This book provides some regional aspects considered by manufacturing firms in their decisions to gain competitiveness and have effects on the performance of their supply chains (SC). Some of the main aspects considered are: government's policies, fixed costs, the availability and quality of infrastructure services. This book also discusses the risks for the SC; based on a perception approach, some aspects studied are: demand, suppliers and production processes and how these are related to other elements of the SC. The authors use structural modeling to analyze the evaluation of some manufacturing practices and their impact on customer service satisfaction, agility and flexibility of the SC. The context of this study is immersed in the Mexican manufacturing industry of exportation, also known as maquiladora industry of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. This borderland is among the top 10 manufacturing Mexican cities. World class industries are located in this region and have been recognized around the world for their competitiveness and high performance. Therefore, the methods and results exposed in this book may be valuable and useful for readers and researchers of the SC worldwide.

Having achieved production quality, aggressive foreign firms are cleverly shifting emphasis to total quality marketing, which is a dynamic market-driven concept that goes beyond the currently popular total quality management approach. It centers on customer satisfaction as a way to achieve solutions to business problems. It is a market-driven idea that stresses customer satisfaction as crucial to the success of a business in a highly competitive modern business world. The concept is an enhanced version of the marketing mix--the familiar 4-P paradigm in marketing. Thus, by incorporating quality into their product, price, promotion, and distribution strategy, firms can regain market shares; and can prevent further erosion of market shares to aggressive foreign competitors from Japan, Germany, and the Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs). By not focusing on markets, firms risk losing their businesses to aggressive foreign firms.

The book is targeted to business executives, scholars, researchers, policy makers of business and government, foreign firms, and the general public. The book has eight chapters. The first chapter presents the problem of loss of market shares. Chapter two evaluates imports to identify major competitors and what they export to U.S. Chapter three focuses on the SWOT Analysis, which evaluates the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of U.S. vs. foreign firms. Chapter four unravels the market share mystique. The following chapters introduce Total Quality Marketing, explain how Total Quality Marketing is currently carried out in some firms and show the integration of quality into marketing through company examples. The last chapter provides a concluding commentary by looking into the future.

This contributed volume studies and explains the effect of agglomeration on a firm's innovation and performance. It presents new cases as well as new topics within the agglomeration phenomenon, exploring also their role under the Great Recession. Beyond the analysis of regions or clusters, this volume focuses on firms within agglomerations and captures this phenomenon from different perspectives, contexts and diverse literatures. Specifically, it looks at the question under what circumstances exert generate benefits on firms' performance, and how those gains are generated and distributed, usually asymmetrically, across agglomerated firms. In this context, the book addresses topics such as networks, collocation, labor mobility, firm's strategies, innovation, competitiveness and collective actions across a diverse set of literatures, including economic geography, business economics, management, social networks, industrial districts, international business, sociology or industry dynamics.

This book presents the latest key research into the performance and reliability aspects of dependable fault-tolerant systems and features commentary on the fields studied by Prof. Kishor S. Trivedi during his distinguished career. Analyzing system evaluation as a fundamental tenet in the design of modern systems, this book uses performance and dependability as common measures and covers novel ideas, methods, algorithms, techniques, and tools for the in-depth study of the performance and reliability aspects of dependable fault-tolerant systems. It identifies the current challenges that designers and practitioners must face in order to ensure the reliability, availability, and performance of systems, with special focus on their dynamic behaviors and dependencies, and provides system researchers, performance analysts, and practitioners with the tools to address these challenges in their work. With contributions from Prof. Trivedi's former PhD students and collaborators, many of whom are internationally recognized experts, to honor him on the occasion of his 70th birthday, this book serves as a valuable resource for all engineering disciplines, including electrical, computer, civil, mechanical, and industrial engineering as well as production and manufacturing.

This volume explores the concepts, themes, methods, and procedures of organization staffing. As author Aharon Tziner notes at the outset, although organizations usually attempt to predict the likely future performance of each applicant in terms of productivity, rarely do they consider the likelihood of the applicants finding gratification in their work-related needs and aspirations. Organizations which fail to consider these needs in the initial hiring process run the risk that extremely talented staff may eventually abandon the organization because of a lack of personal fulfillment. The short--and long-term consequences of these erroneous staffing policies range from decreased staff morale and efficiency to seriously impaired profitability. Tziner here offers a functional and integrated conceptual framework that enables organizations to maximize the probability that staffing decisions will result in optimal work adjustment and the enhancement of organizational productivity.

Tziner begins with an overview of the theoretical foundations of organizational staffing and a discussion of some basic concepts in the field. Subsequent chapters examine the process and methods of job analysis, predictors and measuring tools, and the staffing process. A separate chapter on staffing methods and instruments covers biodata, reference checks, the interview, psychological tests, graphological tests, situational tests, assessment centers, and peer evaluation. The following group of chapters address the cost of personnel programs, performance appraisal systems, work adjustment, and work-related attitudes. In the final chapter, Tziner shows the reader how to recognize the symptoms of work maladjustment. Numerous figures and tables illustrate points made in the text. Four appendices include additional helpful information such as guidelines for a structured interview and examples of performance appraisal rating formats. Industrial and organizational psychologists as well as human resources professionals will find Tziner's work an enlightening and practical guide to a long-overlooked aspect of the organization staffing process.

This edited volume focuses on innovative solutions to the debate on human thriving in the fast emerging technology-driven cyber-physical work context, also called Industry 4.0. The volume asks the important question: How can people remain relevant and thrive in workplaces that are increasingly virtual, technology-driven, and imbued with artificial intelligence? This volume includes two major streams of discussion: it provides multidisciplinary perspectives on what thriving could mean for individuals, managers and organisations in current and future non-linear and Web-driven workspaces. In this context, it points to the need to rethink the curricula of the psychology of human thriving so that it is applicable to Industry 4.0. Second, it discusses the new platforms of learning opening up in organisations and the ways and means with which people's learning practices can be adapted to changing scenarios. Some of these scenarios are: changing job designs and talent requirements; the demand for creativity; the need for virtual teams and intercultural collaborations; and changing emotional competencies. This topical volume includes contributions by scholars from across the world, and is of interest to scholars, practitioners and postgraduate students of psychology, organizational behaviour and human resource management.

This book is the second of two volumes presenting a business model to add value through Procurement. Including several case studies of successful implementation, it demonstrates how the increasing complexity of the business environment requires a significant intervention on the management of processes and information within individual organizations and through inter-company relations. Agile Procurement presents the application of the Agile method which optimizes and digitizes processes in order to reduce wastage and defects. As a method, tool and a culture aimed at effectiveness, efficiency and economy of organizations, Agile Procurement requires a change of paradigm. This volume examines these areas of improvement and presents best practice in the digitization of the processes. The last chapter examines the near future developments of the procurement, which the author labels Procurement 4.0. It presents also how new solutions, like Blockchain, could revolutionize procurement.

This edited collection examines human resource management in organizations other than those that are set up to make a profit. Covering human resource management in a number of different kinds of mission-driven organizations, the book explores organizations in sectors and industries such as the governmental and intergovernmental public sector, volunteer organizations and charities, religious organizations, cultural organizations, sports organizations and B-corporations. Recognizing the reality of management practice in the (many small) organizations covered by the book, the chapters deal with the way that people are actually managed whether or not there is an HRM department present. Students of business management and human resource management will find this book invaluable as a source of knowledge on not for profit organizations, as many of the chapters include detailed examples and case studies.

This book provides an overview of cleaner production, including how regulations have evolved, and presents a broad perspective on how it is being developed. Presenting several practical examples and applications of modern clean production technologies, it provides readers with ideas on how to extend these practices to other industry sectors in order to contribute to a better environment in the future. The authors start from the initial concepts of how to implement new cleaner production systems, before collecting recent developments in the area and demonstrating practical ways in which the latest knowledge can be applied. It motivates readers to develop new ideas on how to improve manufacturing systems to save energy and generate less waste, and discusses strategies on how to save, reuse and adapt materials, as well as techniques to reduce the waste and pollution produced. This book serves as a reference resource for industrial management engineers and researchers, and is also of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students looking for insights into cleaner production in industry.

This open access book investigates the inter-relationship between the mind and a potential opportunity to explore the psychology of entrepreneurship. Building on recent research, this book offers a broad scope investigation of the different aspects of what goes on in the mind of the (potential) entrepreneur as he or she considers the pursuit of a potential opportunity, the creation of a new organization, and/or the selection of an entrepreneurial career. This book focuses on individuals as the level of analysis and explores the impact of the organization and the environment only inasmuch as they impact the individual's cognitions. Readers will learn why some individuals and managers are able to able to identify and successfully act upon opportunities in uncertain environments while others are not. This book applies a cognitive lens to understand individuals' knowledge, motivation, attention, identity, and emotions in the entrepreneurial process.

This book examines current and emerging challenges in manufacturing related to the ideal of developing production processes with variability and agility on one level of the system, combined with structures ensuring stability and robustness on another level; close to what by other scholars has been discussed in terms of continuous innovation. However, this ideal has proven to be difficult to achieve in practice, and there is a need for enhanced and more sophisticated theoretical models dealing with the complexity surrounding organizational conditions to foster incremental as well as radical change in production systems, and, at the same time to ensure stability over time. As a theoretical frame of reference, a perspective on change where conflicting demands and conflicting activities, e.g., exploration and exploitation, are seen as intertwined and interdependent, is used throughout the book. The ideal from this perspective is to make use of such conflicting forces and to develop the change dynamics by keeping them in the same social system, not to structurally separate them in different departments or different initiatives. The main purpose of the book is to address an increased need for quality improvement through innovation and disruptive change in production. Traditional theories and managerial models of production systems are developed with a focus on stability and improvement. There is a need for enhanced models to reach an ability to develop new future production systems. The goal of the book is to provide nuances and new perspectives giving more realistic models of the production system to be able to increase the change potentiality of the organization and thus the long-term competiveness. Learning and organizational perspectives are in focus as enablers to increase the understanding of a production system as such. Long-term competitiveness through adaptability and the potential for radical improvement is of importance throughout the book. The use of dualities and the concept of ambidextrous organizations as a frame of understanding is the innovative strength for this area.

Selecting, training, and managing the scientists, engineers, and technologists who develop new products and apply new technologies is a critical challenge for managers and policymakers worldwide. Nine analysts from universities and research centers in four major industrialized nations find that while companies maintain distinctive approaches to managing their R&D workers, the pressures of technological change and global competition are forcing them to rethink the entire operation. To be taken into consideration now are such factors as group dynamics, intra- and intercompany linkages, research authority and flexibility, research sources, career paths, reward systems, and personal and team development--all of which are covered here. An unusual comparative study for top management and their human resource and planning staffs, and for academics concerned with all aspects of organizational behavior, training, and development.

The scientists, engineers, and technologists who develop new products and apply new technologies--collectively, the R&D workers--are vital in today's competitive and technologically demanding business environment. Of critical importance is how these R&D workers are selected, trained, and managed, and how their activities are linked to other aspects of production. Using a variety of methods, eight analysts from the International Research Group on R&D Management, a unique interdisciplinary group of researchers from universities and research centers in four major industrialized nations, examine the organization and management of R&D workers in and between their respective countries.

Drawing on data provided by more than 1,800 engineers and scientists in 23 companies, the authors find that while companies maintain distinctive approaches to managing their R&D workers, the pressures of technological change and global competition are forcing them to rethink their R&D methods. To be taken into consideration now are such factors as the underlying technical skills of the workers, group dynamics, intra- and intercompany linkages, research authority and flexibility, research resources, career paths, reward systems, and personal and team development--all of which are covered here, succinctly and readably. The result is a useful comparative study for top management and their human resource and planning staffs, R&D policymakers, and those concerned with all aspects of organizational behavior, training, and development.

This book presents a series of high performance product design (PD) and development best practices that can create or improve product development organization. In contrast to other books that focus only on Toyota or other individual companies applying lean IPD, this book explains the lean philosophy more broadly and includes discussions of systems engineering, design for X (DFX), agile development, integrated product development, and project management. The "Lean Journey" proposed here takes a value-centric approach, where the lean principles are applied to PD to allow the tools and methods selected to emerge from observation of the individual characteristics of each enterprise. This means that understanding lean product development (LPD) is not about knowing which tools are available but knowing how to apply the philosophy. The book comes with an accompanying manual with problems and solutions available on Springer Extras.

This Research Handbook includes carefully chosen contributions to provide a well-rounded perspective on design thinking. Encouraging debate and development for future research in design conceptualisation, this forward-thinking Handbook raises crucial questions about what design thinking is and what it could be. With thirty-six expert contributors representing a wide range of disciplines, this Research Handbook contains seventeen chapters structured into three thematic parts to explore the people, processes, and practices of design thinking. Method case studies demonstrate how design thinking has been implemented across different disciplines and contexts. Challenging current design methodologies, chapters move beyond outcome-focused perspectives to examine the diverse range of processes employed for design research. While each chapter provides a novel perspective on design practice, read as an entire work, it continuously challenges the reader to reposition their perspectives. The Handbook unpacks the creative process by isolating each stage and examining them in detail, tracing success through empirical evidence back to design origins. The Research Handbook on Design Thinking provides an overview of the field's history, theoretical approaches, key concepts, perspectives, and methods. It is well-suited to academics and practitioners interested in the development of design thinking theory and the different perspectives traversing theory through to practice globally.

"Financial Risk Management" provides a rigorous analysis of domestic and international risk management issues. Unlike other texts in the area there is an emphasis on the international dimension of portfolio management allowing the development of an effective, geocentric portfolio strategy.
All chapters represent in-depth reviews of the latest research on the topics under discussion. This ensures that the discussions are comprehensive, thorough and easy to read.
Topics covered include: .
* A comprehensive review of investment developments and strategies.
* Foreign exchange markets.
* Various forms of market anomalies.
Presenting the latest techniques and strategies in domestic and international investment management in a clear way, this is an ideal text for advanced undergraduate and graduate students who use quantitative techniques for investment and portfolio management.

This volume of Eurasian Studies in Business and Economics includes selected papers from the 24th Eurasia Business and Economics Society (EBES) Conference, held in Bangkok. The theoretical and empirical papers gathered here cover diverse areas of economics and finance from different geographic regions; yet the main focus is on the latest findings on labor markets and their interactions with competitive environments. The volume also includes meso-economic studies that analyze individual companies, economic and financial environments, particularly with regard to human resource and financial risk management.

This edited volume brings together contributions from experts on a range of food security issues, and examines them through a number of case studies. A Millennium Development goal and important policy concern, food security is experiencing renewed interest due to globalisation, which has led to population affluence, changing consumption, and production and trade patterns. The authors discuss how globalisation brings a new dimension to the discussion on public policy on food security, and consider the extent to which Global Value Chains (GVCs) dominate trade, investment and international agricultural markets. Food Security and Sustainability therefore sheds new light on the nexus of food security and globalization, as well as its implications for investment and financing in the agro-food sector. The volume draws on papers presented at the inaugural Workshop of the Mediterranean Center for Food Security and Sustainable Growth (MED-SEC), an international network of academics focusing on issues of development, sustainability and food security.

This book investigates how strategic marketing is influencing organizations' innovation performance. It presents a structured study conducted on micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to identify the correlation between innovation and strategic marketing in both Indian manufacturing and service organizations. Strategic marketing, which achieves excellence in organizations, is at the heart of improving productivity, profitability and market sustainability, while also supplying organizations a much sought-after competitive advantage. It has been observed that strategic marketing can significantly help any manufacturing firm to attain the required level of growth, and can specifically be used by Indian firms as a means of deriving differential advantages. Indian organizations that pursue more traditional approaches to strategy are now feeling the intense market pressure to modify their policy with respect to quality. The result has been a shift to 'Strategy with Innovation'. As market competition has again increased, providing quality products and services alone is no longer sufficient; companies are additionally expected to provide products with a touch of innovation to attract customers. This calls for innovation in terms of products, processes, technologies, systems and practically every other area of an organization, which can only be achieved by combining strategies and innovation. This book identifies the variables of strategic marketing that can help companies significantly boost their innovation performance, making it a valuable resource for students, researchers, professionals and policymakers alike.

This text is a lively, well-written, and carefully illustrated guide to the mysteries and mystique of how people are compensated for their efforts in all types of organizations. With clear discussions of what works, what doesn't, and why, this intensely practical handbook it covers such topics as job evaluation; job pricing; employee benefit programs; pay for performance; and the compensation of executives, sales personnel, and international employees. Executives and managers with no special training in pay determination and management will find it an easily accessible handbook that not only makes clear how compensation systems are conceived and developed but most importantly, how they are implemented and administrated. Its logical presentation and full coverage makes the book valuable as a text for upper-level college students as well as a solid instructional resource for teachers.

The authors open with an overview of compensation and its role in organizations and then move to the legal environment in which compensation is embedded and the laws that govern it. They describe current and traditional views of motivation and elucidate the importance of job analysis and its end products--job description and job specification. The role of compensation surveys and their use in assigning monetary rates to jobs are discussed. A topic of special interest to executives in New Economy organizations will be the purpose and importance of benefits, particularly indirect monetary compensation, stock options, and other pay for performance incentives. Caruth and Handlogten address the challange of compensating teams and pay special attention to the, often unique, problem of compensating uppermost management, sales people, and employees abroad. The text concludes with practical suggestions for the on-going maintenance and management of compensation systems and how to adapt them to changing organizational circumstances.

How we recruit future healthcare professionals is critically important, as the demand for high quality healthcare increases across the globe. This book questions what the evidence tells us about how best to select those most suited to a career in healthcare, ensuring that the approaches used are relevant and fair to all who apply. The editors of this collection take a comprehensive look at the latest research surrounding recruitment and selection into healthcare roles. Each chapter is authored by leading experts and, using international case material, the practical implications for workforce policy are explored. They review the key stages in designing effective selection systems and discuss how best to evaluate the quality of selection processes. Evidence from role analysis studies as well as the effectiveness of different selection methods including aptitude and situational judgment tests, personality assessment and interviews are examined. Chapters also cover approaches to student selection and recruitment for postgraduate trainees through to senior appointments. Finally they highlight contemporary issues in recruitment, including the use of technology, selecting for values, candidate perceptions, coaching issues and how best to promote diversity and widening access.

This book discusses the application of quality and reliability engineering in Asian industries, and offers information for multinational companies (MNC) looking to transfer some of their operation and manufacturing capabilities to Asia and at the same time maintain high levels of reliability and quality. It is also provides small and medium enterprises (SME) in Asia with insights into producing high-quality and reliable products. It mainly comprises peer-reviewed papers that were presented at the Asian Network for Quality (ANQ) Congress 2014 held in Singapore (August, 2014), which provides a platform for companies, especially those within Asia where rapid changes and growth in manufacturing are taking place, to present their quality and reliability practices. The book presents practical demonstrations of how quality and reliability methodologies can be modified for the unique Asian market, and as such is a valuable resource for students, academics, professionals and practitioners in the field of quality and reliability.

This book focuses on the cultural challenges often faced by international managers and global business operations. In the last few decades, the world has witnessed unprecedented economic turmoil, volatility, and uncertainty which has altered the political dynamics and sociocultural landscape around the globe and directly or indirectly affected international business activities. Further, new markets have opened up in every corner of the world. Brazil, Russia, India, and China, collectively known as BRIC, are strong emerging economic powers similar to the once captivated 'Asian Tigers' such as Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan which rose decades ago. The emergence of these markets has heightened both the opportunities and challenges for national and international businesses. Multinational firms are gradually expanding in the emerging markets and are expected to become giants in the foreseeable future. As they expand, they also need to assume increasing social responsibilities in a global context, and it is important that the ways business is conducted are developed accordingly. As such, understanding the practices, challenges, and strategies that companies have developed is critical to global firm's success. Against this background, the book highlights the importance of understanding cultural elements when managing multicultural human behaviors in the workplace. Based on conceptual and empirical work, it pushes the frontiers of knowledge of this emerging field in international business setup and management, and explores how globalization is changing the way in which multinational firms formulate their business strategies. "The editors of this text bring a wealth of expertise in this area, as is evidenced by their choice of topics, and the strength of the experts they have invited to contribute to the book. The combined chapters provide both strategic guidance as well as a focus on operational concerns that may arise in international business including expatriation and human resource mobility. The authors not only correctly identify the oncoming challenges, but also present evidence regarding the likely solutions such as culture and innovation and global change management. Overall, this book will be a tremendous resource for scholars in the international business field, but I believe the audience will be much wider. The international team of editors and authors bring a wide range of perspective as well as real-world contextual knowledge that will be useful for scholars and practitioners who seek to leverage culture and human capital to advance international business and drive the global economy. I applaud the editors for their vision and leadership in guiding us through one of the most challenging contemporary research areas and through one of the most pressing challenges of our day." -Dr. Richard L. Griffith, Executive Director, Institute for Cross Cultural Management, Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, FL, USA