This book explores the underlying causes of the pervasive dominance of 'unethics' in contemporary affairs in economics, business, and society. It is argued that the state of unethics is related to the overexpansion of market and market values in all spheres of social life and human activities. A correlate of this development is the emergence of an extremely individualistic, materialistic and narcissistic mind-set that dictates the decisions and behavior of people and organizations. The author argues that art can help to overcome the dominant market metaphysics of our age, as genuine art creates models of 'poetic dwelling,' which can generate non-linear, progressive change that opens up a larger playing field for ethics. Aesthetics and ethics go hand in hand. Ethical action is not just right for its own sake, but makes the world a richer, livable and more beautiful place. Ethics, Meaning, and Market Society will be of interest to students at an advanced level, academics, researchers and professionals. It addresses the topics with regard to ethics in economics, business, and society in a contemporary context.

In recent decades, the rapid expansion of trade and investment among developing countries has resulted in a scenario wherein firms from developing countries account for an increasing share of capital, goods, and wealth in the global economy. Industry leaders from developing countries have observed that firms in developing countries need to identify and develop key supply chain capabilities in order to succeed in emerging markets. It is argued that customers in emerging markets are likely to have different needs and supply chain expectations as compared to customers in developed economies. Reaching into these emerging markets, understanding the customer diversity, and translating it into effective segmentation schemes are critical for the efficient design of supply chain operations. Leadership Strategies for Global Supply Chain Management in Emerging Markets is a pivotal reference source that provides vital research on creating efficient supply chain operations in emerging markets. While highlighting topics such as consumer behavior, global operations, and information transparency, this publication investigates the needs of consumers in emerging markets as well as the methods of designing effective operations. This book is ideally designed for supply chain managers, logistics managers, operations and warehousing professionals, industry practitioners, academicians, students, and researchers.

Making decisions is a critical part of every executive's job. However we know so little about the often subliminal processes that shape the decisions we make. The Secret Life of Decisions exposes the unchallenged myths and distortions that impact our reasoning ability, raising our awareness of the many traps we can fall into. Meena Thuraisingham and her collaborator, Wolfgang Lehmacher, have drawn from decades of work with leaders showing that even the most talented leaders and teams can end up making sub-optimal decisions. This is rarely because they had poor critical thinking faculties but rather because they did not pay enough attention to the often invisible traps hardwired into our thinking processes, letting through only information that conforms with our current beliefs, mental models and expectations. This leaves many leaders and businesses exposed. Rather than being the rational output of our reasoning abilities, the authors show decision making to be a highly imprecise process. As decision makers we come to the table armed with our own perspectives, preferences, filters, heuristics and biases, influenced by a broad range of social influences many operating subliminally. The Secret Life of Decisions is an essential read for developing and seasoned executives who have to work through increasingly complex and high stakes decisions. It treats choosing wisely and the thinking involved as a skill, which as with many other skills, can be improved with the guided practice and supporting tools provided here. The journey however starts with awareness that comes from outing the 'secret forces that can sabotage the quality of our decisions.

This addition to the ISOR series addresses the analytics of the operations of electric energy systems with increasing penetration of stochastic renewable production facilities, such as wind- and solar-based generation units. As stochastic renewable production units become ubiquitous throughout electric energy systems, an increasing level of flexible backup provided by non-stochastic units and other system agents is needed if supply security and quality are to be maintained. Within the context above, this book provides up-to-date analytical tools to address challenging operational problems such as: * The modeling and forecasting of stochastic renewable power production. * The characterization of the impact of renewable production on market outcomes. * The clearing of electricity markets with high penetration of stochastic renewable units. * The development of mechanisms to counteract the variability and unpredictability of stochastic renewable units so that supply security is not at risk. * The trading of the electric energy produced by stochastic renewable producers. * The association of a number of electricity production facilities, stochastic and others, to increase their competitive edge in the electricity market. * The development of procedures to enable demand response and to facilitate the integration of stochastic renewable units. This book is written in a modular and tutorial manner and includes many illustrative examples to facilitate its comprehension. It is intended for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of electric energy systems, applied mathematics and economics. Practitioners in the electric energy sector will benefit as well from the concepts and techniques explained in this book.

Do you solve problems in the style of a coyote, competitor or eagle? Recognising the way you approach and deal with problems at work will enable you to identify the most suitable technique to use on a daily basis. Victor Newman's practical book strikes at the heart of fundamental challenges faced by all managers. It looks beyond the conventional techniques of problem-solving to the underlying process, identifies eight stages and explains how to recognise which technique is appropriate to which stage. On this basis managers can generate solutions at both the personal and the organisational level. A unique feature of the book is a Problem Solving Styles Profile that enables each reader to apply the material in the text to improve their own problem-solving capability.

How much risk should we take? A Short Guide to Risk Appetite sets out to help all those who need to decide how much risk can be taken in a particular risky and important situation. David Hillson and Ruth Murray-Webster introduce the RARA Model to explain the complementary and central roles of Risk Appetite and Risk Attitude, and along the way they show how other risk-related concepts fit in. Risk thresholds are the external expression of inherent risk appetite, and the challenge is how to set the right thresholds. By progressively deconstructing the RARA Model, the authors show that the essential control step is our ability to choose an appropriate risk attitude. The book contains practical guidance to setting risk thresholds that take proper account of the influences of organisational risk culture and the individual risk preferences of key stakeholders. Alongside this, individuals and organisations need to choose the risk attitude that will optimise their chances of achieving the desired objectives.

Hyperthinking is predicated on the assumption that the single most important skill required to help you and your organization thrive in the age of perpetual change, digital communications and networks is the mind-set of individuals. This includes your values, your ability to learn and ability to adapt to change. After 14 years of experience with leading global companies, author Philip Weiss has developed an approach that pulls together the ingredients needed for the modern executive to both adapt and thrive in this new age. The Hyperthinking model has been developed and tested on teams, clients and the author's networks with great success. The book explains how Hyperthinking can apply to different facets of our lives, starting from our personal experience and our role in society and shows how to adapt better to the new business world. Hyperthinking is a set of values and tools that, used in combination, enable individuals to embrace change develop their creativity and effectively engage in the digital age. It has been tested by a variety of business executives and helped them to understand change, as well as overcome fear or resistance to technology. Philip Weiss offers the perfect antidote to information overload; a wonderful blueprint for personal and organizational innovation; and a set of perspectives to help us all make sense of a fast-changing business environment. Read it and start Hyperthinking!

Management Ideas is a unique guide to the dominant theories influencing management practice in the late 20th century. Kermally explains how some organizations have taken these ideas on board and incorporated them in their strategies in order to survive in today's intensively competitive climate. Management Ideas looks at: Total quality management Benchmarking Customer service Business process re-engineering Performance measurement Empowerment Learning and knowledge-focused organizations The ...in brief books provide a critical 'snapshot' of the major management fashions and fads influencing business strategy. They cut through the consultants' jargon and steer a practical, common sense course through the theory and hype. They provide managers with a balanced view based on evidence rather than missionary zeal, so that they can be better informed.Sultan Kermally is the senior Vice President and the Director of the Economist Conferences. Formerly he was a Senior Group Director at Management Centre Europe, Brussels. He designs conferences on leading edge management issues such as Benchmarking, Empowerment, Process Re-engineering. He is also a part-time lecturer at Durham University Business School.An expanded hardback edition of this book, Total Management Thinking, is also available - ISBN 0750626143

From the perspective of delivering successful projects, the value of a skilled project sponsor and project manager outweighs many other factors. Projects need leaders who can give them vision, identity, keep the stakeholders and the project team on board and make the difficult decisions that will enable the project to continue (or, if necessary, be terminated). These are human skills that don't necessarily feature large in the project management bodies of knowledge. Ralf Muller and Rodney Turner's Project-Oriented Leadership explains the key leadership models of managerial, intellectual and emotional leadership and shows how they can be applied within projects to lead processes, functions and people, and ensure an ethical and inclusive approach within projects and programs.

The field of project management has developed over the past 40 years; however, the recent increase in computer power has greatly accelerated its theoretical and computational developments. Advanced Models for Project Management is an expository treatment of the recent developments in project modeling. These advances and their treatment in the book are as follows: Chapters 2 and 3 broaden the concept of precedence and the description of activities to produce a wide range of realistic representation of projects. Chapters 4 and 5 explore the stochastic study of project features through several analytical and numerical models - using simulation and risk analysis - which provide experimental and forecasting analyses. Chapter 6 examines the allocation of resources in complex situations and restrictions, and also studies the financial aspects of projects and optimization of financial elements. Chapter 7 assesses and evaluates projects within the framework of multi-criteria decision theory. Chapter 8 concludes with an analysis of new models based on synthetic indicators, helping the operations manager select the most convenient solutions. Hence, the book provides a number of original advances, including: an assessment of the complexity and hardness of a project network; a description of the network's morphology; a new approach to simulate project networks; development of models based on continuous variables to optimize project schedules; and the development of a three-dimension model (MACMODEL) to assess and to evaluate projects and a new synthetic indicator to support the process of scheduling. Finally, several software products are presented that help the project manager to use new tools suchas RISKNET and MACMODEL.

In this thought-provoking book Dr Newman looks beyond the conventional techniques of problem solving to the underlying process. He identifies eight stages and explains how to recognize which technique is appropriate to which stage. On this basis managers can generate solutions at both the personal and the organizational level. He shows: c how to overcome the four main obstacles to developing a balanced problem solving style c how to manage the relationship between problem solving style and stress c how to use physical movement as an aid to problem solving. A unique feature of the book is a Problem Solving Styles Profile that enables each reader to apply the material in the text to improve their own problem solving capability. Written in a lively and practical style and drawing on examples from a wide range of real-life problems, Dr Newman's book is certain of a warm welcome from managers, team leaders and professionals of every kind.

This study, first published in 1986, examines and evaluates the personnel techniques and activities that were characteristic of one period in American industrial life. In later years these techniques and activities came to be known as personnel management or personnel administration. By these terms is meant the policies, procedures, and programs that were introduced by companies for the purpose of bringing about constructive and harmonious relationships between management and its own employees. This title will be of interest to students of business studies and human resource management.

There was much development of both education and industry in post-World War II Britain. There was, on the one hand, an extension of public education to the secondary school stage and the substantial financial help that was available, which meant that increasing numbers were going to university. On the other, there had been immense advances in scientific and technical knowledge and its application to industry. These advances in industry produced an increase in the demand for trained graduates. This book, first published in 1957, examines this correlation, and provides guidance for both graduates and hiring managers. This title will be of interest to students of human resource management and business studies.

In this title, first published in 1918, Lord Leverhulme explores the ideas of co-partnership, piece-work, housing, and the benefits of shorter hours of labour. The most notable of these discussions, collected by Stanley Unwin, with a Preface by Lord Haldane, advocates a six-hour day, with two shifts, in all industries in which the overhead charges are equal to or larger than the cost of weekly wages. Lord Leverhulme's view is that the employees work better in a short working day and might produce as much in six hours as in eight hours, and that in any case the machinery could be utilized more profitably by running for the double shift of twelve hours than for the single shift of eight hours. This seminal work will be of interest to students of business studies and human resource management.

Data Mining in Agriculture represents a comprehensive effort to provide graduate students and researchers with an analytical text on data mining techniques applied to agriculture and environmental related fields. This book presents both theoretical and practical insights with a focus on presenting the context of each data mining technique rather intuitively with ample concrete examples represented graphically and with algorithms written in Matlab(r). Examples and exercises with solutions are provided at the end of each chapter to facilitate the comprehension of the material. For each data mining technique described in the book variants and improvements of the basic algorithm are also given.

We are living in the post-information age, the era of so-called 'Big Data'. It is a practical possibility for corporations to report, chart and analyse every action, transaction and click that happens inside and outside their business. In Decision Sourcing Roberts and Pakkiri examine what this means to organisational decision making. They explode the myth that good decisions need only be informed ones through an examination into how business really make choices. They lay bare the poverty of decision making processes in today's corporate world and offer fresh and fascinating insight into how social tools are providing new sources of information, how they are challenging hierarchy and how they are providing opportunities for growth and agility through aligned and inclusive decision making. This book is for those organisations that want to get beyond the corporate Facebook account and are ready for the next bold step. It is for those businesses that want to engage their workforce and their customers in collaborative relationships that are at the heart of the successful social enterprise.

The Handbook of Mathematical Economics aims to provide a definitive source, reference, and teaching supplement for the field of mathematical economics. It surveys, as of the late 1970's the state of the art of mathematical economics. This is a constantly developing field and all authors were invited to review and to appraise the current status and recent developments in their presentations. In addition to its use as a reference, it is intended that this Handbook will assist researchers and students working in one branch of mathematical economics to become acquainted with other branches of this field. The emphasis of this fourth volume of the Handbook of Mathematical Economics is on choice under uncertainty, general equilibrium analysis under conditions of uncertainty, economies with an infinite number of consumers or commodities, and dynamical systems. The book thus reflects some of the ideas that have been most influential in mathematical economics since the appearance of the first three volumes of the Handbook.

Researchers, students, economists and mathematicians will all find this Handbook to be an indispensable reference source. It surveys the entire field of mathematical economics, critically reviewing recent developments. The chapters (which can be read independently) are written at an advanced level suitable for professional, teaching and graduate-level use.

For more information on the Handbooks in Economics series, please see our home page on http: //www.elsevier.nl/locate/hes

This book addresses computer scientists, IT specialists, mathematicians, knowledge engineers and programmers, who are engaged in research and practice of multicriteria decision making. Fuzzy measures, also known as capacities, allow one to combine degrees of preferences, support or fuzzy memberships into one representative value, taking into account interactions between the inputs. The notions of mutual reinforcement or redundancy are modeled explicitly through coefficients of fuzzy measures, and fuzzy integrals, such as the Choquet and Sugeno integrals combine the inputs. Building on previous monographs published by the authors and dealing with different aspects of aggregation, this book especially focuses on the Choquet and Sugeno integrals. It presents a number of new findings concerning computation of fuzzy measures, learning them from data and modeling interactions. The book does not require substantial mathematical background, as all the relevant notions are explained. It is intended as concise, timely and self-contained guide to the use of fuzzy measures in the field of multicriteria decision making.

Over 20 years ago Philip Sadler, then head of a leading British business school, wrote Managerial Leadership in the Post-Industrial Society. In it he predicted that business would experience the most radical transformation since the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. This transformation has now taken place. In his latest book, Sustainable Growth in a Post-Scarcity World, Sadler charts developments once envisaged by Keynes, Chase, Galbraith and Packard, and more recent radical thinkers such as Chris Anderson. Sadler describes how many goods and services have moved from relative scarcity to relative abundance, and asks how this trend can be reconciled with the global issues of population growth and climate change. He assesses the impact of new technologies, new energy sources, new materials and the development of artificial intelligence, on business, government and economics, and discusses the challenges ahead - the creation of new business models, the need to meet people's legitimate expectations of improved living conditions while avoiding environmental catastrophe, and the need to adapt ideas developed in scarcity to conditions of abundance. Why is it that in countries foremost in creating post-scarcity conditions, millions are still in poverty, and billions, worldwide, still lack basic necessities of life? Philip Sadler agrees with those who say the relief of global poverty cannot rely on aid and corporate philanthropy. He explores the idea of re-engineering products and delivering them into bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) markets, and concludes that the more global companies take this route, as some are already doing, the more profitable they will find it, and this will in turn help the poorest people who currently pay more for goods and services - the 'poverty penalty' - than the rich.

Increasingly in the public discourse there are references to the knowledge economy, knowledge society, knowledge workers and knowledge organisations. The argument is that knowledge is becoming the main economic resource, replacing the natural resources that drove the industrial revolution. The new knowledge economy is driven by knowledge development, innovation and highly skilled employees. Increasing investment in higher education and in universities is in line with this strategy and understanding. In an earlier book, Creating Collaborative Advantage edited with Richard Ennals, Professor Hans Christian Garmann Johnsen argued that it is knowledge that links social and economic processes. He believes that what is missing in the current discussion on innovation is a conceptualisation of exactly what knowledge is. In The New Natural Resource, he digs deeper into what it is and how it develops and subsequently leads to widespread change. The author argues that knowledge is inherently a social phenomenon. That is why social processes are closely linked to economic development, and why this relationship becomes even more apparent in the new knowledge economy. Knowledge is not an objective entity, established once and for all. Knowledge development is interrelated with values, norms, perceptions and interpretations. We need to know what the mechanisms are by which knowledge becomes legitimate, true and relevant.

Andy Garlick's book explores the role of quantitative techniques in modern risk management. Risk management has grown in importance in most organisations in the last 20 years, but in many remains simply a matter of processing lists of risks and actions. The author argues that this fails to make the most of the techniques available and that organisations can improve their risk decision making by using risk models. His book describes a broad range of modelling techniques, all illustrated by business-relevant examples. The role of the models in decision making is also discussed, with particular emphasis on what the risk premium - the price people charge for accepting risk - is and should be. In order to provide a self contained account the underpinning material from probability and decision theory is also included, so that the book will provide a handy reference guide for all practitioners. The discussion is consistently informal, and the book provides a critical view of the accepted wisdom in risk management. This book will enable managers and their specialist advisors to improve their approach to risk whilst removing the mystique.

Developing economies such as those in sub-Saharan Africa are searching for realistic economic policy prescriptions. Despite economic growth in countries like Nigeria, poverty and unemployment blight the lives of many, in the midst of plenty. Simultaneously, much neo-classical economic thought is being questioned against the backdrop of global economic meltdown, giving rise to inquiry about more integral approaches to sustainable development. In An Integral Approach to Development Economics, Basheer Oshodi examines modernization theories, dependency theories, world system theories and emerging 21st century economic theories and links a neo-modern mix of economic thought with the practicalities of finance in parts of the World where poverty is rife. In a specifically African setting, over half of the population are Muslims, Oshodi considers Islamic finance in the context of the triple heritage of indigenous culture, Westernized Christianity, and Islam. He argues that the principles of Islamic banking and finance can be integrated with other elements of that heritage, focusing on meeting the challenges of poverty and unemployment. Islamic finance is not just a religiously-oriented, Sharia-compliant, alternative financial model. It can contribute to overall socio-economic transformation and a wider, people-centred approach to economic development. International organizations, financial institutions, reserve banks, policy makers, donor agencies and students will find resonance in this valuable addition to Gower's Transformation and Innovation Series.

Architects and engineers can build models to test their ideas - why not managers? In Game Theory in Management: Modelling Business Decisions and Their Consequences, author Michael Hatfield presents a series of mathematically structured analogies to real-life business and economic interaction scenarios, and then, using modern game theory, he shows how to test common managerial technical approaches for their effectiveness. His results are astonishing: if game theory is correct then many commonly-held and taught management approaches and techniques are not only less effective than thought, they are actually detrimental in many areas where they are held to be beneficial. Game Theory in Management also examines managerial implications from network theory, cartage schemes, risk management theory, management information system epistemology, and other areas where the quantification and testing of business decisions can be employed to identify winning and losing stratagems.

Business Process Modeling, Simulation and Design, Third Edition provides students with a comprehensive coverage of a range of analytical tools used to model, analyze, understand, and ultimately design business processes. The new edition of this very successful textbook includes a wide range of approaches such as graphical flowcharting tools, cycle time and capacity analyses, queuing models, discrete-event simulation, simulation-optimization, and data mining for process analytics. While most textbooks on business process management either focus on the intricacies of computer simulation or managerial aspects of business processes, this textbook does both. It presents the tools to design business processes and management techniques on operating them efficiently. The book focuses on the use of discrete event simulation as the main tool for analyzing, modeling, and designing effective business processes. The integration of graphic user-friendly simulation software enables a systematic approach to create optimal designs.

We need strategy. The world is changing, the future uncertain. What is required is vision: What might the future bring? Where is our business going? What are our fundamental business values? This book is a manual for all those who want to apply strategy in organisations. It is intended for everyone who wants to put the future on the agenda, to look beyond the short term and beyond mere profit. It describes in practical terms the eight questions we must continually discuss in order to pursue a future-proof strategy in a dynamic and uncertain world: mission, trends, scenarios, options, vision, roadmap, action and monitoring. If you are dissatisfied with an approach to strategy based on simple backward looking analysis, management controls and problems solving after the fact, but would like to make a positive contribution to thinking about the future, Scenario-based Strategy offers the instruments to turn your intention into practice. The text provides examples from commercial to government and trade organizations; showing how others have undertaken future explorations and how they used these explorations to create a dynamic strategy. Paul de Ruijter has a deep insight into the theory, alongside practical experience working with some of the most highly regarded and resilient organizations. The result is a rich combination of methodology and practical, engaging examples that shows you how to go about creating an agenda for the future.