Transportation management in today's consumer goods industry can be characterized by a high proportion of outsourced transportation services. Due to rising freight costs consumer goods manufacturers are seeking opportunities to increase the efficiency of their transportation network. This book presents an operational transportation planning problem typical of the consumer goods industry focusing on a network of suppliers, production facilities and warehouses. With respect to the large share of outsourcing in these networks a detailed analysis of freight costs based on contractual agreements is provided. From this analysis a number of opportunities for efficiency gains are identified and consolidated in an operative transportation planning problem that is numerically investigated. Furthermore, an overview of processes and organizational requirements in transportation management is given with special focus on the integration of existing commercial Transportation Management Systems (TMS).

International marketing consultant Russell Miller takes a close, pragmatic look at the movement to privatization that is sweeping the important markets of Western and Central Europe, Latin America, and Asia, and lays out the business opportunities and challenges that U.S. corporations and others worldwide will find there. He identifies the market dynamics created by newly privatized companies, the problems of reaching them, and the approach strategies that U.S. and other companies would find most productive, such as the creation of strategic alliances, enterprise restructurings, expanded technical relationships, and export market development. He also identifies the methods, objectives, and locations of leading privatization programs. The result is a rich, useful study of the vast new markets now opening up worldwide, and insights into how corporations here and abroad can access them and benefit from them. Essential reading for top-level executives in corporations with aspirations abroad, and for their marketing, strategic planning, and international business development staffs. During the past decade, thousands of former state-controlled companies in more than 100 different countries have entered the private sector. These firms range in size and commercial significance from small family-owned kiosks in Russia to some of the largest, most influential corporations in Western and Central Europe, Latin America, and Asia. Miller provides a comprehensive, business-oriented perspective on the origin and geographic expansion of the privatization movement, and describes the methods that governments use and the objectives they hope to achieve in the divestment of state assets. He identifies theformative influences on these new companies, as well as the operating needs created by the privatization process. Privatization-intensive markets are examined in relation to their importance, type of companies involved, and the challenges they present. Miller's book also discusses alternate methods of market expansion, such as reaching newly privatized firms through a strategic marketing program. His book will be essential reading for academicians and graduate students in international business and world trade, as well as their practitioner counterparts in corporations and multilateral development agencies.

This book deals with how coaching interventions can drive a journey of transformational change at individual, team, and organizational levels. As a result, coaching interventions serve to create more reflective people, who in turn, create better organizations. The group coaching methodology, used by the INSEAD Global Leadership Center (IGLC) and adopted by the Center for Leadership Development Research (CLDR) at the European School of Technology and Management (ESMT), Berlin, is the basis for developing the theoretical assumptions behind the chapters. Through sharing research methodologies, and describing intervention and change techniques used in the leadership development and education of executive coaches, the book sheds light on how the 'magic' of coaching works, what coaches actually do, and how their clients respond.
This book is a joint project between the IGLC and the CLDR. In compiling it, we have involved academics who conduct research, teach, and consult; leadership development coaches; change consultants; and executives who adopted IGLC methods for reflection on leadership development opportunities and challenges. We have also included people who have experienced IGLC methods in the process of their developmental journeys. They have collaborated, consulted their research and practice notes, analyzed data from inquiry projects, and shared their personal experiences in individual essays.

By bringing together and critically engaging with accounts of certain themes in business and labour history, and utilizing original research, this book aims to widen understanding of industrial society and provide a background to further study and research in the area management and labour relations history.

Improved interoperability between public organizations as well as between public and private organizations is of critical importance to make electronic government more successful. ""E-Government Interoperability and Information Resource Integration: Frameworks for Aligned Development"" focuses on the integration of new technologies into digital government, generating new insights into e-government interoperability. This book will benefit systems designers, developers, and programmers in public and private software organizations who need a larger perspective of interoperability when solving technical problems.

Economic reason, especially managerial rationality, stands for the trivial inarguable truths in modern society. But where do they come from? Why are the truths of rational logic true? Are they the laws of nature perhaps to be found in the matter of the universe? Are they inscribed into our genes? The answer is 'no'. Reason is culture. The Production of Seriousness argues that capacities initially common to all higher living have developed into a cultural heritage of sophisticated and well articulated ideas about a logic of incontestably true rational choice. The first half of this book sorts out the basic elements in our ideas of rational choice; the second half is directed at the concept of 'culture'. The concept 'meme' is used to show how simple memetic mechanisms irresistibly lead to constant dynamic forces, driving cultural evolution and, thereby, to the formation of modern ideas about absolute and unassailable rational reason.

Ministry Mess Management is directed principally at Christian ministry leaders and presumes that Christian ministry leaders subscribe to biblically based principles and Christ-centered management. It is our humble attempt to examine ministry failures and malperformance rooted in breeches of one or more of those biblical principles. We will demonstrate the close link between biblical principles and wise management, indeed a linkage based in God's reality. They go hand in hand. Necessary management decisions, including gritty and distasteful ones such as terminations, should be as much grounded in biblical principles as good management principles, not simply pragmatism or financial need. Furthermore, we invite you to think, and to frame, organizational behavior (and failure) within these values and wisdom. We wish to encourage, even urge, Christ-centered boards and managers to discerningly understand, detect and courageously be able to expeditiously act, yet with grace, out of a sense of biblical necessity in an organizational context when danger signs based both in biblical and sound management principles are flashing warnings. Governing and executive leadership are sobering responsibilities with, we believe, transcendent effects.

The study of individual agency, innovation and entrepreneurship is currently experiencing a new birth in management and organization research. As a matter of fact, the dynamics of institutional entrepreneurship, of path creation and disruptive change, have reached the general discourse on organization and management. While this is certainly welcome, one runs the danger of overlooking the power of self-reinforcing processes in and among organizations. Such dynamics run, to a large extent, beyond the control and attention of individuals and organizations and may thus constitute tenacious limits to the innovative endeavors aforementioned. This volume is dedicated to the theoretical and empirical study of self-reinforcements and decidedly redirects attention to these processes, including: escalating commitment, organizational imprinting and path dependence, and sheds light on the genesis and rise of their pervasive influence. It includes a selection of papers, most of which have were presented and discussed at the sub-theme on "Self-reinforcing organizational processes" of the 27th EGOS Colloquium held in 2011 in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Rapid social change requires that major institutions adapt. Management professionals who are called in to help presumably know what to do, but in fact their typical ways of working are anachronistic. Many professionals tacitly assume stability and a level of knowledge that no longer exists. They devise change programs that, while consistent with cultural expectations and professional standards, are flawed from the start and may actually reduce institutional capacity to adapt. Their practices and culture were developed for a different time and are ill-suited to fluid and highly interconnected situations. The very people who are relied upon for adaptive solutions are preventing what they should be providing.

Weaknesses of four familiar patterns of professional thinking are reviewed. Each puts society at risk:

- a rational pattern locks in optimal solutions that rapidly become obsolete

- a focused pattern is blind to reconfiguration options and the influence of external relationships

- a principled pattern fails to apprehend and develop the unique opportunities of a situation

- a interested pattern undercuts common interests that are already imperiled

An ominous feature of these at-risk patterns is the lack of awareness of limitations or of how the professional is included within the problematic situations to be addressed.

A different pattern is described - "reflexive practice" - that takes turbulence seriously and does not make convenient, traditional, and incorrect assumptions about stability, certainty, and the capacity of the professional for insight, foresight, and separation from the problem. These practitioners promote adaptive strategies appropriate for turbulent situations. Distinguishing features of these strategies include rapid generation and pruning of options, building capacity and readiness for continuous modification and reconfiguration, a greater comprehension of external changes, and reliance on mutual interaction through networks across boundaries.

Examples of reflexive practice, and the contrasting failures of at-risk practices, are traced through domains where the need for adaptation is acute - in national security, economics, energy, and environment. Personal characteristics and education of the reflexive practitioner are examined in greater detail. A simple survey of guests on C-SPAN illustrates the prevalence of the various types and their difference.

Reflexive practice is the most appropriate pattern for thinking and action for management professionals under current conditions, and in particular when devising responses to global threats. The thinking pattern remains fallible, however, and will often violate standards and appear weak in comparison with other types. This condition will persist until professional cultures themselves become adapted to the times.

Man has always had a weakness for aesthetics, which secretly catch, enchant and seize the attention. Size and colour, form and rhythm affect the desire to say yes or no.
In modern society art is pure and ruthless. But a price has been paid for this freedom: art has become irrelevant.
The opposite of pure art is applied art, which not only must be aesthetically satisfying, but must also fulfil economic, political or religious considerations.

Aesthetic communication explores how organizations use aesthetics. Beginning with an exciting chapter on aesthetic art and applied art it follows with an in-depth analysis of the different fields of organizational aesthetics;
- Image, or the creation of an attractive veil;
- rhetoric, or the use of words to affect people;
- narrative, or the construction of seducing contexts;
- design, or how to impregnate ordinary things with attraction and identity;
- advertisement, or how to insert products in a heavenly world; and
- architecture or how to use buildings to tell about greatness and power.

Success in solution business starts by accepting that solution" "business is a separate business model, not simply another product category or an extension of the existing product business. This book identifies the business model areas that firms need to focus on when transforming into solution business. It further organizes these areas into three sets of capabilities and practices: commercialization, industrialization and solution platforms. This is the first book to take a comprehensive view of success in solution business and its relevance therefore extends to all functions of firms wanting to become solution providers as well as to many managerial levels. The book will also help you self-assess how ready your organization is for success in solution business.

Demystifying Talent Management questions the explanation of talent, that anyone who has 'more' has a talent, and demonstrates how the term 'talent' has become an empty signifier. The book asks if talent exists at all, and reflects on what the consequences for talent management within business and sports would be if this were the case.

Chris Termeer is said to be one of the few people that can clearly explain the vast complexities of the oil and natural gas industry in non-technical language for an average person. His book, Fundamentals of Investing in Oil and Gas, uses 250 + detailed pictures, graphs, and necessary visual illustrations, combined with thorough, comprehensive descriptions and details to aid the reader.

This book explores the reasons why American industry was so slow to respond to the challenge of high quality goods from Japan in the postwar period.

The current crisis has rocked the financial system worldwide and has cast doubt on the effectiveness of the existing regulatory regime. Thousands of firms have gone bankrupt and many financial institutions were bailed out by governments. The effects of the crisis have shaken emerging and developing markets alike and have not spared neither small nor large businesses.

Many scholars and practitioners attribute the roots of the crisis to failures and weaknesses in the way corporate governance has been practiced since the mid-1990s. Lax board oversight of top management, short-termism and self-interested behavior have been fingered as the culprits behind recent financial turmoil.

This book highlights the recent developments and new trends in corporate governance. The eighteen chapters, written by leading academics and experts, can assist corporate executives, governance bodies, investors, market regulators, and policymakers in having a global picture of major corporate governance issues.

This book highlights the recent developments and new trends in corporate governance. The eighteen chapters, written by leading academics and experts, can assist corporate executives, governance bodies, investors, market regulators, and policymakers in having a global picture of major corporate governance issues.

This title presents an organisational perspective of social enterprises, which allows us to analyse issues such as their governing structure, their modes of operation and their marketing strategies, and to begin to formulate some theoretical constructs on how these entities can survive and thrive.

The Poetic Organization explores the inherent aspects of organization that revolve around poetic processes. This book is a commentary on poetic elements in organization that are critical to developmental areas of organizations, yet poetics are rarely given the attention deserved.

Industrial and Organizational Psychology Help the Vulnerable documents a new direction for industrial and organizational psychology. The chapters are written by psychologists who have used the methods, procedures and theories of industrial and organizational psychology to help the vulnerable people of the world.

Written by the world's leading academics in the outsourcing field, this books gives the most recent overview of developments in research and practice. It focuses on new practices in innovation, offshoring, onshoring, capabilities, project management and cloud services, offering a distinctive theory of outsourcing.

Modern manufacturing requires information systems that integrate process design and costing data, allowing rapid assessment of 'what if' scenarios. This book details the development of such systems with a focus on the data schema and user interface design.

Organizational trust is a subject which has over the past decade become of increasing importance to organizational theory and research. This book examines what trust is, how it is developed and maintained, its underpinnings, manifestations, and its fragility, through a presentation and discussion of key readings.

Much has been written about equal opportunity issues but little has been published about how organisations might provide more structure and support to ensure women's progress to the most senior business levels. This book looks at the career experiences of a group of women managers and consider what helps, and what still hinders their progress.

Making Innovation Last considers the long term success of a firm. Authored by a trio of top international scholars who present pioneering new work on what it takes to create long term growth, the book examines the internal conditions that are likely to encourage sustainable innovation, as well as what a culture of innovation should look like.

Some vanguard companies have evolved to a higher level of decentralization originating in the enabling-and-autonomy paradigm. A new kind of deep leadership is practiced by these spirit-driven organizations. This book brings together theory and case studies to cover historical origins and developments of both types of decentralization.

Transnational Corporations and Transnational Governance examines the different kinds of distance-related barriers related to cross-border investment. Different forms of governance, whether inside the firm or as part of its network of external relationships, have the aim of reducing uncertainty and creating a more predictable environment.