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.

Discover Your Next Breakthrough Idea Every company starts with one idea-that one passion that keeps you up at night, gets you up every morning, and drives you to create something bigger than yourself. Turning an idea into a thriving business requires more than just passion. You'll need to think big, take risks, and be able to step back and recognize game-changing ideas that may already be in front of you. Those are your aha! moments. Business growth expert and serial entrepreneur Scott Duffy shares his journey and the aha! moments that led to launching and selling new businesses to innovators like Richard Branson's Virgin Group. Duffy also shares the stories of entrepreneurs who have turned their ideas into multi-million-dollar businesses, like Shaun White, Tony Robbins, Daymond John, and Gary Vaynerchuck, to help you: Be a nimble leader who makes quick buy smart decisions Unlock hidden gems in your business with the power of finding your "Why?" Apply growth strategies designed to scale your business in today's economy Build a positive company culture by bringing in the right people Determine which next step is right for your business after launch Create sustainability with efficient, effective processes Learn from your mistakes and turn failures into fortunes

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

The logical and enduring way to innovate. Conventional wisdom today says that to survive, companies must move beyond incremental, sustaining innovation and invest in some form of radical innovation. "Disrupt yourself or be disrupted!" is the relentless message company leaders hear. The Power of Little Ideas argues there's a "third way" that is neither sustaining nor disruptive. This low-risk, high-reward strategy is an approach to innovation that all company leaders should understand so that they recognize it when their competitors practice it, and apply it when it will give them a competitive advantage. This distinctive approach has three key elements: It consists of creating a family of complementary innovations around a product or service, all of which work together to make that product more appealing and competitive. The complementary innovations work together as a system to carry out a single strategy or purpose. Crucially, unlike disruptive or radical innovation, innovating around a key product does not change the central product in any fundamental way. In this powerful, practical book, Wharton professor David Robertson illustrates how many well-known companies, including CarMax, GoPro, LEGO, Gatorade, Disney, USAA, Novo Nordisk, and many others, used this approach to stave off competitive threats and achieve great success. He outlines the organizational practices that unintentionally torpedo this approach to innovation in many companies and shows how organizations can overcome those challenges. Aimed at leaders seeking strategies for sustained innovation, and at the quickly growing numbers of managers involved with creating new products, The Power of Little Ideas provides a logical, organic, and enduring third way to innovate.

In Computational Organizational Cognition, Davide Secchi presents an innovative definition of organizational cognition using a research tradition that builds on the Embodied/Distributed/Extended Cognition (EDEC) perspectives and it is developed through agent-based computational simulation modelling. After an overview of EDEC perspectives, Computational Organizational Cognition presents four simulations which allow readers to clearly assess the advantages of agent-based computational organizational cognition (AOC) for both theory and practice. The book attempts to demonstrate how AOC is a useful if not essential instrument to explore, understand and analyze the inner complexities of organizational cognition. AOC is a powerful tool and an approach for organizational research enquiry at the service of both organizational scholars and cognitive scientists.

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

Bring strategy into your daily work. It's your responsibility as a manager to ensure that your work--and the work of your team--aligns with the overarching objectives of your organization. But when you're faced with competing projects and limited time, it's difficult to keep strategy front of mind. How do you keep your eye on the long term amid a sea of short-term demands? The HBR Guide to Thinking Strategically provides practical advice and tips to help you see the big-picture perspective in every aspect of your daily work, from making decisions to setting team priorities to attacking your own to-do list. You'll learn how to: Understand your organization's strategy Align your team around key objectives Focus on the priorities that matter most Spot trends in your company and in your industry Consider future outcomes when making decisions Manage trade-offs Embrace a leadership mindset

This book aims to provide a general overview of heuristic search, to present the basic steps of the most popular heuristics, and to stress their hidden difficulties as well as their opportunities. It provides a comprehensive understanding of Heuristic search, the applications of which are now widely used in a variety of industries including engineering, finance, sport, management and medicine. It intends to aid researchers and practitioners in solving complex combinatorial and global optimisation problems, and spark interest in this exciting decision science-based subject. It will provide the reader with challenging and lively methodologies through which they will be able to design and analyse their own techniques

This book describes the organizational and managerial ways in which firms can overtake and pass other firms. Ackoff stresses the concept of "quality of life" within an organization, and outlines three major ways this can be achieved.

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.

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

Part of the series Exploring Effective Leadership Practices through Popular Culture, Urick examines management theories related to mentorship and learning, transformational and transactional leadership, ethical decision making, bases of power, mindfulness, multi-tasking, and more. As you learn to apply these theories, you can become at one with the Force to find balance in your leadership style. Each theory is viewed through the lens of various aspects of the Jedi approach to exerting influence. Through these examples, 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. Readers will move from Padawan to Master quickly. May the Force be with you, Jedi Manager! 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.

Praise for "Carbon Finance"

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

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

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

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

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

Successful leaders know that leadership is less often about having all the answers--and more often about asking the right questions. The challenge lies in being able to step back, reflect, and ask the key questions that are critical to your performance and your organization's effectiveness. In What to Ask the Person in the Mirror, HBS professor and business leader Robert Kaplan presents a process for asking the big questions that will enable you to diagnose problems, change course if necessary, and advance your career. He lays out areas of inquiry, including questions such as: *Do I clearly articulate my vision and top priorities to my employees and key constituencies? *Does the way I spend my time enable me to achieve my top priorities? *Do I give subordinates timely and direct feedback they can act on? Do I actively seek feedback myself? *Have I developed a succession roadmap? *Is my organization's design aligned with the achievement of its objectives? *Is my leadership style still effective, and does it reflect who I truly am? Packed with real-life situations, this highly readable and practical guide helps you learn to ask the right questions--and work through the answers in ways that are right for you. By asking these questions, you can tackle the inevitable challenges of leadership as you craft new strategies for staying on top of your game.

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

This is a major, and deeply thoughtful, contribution to understanding uncertainty and risk. Our world and its unprecedented challenges need such ways of thinking! Much more than a set of contributions from different disciplines, this book leads you to explore your own way of perceiving your own area of work. An outstanding contribution that will stay on my shelves for many years. Dr Neil T. M. Hamilton, Director, WWF International Arctic Programme This collection of essays provides a unique and fascinating overview of perspectives on uncertainty and risk across a wide variety of disciplines. It is a valuable and accessible sourcebook for specialists and laypeople alike. Professor Renate Schubert, Head of the Institute for Environmental Decisions and Chair of Economics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology This comprehensive collection of disciplinary perspectives on uncertainty is a definitive guide to contemporary insights into this Achilles heel of modernity and the endemic hubris of institutional science in its role as public authority. It gives firm foundations to the fundamental historic shift now underway in the world, towards normalizing acceptance of the immanent condition of ignorance and of its practical corollaries: contingency, uncontrol, and respect for difference. Brian Wynne, Professor of Science Studies, Lancaster University Bammer and Smithson have assembled a fascinating, important collection of papers on uncertainty and its management. The integrative nature of Uncertainty and Risk makes it a landmark in the intellectual history of this vital cross-disciplinary concept. George Cvetkovich, Director, Center for Cross-Cultural Research, Western Washington University Uncertainty governs our lives. From the unknowns of living with the risks of terrorism to developing policies on genetically modified foods, or disaster planning for catastrophic climate change, how we conceptualize, evaluate and cope with uncertainty drives our actions and deployment of resources, decisions and priorities. In this thorough and wide-ranging volume, theoretical perspectives are drawn from art history, complexity science, economics, futures, history, law, philosophy, physics, psychology, statistics and theology. On a practical level, uncertainty is examined in emergency management, intelligence, law enforcement, music, policy and politics. Key problems that are a subject of focus are environmental management, communicable diseases and illicit drugs. Opening and closing sections of the book provide major conceptual strands in uncertainty thinking and develop an integrated view of the nature of uncertainty, uncertainty as a motivating or de-motivating force, and strategies for coping and managing under uncertainty.