This book focuses on the development of communication skills in the context of non-traditional procurement and construction projects. It helps readers to understand the fundamentals of non-traditional procurement, and highlights the inherent communication challenges that arise, as well as how to solve them. The book is divided into four parts, the first of which provides an introduction to communication, discussing the theoretical concepts and contextual nature of communication as well as its benefits. The second part goes into more depth, discussing communication in the context of construction project delivery and non-traditional procurement systems, what these two terms actually mean, and what effective communication looks like in these contexts. Part III offers solutions to the inherent challenges of communication, including the use of information and communications technology, while the book's fourth and final part explores the future of construction communication. Given the scope of its content, the book represents a valuable asset for researchers, professionals and students in the areas of procurement management and construction management.

Jurgen Weber is known for his behavioral perspective on controlling and has made a lasting impact in German speaking countries during the past three decades. This anniversary volume compiles some of his outstanding publications from that period and presents them for the first time in English. In addition, it contains a current publication index of Jurgen Weber's entire body of work.

This book presents a new approach to organizational culture based in the ontologies of process metaphysics, complexity theory, and social constructionism. The author shows that most existing definitions of organizational culture are inadequate and argues that organizational culture is socially constructed, building on Schein's idea that culture emerges as a dynamic response to problem solving by the organization's members. Through several case studies, he demonstrates that neglecting an organization's culture is responsible for the failures of organizational change efforts and shows how using this new model will lead to improved results. This book will be a valuable resources to anyone interested in organizational studies.

The book presents a comprehensive and incisive analysis of Structural transformation which is among the most relevant and crucial themes of contemporary economics. Structural transformation is the edifice that is the basis of the next phase of economic transformation. The book demonstrates that structural transformation cannot be shoe horned into a single point formula, it is not merely about achieving a double-digit growth rate, nor it is achieved by an overarching emphasis on rapid technological advancement. Based on empirical evidence pertinent to developed and developing nations and present imperatives the book provides a comprehensive elucidation that structural transformation will be profoundly determined by the empirics of investment, Innovation and Institutions.

Is your organization strategically prepared for the digital and distributed workplace? Technology, data analytics and artificial intelligence already impact how people work and engage with organizations. A dispersed workforce, greater transparency, social change, generational shift and value chain disruptions are driving new behaviors and expectations from the workplace. Together, these trends are shaping a new era of distributed and digitally enabled network of workers where the work comes to workers instead of the workers going to work. In Humans at Work, employee and workplace experience experts Anna Tavis and Stela Lupushor advocate for the adoption of human-centric practices as a critical and necessary part of adapting work and workplaces to the future of work. Outlining the four factors (digitization of work, distributed workplaces, organizational redesign and changing workforce) driving the dramatic changes in the workplace, each chapter provides examples of how innovative companies are building workplace infrastructure and reshaping norms, serving new markets and adopting new technologies. Filled with examples from both start-ups and established companies, Humans at Work is the workplace leader's guide to building a workplace that creates market value by making work more human.

This book develops innovative techniques from operational research and management science for the design and implementation of a reconfigurable manufacturing system (RMS), and subsequently analyzes and assesses their performance. A reconfigurable manufacturing system (RMS) is a paradigm that can address many of the challenges posed by the modern market. Accordingly, substantial research is now being conducted on RMS, focusing on various levels of decision-making (strategic, tactical and operational). However, as a relatively new research area, there are still only very few books and articles available on reconfigurable manufacturing system design and management. In addition to filling that gap, this book provides a forum for investigating, exchanging ideas on, and disseminating the latest advances in the broad area of RMS applications in today's industry. Gathering contributions by experts from academia, industry and policy-making, it represents an essential contribution to the existing literature on manufacturing and logistics in general and industry 4.0 in particular.

The latest and most important information for best practices in the inventory function

"Inventory Best Practices, Second Edition" offers the latest and most important information on advanced techniques and strategies to improve on the accuracy of all ongoing inventories, configure a warehouse for optimum counting efficiencies, and more. Explains the difference between different types of distressed merchandise for disposal purposesShows how to maximize the efficiency of inventory tracking systems by shifting selected inventory items into floor stockExamines inventory picking, storage, transactions as well as warehouse layouts, and inventory measurement

"Inventory Best Practices, Second Edition" will not only show professionals how to cut their business costs but will demonstrate how to optimize their company's effectiveness as well.

The creation, success and long-term survival of enterprises are fundamentally linked to the effectiveness of decision-making processes and negotiation capabilities. This book provides an overview of research into how decisions permeate entrepreneurial ventures throughout their lifecycle. A multidisciplinary approach combining psychology, sociology and political science is used to investigate how entrepreneurs address and deal with decision-making. The respective contributions highlight the latest empirical, theoretical and meta-research, and bridge the gap between literature on entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial and innovative behaviours with that on decision-making and negotiation. This book is one of the first to combine these streams of research, thereby offering a new and insightful addition to the field of entrepreneurship.

The worldwide financial crisis has wrought deep changes in capital and labor markets, old-age retirement systems, and household retirement and consumption patterns. Confidence has been shaken in both the traditional defined benefit and defined contribution plans. Around the world, plan sponsors, fiduciaries, policymakers, and households have gained a new awareness of retirement risk. When pressed to reform post-crisis, many would recommend enhancing financial advice for plan participants, emphasizing flexibility and the positive effect of working another one or two years to make up for investment losses in the downturn. Adding to this is the continuing need for financial education, essential as the retirement system moves increasingly toward personal account pensions. Perhaps most important of all is the need for greater understanding of risk throughout the retirement security system, along with new approaches to re-engineering retirement pensions. This volume explores the lessons to be learnt for retirement planning and long-term financial security in view of the massive shocks to stock markets, labour markets, and pension plans resulting from the financial crisis. It aims to rethink retirement in the new economic era, including the resilience of defined contribution plans and how defined benefit plans reacted to the financial crisis.

This open access book provides a broad range of insights on market engineering and information management. It covers topics like auctions, stock markets, electricity markets, the sharing economy, information and emotions in markets, smart decision-making in cities and other systems, and methodological approaches to conceptual modeling and taxonomy development. Overall, this book is a source of inspiration for everybody working on the vision of advancing the science of engineering markets and managing information for contributing to a bright, sustainable, digital world. Markets are powerful and extremely efficient mechanisms for coordinating individuals' and organizations' behavior in a complex, networked economy. Thus, designing, monitoring, and regulating markets is an essential task of today's society. This task does not only derive from a purely economic point of view. Leveraging market forces can also help to tackle pressing social and environmental challenges. Moreover, markets process, generate, and reveal information. This information is a production factor and a valuable economic asset. In an increasingly digital world, it is more essential than ever to understand the life cycle of information from its creation and distribution to its use. Both markets and the flow of information should not arbitrarily emerge and develop based on individual, profit-driven actors. Instead, they should be engineered to serve best the whole society's goals. This motivation drives the research fields of market engineering and information management. With this book, the editors and authors honor Professor Dr. Christof Weinhardt for his enormous and ongoing contribution to market engineering and information management research and practice. It was presented to him on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday in April 2021. Thank you very much, Christof, for so many years of cooperation, support, inspiration, and friendship.

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.

Shedding new light on the human side of big data through the lenses of emotional and social intelligence competencies, this book advances the understanding of the requirements of the different professions that deal with big data. It also illustrates the empirical evidence collected through the application of the competency-based methodology to a sample of data scientists and data analysts, the two most in-demand big data jobs in the labor market. The book provides recommendations for the higher education system to offer better designed curricula for entry-level big data professions. It also offers managerial insights in describing how organizations and specifically HR practitioners can benefit from the competency-based approach to overcome the skill shortage that characterizes the demand for big data professional roles and to increase the effectiveness of the selection and recruiting processes.

This book introduces concepts of business incubation and suggests a learning process. This process begins with prior knowledge at the opportunity identification phase, progresses through the acquisition of new skills and knowledge necessary to develop an opportunity and concludes with a transformation phase where new knowledge is acted upon. The book draws on extensive qualitative data and documentary evidence from a range of stakeholders associated with a University Business Incubator known as Innospace. The process of opportunity development within the business incubator is explored by combining experiential and social learning theories as heuristic tools. Presented implications for policy-makers and incubator managers are that attention and scarce resources should be focused on providing relevant information and encouraging an atmosphere of learning and mutual support. Recruitment practices should be revised to include a more holistic appreciation of potential incubatees contribution to the Business Incubation learning community as well as an assessment of their business plans. For policy makers the book suggests that successful business incubators do not necessarily require a large financial investment in state-of-the-art premises and technology. Appropriate management training together with carefully selected incubatees can create an effective learning community where opportunities are developed and transformed into enterprises and individuals into entrepreneurs.

Coaching has emerged as one of the most significant aids in developing managers and executives in the professional world. Yet there is a degree of dissatisfaction with performance coaching models and a desire to connect more with creativity and the imagination. In Coaching for Professional Development: Using Literature to Support Success, Christine A. Eastman suggests that literary works have a part to play in bringing about a change in coaching culture. Using a series of examples from key literary texts, she argues that literature can help coaches enhance their skills, find solutions to workplace problems, and better articulate their own ideas through innovation and imagination. Eastman argues for literature as a coaching tool, detailing how using stories of loss, failure, alienation and human suffering in a coaching dialogue bring positive results to organisational coaching. Coaching for Professional Development considers how reading fiction helps us to imagine lives outside our own, and how this sensitivity of language brings out the unconscious within us and others. Eastman discusses how she guided her students to embrace literature as a positive influence on their coaching practice through literary texts. Chapter 1 begins by exploring how reading Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener allowed her students to understand the importance of metaphor in their own coaching, with Chapter 2 illuminating how Cather's Neighbor Rosicky addresses the role of emotion. After this, Eastman considers how John Cheever's multi-layered story The Swimmer provides rich stimulus for coaching students in understanding failure, how Miller's Death of a Salesman shows how our family relationships are reflected in our office dynamics, and how the reactions of her students engaging with Lampedusa's The Leopard are more effective than the traditional coaching tool, Personalisis, in revealing their personality. She finally looks at Shakespeare's The Tempest for exploring themes of power and manipulation in a coaching context. By applying coaching models to fictional scenarios, Eastman demonstrates that coaches, HR professionals and students can successfully extend the boundaries of their coaching, strengthen their interventions and enhance their understanding of theory. Coaching for Professional Development: Using Literature to Support Success is a unique approach to coaching with engaging case studies throughout that brings together higher education and industry. It will be key reading for coaches in practice and in training who wish to enhance creativity in their work, advisors and teachers on coaching courses, and HR and L&D professionals working in organizations seeking to implement a coaching culture.

This book is written with the belief that HRD professionals will continue to learn, change and find ways to reinvent themselves and the profession individually and collectively as we move further into the 21st century. A major point of this book is that HRD will continue to become more and more important to organizational success. And, that in as calls for accountability and bottom line impact continue to rise, HRD professionals will be proactive in demonstrating their value to the organization. The primary audience for this book is practicing HRM and HRD professionals, and other organizational leaders. The book provides tested and proven ideas important to demonstrating the value of HRD. From a practical viewpoint, it is based on actual experience, a strong research base, and accepted practices presented in an easy to read form. A second target audience is students of HRD and HRM who are preparing for careers in this important field. This book will help them develop a solid foundation to the study of HRD practices that are key to HRD success regardless of the type of organization. A third target audience is managers or leaders at all levels of an organization who are increasingly expected to take on HRD responsibilities while also partnering with HRD professionals. It offers these individuals a firsthand look at what they should expect of their HRD functions or areas and how they can encourage HRD professionals in their organizations to be accountable' strategic partners in helping the organization achieve its success by getting the most out of its human capital.

This book serves as a comprehensive guide to understanding the theories and applications in managing the Asian fashion supply chain, presenting both quantitative and exploratory studies. Providing academicians and practitioners insights into the latest developments and models, it also offers diverse perspectives on areas like strategic sourcing, quick response strategies, and other essential parts of the supply chain.

Rapid changes within the modern business landscape have created new demands for human resources management. With a different set of challenges to face, human resources managers must implement novel approaches to improve policy effectiveness. Strategic Labor Relations Management in Modern Organizations is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly research on emerging human resource practices in relation to labor management, featuring innovative methods to remain competitive in the global business arena. Focusing on critical analyses and real-world applications, this book is ideally designed for professionals, upper-level students, managers, and researchers actively involved in human resources settings.

This book investigates individual companies' and industries' supply chain risk management approaches to identify risk drivers and verify effective risk-reduction measures and business continuity plans. Typically, supply chain risk assessments focus on normative guidelines based on single best practice examples or vulnerability events, and there has been little work exploring how the concepts of supply chain risk management and resilience are related. However, since this relationship has implications for developing integrated response strategies, a clear understanding of the possible consequences is a fundamental step in building socio-economic resilience along the supply chain. Against this background, the book addresses three main topics: firstly, it defines the conceptual and sectoral domains of supply chain risk management and resilience by examining the welfare effects of extreme weather events and other economic shocks on selected global supply chains. It then presents an in-depth analysis of the scope of public-private partnerships to tackle the risks, by empirically exploring supply chain risk effects and information management. Thirdly, it proposes a regional cooperation framework in the context of major supply chain vulnerability events such as disasters and global financial crises.