This book presents the state-of-the-art in social simulation as presented at the Social Simulation Conference 2018 in Stockholm, Sweden. It covers the developments in applications and methods of social simulation, addressing societal issues such as socio-ecological systems and policy making. Methodological issues discussed include large-scale empirical calibration, model sharing and interdisciplinary research, as well as decision making models, validation and the use of qualitative data in simulation modeling. Research areas covered include archaeology, cognitive science, economics, organization science, and social simulation education. This collection gives readers insight into the increasing use of social simulation in both its theoretical development and in practical applications such as policy making whereby modelling and the behavior of complex systems is key. The book will appeal to students, researchers and professionals in the various fields.

Since the mid-1990s risk management has undergone a dramatic expansion in its reach and significance, being transformed from an aspect of management control to become a benchmark of good governance for banks, hospitals, schools, charities and many other organizations. Numerous standards for risk management practice have been produced by a variety of transnational organizations. While these many designs and blueprints are accompanied by ideals of enterprise, value production, and good governance, it is argued that the rise of risk management has also coincided with an intensification of auditing and control processes. The legalization and bureacratization of organizational life has increased because risk management has created new demands for proof and evidence of action. In turn, these demands have generated new risks to reputation.
In short, this important book traces the rise of the managerial concept of risk and the different logics and values which underpin it, showing that it has much less to do with real dangers and opportunities than might be thought, and more to do with organizational accountability and legitimacy.

"Advances in Business and Management Forecasting" is a blind refereed serial publication published on an annual basis. The objective of this research annual is to present state-of-the-art studies in the application of forecasting methodologies to such areas as sales, marketing, and strategic decision making. (An accurate, robust forecast is critical to effective decision making.) It is the hope and direction of the research annual to become an applications and practitioner-oriented publication. The topics will normally include sales and marketing, forecasting, new product forecasting, judgmentally-based forecasting, the application of surveys to forecasting, forecasting for strategic business decisions, improvements in forecasting accuracy, and sales response models. It is both the hope and direction of the editorial board to stimulate the interest of the practitioners of forecasting to methods and techniques that are relevant.

Includes 10 handy do's and don'ts of using KPIs Want to measure the performance of your people and your business? Need a quick overview of the most useful KPIs and how to use them? Only want what you need to know, rather than reams of theory? With the critical Key Performance Indicators required to understand your employees, financials and customers, this book tells you what you need to know, fast. 'This book does a fantastic job of narrowing down the best KPIs for you and your team. It's short, sharp and incredibly useful.' --Thomas H. Davenport, Distinguished Professor at Babson College and author of BigData@Work

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 an essential review of central theories, current research and applications in the field of numerical representations of ordered structures. It is intended as a tribute to Professor Ghanshyam B. Mehta, one of the leading specialists on the numerical representability of ordered structures, and covers related applications to utility theory, mathematical economics, social choice theory and decision-making. Taken together, the carefully selected contributions provide readers with an authoritative review of this research field, as well as the knowledge they need to apply the theories and methods in their own work.

For courses in decision support systems, computerised decision-making tools, and management support systems. Market-leading guide to modern analytics, for better business decisions Analytics, Data Science, & Artificial Intelligence: Systems for Decision Support is the most comprehensive introduction to technologies collectively called analytics (or business analytics) and the fundamental methods, techniques, and software used to design and develop these systems. Students gain inspiration from examples of organisations that have employed analytics to make decisions. With six new chapters, the 11th edition marks a major reorganisation reflecting a new focus - analytics and its enabling technologies, including AI, machine-learning, robotics, chatbots, and IoT.

Not all markets are alike: the European entrepreneur requires knowledge on how to avoid pitfalls before believing and focusing on opportunity. European Venture Toolbox features the leadership toolkit future decision makers, innovators, and entrepreneurs need to build a venture in Europe. Many European entrepreneurs are prone to the rhetoric of company building based on fast-growing start-up survivors, abundance of circulating capital, and sub-optimal business models monetizing late. They fall into the trap of thinking a mildly successful company can survive in the European ecosystem even if it does not thrive. This toolbox provides a framework to assess risk and return of choices, iteratively implement business, and avoid being blinded by incorrect principles not grounded in financial reality. European Venture Toolbox: The path for SMEs to grasp and defend opportunities is a compelling book for all small-to-medium enterprises. Written by a theoretician and a practitioner, it captures Europe-specific perspectives, examples, and case studies to provide an alternative insight. The Entrepreneurial Behaviour series is focused on expanding the scope of Entrepreneurial Behaviour theory and analysis and enriching practice by encouraging multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary approaches.

Throughout history, humankind has progressed in a somewhat predictable manner. Leaders have been able to leverage the accumulated knowledge residing within the world's organizations to presage tomorrow's demands and make their decisions accordingly. But there are times that defy such extrapolations, and ours seems to be one of them. Faced with a veritable maelstrom of technological innovation and ensuing social upheaval, today's organizational leaders must be risk takers, basing their decisions for the future not on the existing bodies of concrete information, but on an invaluable reserve of organizational wisdom and executive courage. The contributors to this book explore the roles wisdom and courage play in shaping our organizational lives and the implications they hold for the advancement of organizational science and practice. Filled with new thought and compelling insights, Organizational Wisdom and Executive Courage offers executives, educators, and scholars alike the means to broaden their thinking about change and management.

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

Distributed decision making (DDM) has become of increasing importance in quantitative decision analysis. In applications like supply chain management, service operations, or managerial accounting, DDM has led to a paradigm shift. The book provides a unified approach to such seemingly diverse fields as multi-level stochastic programming, hierarchical production planning, principal agent theory, negotiations or contract theory. Different settings like multi-level one-person decision problems, multi-person antagonistic planning, and leadership situations are covered. Numerous examples and real-life planning cases illustrate the concepts. The new edition has been considerably expanded by additional chapters on supply chain management, service operations and multi-agent systems.

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

This book starts from the relationship between urban built environment and travel behavior and focuses on analyzing the origin of traffic phenomena behind the data through multi-source traffic big data, which makes the book unique and different from the previous data-driven traffic big data analysis literature. This book focuses on understanding, estimating, predicting, and optimizing mobility patterns. Readers can find multi-source traffic big data processing methods, related statistical analysis models, and practical case applications from this book. This book bridges the gap between traffic big data, statistical analysis models, and mobility pattern analysis with a systematic investigation of traffic big data's impact on mobility patterns and urban planning.

Standards have become widespread regulatory tools that are set to promote global trade, innovation, efficiency, and quality. They contribute significantly to the creation of safe, reliable, and high quality services and technologies to ensure human health, environmental protection, or information security. Yet intentional deviations from standards by organizations are often reported in many sectors, which can either contribute to or challenge the measures of safety and quality they are designed to safeguard. Why then, despite all potential consequences, do organizations choose to deviate from standards in one way or another? This book uses structuration theory - covering aspects of both structure and agency - to explore the organizational conditions and contradictions under which different types of deviance occur. It provides empirical explanations for deviance in organizations that go beyond an understanding of individual misbehaviour where mainly a single person is held responsible. Case studies of software-developing organizations illustrate insightful generalizations on standards as a mechanism of sensemaking, resource allocation, and sanctioning, and provide ground to re-think corporate responsibility when deviating from standards in the 'audit society'.

The rapid pace of technological innovation and the effects of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) revolution have resulted in dramatic changes on a global scale, from the empowerment of the individual to the spawning of global markets. From the business perspective, the widespread deployment of Information Technology (IT) has resulted in many organisational changes and the development and use of new management and business processes. An important challenge for today's manufacturing organisations is to be able to anticipate the impact of investments in new (frequently IT-based) manufacturing technologies and programmes. Ideally, management needs to be able to identify and articulate the many ways in which investment decisions influence their organisation - in terms of performance across a range of measures. Furthermore, in today's manufacturing environment, it is increasingly necessary that a close relationship exists between manufacturing decision making and corporate business strategy, so that manufacturing decisions complement and are fully aligned with the organisation's strategic objectives.
Strategic Decision Making in Modern Manufacturing introduces and explains the AMBIT (Advanced Manufacturing Business ImplemenTation) approach, which has been developed to bridge the gap between strategic management considerations and the operational effects of technology investment decisions on the manufacturing organisation, so that the likely impact of new manufacturing technology and/or programme implementations can be evaluated, anticipated and accurately predicted. The AMBIT approach focuses specifically on the non-financial aspects of such investment decisions andoffers an approach that allows a manager, or more frequently a management team, to understand the impacts of a new technology or a new programme on the manufacturing organisation in terms of manufacturing performance.
The prediction of future trends and patterns is a very imprecise and ambiguous activity at the best of times. Yet despite such ambiguity, managers need to be forward looking. They need appropriate tools and approaches to help them anticipate the future. Thus, whilst the pages of organisational history may be filled with anecdotes about organisations that failed to "predict" the future, it is the challenge of today's organisations to evade such a fate. The AMBIT approach delineated in this book has been specifically developed to anticipate the future by analysing the impact of managerial decisions.

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

Become a more effective decision-maker, communicator, and manager by using the valuable techniques described in this unique book. It's designed to help you break away from the constraints of the technologist's "analytical/scientific" viewpoint and employ broader organizational and personal perspectives that strengthen your decision-making ability and leadership skills.

"Decision-Making for Technology Executives" shows you how to utilize this multiple perspective approach to problem-solving and systems development in real-world, outside the laboratory, situations. You learn how this three-dimensional approach has been applied successfully to a wide spectrum of complex systems tasks: from system forecasting to technology assessment, from industrial catastrophes to facility siting decisions, from corporate strategy to acquisition.

Through valuable case studies, such as the Exxon Valdez and Bhopal accidents, you learn lessons on improving technology and risk assessment, forecasting, and crisis management. And through ready-to-implement, practical guidelines you see how to become a more effective decision-maker and manager, while improving communication between technologists and others involved in the decision process.

A one-of-its-kind look at the multiple perspective concept, this guide helps to increase your understanding of complex sociotechnical systems, boost the technologist's effectiveness as an executive, and improve technological risk management, forecasting, and planning.

Don Lamberton was one of the first scholars to recognise the need for information to be taken seriously, he has spent much of his career persuading others. Focusing on his contribution, this volume explores the struggle for recognition of a way of thinking which is fundamental to our understanding of the social and economic role of information.

Each of the thirty authors, prominent in information economics and related fields have written a contribution especially for this volume. Vital issues, central to Lamberton's concerns and often ignored in euphoric approaches to information - the plight of the information poor, the poverty of information policy, the future of universal service, quality of employment, organisational and market failure to effect information transactions, the role of information in economic development, problems of codifying, classifying and managing information, the limitations of information systems - are emphasised throughout.

The whole encapsulates the vast progress which has been made, not just in academic thinking about information, but in the part this thinking now plays in corporate strategy and government policy. The volume is both an affectionate account of Don Lamberton's contribution to the understanding of information, and also the most comprehensive and authoritative of collections on the social and economic significance of information.

Life after Boris is a quick-to-read fable that should encourage any partner - or indeed anyone aspiring to partnership - in a professional services firm, to make sure that the succession planning issue is addressed in their firm. It seeks to demonstrate that with good planning, collaboration and proactive discussion, options can be found that will be acceptable to all. Without such an approach, the consequences could be serious. Succession planning is not inherently difficult or intellectually complex. It does, however, strike many raw nerves, both with those who are currently at the top of their firms and are contemplating retirement (or not), and also with those in the early stages of their careers who are anxious to know what the future holds for them in their current firm. The frustration, of course, is that many stakeholders in the succession planning process (of which there are far more than one might originally envisage) rush into decisions because of the apparent lack of a succession plan, thereby simply exacerbating the problem for all the other stakeholders. It is therefore critical that all firms, and the stakeholders within those firms, address the succession planning question before it becomes an issue. Closing the stable door after the horse has bolted is simply not an option. Initiating the succession planning process need not necessarily come from the current leaders. Indeed, their failure to do so is often at the root of the problem. The bright leaders of tomorrow have much at stake and although a great deal of tact and sensitivity will be needed, it is often these future leaders of a firm who are best positioned to bring about change. In the author's experience over the last 12 years of working with professional services firms around the world, one of the most frequently recurring catalysts for discussion has been succession management. Firms that got it right developed and prospered. Those that didn't struggled and often ended up having to merge and ultimately disappear into oblivion.

This new edition Workbook has been fully updated for 2019 and covers Theme 3 Business behaviour and the labour market A-level Paper 1 Markets and business behaviour, and A-level Paper 3 Microeconomics and Macroeconomics will both draw on topics from Theme 3. Up-to-date and focused to help students practice their skills and improve their subject knowledge both inside and outside the classroom, this Practice Workbook: - Covers specific aspects of the course, providing targeted support for complex and challenging topics - Reinforces students' understanding, with more new practice questions and exam-style questions to develop their skills and improve their confidence - Includes more sample answers with commentary to help students meet the demands of the specification - Adapts easily and flexibly to existing textbooks and schemes of work - Provides opportunities for self-directed learning and self-testing, helping students revise on their own terms

The long-awaited follow-up to the international bestsellers, Business Model Generation and Value Proposition Design Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneurs' Business Model Canvas changed the way the world creates and plans new business models. It has been used by corporations and startups and consultants around the world and is taught in hundreds of universities. After years of researching how the world's best companies develop, test, and scale new business models, the authors have produced their definitive work. The Invincible Company explains what every organization can learn from the business models of the world's most exciting companies. The book explains how companies such as Amazon, IKEA, Airbnb, Microsoft, and Logitech, have been able to create immensely successful businesses and disrupt entire industries. At the core of these successes are not just great products and services, but profitable, innovative business models--and the ability to improve existing business models while consistently launching new ones. The Invincible Company presents practical new tools for measuring, managing, and accelerating innovation, and strategies for reducing risk when launching new business models. Serving as a blueprint for your growth strategy, The Invincible Company explains how to constantly stay ahead of your competition. In-depth chapters explain how to create new growth engines, change how products and services are created and delivered, extract maximum profit from each type of business model, and much more. New tools--such as the Business Model Portfolio Map, Innovation Metrics, Innovation Strategy Framework, and the Culture Map--enable readers to understand how to design invincible companies. The Invincible Company: Helps large and small companies build their growth strategy and manage their core simultaneously Explains the world's best modern and historic business models Provides tools to assess your business model, innovation readiness, and all of your innovation projects Presented in striking 4-color, and packed with practical visuals and tools, The Invincible Company is a must-have book for business leaders, entrepreneurs, and innovation professionals.

"Risk or uncertainty assessments are used as aids to decision making in nearly every aspect of business, education, and government. As a follow-up to the author's bestselling Risk Assessment and Decision Making in Business and Industry: A Practical Guide, Risk Modeling for Determining Value and Decision Making presents comprehensive examples of risk/uncertainty analyses from a broad range of applications. Decision/option selection

With technical skills in ever increasing demand and software updates coming thick and fast, the need for technical training is rising rapidly.This book is the essential guide to establishing, managing, growing and controlling a technical training business within a national or global organisation, providing you with the commercial understanding and industry knowledge you need to succeed.

An economy low in carbon and high in life satisfaction will require thousands, if not millions of exceptional leaders. This book is the first to bring together sustainability knowledge with the leadership skills and tools to help you become one of those leaders. In it you will find everything you need to get started straight away, and to grow your effectiveness, even in a world that remains perversely intent on the opposite. Whether you are new to the whole idea of sustainability, or reasonably well informed but not entirely confident about what to do for the best, this guide will help you 'do' sustainability. Free of checklists and policy recommendations, the focus is on you, and on developing your capacity to identify the right thing to do wherever you are and whatever your circumstances. This is essential reading for those in or aspiring to sustainability-literate leadership, and a must for all those teaching leadership and management.