There is hardly an aspect of internet music promotion, sale and distribution which does not have a legal dimension. Since the stakeholders in the process includes artists, their managers, music publishers, record companies, distribution companies and the consumer, the law relating to internet music distribution is extremely complex. Andrew Sparrow's Music Distribution and the Internet provides those connected to the music and media industries with a guide to the legal requirements they must meet, answering questions such as: c How should you conclude contracts with consumers over the internet? c What are the various legal terms and conditions that should govern the sale of physical product to online music buyers? c How should a website user's personal information be handled? c What limitations are there on the way this data may be used for ongoing marketing of an artist's work or the merchandise associated with it? c What are the latest copyright laws in this area and how do they apply to the internet? The book provides practical advice on how to approach key relationships with the internet buying consumer and other online media providers. The law is explained in straightforward terms and applied throughout in a music business context. Music Distribution and the Internet is an essential reference for anyone seeking to exploit and protect their rights and those of their artists in the rapidly expanding, constantly evolving and fascinating arena that is new media.

Knowledge management goes beyond data and information capture in computerized health records and ordering systems; it seeks to leverage the experiences of all who interact in healthcare to enhance care delivery, teamwork, and organizational learning. Knowledge management - if envisioned thoughtfully - takes a systemic approach to implementation that includes the embodiment of a learning culture. Knowledge is then used to support that culture and the knowledge workers within it to encourage them to share what they know, thusly enabling their peers, their organizations and ultimately their patients to benefit from their experience to proactively dismantle hierarchy and encourage sharing about what works, and what doesn't to focus efforts on improvement. Knowledge Management in Healthcare draws on relevant business, clinical and health administration literature plus the analysis of discussions with a variety of clinical, administrative, leadership, patient and information experts. The result is a book that will inform thinking on knowledge access needs to mitigate potential failures, design lasting improvements and support the sharing of what is known to enable work towards attaining high reliability. It can be used as a general tool for leaders and individuals wishing to devise and implement a knowledge-sharing culture in their institution, design innovative activities supporting transparency and communication to strengthen existing programs intended to enhance knowledge sharing behaviours and contribute to high quality, safe care.

A quality product or service is the successful and profitable outcome of organising resources, as judged by the final customer. Every business unit needs processes in order to do this effectively; and all processes must be documented so that achievements can be measured and future improvements planned and implemented. Pharmaceutical Process Design and Management takes a step-wise approach to process management. It presents the various elements comprising a process (man, machine, materials, method and environment); it looks at quality control and quality assurance, tools for quality improvements and ways of structuring a process into discrete, fully accountable elements; it proposes that for processes to run successfully, all operators must be the initial problem-solvers; finally, it illustrates how, with the right tools, every problem can be broken down into solvable elements. Learn how to deploy a science and risk-based approach to pharmaceutical manufacturing, by taking a fundamental approach to process design and management and, as a consequence, keep your customers satisfied and your profits healthy.

Many companies have adopted the approach of Material Requirements Planning (MRP) and Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP II). Despite the improvements and broadening of the MRP framework, MRP II systems still perform poorly in certain manufacturing environments. Help is at hand. This book proposes new ideas to improve the planning activities at the strategic, tactical and execution layers in manufacturing organisations. It takes into account the diverse nature of manufacturing environments. The book presents an almost unique combination of theory tested in practice, enhancing traditional manufacturing planning approaches. It is essential reading for managers and practitioners in the field, and is also suitable as an advanced text for students in industrial engineering, manufacturing and management.

Just because a problem is invisible doesn't mean it's not affecting your operation. While communication, distance, and culture are often ignored as real threats to your results, these unnoticed forces are negatively affecting companies that operate internationally. Globalization has amplified a series of obstacles we not have paid enough attention to in our organizations. Ultimately, it's humans that solve problems in coordination with other humans, and this requires excellent communication. Currently, people must coordinate actions and collaborate with teams sitting in geographically separated places. Misunderstandings and lack of clarity, however, cause high, unbudgeted costs. Global Lean: Seeing the New Waste Rooted in Communication, Distance, and Culture highlights the waste created by these interactions and adopts Lean thinking to provide methods, approaches, and real case studies to eliminate these problems at the source. As organizations evolve into global networks, Lean initiatives must now meet new needs. The book follows the story of a CEO and his company that, while successful in their local environment, are heavily impacted by new obstacles as they expand internationally. It illustrates how they adopt Lean methodologies to bring hidden problems to the surface.

Embracing the theory and practice of strategic foresight and illuminating how different schools of thought regard its role in policy making, Tuomo Kuosa describes how something not traditionally considered an independent discipline, is steadily becoming one. In The Evolution of Strategic Foresight he explains how the practice of strategic foresight has long been closely associated with the military and politics. Linking strategic thinking more broadly to futurology, however, it is quite new. Since strategic foresight refers to the practice of generating analyses of alternative futures and strategies, based on available intelligence and foreknowledge, the practice can and should be applied to companies, business sectors, national and trans-national agencies of all descriptions, and to all aspects of public policy making. The author explains its practice in terms of structure, process, and knowledge domains, and examines its methodologies and systems, along with how strategic foresight can be used to produce better knowledge and be more effectively linked to policy making. Using examples from 30 different countries and with access to interviews and workshops involving key experts, The Evolution of Strategic Foresight will be valuable to scholars, educators, students engaged in strategy and future studies, long-range, public policy and urban planners, analysts; risk assessment experts, and consultants, managers and decision makers in many organisations, public and private.

For boards and executives, high-quality and transparent information is critical to allow effective decision-making. Emerging risks are increasingly challenging issues, both in terms of threats and growth opportunities; not least since the science pertaining to these risks tends to be contested. Emerging Risks: A Strategic Management Guide restores the constructive dialogue between the business professional and the expert/scientist community, essential if companies are to anticipate, plan ahead and exploit leading-edge ideas. It provides insights into some of the major emerging risks of the 21st century and then guides organizations on how to approach and manage those risks proactively in the wake of new regulation, governance and enterprise-wide risk management. The topics covered include: nanotechnologies, covering the industrial revolution of the 21st Century; new information and communication technologies (NICT), discussing the infrastructure of the future; electromagnetic fields (EMF) and their debated health impact; chemical substances/REACH, a regulation with major economic and environmental stakes and an example of emerging risk management; biological risk and its on-going need for international surveillance; supply chain, a top management priority; and country risk, for which security and corporate social responsibility (CSR) are growing issues. The authors assess and propose a process for managing emerging risks and the strategies that need to be put in place, drawing on examples of best practice.

After a century in which charities suspected the motives of cynical business people, and business people dismissed the contributions of amateur volunteers, the two sectors are coming together today as never before. The third sector has increased its business capacity through the experience gained from a decade of providing commissioned services to the public sector. Society today expects employers to do more to engage with both communities and good causes and the business case for doing so can be and is being made. But business also realises that charities do conscience better than they can and so co-working is increasingly being sought. In Partners for Good, Tom Levitt points the way to successful partnerships at local, national and international levels. There is now even an agreed international standard on what constitutes the social responsibility obligations of organisations operating in all sectors, in all parts of the world, over and above international legal frameworks. Sustainability today refers to the triple bottom line (financial, social, environmental) rather than being a green concept alone. On the down side, grants and other funding opportunities provided by governments to the third sector over the last ten years are suddenly ending and support structures are disappearing. The incentives for forging successful and sustainable win:win partnerships between businesses and charities in the new Big Society are therefore high, however demanding the time scale on offer.

Every day human organisations fail. Building Anti-Fragile Organisations explores a powerful alternative framework for risk in the design and management of human systems. Anti-Fragility is a new way of thinking about mitigating risk that builds on earlier work on the characteristics of biological systems that, being more than just robust, actually improve their resilience through being stressed. Professor Bendell explains how applying this concept to the development and management of organisations, services and products, allows us to identify the characteristics that will not only mitigate against the realisation of hazards, but enable growth in protection, strength and anti-fragility over time. In this context, anti-fragility also encompasses flexibility, agility and the exploitation of opportunities. At the organisational level, anti-fragility (or its absence) is determined by the organisational strategy, structure and systems, its people, relationships and culture. The book focuses on establishing the Anti-Fragile concept of the firm, and explores its application in private and public sector organisations of all types. It identifies characteristics relevant to survival in a turbulent world, and how our approaches to risk and governance need to change in order to create and manage anti-fragile organisations. It provides practical insight into the concept of Anti-Fragility and its deployment within human organisations of all types, and give readers the opportunity to start to make sense to applying the concepts within their own worlds.

Retailers are in difficult times. The recession, global competition, government regulation and the growth of the Internet mean that costs are rising but margins are increasingly squeezed. Cor Molenaar's Shopping 3.0 offers an engaging, convincing and well-researched manifesto for the future of retailing; a manifesto which encourages retailers to switch their approach from a strategy that is based around transactions to one that is based around customers. Logic dictates that there is no one single strategy that will work for all retailers; some of them may indeed benefit from investing in e-retailing solutions and the Internet but for others, success will lie in developing a service based on customer experience or one with some apparently bespoke elements; a strategy to appeal to customers as individuals. Shopping 3.0 examines all these changes. It sketches the world of consumers; those who make their purchases from the comfort of their armchair and those who enjoy shopping with friends. Cor Molenaar explores the impact of changing consumer attitudes to shopping; the role of new technology in future retailing and the changing face of both city centre and out of town shops and malls. Shopping 3.0 offers a welcome helping hand for retailers, both physical and web-based shopkeepers; something to help you make sense of the ongoing revolution in shopping and to plan or adjust your business strategy to enable you not just to survive but to thrive in a world that will look very different in a few years time.

The only pocket guide to the UK building regulations on the market Succinct, portable, reliable guide to UK Building regulations Essential for anyone involved in building works or renovations in the UK

A practical and realistic guide for both external and internal service providers in an aviation context to implementing an effective way to control the service quality as perceived by their customers, Delivering Excellent Service Quality in Aviation is essential for those service providers that are not yet systematically managing their service quality. Offering a step-by-step and easy to understand framework, it also enables those service providers that are already proactively managing their service quality to build new techniques into current practice for maximum effect. By using this guide, decision-making as well as budget and capacity planning can be optimized and justified to any stakeholders in the service operation. Customer satisfaction can be improved considerably over time and, thereby, profits (or budget allocation for internal service providers). Crucially, the improvements the book provides can be systematically measured and easily disseminated throughout the organization, leading to increased levels of motivation amongst staff.

Leadership in projects has been under-represented in many of the most influential project methodologies, where the focus has been on management and process. The importance to project success of key roles such as project board member, executive sponsor, project manager, client representative or team leader, increases exponentially with the scale and complexity of the project. Kaye Remington's Leading Complex Projects draws on original, empirical research into successful leadership of complex projects, including 70 in-depth interviews with people, across a broad range of industries, selected for their roles in guiding complex projects towards successful outcomes. The book, structured around the major themes from the interviews, explains and applies emerging best-practice in a coherent and focused way. A potent combination of wisdom from leaders in practice and the latest knowledge from many fields of research will engage experienced practitioners, as well as those who are teaching and researching projects, complexity and leadership.

In The Focused Organization Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez shows you how fewer, more effectively elected and managed projects are the key to strategic and long-term success. Using his own research and work experience he explains how and why those organizations that focus on just a few key initiatives can perform significantly better than unfocused organizations, not only financially but also in achieving their strategic objectives and motivating their staff. The author introduces a new way of looking at a company through two very different and often conflicting dimensions: running-the-business and changing-the-business. What you add to one dimension you have to subtract from the other one. Finding the right balance between these two dimensions represents one of the major challenges to successful strategy execution. Becoming a focused organization involves a radical change in the way companies are organized and the way they select and manage projects - the creation of a new culture. The Focused Organization discusses the characteristics that comprise a focused organization. It describes key areas where a focused organization builds its levels of maturity; provides examples of focused organizations that outperform the rest; and explains in practical steps how all enterprises can become focused. The book finishes with a unique and inspiring case study that transports us to the early days of the current business world. Through the main character, Benny White, we learn how a business was conducted and how management evolved over decades with the introduction of business theories, including project management.

The pharmaceutical industry has encountered major shifts in recent years, both within the industry, and in its external environment. The cost of healthcare rising due to an ageing population, the intensification of regulatory requirements and mergers within the industry have led to an increased need for restructuring, cost reduction and culture change projects. Project management is the key to addressing these needs, and also to effective drug development. Given the costs of development and the critical issue of 'time to market', project management techniques - appropriately used - are a key factor in bringing a drug to market. In this book, Laura Brown and Tony Grundy's pharmaceutical expertise and experience offers the reader a guide to the most relevant project management tools and techniques and how to rigorously apply them in the pharmaceutical industry. The authors cover the technical, strategic and human aspects of project management, including contingency planning, simulation techniques and different project options. Complete with decision-tree diagrams, checklists, exercises and a full glossary, Project Management for the Pharmaceutical Industry provides clinical research, drug development and quality assurance managers or directors with a one-stop reference for successfully managing pharmaceutical projects. The text has been revised for this edition and now includes some additional material on risk management.

Spatial planning is about dealing with our 'everyday' environment. In A Planner's Encounter with Complexity we present various understandings of complexity and how the environment is considered accordingly. One of these considerations is the environment as subject to processes of continuous change, being either progressive or destructive, evolving non-linearly and alternating between stable and dynamic periods. If the environment that is subject to change is adaptive, self-organizing, robust and flexible in relation to this change, a process of evolution and co-evolution can be expected. This understanding of an evolving environment is not mainstream to every planner. However, in A Planner's Encounter with Complexity, we argue that environments confronted with discontinuous, non-linear evolving processes might be more real than the idea that an environment is simply a planner's creation. Above all, we argue that recognizing the 'complexity' of our environment offers an entirely new perspective on our world and our environment, on planning theory and practice, and on the raison d'Atre of the planners that we are. A Planner's Encounter with Complexity is organized into 17 chapters. It begins with the interplay of planning and complexity from the perspective of contemporary planning theory. It continues by critically assessing planning theory and practice in the light of the interdisciplinary debate regarding complexity thinking. As the book progresses, it positions itself ever closer to the perspective of complexity thinking, looking at the planning discipline 'from the outside in', clarifying the facets of complexity and its importance in planning. Finally, conceptual and theoretical developments towards more applied examples are identified in order to see the interplay of planning and complexity in practice. This book emphasizes the importance of complexity in planning, clarifies many of the concepts and theories, presents examples on planning and complexity, and proposes new ideas and methods for planning.

The book takes readers though a series of security and risk discussions based on real-life experiences. While the experience story may not be technical, it will relate specifically to a value or skill critical to being a successful CISO. The core content is organized into ten major chapters, each relating to a "Rule of Information Security" developed through a career of real life experiences. The elements are selected to accelerate the development of CISO skills critical to success. Each segments clearly calls out lessons learned and skills to be developed. The last segment of the book addresses presenting security to senior execs and board members, and provides sample content and materials.

The adoption of Information Technology (IT) and Information Systems (IS) represents significant financial investments, with alternative perspectives to the evaluation domain coming from both the public and private sectors. As a result of increasing IT/IS budgets and their growing significance within the development of an organizational infrastructure, the evaluation and performance measurement of new technology remains a perennial issue for management. This book offers a refreshing and updated insight into the social fabric and technical dimensions of IT/IS evaluation together with insights into approaches used to measure the impact of information systems on its stakeholders. In doing so, it describes the portfolio of appraisal techniques that support the justification of IT/IS investments. Evaluating Information Systems explores the concept of evaluation as an evolutionary and dynamic process that takes into account the ability of enterprise technologies to integrate information systems within and between organisations. In particular, when set against a backdrop of organisational learning. It examines the changing portfolio of benefits, costs and risks associated with the adoption and diffusion of technology in today's global marketplace. Finally approaches to impact assessment through performance management and benchmarking is discussed.

The author of this thought provoking addition to Gower's Transformation and Innovation Series has worked as a management consultant in the Arab Middle East for 25 years. In Islamic Values and Management Practices she acknowledges that businesses and other organizations in the region face urgent concerns in relation to quality and transformation, but argues that these issues might be more appropriately addressed by the application of an Islamic Management Model, rather than the 'Western' one hitherto applied. Over time, a set of management systems based on Islamic values has been developed by the author. These systems recognise the need to build human organizations, socially and politically as well as commercially, and also the recognition that for Muslims, justice is the ultimate value, bringing balance between the individual's soul and spirit on the one hand, and the organization's soul and spirit on the other. This Islamic management model stresses that effectiveness is an outcome of operating efficiently and at the same time unifying the organization's objectives with those of its employees and wider society, and ensuring that at the strategic level the long view is always maintained. Recounting her own personal and business journey, Maqbouleh Hammoudeh presents the outcomes of research that has tested the application of the Islamic Management Model and its ability to deliver the desired quality and transformation outcomes in a major civic or profit making organization. At a time when many practitioners and business educators are seeking new management approaches, this revealing case study sheds light on the evolution of a contemporary theory of management for the Muslim World.

Total Organizational Excellence: Achieving world-class performance sets down an implementation framework to guide managers on how to improve business performance in all types of organization. Drawing on extensive research and case study work conducted within Oakland Consulting and its Research Division, the European Centre for Business Excellence, it shows how to set clear direction and fulfil desired goals through key business and people development processes and regular performance measurement. These are the secrets of successful strategy deployment and change management.

Change programmes in both private and public sectors have a poor record of delivering their intended value. The reasons given most often for their failure include lack of executive support or buy-in from key users, loose requirements definition, weak programme management, and plain wishful thinking. They rarely include technical limitations. Value Management puts forward the view that the true problem lies in failing to understand the causal links between the intended stakeholder outcomes and the actual programme outputs. Repeating the pattern of failure can be avoided by asking two questions: - Before implementation, what capabilities must a change programme deliver, when and in what order so as to cause intended value against a defined purpose with speed and certainty? - During and after implementation, what minor adjustments and/or major shifts are needed to be certain that the programme remains on purpose and on value? and two answers to be given: - Target, time and align change programmes to deliver maximum intended value to stakeholders - the baseline business case - track and respond to changes during and beyond implementation to ensure that the programme actually delivers or exceeds intended value - value realisation. The authors show how, by asking and answering these questions, direction and delivery of any programme can be clarified and greater economic value achieved.

This book shows how to identify potential design errors and modify procedures in the design process to mitigate design-induced error. Real life examples are used to demonstrate the points being made. Many of the concerns raised in the book have come from a worldwide study conducted with designers, managers, and end-users.

Over the last few years, games of different types have been successfully used in the teaching of production management and in the introduction of new planning methods and systems in industrial enterprises. Games have been used to explain the dynamic nature of production management and for testing new planning principles. Company-specific games have recently been involved as part of developing new production management systems.

Organisations continue to struggle with their strategies; even when they have a strategy development process, their plans rarely have the impact that was intended. Too many of their people don't know about the strategy, don't understand it or can't translate it into what it means for their role. Validating Strategies addresses the taxonomy, syntax and semantics of strategies; in other words: what does the strategy say, how does it relate to other plans, what are the causalities between the strategy and successful business outcomes and how should this all be expressed in a language that everyone in the organization can understand. The model at the heart of this book - Organisations run Projects that produce Results and enable people to Use them to create Benefits (PRUB) - offers an intuitive approach that links collaborative strategic planning and validation to project and programme management so as to create, validate and implement strategies. The strategy development and validation model offered by Phil Driver addresses the struggle of organisations to realise their strategy, replacing endless projects that don't quite seem to deliver what the organization needs with an easy-to-understand, implementable methodology that can be validated with evidence.

Companies of all kinds have fallen into some of the most fundamental of traps when it comes to consumer marketing; in assuming that the motivation that drives their customers is entirely rational. Enrico Trevisan's The Irrational Consumer builds on the ground breaking works on behavioural economics of authors such as Daniel Kahneman and Richard Thaler in order to explain the fundamental drivers of customer decisions and how to incorporate these into your business strategy. Learn how consumers respond to different offer architectures and discounts; why they sometimes struggle to see the wood for the trees in a world of ever-increasing options; what are the rules of thumb they develop for making sense of value. Behavioural economics offers organizations perspectives for engaging with customers, whose views on what to buy are strongly driven by contextual factors, such as the framework and the dynamics of choices. Enrico Trevisan's The Irrational Consumer is your 'must-have' primer to this world.