This attractive textbook with its easy-to-follow presentation provides a down-to-earth introduction to operations research for students in a wide range of fields such as engineering, business analytics, mathematics and statistics, computer science, and econometrics. It is the result of many years of teaching and collective feedback from students.The book covers the basic models in both deterministic and stochastic operations research and is a springboard to more specialized texts, either practical or theoretical. The emphasis is on useful models and interpreting the solutions in the context of concrete applications.The text is divided into several parts. The first three chapters deal exclusively with deterministic models, including linear programming with sensitivity analysis, integer programming and heuristics, and network analysis. The next three chapters primarily cover basic stochastic models and techniques, including decision trees, dynamic programming, optimal stopping, production planning, and inventory control. The final five chapters contain more advanced material, such as discrete-time and continuous-time Markov chains, Markov decision processes, queueing models, and discrete-event simulation.Each chapter contains numerous exercises, and a large selection of exercises includes solutions.

The continued growth of emerging nations depends largely on the development of their built infrastructures and communities. Roads, dams, bridges, hospitals, schools, and housing are all examples of the built environment that impacts economic improvements in the developing world. Decision Support for Construction Cost Control in Developing Countries explores how the construction industry contributes to a nation's GDP and the related cost issues and proposed cost reduction solutions for construction projects and initiatives in developing regions. Emphasizing the role of decision support systems for reducing and managing the costs associated with construction projects, this title is an essential reference source for civil engineers, business and engineering managers, project managers, researchers, and professionals in the construction industry.

Retaining top talent is a universal concern that is increasingly global. However, the context, meaning, and mechanisms for changing jobs varies around the world. Global Talent Retention: Understanding Employee Turnover Around the World provides the first context-specific global perspective on retaining talent. Although extensive research informs understanding of why employees decide to leave or remain with organizations, the bulk of theory and research adopts a U.S.-centric perspective, problematic because most employees do not work for firms that are U.S.-owned or based. Global Talent Retention addresses the need for turnover theory and research to give more careful consideration to global and cross-cultural perspectives on employee retention, and includes contributions from a global range of scholars in differing cultural contexts in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. The chapters represent many of the largest and most dynamic economies in the world, including Bulgaria, China, Denmark, Germany, India, Mexico, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Turkey, and the UK. Each chapter provides a description of the institutional, legal, and cultural context as it relates to employee mobility, a review of context-specific research leading to a description of how the mechanisms of prominent turnover theories may operate differently in particular contexts, and the implications for research and practice related to employee turnover and retention.

There are numerous trends taking place around the world and especially in the U.S. with implications for organizations, the workplace, leaders, and supporting organizations like Human Resources. How organizations and their leadership react and proactively address these changes will be difference between positioning themselves for success in the future or for disappearing as other organizations have disappeared. The critically important issue of these trends is that they are occurring simultaneously. The trends consists of constant and consistent change driven by advancing technology, challenges with education with implications for a future workforce, an aging population and workforce, four generations in the workforce with a growing millennial workforce, changing expectations from the workforce with an emphasis on employee engagement, and leadership development opportunities. This perfect human capital storm addresses these very important and relevant issues in a succinct fashion while also providing some systemic recommendations for organizations and its leadership to consider as they work to differentiate themselves from their competition, to look to reinvent themselves, while also creating a great place to work in the 21st century. In addition, the book provides an assessment to use as a guide and to serve as a starting point for discussion and planning among the organization's leadership team for the organization.

This volume in the Research in Organizational Sciences series is entitled Received Wisdom, Kernels of Truth and Boundary Conditions in Organizational Studies. Received wisdom is knowledge imparted to people by others and is based on authority and tenacity as sources of human knowledge. Authority refers to the acceptance of knowledge as truth because of the position and credibility of the knowledge source. Tenacity refers to the continued presentation of a particular bit of information by a source until this bit of information is accepted as true by receivers. The problem for organisational studies, however, is that this received wisdom often becomes unquestioned assumptions which guide interpretation of the world and decisions made about the world. Received wisdom, therefore, may lead to organisational practices which provide little or no benefit to the organisation and, potentially, negative organisational effects, because this received wisdom is no longer valid. The 14 papers in this volume all, in some way, strive to question received wisdom and present alternatives which expand our understanding of organisational behaviour in some way. The chapters in this volume each strive to present new ways of understanding organisational constructs, and in so doing reveal how received wisdom has often led to confirmation bias in organisational science. The knowledge that some perceived truths are actually the products of received wisdom and do not stand up to close scrutiny shakes up things within research areas previously thought settled allowing new perspectives on organisational science to emerge.

The study of e-adoption focuses on the implementation and use of the Internet and Internet-based technologies for personal and business activities. This field has become increasingly relevant due to the increased reliance upon the Internet among individuals in both developed and developing countries. E-Adoption and Socio-Economic Impacts: Emerging Infrastructural Effects identifies the multidimensional impact of e-adoption and provides theoretical and practical solutions for policy makers, managers, and researchers in government, industry, and academia. This publication unites research on all aspects of e-adoption with the aim of understanding this phenomenon on both an organizational and individual level.

Evaluating the role of logistics and supply chain management skills or applications is necessary for the success of any organization or business. As market competition becomes more aggressive, it is crucial to evaluate ways in which a business can maintain a strategic edge over competitors. The Handbook of Research on Information Management for Effective Logistics and Supply Chains highlights strategies, tools, and skills necessary for supply management within organizations and companies. Featuring best practices and empirical research within the field, this handbook is a critical reference source for scholars, practitioners, researchers, information systems and telecommunication specialists, and managers.

A volume in Research in Strategic Alliances Series Editor T. K. Das, City University of New York Managing Multipartner Strategic Alliances is a volume in the book series Research in Strategic Alliances that focuses on providing a robust and comprehensive forum for new scholarship in the field of strategic alliances. In particular, the books in the series cover new views of interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks and models, significant practical problems of alliance organization and management, and emerging areas of inquiry. The series also includes comprehensive empirical studies of selected segments of business, economic, industrial, government, and non-profit activities with wide prevalence of strategic alliances. Through the ongoing release of focused topical titles, this book series seeks to disseminate theoretical insights and practical management information that should enable interested professionals to gain a rigorous and comprehensive understanding of the field of strategic alliances. Managing Multipartner Strategic Alliances contains contributions by leading scholars in the field of strategic alliance research. The 10 chapters in this volume cover a number of significant topics related to the formation, operation, and performance of multipartner strategic alliances (i.e., alliances with more than two members) that are increasingly being formed in various industrial sectors. The chapter topics cover both the broader issues, such as the peculiar complexities of multipartner alliances that arise because of indirect or generalized reciprocities among its multiple members vis-a-vis the direct reciprocity within dyadic or two-member alliances, and the roles of power and multilevel embeddedness, and the more focused topics of managing triadic alliances, the evolution of an airline alliance, and the nature of value creation in a consortium. The chapters include empirical as well as conceptual treatments of the selected topics, and collectively present a wide-ranging review of the noteworthy research perspectives on the nature, management, and performance of multipartner alliances.

Women play an essential role in the transport workforce worldwide, working in formal and informal jobs in public transport, road freight and logistics, rail, maritime and aviation sectors, in ports and in active travel. Women, Work and Transport is an international collection that brings together researchers with global expertise in gender and transport work to provide original evidence of the experiences of women working in all transport modes across countries in the Global North and the Global South. The 21 chapters reveal the everyday challenges faced by women working in highly masculinised environments, including gender stereotypes about women's lack of suitability for transport work, gender-based violence and harassment, limited opportunities for promotion and progression, inflexible work patterns, poor working conditions, and lack of gender-specific facilities. The transport sector has also been severely affected by the coronavirus pandemic, resulting in widespread furlough and redundancies. The effect of the pandemic on women's work in transport is addressed, while other chapters also reveal how women have succeeded in transport occupations, with the support of mentoring schemes, leadership programmes and trade unions, highlighting new emerging opportunities to challenge occupational gender segregation as the transport sector transforms through automation, digitisation, and the transition to low-carbon technologies. The Transport and Sustainability series addresses the important nexus between transport and sustainability containing volumes dealing with a wide range of issues relating to transport, its impact in economic, social and environmental spheres, and its interaction with other policy sectors.