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.

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.

DLP denotes a dynamic-linear modeling and optimization approach to computational decision support for resource planning problems that arise, typically, within the natural resource sciences and the disciplines of operations research and operational engineering. It integrates techniques of dynamic programming (DP) and linear programming (LP) and can be realized in an immediate, practical and usable way. Simultaneously DLP connotes a broad and very general modeling/ algorithmic concept that has numerous areas of application and possibilities for extension. Two motivating examples provide a linking thread through the main chapters, and an appendix provides a demonstration program, executable on a PC, for hands-on experience with the DLP approach.

Value aggregation to goods and services is unbelievably important to the balance of trade of modern nations, yet it receives minute attention by economists and policy-makers alike. In Competitiveness in the Real Economy, Rui Vinhas da Silva shows that the nature and dynamics of contemporary global competition requires a sharper focus on value aggregation. He provides a rounded, integrative and multi-disciplinary perspective linking national competitiveness, economics and management. The emphasis is on a transversal philosophy of value aggregation as a key driver of national competitiveness across sectors in the real economy and from production to the consumption of goods and services. The links between exports, inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI) and country competitiveness are examined along with the role of exports and the attraction of FDI inflows in building national GDP. The author emphasises that culture, the notion of being cosmopolitan and understanding aspirational and discriminatory consumers with high disposable income are key drivers of success in the global economy. Acknowledging that the complexity of problems comes from diversity of global actors, the author highlights the limitations of current economics in responding to contemporary challenges. His concern about the management sciences and management learning is that solutions do not lie in the formulation and prescription of universal laws, but are contextually-laden and derive from an informed intuition that is partly taught and partly experiential. The book addresses the implications of all this for how the management skills needed for competitive advantage might best be developed.

Pinedo is a major figure in the scheduling area (well versed in both stochastics and combinatorics), and knows both the academic and practitioner side of the discipline.

This book includes the integration of case studies into the text.

It will appeal to engineering and business students interested in operations research.

Much has been said and written about the 'financial tsunami' and subsequent economic dislocation that occurred in the opening decade of the 21st Century. Professor Ivo Pezzuto is described by business scholars as an expert on the global financial crisis. He has lectured about it at conferences and seminars; written some of the most read and quoted papers; contributed to what is considered the most authoritative book on the subject; and to one of the best known US-based blogs dealing with it. In Predictable and Avoidable, Dr Pezzuto offers business school students; academics; and industry experts in the fields of finance, risk management, audit, corporate governance, economics, and regulation, a truly independent and unbiased analysis of the financial crises starting in 2007 and one of the first fully considered expositions of the financial, governance and regulatory reforms needed for the future. Augmented with personal interviews involving selected global thought leaders and industry experts, the author's narrative focuses on the technical issues that led to the global crisis, but also addresses the human, cultural, and ethical aspects of the events from both sociological and managerial perspectives. The book exposes the root causes and contributes significantly to the debate about the change needed in the banking and finance industries and to supervisory frameworks and regulatory mechanisms. This analysis enables readers to understand that the crisis we have seen was predictable and should have been avoidable, and that a recurrence can be avoided, if lessons are learned and the right action taken.

Projects are constantly beset by problems, often caused by seemingly small mistakes which collectively lead to larger issues. Why do project managers and teams appear to repeat the same mistakes? Can they make better choices without introducing complex decision analysis processes? How can they make better estimates? Project management is the art and science of human interactions. Project Think identifies and explains the paths of those intentional and unintentional actions that lead to trouble. It provides advice and guidance in analysing information and risk and explains how 'choice-engineering' can facilitate decision-making and encourage everyone involved in a project to follow the right procedures and work collaboratively.

This textbook is comprised of detailed case studies covering challenging real world applications of OR techniques. Among the overall goals of the book is to provide readers with descriptions of the history and other background information on a variety of industries, service or other organizations in which decision making is an important component of their daily operations. The book considers all methods of optimum decision making in order to improve performances. It also compares possible solutions obtained by different approaches, concluding with a recommendation of the best among them for implementation. By exposing students to a variety of applications in a variety of areas and explaining how they can be modeled and solved, the book helps students develop the skills needed for modeling and solving problems that they may face in the workplace. Each chapter of "Case Studies in Operations Research: Applications of Optimal Decision Making" also includes additional data provided on the book's website on Springer.com. These files contain a brief description of the area of application, the problem and the required outputs. Also provided are links to access all the data in the problem. Finally there are project exercises for students to practice what they have learnt in the chapter, which can also be used by instructors as project assignments in their courses.

While many business schools are teaching Global Operations Strategy with self-made teaching materials, there are no such textbooks. Combining practical approaches with detailed theoretical underpinnings, this book provides theories, tools, frameworks, and techniques for global operations strategy, and brings real world perspectives to students and managers. Each chapter includes definition of key terms, introduction of fundamental theories, several short case examples, one long new case to explain the associated theories, and recommended further reading.

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.

This book provides new and innovative insights into the field of management and organization inquiry through theory, method, and research. It provides extensive coverage of the 7S structure that has been so transformational for the field: Storytelling, System, Sustainability, Science, Spirit, Spirals, and Sociomateriality, showing how they evolved, how they interact, and possible futures for this discipline. These themes emerged during the 25 years of the Standing Conference for Management and Organizational Inquiry (Sc'Moi). We realized that we have to make space and time to get off the path of 'business-as-usual' ways of working. We know how to make organizations more efficient, but we cannot steer them away from a short-term, quarterly return mindset. It takes a long temporal horizon to understand how we are depleting the resources that future generations will need to survive. The Emerald Handbook of Management and Organization Inquiry shines a light on a brighter way of working for the future: one that accommodates living and working within the limits of the world's resources.

This is the first book to present marketing strategy of high-tech products and services in a legal, economic, and global context. From software to hardware, from pharmaceuticals to digital movies and TV, the authors argue that the understanding of intellectual property rights (IPRs) is essential to devising effective marketing strategies.

In this book, the theory, methods and applications of separable optimization are considered. Some general results are presented, techniques of approximating the separable problem by linear programming problem, and dynamic programming are also studied. Convex separable programs subject to inequality/ equality constraint(s) and bounds on variables are also studied and convergent iterative algorithms of polynomial complexity are proposed. As an application, these algorithms are used in the implementation of stochastic quasigradient methods to some separable stochastic programs. The problems of numerical approximation of tabulated functions and numerical solution of overdetermined systems of linear algebraic equations and some systems of nonlinear equations are solved by separable convex unconstrained minimization problems. Some properties of the Knapsack polytope are also studied. This second edition includes a substantial amount of new and revised content. Three new chapters, 15-17, are included. Chapters 15-16 are devoted to the further analysis of the Knapsack problem. Chapter 17 is focused on the analysis of a nonlinear transportation problem. Three new Appendices (E-G) are also added to this edition and present technical details that help round out the coverage. Optimization problems and methods for solving the problems considered are interesting not only from the viewpoint of optimization theory, optimization methods and their applications, but also from the viewpoint of other fields of science, especially the artificial intelligence and machine learning fields within computer science. This book is intended for the researcher, practitioner, or engineer who is interested in the detailed treatment of separable programming and wants to take advantage of the latest theoretical and algorithmic results. It may also be used as a textbook for a special topics course or as a supplementary textbook for graduate courses on nonlinear and convex optimization.

The book presents new developments in the dynamic modeling and optimization methods in environmental economics and provides a huge range of applications dealing with the economics of natural resources, the impacts of climate change and of environmental pollution, and respective policy measures. The interrelationship between economic activities and environmental quality, the development of cleaner technologies, the switch from fossil to renewable resources and the proper use of policy instruments play an important role along the path towards a sustainable future. Biological, physical and economic processes are naturally involved in the subject, and postulate the main modelling, simulation and decision-making tools: the methods of dynamic optimization and dynamic games.

With the influence of operations research and management science, business and administration methods have made significant strides in advancing the effective application methods for decision-making processes. Management Science, Logistics, and Operations Research examines related research in decision, management, and other behavioral sciences in order to exchange and collaborate on information among business, industry, and government. This book presents innovative theories and practices in operations research and is essential for practitioners, educators, and researchers for improving business functions and decision making.

This third volume in the Routledge Focus on Women Writers in Organization Studies series challenges us to think again about the implications of gender, embodiment and fluidity for organizing and managing. The themes of this book disrupt our understanding of dualisms between sex (men and women), gender (masculinity and femininity) and mind / body, and in so doing analyze the ways in which dominant power relations constitute heteronormativity throughout organizational history, thereby reinforcing mainstream management research and teaching. By centring the work of women writers, this book gives recognition to their thinking and praxis; each writer making political inroads into changing the lived experiences of those who have suffered discrimination, exclusion and marginalization as they consider the ways in which organizational knowledge has tended to privilege rather than problematize masculinity, fixity, control, normativity, violence and discrimination. The themes and authors (Acker, de Beauvoir, Halberstam, Kosofsky Sedgwick, Kristeva, Yourcenar) covered in this book are important precisely because they are not generally encountered in mainstream writing on management and organization studies. They are significant to the study and analysis of organizations because they demonstrate how our understanding of managing and organizing can be transformed when other voices/bodies/genders write on what it is work, live, lead and relate to self and others. All the writers turn to the ways in which individuals matter organizationally, acknowledging that lived experiences are a source of political and ethical practice. Each Woman Writer is introduced and analyzed by experts in organization studies. Further reading and accessible resources are also identified for those interested in knowing more. This book will be relevant to students, researchers and practitioners with an interest in business and management, organizational studies, critical management studies, gender studies and sociology. Like all the books in this series, it will also be of interest to anyone who wants to see, think and act differently.

There have been two critical leadership approaches. First Generation Leadership (command and control) was the dominant model until the 1940s. Second Generation Leadership (compliance coupled with rewards and punishments) is still dominant today. This approach is being rejected by 'Generation Y ', threatening the longevity of traditional organisations. In Third Generation Leadership and the Locus of Control, Douglas Long acknowledges the need for a leadership approach that elicits engagement, commitment, and enhanced personal, group, and organisational accountability. This is Third Generation Leadership. At its core lies the issue of where we centre our brain's locus of control and how this impacts on our understanding of and approach to leadership. With examples from everyday situations, underpinned by research, this book is about understanding and applying aspects of neuroscience critical for tomorrow's world. It provides a framework for addressing problems through insights into how the way we use our brains affects values, worldviews and behaviours. The author introduces the concept of 'red zone - blue zone' to explain the differences between a brain controlled by its stem-limbic areas (red zone) and the limbic-cortical cortex areas (blue zone). This becomes a short hand for describing and applying knowledge from neuroscience to encourage practitioners in leadership and management roles to achieve desired outcomes through becoming acquainted with different areas of their brain. Anyone grappling with what is required to deal with Generation Y people in a networked and mobile age will welcome this introduction to the world of third generation leadership.

Decision makers in the Renewable Energy sector face an increasingly complex social, economic, technological, and environmental scenario in their decision process. Different groups of decision-makers become involved in the process, each group bringing along different criteria therefore, policy formulation for fossil fuel substitution by Renewable Energies must be addressed in a multi-criteria context. Multi Criteria Analysis in the Renewable Energy Industry is a direct response to the increasing interest in the Renewable Energy industry which can be seen as an important remedy to many environmental problems that the world faces today. The multiplicity of criteria and the increasingly complex social, economic, technological, and environmental scenario makes multi-criteria analysis a valuable tool in the decision-making process for fossil fuel substitution. The detailed chapters explore the use of the Multi-criteria decision-making methods and how they provide valuable assistance in reaching equitable and acceptable solutions in the selection of renewable energy projects. Common multi-criteria decision-making methods including Analytical Hierarchy Process, PROMETHEE, ELECTRE, TOPSIS and VIKOR are explored in detail with an application case of each method included at the end of each chapter. As such, Multi Criteria Analysis in the Renewable Energy Industry is an ideal resource for those groups of individuals, institutions and administration such as local authorities, academic institutions, environmental groups, and governments that, through their priorities and evaluation systems, have interests at stake and directly or indirectly influence the decision-making process.

There are some events in life that are inevitable, and the emergence of problems in the workplace is one. Solutions sets out to provide remedies that are accessible, practical, meaningful, and final. Well organized, and referenced to specific operations, this book provides troubleshooting and other assistance, and serves as an encyclopedic reference for answers to organizational problems for managers and practitioners. All the functional activities and operations of organizations are included, so that almost any problem or issue that may occur will be addressed in one or more chapters. Readers will be able to quickly locate, understand and use a specific tool or technique to solve a problem. The different tools available are described, or a single most useful tool indicated. The tool is then explained in depth with an example of how it can be used. The strengths and weaknesses of individual tools are identified and there are suggestions for further help. Solutions is essential for anyone wanting to learn the basics of business problem solving and those who might know the basics but want to expand their understanding.

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.

This book presents the state-of-the-art in theory and practice regarding similarity and distance measures for intuitionistic fuzzy sets. Quantifying similarity and distances is crucial for many applications, e.g. data mining, machine learning, decision making, and control. The work provides readers with a comprehensive set of theoretical concepts and practical tools for both defining and determining similarity between intuitionistic fuzzy sets. It describes an automatic algorithm for deriving intuitionistic fuzzy sets from data, which can aid in the analysis of information in large databases. The book also discusses other important applications, e.g. the use of similarity measures to evaluate the extent of agreement between experts in the context of decision making.

This edited volume highlights recent research advances in humanitarian relief logistics. The contributed chapters span the spectrum of key issues and activities from preparedness to mitigation operations (response), planning and execution. The volume also presents state-of-the-art methods and systems through current case studies.

Significant issues in planning and execution of humanitarian relief logistics discussed in this volume include the following:

Approaches that tackle realistic relief distribution networks. In addition to large-scale computing issues, heuristics may handle the complexity and particularities of humanitarian supply chains
Methods that integrate real-time information while effectively coping with time pressure and uncertainty, both of which are inherent to a disaster scene
Judicious recourse strategies that allow a quick and effective restoration of pre-planned solutions whenever an unpredictable event occurs
Coordination of multiple parties that are often involved in managing a disaster, including NGOs, local, state and federal agencies.

This volume provides robust evidence that research in humanitarian logistics may lead to substantial improvements in effectiveness and efficiency of disaster relief operations. This is quite encouraging, since the unique characteristics of disaster scenes provide significant opportunities for researchers to investigate novel approaches contributing to logistics research while offering a significant service to society.

Previous editions of Action Learning in Practice established this authoritative overview of action learning around the world. Over the last decade the move towards action-based organizational learning and development has accelerated, and action learning is now an established part of the education and development mainstream in large and small organizations. Fully revised and updated, this fourth edition covers the origins of action learning with Reg Revans' ideas, and looks at their development and application today. Action learning is self-directed learning through tackling business and work problems with the support of peers and colleagues. A professional and diverse workforce, attracted, influenced and developed in this way is more able to deal effectively with the growing complexity and pressures of working life. As the limits of conventional training and development become more obvious, leaders are increasingly attracted to action-based approaches to learning when seeking better outcomes and returns on investment.

Why do carefully planned projects fail? Projects are affected, for good or ill, by the humans who undertake them. If the plan fails to take account of the psychology of managing people and the psychology of managing change there may be trouble ahead. Sharon De Mascia's Project Psychology uses human behaviour and emerging psychological models to provide an insight into the successful management of people in projects. By selecting the right team, facilitating a common vision and by gaining a psychological understanding of how the team and the project stakeholders interact together, a project manager improves the chance of a successful outcome. Whether you are looking to set up and manage a new project or working to develop the competence and maturity of your organization's project management capability, Project Psychology will provide you with insights and tools for making sense of the people involved and for managing them to best effect.

"Optimal Design of Complex Mechanical Systems" presents the foundations and practical application of multi-objective optimization methods to Vehicle Design Problems with an extensive overview of examples. The first part provides an introduction and a general theoretical information about the optimization of complex mechanical systems and multi-objective optimization methods. Several presented applications such as the global approximation approach are brand new in literature and extensively exposed the first time in this book. The second Part of the book shows some examples of the application of the proposed methods to the solution of real vehicle design problems.