Jay Mendell explores the profound implications and consequences of the forecaster's new and changing role in an economy based on high-technology entrepreneurship. This incisive text explains the principles of nonextrapolative forecasting/planning and compares them with conventional forecasting/planning methods. Case studies of nonextrapolative forecasting and planning in Sears, AT&T, a large hotel chain, an electric power company, and the Security Pacific Bank are provided. They deal with the practical problems of setting up forecasting/planning groups and maintaining their existence and influence through internal planning processes. The political process of acceptance and implementation of forecasting/planning is also explained. Comprehensive planning and forecasting documents are included as appendix material.

More than a fad, teaming is proving to be a new way of organizational life, with eight out of every ten employees now involved in some kind of teamwork. But how exactly does one play on a team at work? While there are plenty of manuals, trainers, and theories that help managers create, lead, and reward teams, actual team members are often left struggling without a handbook or a coach.
With refreshing clarity and common sense, Maureen O'Brien, a team expert with more than twenty years of experience as a player, coach, and business consultant, offers one-on-one coaching tips to team players in Who's Got the Ball? The author covers all the bases, from setting a team's goals and articulating its noble purpose, to banishing boring meetings, deciding how to make decisions, and even using flip charts effectively. Friendly and conversational, O'Brien offers experience-based, easy-to-implement guidelines that are eminently practical and surprisingly fun. Her concise coaching notes, wonderfully illustrated by real-life organizational situations, address every aspect of daily team life, including: creating a workable team structure * being a valuable team member * avoiding common teamwork traps * running an effective team meeting * making and implementing decisions * leading a team.
From developing a new team and determining just what kind of game your team is playing--individualistic baseball, interdependent basketball, or tightly orchestrated football--to dealing with personality-based conflicts, knowing when to take a time-out, and honoring a project's most valuable player, Who's Got the Ball? is an invaluable guide to surviving--and thriving--on today's work teams.

Updated examples throughout the book feature current business problems and events and incorporate new, relevant research. New discussions and insights on topics such as 'blind spots', overconfidence, and ethical decision making. New content exploring recent controversies in the field of judgment and decision making.

Decision Support Systems: Frequently Asked Questions is the authoritative reference guide to computerized Decision Support Systems. others about computerized Decision Support Systems. Dr. Power is first and foremost a Decision Support evangelist and generalist. From his vantage point as editor of DSSResources.COM, he tracks a broad range of contemporary DSS topics. computerized decision support systems. The FAQ covers a broad range of contemporary topics and the questions are organized into 8 chapters. differ for a Data-Driven DSS? * Is a Data Warehouse a DSS? * Is tax preparation software an example of a DSS? * What do I need to know about Data Warehousing/OLAP? * What is a cost estimation DSS? * What is a Spreadsheet-based DSS? IT specialists, students, professors and managers. It organizes important Ask Dan questions (with answers) published in DSS News from 2000 through 2004.

Current thinking about how to improve strategic planning (now upgraded to strategic thinking) and decision making by managers at all levels is to employ some aspect of information systems technology. Although this approach has worked well for most organizations, chief executives are now asking their managers to do what they do best but to do it better. But how? Future thinking about improving strategic thinking and decision making involves integrating creativity with the latest in information systems. Hence, the power of the computer can be an important means to assist managers in doing what they do better when employing a creative computer software approach.

Initially, the text looks at a number of areas that are impacted by creativity, with special emphasis on creative computer software. Management decision making is examined from a problem-finding or a forward-looking viewpoint that can benefit from utilizing creative computer software. Not only is this software useful for organizing ideas, but also for getting managers involved in networking ideas in different locations of a company. But more importantly, this software centers on the generation of new ideas. To demonstrate the generation of these ideas, the final part of the text gives a number of real-world applications of creative computer software. Particular emphasis is placed on Idea Fisher 4.0, an effective software package for generating new products and services.

As the world's resources are running out, sustainability issues will drive large strategy shifts for many organizations in the near future. Businesses need to explore how profit and value can be generated from sustainable innovations in their commercial offerings. This is both an ethical and an essential strategy in a global economy still reliant on increasingly limited resources.
Sustainable Innovation Strategy is a thought-provoking and timely book which examines the links between sustainable development, innovation strategy and the business model. Through insightful case studies from mature and developing markets, the authors show how sustainability needs to be at the core of every organization's strategy and innovation. They reveal the three ways in which sustainable strategies can be incorporated into business models - eco-efficiency, circularity and functional economy.
Rigorous and practical, this book shows how other organizations have successfully made the transition from resource reliant to generating profit and value through sustainable models. From the innovative strides being taken in the electric car industry in Europe to the management of agricultural waste in Brazil for profit and clean energy, they show how sustainable business models can add value to an organization.

Collaborative decision making processes are a form of communication inside organizations. Their functioning can teach lessons for the design of electronic office systems. Those processes are open ended and therefore decide themselves on their form. Like oral deliberations which cannot be modelled in advance any open ended communication process needs means for common control over the further advancement and the ending of the process.

The history of German administrative practice and its special methods of using disposals for the control of common processes shows the creation of records as based on communication needs generated by the intention of joint actions. For electronic decision making processes the purposes remain the same, but the means have to follow the effects of electronic communication on messages.

The book is a reworked English version of a thesis for the official qualification for university professorship accepted by the German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer. Germany.

Getting organizations going is one thing. Stopping them is another. This book examines how and why organizations become trapped in disastrous decisions. The focal point is Project Taurus, an IT venture commissioned by the London Stock Exchange and supported by numerous City Institutions. Taurus was intended to transform London's antiquated manual share settlement procedures into a state of the art electronic system that would be the envy of the world. The project collapsed after three year's intensive work and investments totalling almost GBP500 million. This book is an in depth study of escalation in decision making. The author has interviewed a number of people who played a key role and presents a most readable account of what actually happened. At the same time she sets the case in the broader literature of decision making.

This book mainly introduces a series of theory and approaches of group decision-making based on several types of uncertain linguistic expressions and addresses their applications. The book pursues three major objectives: (1) to introduce some techniques to model several types of natural linguistic expressions; (2) to handle these expressions in group decision-making; and (3) to clarify the involved approaches by practical applications. The book is especially valuable for readers to understand how linguistic expressions could be employed and operated to make decisions, and motivates researchers to consider more types of natural linguistic expressions in decision analysis under uncertainties.

How to make change happen in business.

A practical and revealing guide for anyone dealing with transformation, whatever their business or sector. Understand how to deliver digital change at the coalface, alongside the relevant management theory. With case studies detailing the successes and challenges they have overcome, you’ll learn from the experiences from managers, academics and relevant stakeholders in each chapter, including the FT.

Written by an experienced risk manager, this innovative new book explores the core concepts of risk management, including in-depth coverage of its scope, rationale, and practical applications. In addition to being fundamentally important to risk managers, this text will also be invaluable to senior executives, directors, regulators, and capital markets professionals. Students, lay readers, and others interested in finance will find a vast subject made engaging and accessible. Written with unusual clarity, "The Shape of Risk" makes use of graphics, case studies, and questions. The author encourages readers to develop their own intuition and judgment for identifying and managing risk. This is an excellent starting point for a new generation of readers who increasingly need a both practical and conceptual understanding of risk management.

Making important business decisions is usually a difficult and complicated task. In the modern economy where businesses have to solve increasingly complex decision-making problems, it is important to learn and use methods and techniques including the analysis of behavioral data to support decision-making in practice. This book presents various methods and solutions to problems in modern data acquisition techniques and practical aspects of decision making. In particular, it addresses such important issues as: business decision making, multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA), multidimensional comparative analysis (MCA), decision games and data acquisition techniques for decision making (declarative techniques and cognitive neuroscience techniques). Important topics such as consumers' rational behavior, environmental management accounting, operational research methods, neuroscience including epigenetics, DEA analysis etc., as well as case studies related to decision making in management are also included.

With the fast pace of communications and change in today's global marketplace, investing in equities has become increasingly complex. Communicating a clear, concise, meaningful message to investors is critical. Dr. Higgins and his contributing authors provide a broad set of perspectives, lessons learned, and best practices in global investor relations. They examine the fundamentals of investor relations from a theoretical and practical perspective. They explore individual company strategies and challenges for investor relations in unique and meaningful situations--all from their own vantages and experiences at six topflight corporations with world-class investor relations organizations: AT&T, Schering-Plough, BASF, Reuters, Sony, and Toyota. Readers will get detailed pragmatic insights into the way IR is done in these important, highly visible corporations, plus the results of a unique five-year study of global strategy communications, complete with ideas and concepts they can use immediately in developing and influencing investor relations in their own organizations.

But Higgins' book is more than a collection of company studies. Impinging upon the strategic and financial communications of virtually every global corporation are institutional, market, and technological forces that are shaping the current practice of investor relations. The book examines these forces and their impact on strategic financial communications. It also explores the theoretical and empirical foundations underlying the practice of investor relations and presents a conceptual model--a strategic perspective--for viewing and analyzing best practices. In addition, the book presents the results of a recent survey of global investor relations practices in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, and Japan, plus two new studies of the latest communication technologies in U.S. companies.

Providing the necessary background information and hands-on tools to build compelling business cases, this book will increase the reader's capability to champion new business development ideas, take them to senior management, and facilitate the decision process by understanding the key theories and practices of finance and corporate investments.

This book explores the challenges that confront leaders in government and industry when making decisions in the areas of environmental health and safety. Today, decision making demands transparency, robustness, and resiliency. However thoughtfully they are devised, decisions made by governments and enterprises can often trigger immediate, passionate public response. Expertise Under Scrutiny shows how leaders can establish organizational decision making processes that yield valid, workable choices even in fast-changing and uncertain conditions. The first part of the book examines the organizational decision making process, describing the often-contentious environment in which important environmental health and safety decisions are made, and received. The authors review the roles of actors and experts in the decision making process. The book goes on to address such topics as: * The roles of actors and experts in the decision making process * Ethics and analytics as drivers of good decisions * Why managing problems in safety, security, environment, and health Part II offers an outline for adopting a formal decision support structure, including the use of decision support tools. It includes a chapter devoted to ELECTRE (ELimination and Choice Expressing Reality), a multi-criteria decision analysis system. The book concludes with an insightful appraisal and analysis of the expertise, structure and resources needed for navigating well-supported, risk-informed decisions in our 21st Century world. Expertise Under Scrutiny benefits a broad audience of students, academics, researchers, and working professionals in management and related disciplines, especially in the field of environmental health and safety.

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.

This book provides an introduction to investment appraisal and presents a range of methods and models, some of which are not widely known, or at least not well covered by other textbooks. Each approach is thoroughly described, evaluated and illustrated using examples, with its assumptions and limitations analyzed in terms of their implications for investment decision-making practice. Investment decisions are of vital importance to all companies. Getting these decisions right is crucial but, due to a complex and dynamic business environment, this remains a challenging management task. Effective appraisal methods are valuable tools in supporting investment decision-making. As organisations continue to seek a competitive edge, it is increasingly important that management accountants and strategic decision-makers have a sound knowledge of these tools.

Strategic Acquisitions: A Guide to Growing and Enhancing the Value of Your Business is for business managers, rather than "deal makers," and explains why strategy, people, and financial performance are the keys to successful acquisitions. This book will show business managers how to identify a viable acquisition, how to evaluate the likelihood of a smooth corporate merger, how to efficiently combine management and labor teams, and how to absorb the new company without jeopardizing the existing corporate culture.

This highly praised introductory treatment describes the parallels between statistical physics and finance - both those established in the 100-year long interaction between these disciplines, as well as new research results on financial markets.

The random-walk technique, well known in physics, is also the basic model in finance, upon which are built, for example, the Black-Scholes theory of option pricing and hedging, plus methods of portfolio optimization. Here the underlying assumptions are assessed critically. Using empirical financial data and analogies to physical models such as fluid flows, turbulence, or superdiffusion, the book develops a more accurate description of financial markets based on random walks. With this approach, novel methods for derivative pricing and risk management can be formulated. Computer simulations of interacting-agent models provide insight into the mechanisms underlying unconventional price dynamics. It is shown that stock exchange crashes can be modelled in ways analogous to phase transitions and earthquakes, and sometimes have even been predicted successfully.

This third edition of "The Statistical Mechanics of Financial Markets" especially stands apart from other treatments because it offers new chapters containing a practitioner's treatment of two important current topics in banking: the basic notions and tools of risk management and capital requirements for financial institutions, including an overview of the new Basel II capital framework which may well set the risk management standards in scores of countries for years to come.