Organizational Behavior provides the information you want, when you want it. Reflecting the most recent research and events within the field of OB, the 19th Edition continues its hallmark focus on clear writing, cutting-edge content, and intuitive pedagogy. There's a reason why Robbins's textbooks have educated millions of students and have been translated into 20 languages: because of a commitment to provide engaging, cutting-edge material that helps you understand and connect with this important field of study. This print textbook is available for students to rent for their classes. The Pearson print rental program provides students with affordable access to learning materials, so they come to class ready to succeed.

This book encompasses eleven chapters dealing with some of the most important issues in the field of human resource management through the exploration of four key themes: drawing the scenario, the pivots of human capital, measuring human capital, and good practices from abroad.

This revised and updated edition of RahiM's classic work on managing conflict in organizations presents new evidence that suggests, contrary to generally accepted views, that organizational conflict need not be minimized or avoided in all cases. Some conflicts are functional and others are dysfunctional. Substantive or task-related conflict is functional for nonroutine tasks, but affective conflicts are dysfunctional irrespective of the task conditions. Classifying conflicts as intrapersonal, interpersonal, intragroup, or intergroup, Rahim explains how to diagnose conflict, how to intervene effectively, and how to handle all the different types of conflict that typically arise in organizations.

RahiM's systematic approach to conflict management identifies five styles of handling conflict (integrating, obliging, dominating, avoiding, and compromising). These styles may be used in the course of an intervention, a technique that enables managers to minimize affective conflict while attaining and maintaining a moderate amount of substantive conflict at the individual, group, and intergroup levels. RahiM's book will be of interest to scholars, students, and practitioners in management, organizational psychology, human resources management, and communication.

There is a much better chance to politically establish a strategy in your company if strategy development is already tactically thought-out and all involved persons are included in an intelligent manner. This book demonstrates how to shape this process to ensure that a sustainable strategy is generated that ensures economic stability, uniquely positions the company and can readily be implemented. After all, strategy for its own sake is worthless - what counts is implementation and results. The centre stage of strategy process is taken by the intelligent use and combination of methodological tools. Numerous case studies from enterprises and medium-sized businesses illustrate strategy work in a vivid and clear manner. "

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).

This third volume of ""LMX Leadership: The Series"" addresses the question of how leaders prepare their teams for required loosely directed, highly coordinated, and above all, flexible operations. It is our hope that this volume will stimulate scholarly sweat, blood, and tears needed to make continued progress toward our goal of understanding how the powerful tools of relational leadership can be employed properly to create the flexible organizational structures required to compete successfully in the environmental turbulence of the 21st century. As we stated before, the rapidly changing information age is all around us and we are struggling to cope with our out-dated, rigid bureaucratic structures. The ""China Price"" has redefined the standards of performance world wide and they cannot be met with obsolete organizing designs.

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.

Internal and external advocacy is a complex communication process, with many interwoven purposes, methods, and expected (or unexpected) outcomes. Judith Hoover and her contributors show what the advocacy processes are, using a fascinating set of case histories, and then analyze and evaluate them by means of rhetorical, cultural, critical, and argumentation theories. In doing so they blend organizational communication and classical rhetorical theory, and thus extend the concept of corporate advocacy into new areas of study. An important resource for teachers and students of communication theory and practice, and an unusual insight for corporate communication specialists.

In fourteen case studies analyzed through three significant communication theory perspectives, Hoover and her contributors examine the concept of advocacy by looking at corporate rhetoric, corporate cultures, and the hidden sources of power inherent in both. We listen to the messages of corporate spokespersons such as Lee Iacocca. We observe the internal cultures of business and industry. We investigate the meanings of such terms as Wall Street and consumerism. We broaden our view to include not only union advocacy, but also the role of language in the organizational distribution of power. By synthesizing these cases through yet a fourth perspective, the book not only extends the concept to recognize internal advocacy processes but also reveals the complexity of advocacy strategies that must be designed to accomplish multiple purposes and that must respond to multilayered and interconnected contexts.

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.

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.

This Handbook provides authoritative up-to-date scholarship and debate concerning creativity at work, and offers a timely opportunity to re-evaluate our understanding of creativity, work, and the pivotal relationship between them. Far from being a new arrival on the scene, the context of work has always been a place shaped and sharpened by creativity, as well as a site that determines, where, when, how, and for whom creativity emerges. Structured in four parts - Working with Creativity (the present); Putting Creativity to Work (in an organizational context); Working in the Creative Industries (creative labour); and Making Creativity Work (the future) - the Handbook is an inspirational learning resource, helping us to work with creativity in innovative ways. Providing a cutting edge, interdisciplinary, diverse, and critical collection of academic and practitioner insights, this Handbook ultimately conveys a message of hope: if we take better care of creativity, our creativity will better care for us.

This book presents a comprehensive overview of enterprise architecture management with a specific focus on the business aspects. While recent approaches to enterprise architecture management have dealt mainly with aspects of information technology, this book covers all areas of business architecture from business motivation and models to business execution. The book provides examples of how architectural thinking can be applied in these areas, thus combining different perspectives into a consistent whole. In-depth experiences from end-user organizations help readers to understand the abstract concepts of business architecture management and to form blueprints for their own professional approach. Business architecture professionals, researchers, and others working in the field of strategic business management will benefit from this comprehensive volume and its hands-on examples of successful business architecture management practices.

This book focuses on the core theoretical concept of "Ma thinking" - an idea that serves as springboard for the thoughts and actions of distinguished practitioners, innovators, and researchers. The theoretical and practical importance of the Ma concept in new innovation activities lies in the thinking and activities of the leading practitioners. However, there is little academic research clarifying these characteristic dynamic transition mechanisms and the synthesis of diverse paradoxes through recursive activities between formal and informal organizations to achieve integration of dissimilar knowledge.

This is the first book to offer a complete spectrum of the role that operations research has played and can play in the improvement of North American freight railroads. It explores how decisions are made at railroads, contains examples of the mathematical programming formulations to the complex problems, and provides insights into real-world applications. The handbook is divided into eleven chapters, covering topics including scheduling problems, empty railcar distribution, and intermodal rail. These topics have been specifically selected to offer a thorough examination of the application of operations research at freight railroads. The chapters are written by recognized award-winning scholars and practitioners with a deep knowledge and understanding of their specific topics. The Handbook of Operations Research Applications at Railroads is an ideal resource for academics, experienced researchers, and consultants in the field.

This book concretely defines the concept of learning agility and offers a business case for why organizations of all types should concentrate on building and sustaining this approach. It provides readers with a holistic approach towards the topic, and helps leaders leverage the learning agility of individual employees to sustain a learning-agile workplace culture. Synthesizing academic research and practical approaches, this book takes leaders through ways to interview and assess potential employees for learning agility, develop and foster an environment for learning agility, and measure the results of a learning agile workplace. The authors present an innovative learning agility assessment which has been developed, tested, and implemented by clients and outline metrics which can measure the results of a learning agile workforce. This little-understood but highly advantageous approach is crucial for leaders to understand if they wish to deliver results and impact their organizations' bottom line.

In a world of increasing financial uncertainty and growing unemployment, the macroeconomic contribution of SMEs is more important than ever. Development of a vibrant, sustainable small firm sector is dependent on sufficient resourcing of SMEs, particularly adequate capitalisation. This book provides a timely examination of SME financing and determinants of capital structure. A special feature of this book is the novel methodological approach adopted, providing an innovative perspective on SME financing. Analysis of stated financing preferences and objectives of SME owners is combined with results of statistical analysis of firm characteristics in exploring holistic explanations for observed capital structures. The uniqueness of this approach is in the contribution of data on financing preferences to supplement and contextualise results of bivariate and multivariate statistical tests. This methodology extends the SME literature, and is of interest to academics, researchers, practitioners and policy makers.

Provides an understanding of how HRM policies and practices differ across countries and how the development of management practice may be affected by different institutional and cultural contexts. Containing contributions from a range of well-respected HRM scholars across the world, this collection is based upon data from a unique research project.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.