The practice of consultation between senior managers and employee representatives has a long history in British employment relations yet has often been overshadowed by discussions on collective bargaining. In the last few decades, the importance of consultation has been elevated by two main trends: the decline in trade union membership and the retreat from collective bargaining in the private sector on the one hand, with the result that consultation may be the only form of collective employee voice available; and the programme of legislative support for consultation by the European Union since the 1970s on the other. The book charts the meaning and development of consultation in the twentieth century and explores the justifications for the practice. It shows how EU intervention to promote consultation evolved and changed, paying particular attention to the adoption of the Information and Consultation of Employees (ICE) Regulations, which became fully operational in enterprises with 50 or more employees in 2008. Analysing the half-hearted response to EU consultation initiatives by the social partners in Britain, it provides a critical assessment of successive UK governments' handling of the issue. Drawing on the authors' empirical research in twenty-five organizations, the book closely examines the take-up and impact of consultation regulations, and explores the processes involved in effective consultation. Consultation at Work looks at the dynamics of consultation and draws a contrast between 'active' consultation of the type envisaged by the EU, and more limited consultation used as a means of communication. Discussing the UK experience in comparative perspectives, it asks what has to happen for the take-up of consultation to improve and suggests the changes that should be made to the EU Directive and UK ICE Regulations.

How does one implement highly creative ideas in the workplace? Though creativity fuels modern businesses and organizations, capitalizing on creativity is still a relatively unchartered territory. The crux of this issue is explored as contributors present and analyze remedies for capitalizing on highly creative ideas. Editors Miha Skerlavaj, Matej Cerne, Anders Dysvik and Arne Carlsen have gathered a large network of contributors across four continents to craft this relevant, evidence-based and holistic text. Multiple levels, methods, approaches and perspectives are all considered while focusing on a single research question. Chapters feature a combination of research-based materials, stories and short cases to show what can be done to implement highly creative ideas in the workplace. This extremely relevant subject will be of interest to a large number of organizations worldwide that are looking to tap into the potential of highly creative and possibly useful ideas to build their competitive advantage. Specifically, management consultants in Human Resource Management, innovation, creativity, coaching, and/or leadership will find this book useful. It can also be used in Innovation Management MSc and MBA courses, executive education courses, as well as for PhD researchers and innovation management scholars. Contributors: D. Aleksic, B. Balboni, S. Batistic, T. Bednall, S. Bogilovic, G. Bortoluzzi, B. Brogger, R. Buch, A. Carlsen, M. Cerne, A. Dysvik, N. Escriba-Carda, A. Giudici, S. Harrison, T. Hernaus, T. Hoholm, J. Hudovernik, P. Hull Kristensen, A. Hvidsten, M. Jaklic, R. Kase, J. Krapez Trost, B. Kuvaas, A. La Rocca, V.C. Lin, M. Lotz, B.E. Mork, A.S. Nabergoj, C.G.L. Nerstad, P. Parycek, A. Pustovrh, I. Rauth, K. Sanders, R. Schoellhammer, J. Schossboeck, H. Shipton, M. Skerlavaj, J. Sumanth, A. Tracogna, L. Valikangas, S.I. Wong, I. Zupic

For many decades, unheard indigenous business leaders and entrepreneurs in Africa, drawing from their ground-level experience, have intuitively felt that organizations and management of people in Africa needs a different approach; one that must be deeply embedded in the African context. These business leaders constantly advocate for home-grown solutions, or at least engage in selective adaptation with foreign management practices, for a number of reasons. First, there has always been the sense that any management of organizations which fails to embrace the dictates of the local contexts with deep-rooted knowledge and experience is bound to fail. Second, indigenous business leaders believe that local context knowledge and experience would inspire and empower people to seek 'best practice' initiatives, that would then work as a catalyst to generate local ideas and values that are crucial to effective people management, organization and national development-resilience. Such an approach would also promote self-reliance, confidence and social cohesion. This volume therefore suggests approaches to managing people and organizations that reflect and satisfy the objectives and interests of multiple stakeholders in Africa.

This book presents the most recent theoretical insights and practical intervention methods to (re)build trust between management and organized employees in organizations. Offering a multidisciplinary perspective on trust and conflict management in organizations, the book draws from diverse fields such as organizational psychology, business, law, industrial relations and sociology. It examines the often encountered breaches of trust between management and organized workers, and the resulting destructive social conflicts, social actions, strikes or dramatic business decisions. Its focus is on trust and conflict management at the organizational level in an industrial relations context: that of employee representatives and management. The book introduces a new theoretical approach: the Tree of Trust, designed to analyse and mediate the interconnected levels of trust and distrust in industrial relations. It presents case studies and practical recommendations to build trust and constructive conflict management in the organizations, and illustrates these by means of experiences from different countries around the globe.

The question that faces governments and militaries the world over is how best to allocate resources for management of defence in the new age. This book, by Shri A.K. Ghosh who has an economics background, explores the framework for change in resource allocation and capability building. It emphasises the importance of introducing programming in Indian defence to serve as a link between defence planning and budgeting. The mismatch between defence planning and budgeting needs to be connected by the introduction of resource constrained budgeting, having a multi-year perspective. The RMA, force modernisation, cost-benefit analysis, management of risks, and internal and external audits are among the many issues the author has provided a perspective on. It is argued by the author that defence needs to be viewed as a giant business and, where possible, business practices should be introduced. The book is recommended reading for the planners and decision-makers of defence management and will benefit readers from the armed forces as well. The lay readers interested in the subject of national defence and security will also find it useful and interesting.

This book examines the relationships among leadership, the quality of the management process and business results. Drawing from the pioneering contributions of Chester I. Barnard, this book defines the role and characteristics of an effective and efficient manager in the new knowledge economy. This book also examines the relevance of Barnard's work on modern studies in economics and business administration. Chester I. Barnard considered the company to be a complex socio-economic system, oriented towards general aims. A company's behavior is rational if its constituent elements and management models are planned, organized, guided and regulated in order to create and maintain a cooperative system that combines efficiency and effectiveness. In this book, the conceptual construction of Barnard's management theory is represented by a synthetic scheme in which the various components of the business process (including leadership) and their influences on the outcome variables of the company are linked as a system. This approach makes this book appealing to academics, scholars and professionals in business, management, administration and knowledge management.

Today, innovation is a key driver for performance and growth in business. It provides a strong competitive advantage and is one of the best ways to speed up the rate of change and adaptation to the global environment. Concurrently, the innovation topic is also regaining more and more visibility and interest among the academic communities worldwide.
However, some of the challenges of innovating are remarkably consistent and recent times have shown the emergence of new ways for stimulating and managing the innovation process, especially from an international perspective. Even if these processes are taking place in very different industries, there are many parallels in successfully managing them.
Thsi voluem explores these new routes and assesses their value both for markets and companies. More specifically, the book is organized around three themes:
- How to stimulate and nurture innovations
- How to commercialize innovations
- How to lead and manage the innovation process

A firM's value consists of its assets-in-place and growth opportunities: its investment opportunity set. IOS plays a major role in determining a firM's corporate and accounting strategies, and how the marketplace reacts to them. Riahi-Belkaoui shows how IOS can be examined, measured, and used as one way to understand the various accounting and nonaccounting strategies espoused by management. His book fills a gap in the literature on this timely and provocative topic, and provides useful knowledge for upper management, academics, and graduate-level students.

The importance of the IOS concept is beginning to be acknowledged in the literature of empirical accounting, finance, and management. There, the investment opportunity set is introduced as an explanatory or moderating variable of the relationship between accounting and economic phenomena and various predictor variables. Riahi-Belkaoui explicates a concept of growth opportunities or IOS (Chapter 1) and provides a general model for its measurement (Chapter 2). He shows its role in a general valuation model based on dividend yield and price earnings ratio (Chapter 3), in the relationship between profitability and multinationality (Chapter 4), in the determination of capital structure (Chapter 5), in a general model of international production (Chapter 6), in a general model of corporate disclosure (Chapter 7), in the relationship between systematic risk and multinationality (Chapter 8), in a model of reputation building (Chapter 9), and earnings management (Chapter 10). He goes on to discuss its role in explaining the relative market value compared to the accounting value of a multinational firm in Chapter 11, and in differentiating between the usefulness of accrual and cash flow based on valuation models in Chapter 12.

Addressing the challenge of improving battery quality while reducing high costs and environmental impacts of the production, this book presents a multiscale simulation approach for battery production systems along with a software environment and an application procedure. Battery systems are among the most important technologies of the 21st century since they are enablers for the market success of electric vehicles and stationary energy storage solutions. However, the performance of batteries so far has limited possible applications. Addressing this challenge requires an interdisciplinary understanding of dynamic cause-effect relationships between processes, equipment, materials, and environmental conditions. The approach in this book supports the integrated evaluation of improvement measures and is usable for different planning horizons. It is applied to an exemplary battery cell production and module assembly in order to demonstrate the effectiveness and potential benefits of the simulation.

Dr. Hines draws on her own extensive worldwide research and her consultations with major multinational corporations to provide a comprehensive, detailed study of the rationale underlying the emergence of global private power, ways to find opportunities for further development within the global private power business, and alternative methods and techniques for its development and finance. Her book shows that, with assistance from bilateral and multilateral government agencies such as the International Finance Corporation and the various national export-import banks, project debt ratios resonably low. Equity is usually contributed to the project by all the major participants. Global competition for viable power projects is tending to reduce costs and increase plant efficiencies. This work is a major contribution to our understanding of what global power privatization is, where it is being implemented and how it is done, and the various considerations that energy executives and public policymakers worldwide should keep in mind when they seek financing for their private power projects.

Global power plant development commonly starts with regional and country risk analysis as the developer views alternative opportunities and compiles a prospectus for potential investors. As the developer analyzes the financial, market, operating, resource, political, and other risks, he or she usually considers possible methods of risk mitigation. With the participation of key host and home country and foreign partners, the developer selects the new location, the type of power plant and necessary equipment for the desired output, the fuel types and sources, the potential customers, the private financing methods, and the possibility of financial guarantees from the host government and bilateral and multilateral organizations. The markets of Asia, Latin America, and Europe present unusually good opportunities at the turn of the new century.

This book discusses opportunities for broadcasters that arise with the advent of broadband networks, both fixed and mobile. It discusses how the traditional way of distributing audio-visual content over broadcasting networks has been complemented by the usage of broadband networks. The author shows how this also gives the possibility to offer new types of interactive or so-called nonlinear services. The book illustrates how change in distribution technology is accelerating the need for broadcasters around the world to adapt their content distribution strategy and how it will impact the portfolios of content they offer.

A service economy era is coming As the basic discipline of service dominant era, service science mainly studies common rules of service activities, aiming to provide theoretical bases for creating service value in the new era. The book, which integrates knowledge of service management, operational management, logistics and supply chain management, constructs a research system for this emerging discipline. Service science research system constitutes service philosophy, resource allocation, operational management and service technology. Many cases about China s service enterprises are incorporated in the book, in the hope of providing readers an insight into not only service science but also the development of China s service economy."

This book introduces several simple analytical approaches to aid the seamless integration of renewable distributed generation. It focuses on the idea of intelligent integration, which involves locating and developing suitable operational characteristics of renewable distributed generation. After reviewing the options available, the best location should be chosen, an appropriately sized operation should be installed and the most suitable operational characteristics should be adopted. Presenting these simple analytical approaches, their step-by-step implementation and a number of cases studies using test distribution systems, the book clearly demonstrates the technical, economic and environmental benefits of intelligent integration.

Knowledge Management in the Construction Industry: A Socio-Technical Perspective presents a portfolio of concepts, methods, models, and tools supported by real life case studies from various corners of the globe providing insights into the management of knowledge in the construction industry. Untangling the hype from the reality, practical means of implementing knowledge management in the construction industry through various mechanisms and tools are demonstrated. For the practitioner, it provides practical insights and experiences from real life cases, for the researcher and academic, it provides current and state-of-the-art undertakings in this emerging area for the construction industry.

E-supply chain is the use of information technology, electronic means, or cyberspace to bring together widely dispersed suppliers and buyers, to enhance coordination and knowledge sharing, and to manage upstream and downstream value chain channels. ""E-Supply Chain Technologies and Management"" offers the most comprehensive analysis of the concepts, models, and IT infrastructures of electronic supply chains. This Premier Reference Source provides a broad understanding of issues pertaining to the use of emerging information technologies and their impact on supply chain flexibility and management. Professionals, researchers, and practitioners who want to explore the concepts and principles of e-supply chain, or want to apply various e-supply chain models and systems to solve business problems, will find this reference book to be an indispensable tool.

This book is the first to comprehensively cover research methods for building occupant behavior. As this is of growing importance for building design and for building performance optimization, the book aims to provide a sound scientific basis for experimental studies in this field. It introduces the reader to fundamental questions about the topic and unfolds the different fields related to occupant actions and comfort. This is followed by more general questions about developing an appropriate research method and experimental design. A comprehensive overview of sensors for monitoring environmental and also behavioral and action-related quantities helps to set up an experiment. In this context, different experimental environments and data collection methods (in-situ, laboratories, surveys) are introduced and discussed in terms of their suitability for the respective research question. Furthermore, data management and reporting is addressed. The book concludes with fundamental challenges in conducting occupant studies, with chapters on ground truth, ethics and privacy.

From recognition to treatment to prevention, this outstanding guide offers techniques and programs specifically tailored to assist the alcoholic, the gambler, the emotionally disturbed, and the maritally, legally, or financially distressed, among others. In addition, experts also show how to establish programs in retirement planning, leisure counseling, wellness, career planning, dual career counseling, and outplacement counseling. Providing realistic and practical assistance, they show precisely how to incorporate employee counseling and assistance into strategic management planning and identify potential legal and risk problems created by employees in need.

Computer programs that simulate complex processes in the real world can provide a quantitative tool for determining how much debt can be added safely to a company's capital structure. The increasing number of bankruptcies and defaults in today's international business arena result from debt overload and point to major shortcomings in the conventional financial evaluation process. In this book, Roy L. Nersesian describes why current methods of risk management fail and how computer simulation can be employed to determine the safe level of debt more accurately. Because the decision to add debt to an organization requires favorable, and essentially independent, decisions from both the borrower and lender, it is necessary to quantify both perspectives. Through actual examples readers will learn how to do this and to translate an actual business situation into a simulation model or program.

Current evaluation systems, according to Nersesian, fail to incorporate the cyclical nature of business activity. They result all too often in an overly optimistic projection of cash flow. Simulation techniques are better able to incorporate the transience of good times and put quantitative analysis of risk on par with quantitative analysis of reward. Simulation techniques also reduce the role of speculative, and highly subjective, judgment. For example, decisionmakers who are not familiar personally with a particular business area, assign more risk to that area than those who are. A quantified risk management system enables executives to rank projects by the degree of risk much as they currently rank them by degree of profitability. The book presents the concept of simulation in terms that can be understood by generalists in corporations and financial institutions. At the same time, it provides computer programmers with an understanding of risk management principles. It will provide a valuable resource for: financial executives, planners and strategists in corporate and governmental organizations; bank lending officers; and computer programmers working with these organizations.

Stock management and control is a critical element to the success and overall financial well-being of an organization. Through the application of innovative practices and technology, businesses are now able to effectively monitor their operations and manage their inventory by evaluating sales patterns and customer preferences. The Handbook of Research on Promoting Business Process Improvement Through Inventory Control Techniques is a critical scholarly resource that examines optimization techniques, data mining concepts, and genetic algorithms to manage inventory control. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as logistics and supply chain management, stochastic inventory modelling, and inventory management in healthcare, this book is geared towards academicians, practitioners, and researchers seeking various research methods to get optimal ordering policy.

This proceedings volume presents the latest research from the worldwide mass customization & personalization (MCP) community bringing together new thoughts and results from various disciplines within the field. The chapters are based on papers from the MCPC 2017. The book showcases research and practice from authors that see MCP as an opportunity to extend or even revolutionize current business models. The current trends of Industrie 4.0, digital manufacturing, and the rise of smart products allow for a fresh perspective on MCP: Customization 4.0. The book places a new set of values in the centre of the debate: a world with finite resources, global population growth, and exacerbating climate change needs smart thinking to engage the most effective capabilities and resources. It discusses how Customization 4.0 fosters sustainable development and creates shared value for companies, customers, consumers, and the society as a whole. The chapters of this book are contributed by a wide range of specialists, offering cutting-edge research, as well as insightful advances in industrial practice in key areas. The MCPC 2017 has a strong focus on real life MCP applications, and this proceedings volume reflects this. MCP strategies aim to profit from the fact that people are different. Their objective is to turn customer heterogeneities into opportunities, hence addressing "long tail" business models. The objective of MCP is to provide goods and services that best serve individual customers' needs with near mass production efficiency. This proceedings volume highlights the interdisciplinary work of thought leaders, technology developers, and researchers with corporate entrepreneurs putting these strategies into practice. Chapter 24 is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com.

Managers are repeatedly confronted by the need to decide whether a proposed non-technical program purporting to improve their operations should be accepted or not. This book will put involved personnel on surer footing in reaching decisions on proposed programs. It updates major information concerning pre-appraisal procedure, brings it together, and focuses on the purpose of preappraisal programs. In its review of research and experiential indications, the volume can provide a better understanding of what influences employee productivity and satisfaction.