Companies across all industries are engaging in digital transformation to harness the power of advanced information technologies. Building on interviews and diverse case studies, this book provides an in-depth look at how data and algorithms are reshaping management practices, organizational structures, corporate culture, and work roles. Henri Schildt develops a broad framework for understanding digitalization not as a technological change but as a new normative mind-set, here called 'the data imperative'. It describes the new managerial ideals that compel companies to pursue digital omniscience and omnipotence-abilities to represent and understand the world through real-time data flow and to control customer experiences, physical equipment, and workers with software. The efforts to complement and replace human expertise with data and smart algorithms are associated with shifts in strategic priorities, adoption of powerful modular architectures, new organizational structures, and the introduction of artificial intelligence into diverse work roles. Surveying the developments in management and the workplace, this book offers an integrative and balanced account of the on-going changes that will continue to affect everyone from executives and professionals to front-line workers.

The bestselling author of Team of Teams dismantles the Great Man theory of leadership, by profiling leaders whose real stories defy their legends. In Leaders, retired four-star general Stan McChrystal explores what leadership really means, debunking the many myths that have surrounded the concept. He focuses on thirteen great leaders, showing that the lessons we commonly draw from their lives are seldom the correct ones. Leaders featured in the book include: Founders: Walt Disney and Coco Chanel Zealots: Maximilien Robespierre and Abu Musab Zarkawi Powerbrokers: Margaret Thatcher and Boss Tweed And other leaders profiled include geniuses Albert Einstein and Leonard Bernstein, reformers Martin Luther and Martin Luther King, Jr., and heroes Harriet Tubman and Zheng He. Ultimately, McChrystal posits that different environments will require different leaders, and that followers will choose the leader they need. Aspiring leaders will be best served not by cultivating a standard set of textbook leadership qualities, but by learning to discern what is required in each situation. 'Leaders rexamines old notions of leadership - especially the outdated view that history is shaped by great men going it alone' - SHERYL SANDBERG, COO of Facebook and founder of LeanIn.Org 'Leaders takes us deeper than most other leadership books into the true and often messy mechanics of leadership. Anyone who considers themselves a student of leadership must read this book' - SIMON SINEK, optimist and author of Start With Why and Leader Eat Last

Increased longevity and better health are changing the nature of family life. In the context of changes in the world of work, increased divorce and a declining welfare state, multi-generation or 'beanpole families' are a potential resource for family support. Focusing on four-generation families and the two central careers of the life course - employment and care - Working and Caring Over the Twentieth Century explores this question. Based upon new research that employed biographical methods, it maps in detail from 1910 to the late 1990s the lives of men and women as great-grandparents, grandparents and parents. The book provides unique insights into processes of change and continuity in family lives and the ways in which different generations of men and women make sense of their lives.

Can working parents in America--or anywhere--ever find true leisure time?

According to the Leisure Studies Department at the University of Iowa, true leisure is "that place in which we realize our humanity." If that's true, argues Brigid Schulte, then we're doing dangerously little realizing of our humanity. In "Overwhelmed," Schulte, a staff writer for "The Washington Post," asks: Are our brains, our partners, our culture, and our bosses making it impossible for us to experience anything but "contaminated time"?
Schulte first asked this question in a 2010 feature for "The Washington" "Post""Magazine" "How did researchers compile this statistic that said we were rolling in leisure--over four hours a day? Did any of us feel that we actually had downtime? Was there anything useful in their research--anything we could do?"
"Overwhelmed" is a map of the stresses that have ripped our leisure to shreds, and a look at how to put the pieces back together. Schulte speaks to neuroscientists, sociologists, and hundreds of working parents to tease out the factors contributing to our collective sense of being overwhelmed, seeking insights, answers, and inspiration. She investigates progressive offices trying to invent a new kind of workplace; she travels across Europe to get a sense of how other countries accommodate working parents; she finds younger couples who claim to have figured out an ideal division of chores, childcare, and meaningful paid work. "Overwhelmed"is the story of what she found out.

When do you address correspondents by their first names over email? Need a refresher on the proper format for a business letter? Or perhaps a cram-course on how business is conducted in a particular foreign country? Now, all your workplace questions can be found in one convenient source from the most trusted name in reference. The Office Professional's Guide takes you through office basics (frequently misspelled words; proper telephone, fax, and email etiquette; common filing systems), important business and financial concepts (P&L, ROI, price to earnings ratio), international business (a glossary of terms in five different languages; a guide to travel arangements), giving presentations (with PowerPoint), making meeting arrangements, and much more.

The Office Professional's Guide is an invaluable tool for any modern professional, no matter how high you are on your department's totem pole. Compiled and researched by Oxford's renowned reference team, this comprehensive book will be a daily source of knowledge and peace of mind.

This book looks at how large organizations have managed and adapted to changing conditions of employment shaped by the recent economic and political environment. Additional data are presented based on evidence from other significant actors such as agency employment firms and trade unions. The book also engages with important North American debates on the changing nature of work, careers, and employment.

Austerity's impacts on the healthcare, social care and education professions are under the spotlight in this important book. From scarcer resources to greater stresses, and falling training budgets to rising risks, it charts how policies and cuts have compromised workers' ability to undertake their professional roles. It combines research and practice experience to assess the extent of de-professionalisation in recent years and how workers have responded. This book is a vital review of how austerity has resculpted our notions of professionalism.

What's stopping you from doing the best work of your life? People are sick of the old ways of doing business. Despite the enthusiasm that surrounded the emergence of a hybrid working world, it still takes for ever to get anything done. Meetings and emails are almost belligerently incessant. Bureaucracy and hierarchy continue to stifle creativity and talent. So - after literal decades of management theory, as well as multiple shifts in the technological landscape - why can't we do better? Aaron Dignan is an expert in modernizing workplaces. He has built a career teaching top-level companies how to change to suit their workforce better and, in doing so, how to foster genuine innovation, loyalty and growth. In Brave New Work, he uses stories and experiences gathered from that career to lay out a fearless manifesto for a new type of work. This book will show you how to transform your team, department or business from the inside out, making work more adaptable, enjoyable and human. It's packed with tactics and tips for updating your company's operating system: the assumptions so deeply embedded within your organization that you don't even know you're being crippled by them. Learn how to reignite passion and energy throughout your organization, how to retain and attract a dedicated and happy workforce, and, ultimately, how to build a company that runs itself.

This is the first textbook that makes workplace health surveillance accessible to a broad audience. Step-by-step, it shows how to establish or improve a surveillance system. The reader learns about defining objectives, seeking organizational support, forming a surveillance workgroup, collecting data, calculating basic injury and illness statistics, designing databases, analyzing and interpreting surveillance data, setting priorities, making protocols for follow-up and case management, marketing results and giving feedback, and evaluating surveillance systems. Links are emphasized between surveillance and workplace follow-up, community-based intervention programs, cost-benefit analysis, and other prevention activities. Readers get a solid foundation of epidemiologic concepts reinforced by examples that use simple arithmetic. Leading practitioners from government, business, and unions illustrate the surveillance of injuries, lead poisoning, pesticide illness, cumulative trauma disorders, asthma, noise-induced hearing loss, silicosis, cancer, and chemical and physical hazards. Non-traditional data sources are examined, including health and disability insurance, hospital discharge, and poison control centers. Disability surveillance, return-to-work, and the quality/effectiveness of health services also are explored. Surveillance is shown to be an action-oriented tool for decision-making that is the key to a successful health and safety program.

The "informal" economy economic activity and income outside government regulation, taxation and observation is, by its very nature, difficult to quantify. Recent estimates suggest it accounts, in OECD countries, for around 13% of national income (in the UK, the equivalent of GBP150 billion) and in developing nations it can make up as much as three-quarters of all non-agricultural employment. Whatever the exact figures, it is clear that the informal economy plays a significant role in national incomes (eventhough excluded from calculations of GDP or GNP) and affects a large share of the global workforce. Colin C. Williams provides an authoritative introduction to the topic, explaining what the informal economy is (and what it isn't) and how it can best be measured. Taking a global perspective, he examines its characteristics in developed, developing and transitional economies, and looks at its role as a driver of economic growth. The theoretical underpinnings are explored, from conceptual origins in the development models of the 1950s, through to present-day discussions, which question whether a formalised economy is always the ideal. The book considers the economic motivations of the informal economy workforce, which may include tax evasion, circumventing regulations and maintaining state benefits, and assesses the different policy options available to governments to combat them, whether a punitive policy of deterrence, or one of accommodation that recognises the value of the sector in generating income and in meeting the needs of poor consumers. The book provides a masterly summation of the published research on the informal economy and an expert assessment of the key areas for research going forward. It will be welcomed by students taking courses in development economics, economic growth, labour economics, welfare economics and public policy.

This book examines the various environmental factors which affect the workplace atmosphere in businesses, with a particular focus on indoor air quality. Topics discussed include antimicrobial treatments of indoor mould and bacteria; an assessment of the carbon footprint and how that will affect long-term pollution emission reduction; indoor air quality, health and productivity; antigenic/allergenic rubber proteins and environmental regulations and environmental investing practices in Europe.

The United States has a large number of well educated, experienced professional women ready, willing and able to move into the boardrooms and executive suites of corporate America. Together they represent a great, untapped economic resource, a resource no other country in the world can claim. This is America's competitive secret, argues Judy B. Rosener in this refreshingly pragmatic new book for managers who want to improve their bottom line.

This volume brings together experts in the fields of information ethics and health care to explore the impactions of these challenges as they impact what kind of care will be available, who will receive health care, and how the care is monitored. This fascinating study grew out of a project sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

"For those whose jobs have been a victim of the economic impact of the pandemic, it is a timely reminder not only to stay determined, but hopeful." - Financial Times 'This book reminded me why an ending - especially an unexpected one - can be the best kind of beginning' Viv Groskop, author of Lift As You Climb 'This book will help you escape the valleys of rejection bound for the peaks of opportunity' Bruce Daisley, bestselling author of The Joy of Work 'So much more than a user guide to life after redundancy, it's an inspiring lesson on how to deal with the knocks of everyday life; written with humour, empathy and honesty' Debbie Hewitt MBE, Chair, Visa Europe Why Losing Your Job Could be the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You is a compassionate guide that will inform and engage anyone who is facing redundancy or job loss; with deeply inspiring case studies and clear and brilliantly accessible, practical advice for getting back on course with your life and career. Learn how to: -Navigate feelings of anger, guilt and shame -Search for new beginnings -Overcome analysis paralysis -Progress with small steps Eleanor Tweddell's five-step plan will support you through the early stages of shock, through to building up the skills, self-confidence and motivation to thrive after redundancy; whether that is in your previous sector or something new.

Office ergonomics - whether we realize it or not - directly or indirectly affects every one of us. It is the study of the work we do, the environment we work in, and the tools we use to successfully perform our jobs. Office ergonomics helps us be comfortable and safe at work, which reduces the risk of injury, lowers stress, increases personal engagement, and raises overall work performance. This book embraces and addresses the new reality of the traditional 'office' work, which is ever changing and evolving, and offers tactical recommendations on how to make non-traditional office settings more comfortable. This book suggests how to Set up the office, wherever that may be - at a company site, at home, at a corner cafe, on a commuter train Interact with colleagues Organize and pace work Select and arrange equipment and furniture Maintain the physical climate - lighting, sound, heating and cooling The book is a practical one, based on sound theory and solid research. Written for non-engineers as well as those in the industry, it has a conversational tone, reflects true-life situations that office workers face, and is adaptable to multiple office settings. While budding ergonomists will find it educational, office managers and designers will benefit from it as well. You will find ten fast-paced chapters, augmented with brief case studies and illustrations, and capped off with a series of practical design recommendations. Three appendices delve into ergonomic topics with more thorough details. This book suggests how best to achieve a harmonious work scenario by optimizing the 'fit' between the person and his or her environment. This, in a nutshell, is what ergonomics is all about: working with ease and efficiency.

This book gives an understanding of the origins and nature of conflict, and enables the reader to find solutions through open communication and mutual trust and respect. It offers a simple structure which will allow all parties to reach the magic of win-win. Contents: About the authors; Preface; Introduction; 1. How the view explains our differences; 2. Differences in personality types; 3. Fight the difference or celebrate it? 4. Are you building a bridge or a barrier?; 5. Understand and manage your feelings; 6. Develop your skills and increase your choices; 7. Four steps to resolution; 8. Preventing conflict; Appendices; Bibliography; Index; Conflict resolution workshop.

"Many of the common concepts of power in business are so close to perfectly wrong that it's amazing any work happens at all..." The physics definition of power is 'the ability to do work'; most social definitions are closer to the ability to avoid it. This insight provides opportunities for a radical re-think of power and response-ability at work. Linking the human side of systems into the architecture of the enterprise creates workplaces that are more effective, empowering and profitable for everyone involved. This enlightening and enlivening book explains the interplay of power, property and responsibility in the business context - how it works, why it doesn't, and what to do about it. Topics covered include: - how to identify power in the workplace - both functional and dysfunctional - how to enhance responsibility and 'response-ability' at work - how to resolve differences of scale, from 'I' to 'We' to 'Us' to 'Them' - how to avoid 'power-traps' that could put the enterprise at risk - how to design systems that improve purpose-fulfilment, relationship-management and knowledge-technology in the enterprise The book includes a diagnostic checklist on power, property and responsibility, and also describes the background to other Tetradian tools and techniques such as the SEMPER whole-of-enterprise metric. If you want to include the human side of systems in your enterprise-architecture, this is one book you'll definitely need. Tom Graves has been an independent consultant for almost three decades, in business transformation, enterprise architecture and knowledge management. His clients in Europe, Australia and the USA have covered a broad range of industries including banking, utilities, logistics, engineering, media, telecoms, research, defence and government. He has a special interest in architecture for non-IT-centric enterprises, and integration between IT-based and non-IT-based services.

Winner of a 2012 Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award Demystifying the application of Lean methods, Lean Office and Service Simplified: The Definitive How-To Guide goes beyond the basic tools to detail the key concepts of Lean as they apply to office and service environments. It begins by discussing value stream management, followed by chapters on standard work, flow, level pull, and visual management. Winner of a 2012 Shingo Prize, this book covers essential Lean tools, including 5S and mistake proofing. It breaks down Lean concepts into their elementary components, describes them in a nonmanufacturing context, and supplies readers with specific how-to methodologies. Providing detailed examples throughout, the text illustrates the functions found in most service organizations, as well as the administrative areas of manufacturing companies. Drawing on more than two decades of practical experience, the author provides implementation strategies on a function-by-function and department-by-department basis. He examines the most common obstacles that readers are likely to encounter and supplies strategies to address those obstacles. The text includes a toolbox of helpful forms, charts, checklists, templates, and worksheets to help kick-start your Lean implementation efforts. Watch Shingo Prize-winning author Drew Locher discuss how to implement Lean concepts into your office and service settings.

The Art of Connected Leadership teaches leaders how to keep rock star employees and build a powerhouse team. Lyndsay K. R. Toensing has fifteen years of experience leading teams, mentoring, and coaching people in startups to Fortune 500 companies. In The Art of Connected Leadership, she shows leaders how to: See the most common reasons why good people leave a job Set team direction that motivates their employees Build relationships that increase employee loyalty Develop their employees in a way that benefits them Create a team culture that gets results Help employees love their jobs