Drawing on 25 years of experience as a salesman, sales manager, and training consultant, David Stumm provides a thoughtful analysis of the sales training process--where it succeeds, why it fails, and what is lacking in current practice--and presents field-tested techniques for creating an effective training program. The book is built around three concepts: reading what is happening in any sales situation; recognizing situational need areas as a common theme in all sale techniques development; and building sales strategies that blend selling techniques into an integrated effort. Each chapter explains the theory behind a different sales skill and translates it into specific sales applications.

This book presents the latest on the theoretical approach of the contemporary issues evolved in strategic marketing and the integration of theory and practice. It seeks to make advancements in the discipline by promoting strategic research and innovative activities in marketing. The book highlights the use of data analytics, intelligence and knowledge-based systems in this area. In the era of knowledge-based economy, marketing has a lot to gain from collecting and analyzing data associated with customers, business processes, market economics or even data related to social activities. The contributed chapters are concerned with using modern qualitative and quantitative techniques based on information technology used to manage and analyze business data, to discover hidden knowledge and to introduce intelligence into marketing processes. This allows for a focus on innovative applications in all aspects of marketing, of computerized technologies related to data analytics, predictive analytics and modeling, business intelligence and knowledge engineering, in order to demonstrate new ways of uncovering hidden knowledge and supporting marketing decisions with evidence-based intelligent tools. Among the topics covered include innovative tourism marketing strategies, marketing communications in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the use of business modeling, as well as reflecting on the marketing trends and outlook for all transportation industry segments. The papers in this proceedings has been written by scientists, researchers, practitioners and students that demonstrate a special orientation in strategic marketing, all of whom aspire to be ahead of the curve based on the pillars of innovation. This proceedings volume compiles their contributions to the field, highlighting the exchange of insights on strategic issues in the science of innovation marketing.

The costs of stress and ill health to society are enormous. In recent years, there has been an increasing focus on workplace initiatives to reduce stress and improve individual resilience. This volume brings chief medical officers, leading health professionals and academics to present their views on innovations in the field of stress and health.

Leaders or Boards of Directors often believe the culture of their organization is in need of change. Sometimes the organizational culture is in need of change; other times it is not. In today's global marketplace, it is important for leadership to make the right decision. There are proven success steps leaders need to follow to bring about cultural changes in their organizations. This book provides the steps and questions for leaders to address relative to whether their organizations are in need of a change. It asks leaders to consider their leadership style, to look at what other organizations have done, to set goals and timeframes, the organization's vision and mission statements - all before making a final decision about whether there is a need for changing the culture. The importance of effective communications can make the difference in whether an organization succeeds in changing. Too often leaders believe providing information about how an organization is changing is the same as communicating how and why an organization is changing. Nothing is further from reality. Followers need to understand how organizational changes will affect them personally. Because many followers are not comfortable with change, conflicts often arise. This book discusses how organizational leaders can foresee and prevent some conflicts from happening and how to deal with the conflicts that do arise. Lastly, the book outlines the steps leaders need to follow to ensure a successful change in their organizations. Too often leaders do not outline a plan of action the leads to a successful change. Without a plan of action, leaders often don't stay the course, ensuring failure of the organization.

This book describes the implementation of autonomous control with multiagent technology. Therewith, it tackles the challenges of supply network management caused by the complexity, the dynamics, and the distribution of logistics processes. The paradigm of autonomous logistics reduces the computational complexity and copes with the dynamics locally by delegating process control to the participating objects. As an example, shipping containers may themselves plan and schedule their way through logistics networks in accordance with objectives imposed by their owners. The technologies enabling autonomous logistics are thoroughly described and reviewed. The presented solution has been used in a realistic simulation of real-world container logistics processes. The validation shows that autonomous control is feasible and that it outperforms the previous centralised dispatching approach by significantly increasing the resource utilisation efficiency. Moreover, the multiagent system relieves human dispatchers from dealing with standard cases, giving them more time to solve exceptional cases appropriately.

The innovation economy sets new standards for global business and requires efficient innovation management to plan, execute and evaluate innovation activities, establish innovation capability and coordinate resources and capacities for innovation on an intra- and inter-organizational level. Communication has become a critical factor underpinning successful innovation. As a new communication field, innovation communication facilitates the successful launches of new products and services, the establishment of stakeholder relationships, and the strengthening of corporate reputation in the long-run. Consequently, firms today need to develop a strong portfolio of communication tools as an integral part of their strategic innovation management activities. This new edition mainly concentrates on emerging approaches and methods for integrating communication as part of strategic innovation management. A key theme is the provision of an integrated perspective to bridge the gap between innovation management and communication management at both strategic and operational levels. This book makes an important contribution to this evolving academic domain by providing multiple perspectives on the latest research on innovation communication and strategic open innovation. It also provides guidance for managers seeking to understand the diverse ways by which they can leverage communication to support successful innovation.

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This book highlights recent advances in the development of effective modeling and solution approaches to enhance the performance of military logistics. It seeks to further research in global defense-related topics, including military operations, governmental operations and security, as well as nation support. Additionally its purpose is to promote the global exchange of information and ideas amongst developers and users of military operations research tools and techniques. Over the course of its nine chapters, this edited volume addresses significant issues in military logistics including: a) Restructuring processes via OR methods aimed at improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the military logistics, b) Sense-and-Respond logistics prediction and coordination techniques that provide competitive advantage, spanning the full range of military operations across the strategic, operational and tactical levels of war, c) Procurement and auctioning, d) Inventory and stock control theories and applications, e) Military transport and logistical equipment, and, f) Maintenance, repair and overhaul on operational capability in general and equipment availability. The book aims to bridge the gap between the abundant literature on commercial logistics and its scarce defense & combat counterpart. This collection of useful insights into new trends and research will offer an ideal reference for practitioners and army related personnel interested in integrating scientific rigor to improve logistics management within defense organizations & agencies. Ultimately this book should provide a relevant platform for the latest contributions of operations management, operations research, and computational intelligence towards the enhancement of military logistics.

In a world moving towards services, driving service productivity is a central challenge for leaders and members of all types of organisations: for service businesses there is a clear need to be "productive", but it is far less clear what this exactly means. In this book, we invite you on a journey that explores the ways, tools and options for driving service productivity. We take an innovator's perspectives and look at the tricky challenge of service productivity as a landscape of options for designing the future of services. Case examples, from the airport, hotel, healthcare, and professional service industry, offer insights in the methods used and approaches taken in business practice. Research results provide food for thought and valuable advice on the path towards superior service productivity. Throughout the book we also listen to the views and advices of interviewed experts from academia as well as business practice on how to drive service productivity. A forecast on how service productivity and service innovation might evolve in the future provides us - and hopefully you as a reader - with the necessary food for thought to develop our own understanding of driving service productivity in different business settings. Overall, this book is not a traditional "academic product" that summarises the views of a few, but a co-created offering that profited enormously from the contributions of so many.

"Presenting findings from research into Sweden's leading multinationals this book focuses on engineering companies operating in global industries such as pharmaceutical, aerospace, packing systems and automotive. It explores research and practice within the area of HRM focusing on project-based organizations"--

The storage yard is the operational and geographical centre of most seaport container terminals. Therefore, it is of particular importance for the whole terminal system and plays a major role for trade and transport flows. One of the latest trends in container-storage operations is the automated Rail-Mounted-Gantry-Crane system, which offers dense stacking, and offers low labour costs. This book investigates whether the operational performance of container terminals is influenced by the design of these storage systems and to what extent the performance is affected by the terminal's framework conditions, and discusses the strategies applied for container stacking and crane scheduling. A detailed simulation model is presented to compare the performance effects of alternative storage designs, innovative planning strategies, and other influencing factors. The results have useful implications future research, practical terminal planning and optimisation.

Technological advancements have become an integral part of life, impacting the way we work, communicate, make decisions, learn, and play. As technology continually progresses, humans are being outpaced by its capabilities, and it is important for businesses, organizations, and individuals to understand how to optimize data and to implement new methods for more efficient knowledge discovery and information management and retrieval. Innovative Applications of Knowledge Discovery and Information Resources Management offers in-depth coverage on the pervasiveness of technological change with a collection of material on topics such as the impact of permeable work-life boundaries, burnout and turnover, big data usage, and computer-based learning. It proves a worthy source for academicians, practitioners, IT leaders, IT professionals, and advanced-level students interested in examining the ways in which technology is changing the world.

The popular and influential concept of employee empowerment may have the emancipatory potential its supporters claim, but it also is subject to constraints and inhibitions. Potterfield calls for actions to cut through the ideological inhibitors at the corporate level and also for ways to alter the prevailing socioeconomic structure, ways to enhance the relative strength of employees an various types of organizations. His book provides a synthesis of major empowerment theories and viewpoints, a discussion of its historical and intellectual roots, in inquiry into empowerment practices at a "Fortune" 100 company, and a discussion of both the emancipatory potential and ideological constraints in empowerment theories and practices. With specific recommendations for corporate and societal action, Dr. Potterfield's book will be important for professionals, teachers, and students in management, organizational studies, human resources, and organizational change.

Potterfield begins by situating empowerment in the larger historical context of long-standing effort to provide more participatory work environments. He reviews the social and intellectual roots of the empowerment concept, including basic contoures of modernity such as the rise of capitalism, and examines the development of the concept within the realm of social action movements during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. He provides a detailed explication of the essential dimensions and core elements of empowerment as it is espoused by leading organizational theorists and management experts, then looks at the actual practice of empowerment in a "Fortune" 100 company that has a major, ongoing commitment to the empowered workplace. With this as a foundation he discusses ways in which these theories and practices either advance the cause of democracy and freedom in the workplace or reinforce corporate organizational power and worker dominations. He concludes with concrete suggestions for overcoming ideological influences and facilitating the emancipatory potential of empowerment.

This book aims to identify and describe the practical key components of demand driven supply chains, and based on these components, develops a structured and integrated assessment framework that companies can use to assess their current and desired future supply chain states in light of the Demand Driven Supply Chain (DDSC) concepts. Another contribution of the book is the structured framework developed to design a supply chain strategy, which will consider the DDSC assessment results as one of the key inputs, and will support the implementation of the opportunities identified during the assessment. The framework presented in this book was applied in different supply chain operations of a global CPG company to validate the methodology and formalize an action plan to allow these operations move towards a DDSC. Results show clear opportunities to improve supply chain operation and become more demand driven.

We live in a 'bimoral' society, in which people govern their lives by two contrasting sets of principles. On the one hand there are the principles associated with traditional morality. Although these allow a modicum of self-interest, their emphasis is on our duties and obligations to others: to treat people honestly and with respect, to treat them fairly and without prejudice, to help and care for them when needed, and ultimately, to put their needs above our own. On the other hand there are the principles associated with the entrepreneurial self-interest. These also impose obligations, but of a much more limited kind. Their emphasis is competitive rather than cooperative: to advance our own interests rather than to meet the needs of others. Both sets of principles have always been present in society but in recent years traditional moral authorities have lost much of their force and the morality of self-interest has acquired a much greater social legitimacy, over a much wider field of behaviour, than ever before. The result of this is that in many situations it is no longer at all apparent which set of principles should take precedence. In this book John Hendry traces the cultural and historical origins of the 'bimoral' society and explores the challenges it poses for the world of business and management. The developments that have led to the 'bimoral' society have also led to new, more flexible forms of organizing, which have released people's entrepreneurial energies and significantly enhanced the creative capacities of business. Working within these organizations, however, is fraught with moral tensions as obligations and self-interest conflict and managers are pulled in all sorts of different directions. Managing them successfully poses major new challenges of leadership, and 'moral' management, as the technical problem-solving that previously characterised managerial work is increasingly accomplished by technology and market mechanisms. The key role of management becomes the political and moral one of determining purposes and priorities, reconciling divergent interests, and nurturing trust in interpersonal relationships. Exploring these tensions and challenges, Hendry identifies new issues for contemporary management and puts recognized issues into context. He also explores the challenges posed for a post-traditional society as it seeks to regulate and govern an increasingly powerful and global business sector.

Currently, the main operations of companies are either directly or indirectly interconnected in a global-world context. Competition has drifted from an individual to a supply chain basis, where digitalization plays a key role. Companies with better digital capabilities achieve sustainable competitive market advantages. In this context, companies must identify their current position in terms of digital capabilities, link these capabilities to supply chain performance, define their future desired competitive position and how their digital capabilities are going to help them to get there, and forecast their future desired performance not only at the individual company but also at the supply chain level. Increasing Supply Chain Performance in Digital Society considers innovative approaches to measure, manage, and project towards the future of the digital capabilities of both individual companies and supply chains. It also examines the relations these have with performance being a practical tool to identify not only where they are today in terms of digital capabilities but also where they should be long term and the resources needed to get them there. Covering a range of topics such as artificial intelligence and risk management, this reference work is ideal for practitioners, researchers, scholars, business owners, industry professionals, academicians, instructors, and students.

This book is intended to spark a discourse on, and contribute to finding a clear consensus in, the debate between conceptualizing a knowledge strategy and planning a knowledge strategy. It explores the complex relationship between the notions of knowledge and strategy in the business context, one that is of practical importance to companies. After reviewing the extant literature, the book shows how the concept of knowledge strategies can be seen as a new perspective for exploring business strategies. It proposes a new approach that clarifies how planned and emergent knowledge strategies allow companies to make projections into the uncertain and unpredictable future that dominates today's economy.

In this groundbreaking book, the author advocates that many relational collapses are the result of ineptitude rather than ill will. That is, they are the result of a lack of skills rather than a lack of goodwill. As this book puts it, many of societys relational problems may be competency related. This might be good news since competencies can be learned. The purpose of this book is to take a careful look at how such competencies can be developed. Beginning with the view that if such competencies can be learned, they must first be defined and have standards set for them, it asks the question, Can competency standards be designed for soft skills? It is argued that the answer is yes. Locating itself in the workplace context (where adults often spend most of their lives), but relevant to life in general, this book shows how theoretically sound competency standards can be developed for selected soft skills. This is done by adapting a methodology used to specify workplace competency standards. The book also notes a number of practical and ideological issues that must be considered at implementation. This book shows how standards for three such skills have been developed and provided with a preliminary workplace validation. The skills selected are related to interpersonal skills and are derived from the framework of emotional intelligence competencies popularised by Goleman. This is an important book for those in business studies.

There has been much attention paid to the idea of Smart Cities as researchers have sought to define and characterize the main aspects of the concept, including the role of creative industries in urban growth, the importance of social capital in urban development, and the role of urban sustainability. This book develops a critical view of the Smart City concept, the incentives and role of governments in promoting the development of Smart Cities and the analysis of experiences of e-government projects addressed to enhance Smart Cities. This book further analyzes the perceptions of stakeholders, such as public managers or politicians, regarding the incentives and role of governments in Smart Cities and the critical analysis of e-government projects to promote Smart Cities' development, making the book valuable to academics, researchers, policy-makers, public managers, international organizations and technical experts in understanding the role of government to enhance Smart Cities' projects.

Cross-cultural knowledge management, an elusive yet consequential phenomenon, is becoming an increasingly essential factor in organizational practice and policy in the era of globalization. In order to overcome culturally shaped blind spots in conducting research in different settings, this volume highlights how the structuring of roles, interests, and power among different organizational elements, such as teams, departments, and management hierarchies (each comprised of members from different intellectual and professional backgrounds), generates various paradoxes and tensions that bring into play a set of dynamics that have an impact on learning processes. In this context, such questions often arise: How is knowledge shared in the multicultural organization? What problems and issues emerge? How do different mentalities affect people's responses to new knowledge and new ideas? How can knowledge-sharing processes be improved? Under which conditions do ideas generated by units or groups of different cultural traditions have a chance of being heard and implemented? Such questions translate into an investigation of potential managerial dilemmas that occur when different but equally valid choices create tensions in decision making. The authors draw from experiences working with a wide variety of organizations, and insights from such fields as sociology and psychology, to shed new light on the dynamics of knowledge management in the multicultural enterprise. In so doing, they help to identify both obstacles to successful communication and opportunities to inspire creativity and foster collaboration. The authors note that in order to enable organizations to transfer knowledge effectively, mechanisms for dispute settlement, mediation of cultural conflict, and enforcing agreements need to be in place.

Within the past ten years, tremendous innovations have been brought forth in information technology and knowledge management. Some of the key technical innovations have included the introduction of social media, artificial intelligence, as well as improved network connectivity and capacity. Effective Knowledge Management Systems in Modern Society is a critical scholarly resource that presents an overview of how technical, social, and process changes are impacting the way knowledge systems are being designed. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as knowledge engineering, cognitive ergonomics, and interorganizational knowledge, this book is geared toward consultants, practitioners, and researchers seeking current research on how new approaches in knowledge management impact information technology professionals.

Contemporary digital tools have revolutionized the storing, transfer, and processing of information management. Open Information Management: Applications of Interconnectivity and Collaboration provides a practical-level reference discussing the impact of emerging trends in information technology towards solutions capable of managing information within open, principally unbounded, operational environments. This book can be utilized in advanced courses in knowledge management, information technology, and business education, and also serve as an excellent addition to library reference sections and research collections.