness of the many traps we can fall into. Meena Thuraisingham and her collaborator, Wolfgang Lehmacher, have drawn from decades of work with leaders showing that even the most talented leaders and teams can end up making sub-optimal decisions. This is rarely because they had poor critical thinking faculties but rather because they did not pay enough attention to the often invisible traps hardwired into our thinking processes, letting through only information that conforms with our current beliefs, mental models and expectations. This leaves many leaders and businesses exposed. Rather than being the rational output of our reasoning abilities, the authors show decision making to be a highly imprecise process. As decision makers we come to the table armed with our own perspectives, preferences, filters, heuristics and biases, influenced by a broad range of social influences many operating subliminally. The Secret Life of Decisions is an essential read for developing and seasoned executives who have to work through increasingly complex and high stakes decisions. It treats choosing wisely and the thinking involved as a skill, which as with many other skills, can be improved with the guided practice and supporting tools provided here. The journey however starts with awareness that comes from outing the 'secret' forces that can sabotage the quality of our decisions.
Where chief executives and company presidents lead, thousands follow. These elites make excruciatingly difficult calls on strategies which will affect jobs, drive corporate growth and investment and deliver shareholder returns. But their impact is far greater than merely numbers on a balance sheet. Their personalities dramatically set the tone of their organization. Do these people have anything in common? Do they share any similar behaviours and philosophies? The Nine Types of Leader introduce some obvious and some not so obvious types of leader. From the alphas, the campaigners and the lovers, through to the fixers, the founders and the scions, via the sellers, the diplomats and moderns, this book introduces them through stories, anecdotes and insight garnered from hundreds of encounters with world-class leaders. Featuring interviews with industry titans including Jean-Francois Decaux of JC Decaux, Michael Rapino of Live Nation, Ana Botin of Santander, James Daunt of Barnes & Noble and Waterstones, Dame Moya Greene of the Royal Mail and Isabelle Kocher of Engie, it explores how the leaders of tomorrow will improve their game by borrowing from the very best of the nine types of leader that exists today.
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:
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.
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.
Unleash the transformative power of face to face groups The third edition of this ground-breaking book continues to advance its mission to support groups to do their best thinking. It demonstrates that meetings can be much more than merely an occasion for solving a problem or creating a plan. Every well-facilitated meeting is also an opportunity to stretch and develop the perspectives of the individual members, thereby building the strength and capacity of the group as a whole. This fully updated edition of The Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making guides readers through the struggle and the satisfaction of putting participatory values into practice, helping them to fulfill the promise of effective group decision-making. With previous editions already embraced by business and community leaders and consulting professionals around the world, this new book is even more insightful and easy to use. New for this edition: 60 pages of brand new skills and toolsMany new case examplesMajor expansion and reorganization of the advanced sections of the book.New chapter: Teaching A Group About Group DynamicsDoubled in size: Classic Facilitator Challenges.Substantially improved: Designing Realistic Agendas - now three chapters, with wise, insightful answers to the most vexing questions about meeting design.
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
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.
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. |
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