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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This book describes a variety of teaching and academic research applications that effectively utilize FlexSim to: (1) provide guidelines, methods and tools for simulation modeling and analysis in a variety of educational settings and (2) address a variety of important design and operational issues in industry. Simulation is increasingly proving to be an important tool for supporting decision-making and problem-solving processes in many disparate domains, including the design, management and improvement of a wide range of operations systems in manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, etc. Achieving resource efficiency and minimizing negative externalities from operations represent two of today's greatest challenges; modern simulation methods can help to overcome them. FlexSim is a prominent software package for developing discrete-event, agent-based, continuous, and hybrid simulations.

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.

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.

The essays collected in this volume present a broad survey of the state of the art in logistics systems research as viewed by a distinguished group of scholars. The book shows that logistics remains an active, vibrant subject of inquiry. There are several reasons for this continued development. Firstly, logistic systems are extremely complex with many inherent technical problems and fundamentally new approaches to the subject are frequently arising. Secondly, the practical world of logistics has changed markedly over the past few decades, posing significant new challenges to researchers. This volume focuses mainly on the key developments in the last decade, which has witnessed an astonishing leap in our understanding of what logistics is all about.

Organizations in the construction industry struggle with three key issues: quality management or better meeting customer expectations, supply chain management or more effectively working with suppliers to provide a seamless service to customers, and knowledge management, the challenge of learning between collaborating organisations and between people working on similar projects around the world. Excellence in these key aspects of business is the hallmark of great companies. This book tackles each of these themes, demonstrating their significance as strategic concepts for the construction sector and illustrating how development goals in each of the areas can be met. To be successful Total Quality has to impact on the organisation's Performance, which should be measured on a "balanced scorecard", including the results from the customer. This can be achieved through good Planning and improvements in Processes through involvement of the People. These 4Ps combine with the 4Cs - Customer, Culture, Communication and Commitment to provide a model for implementing total quality into construction. The book brings together, within this consistent theoretical framework, international case studies from all areas of the construction industry. These include examples as diverse as quarrying, construction, design, real estate, land development and regulatory agencies, drawn from the UK, USA, Hong Kong, Singapore Australia and Japan. Through these the authors demonstrate how a total quality or business excellence strategy can be applied in all activities in the construction supply chain to achieve world-class performance. Written by two of the world's leading experts, in a logical and very practical style, Total Quality in the Construction Supply Chain offers students and others new to the subject a clearly structured introduction to the concept of quality in the industry, while offering help and guidance to the most experienced professionals. The book should also appeal to people from all areas of the building and construction sector in any country.

Communicating with the Multicultural Consumer highlights demographic changes impacting the consumer marketplace in the United States. Growing multiculturalism creates both new opportunities for marketers as well as new challenges. With a balance of theoretical and practical perspectives, this text explores how to develop successful campaigns targeting Hispanic Americans, African Americans, and Asian Americans. Complete with current examples and case studies, it addresses the key issues that must be kept in mind when creating effective communications programs for ethnic consumers - from marketing mix elements to cultural norms and values. Communicating with the Multicultural Consumer is an ideal text for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in specialized courses dealing with ethnic advertising or marketing. It is also an effective supplementary text for introductory advertising, marketing or mass communication courses, and would be useful to advertising practitioners - whether on the client side or within the advertising agency.

On the verge of the global information society, enterprises are competing for markets that are becoming global and driven by customer demand, and where growing specialisation is pushing them to focus on core competencies and look for partnerships to provide products and services. Simultaneously the public demands environmentally sustainable industries and urges manufacturers to mind the whole life span of their products and production resources. Information infrastructure systems are anticipated to offer services enabling and catalyzing the strategies of manufacturing companies responding to these challenges: they support the formation of extended enterprises, the mastering of full product and process life cycles, and the digitalization of the development process. Information infrastructure systems would accommodate access to and transformation of information as required by the various authorized stakeholders involved in the life phases of products or production resources. Services should be available to select and present all relevant information for situations involving any kind of players, during any life phase of a product or artifact, at any moment and at any place.

First published in 1939, Management and Labour is a study of industrial organisation in the 1930s, with special reference to personnel relations. The matters dealt with include the development of systematic methods of management; 'Scientific Management' and industrial psychology; Industrial fatigue and its reduction; Working conditions and factory environment; Labour management; Foremanship; Labour turnover; Absenteeism; Arbitration and conciliation in labour disputes; Statutory and voluntary welfare; State regulation of wages; Industrial diseases and their prevention; Industrial accidents; and the problem of economic security for employees. This book will be of interest to students of business, management, labour studies, disaster management and history.

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.

What does excellent manufacturing management mean? Management texts to date have emphasized that it is, above methods such as SPC or TQM, a matter of "intangibles" and "culture". This book takes the myth out of management excellence; it can be learned and practiced: 1. Manage the four core processes, strategy formulation and deployment, product innovation, process development, and the supply chain, and 2. Pay attention to the seven dimensions of management quality, direction setting, integration, delegation, communication, participation, measurement, and employee development. Thus, we argue that an excellent manufacturing manager can move to a plant in a different industry and become, after an appropriate time to learn its specific technologies, an excellent manufacturing manager there as well. This book explains management quality and demonstrates how it is implemented, with nine plant tours through world-class factories from different industries.

Technical innovation in industry is regarded by many people as the best way of making industry more profitable. A great deal of energy and time is being expended by businessmen and by governments discussing how best to bring about technical innovation. This book, which was first published in 1987, argues that all concerned with technical innovation should bear in mind the importance of 'networks'. 'Networks' are defined as the web of contacts which exist between suppliers, customers, and producers in industry. Drawing on extensive original research, the book discusses the need for co-ordinating technical research and development with suppliers and customers and examines in detail how this should best be done. This book is ideal for students of business and economics.

This book explains the systematic structure and practical use of the new SQC application that systematically and organizationally enhances the corporate management key for the 21st century. Departing from the conventional statistical application of SQC, this book explains the SQC application for scientific problem solving and its structural framework in which SQC is utilized for discovering the cause and effect relation from the gap between a theory and the actual, eliciting a new fact and finding, and establishing a general solution that contributes to development of innovative technology. It also reports case studies in which management technology issues were solved at a manufacturer, Toyota Motor Corporation, and verifies that: 1. Application of Science SQC promotion cycle that enables creative human resources development enhances problem solving skills of the staff and business process quality, and contributes to establishing core technology; 2. Science SQC is applicable to a wide range of business types including planning, design, engineering, production, sales, and administration. In the earlier thesis, "SQC Application for Developing Individual Techniques (1992)," the author introduced an example of "SQC Renaissance" in which SQC was effectively utilized for solving engineers' immediate problems. Further, in the thesis, "Science SQC-Innovation of Business Process Quality 2OOO)," the author proposed approaches and procedures of scientific application of SQC (Science SQC) and verified their effectiveness by introducing case studies that solved contemporary engineering problems.

This two-volume handbook set introduces the state-of-the-art development in research and applications related to usability and user-experience. Volume one includes methods and techniques and volume two covers research and case Studies. This handbook set is essential for everyone that is interested in understanding how the principles of usability and user-experience can contribute to a design that ensures that the needs of the users have been properly met. The books will cover several areas, such as the conceptual aspects of usability and user-experience, the knowledge of human characteristics in design, the methodological aspects; the books will include intervention, examples of consumer products, digital systems, and augmented and virtual realities. This set will be of interest to those working in the fields of ergonomics, designers, engineers, as well as students and practitioners.

Si usted quiere entender como se origino el sistema de producci?n Toyota y por que tiene exito, debe leer este libro. Aqui encontrara una introducci?n avanzada del justo a tiempo. El mundo le debe mucho a Taiichi Ohno. Nos ha demostrado como fbricar con mayor eficacia, como reducir costos, como producir una mayor calidad, y a examinar atentamente como nosotros, en nuestra calidad de seres humanos, trabajamos en una fbrica. El relato que Ohno cuenta en este libro es brillante. Deberia ser leido por todos los gerentes. No es solo un relato acerca de la fabricaci?n; sino tambien sobre como dirigir exitosamente una empresa.

The ERP Implementation cycle is characterized by complexity, uncertainty and a long timescale. It is about people and issues that affect the business - it is a multi-disciplinary effort. This book will provide you with the practical information you will need in relation to the many issues and events within the implementation cycle. After reading this book you will be fully equipped and alerted to what is involved in an ERP implementation. ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) can be described as an integrated enterprise-wide information system. As well as handling many of the transactions found within a business it has the potential for meeting many of the information requirements of busy personnel. If used in the right hands, it may provide the business with a competitive edge. Much can go wrong during the implementation since there are many issues to deal with. From the content of this book you will gain an understanding of what can go wrong - you will be prepared in advance, and will be equipped to take preventative steps to smooth the progress of implementation. This book: Covers the multidisciplinary subject of ERP implementation Looks at a range of relevant topics including ERP market-place development, vendor selection, project management, process design and post GoLive improvements Reveals a range of issues which an implementer should be alert to right at the outset before the go-ahead is given to proceed with an implementation Features material on vendor selection, project management, training, business process re-engineering (BPR) and continuous improvement

As retail businesses migrate to the digital realm, internal information theft incidents continue to threaten on-line and off-line retail operations. The evolving propagation of internal information theft has surpassed the traditional techniques of crime prevention practices. Many business organizations search for internal information theft prevention guides that fit into their retail business operation, only to be inundated with generic and theoretical models. This book examines applicable methods for retail businesses to effectively prevent internal information theft. Information Theft Prevention offers readers a comprehensive understanding of the current status of the retail sector information theft prevention models in relation to the internationally recognized benchmark of information security. It presents simple and effective management processes for ensuring better information system security, fostering a proactive approach to internal information theft prevention. Furthermore, it builds on well-defined retail business cases to identify applicable solutions for businesses today. Integrating the retail business operations and information system security practices, the book identifies ways to coordinate efforts across a business in order to achieve the best results. IT security managers and professionals, financial frauds consultants, cyber security professionals and crime prevention professionals will find this book a valuable resource for identifying and creating tools to prevent internal information theft.

First published in 1983, this study investigates and compares three leading firms in the British iron and steel industry between 1914 and 1939, analysing their strategies, boardroom politics, and their responses to the problems posed by the Great War and by the vicissitudes of the 1920s and '30s. Jonathan Boswell illuminates certain issues that are of perennial importance for students of business: rationality and 'error' in decision-making, ethics, centralisation versus decentralisation, and the question of cyclical phases. The central theme throughout is the pursuit of three partly conflicting objectives: growth, efficiency and social action. The trade-offs between these three pursuits are used to examine significant contrasts in corporate strategies and behaviour, including towards government and public opinion. Boswell's rejection of economic determinism; his insistence that managerial influences fall into definable long-run patterns; and his theses on managerial specialisation and long-term policy biases confront fundamental issues for theories of the firm.

Assessing Business Excellence presents a strategic framework for business excellence and total quality management and shows how you can be actively involved in continuous improvement by systematically reviewing your business activities and results against holistic business excellence frameworks. For all practitioners who seek to use total quality management to improve their organization's effectiveness, efficiency and responsiveness, this title is the essential route map to business excellence. From two leading expert authors comes a book where the most recognized quality award criteria are used to explore the concepts of business excellence and self-assessment. This book: * Introduces the major business excellence and total quality frameworks including The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the European Quality Award and ISO9000:2000 * Compares the frameworks and identifies their strengths and limitations * Introduces the self-assessment process * Explores the main approaches to self-assessment * Illustrates the practical benefits of self-assessment through case examples

Portfolio management is becoming the 'must have' for organizations to prosper and survive in this decade and beyond. No longer can the organizational focus be one of following best and repeatable practices as resource limitations mean only those programs, projects, and operational work that add business value can and should be pursued. Executives are focusing on strategic ability and managing complexity, which only can be done through a disciplined portfolio process in ensuring the best mix of programs, projects, and operational work is under way. In turn, the portfolio is constantly in flux as difficult decisions are made if a project, for example, is no longer contributing to business value and providing benefits and should be terminated to reallocate resources to one of higher priority. Commitment to this difficult approach is necessary at all levels, and communication is required so everyone knows how their work contributes to the organization's strategic goals and objectives. Portfolio Management: Delivering on Strategy, Second Edition focuses on the benefits of portfolio management to the organization. Its goal is to provide senior executives a view on how portfolio management can deliver organizational strategy. The emphasis is on the specific aspects within the portfolio management discipline and how each aspect should be managed from a business perspective and not necessarily from a portfolio management perspective. Highlights of the book include: Agile portfolio management Delivering organizational value Portfolio management and uncertainty Portfolio governance Marketing a portfolio Portfolio management success Starting with a review of the project portfolio concept and its development, the book is a reference for executives and practitioners in the field, as well as a students and researchers studying portfolio management.

* A fully comprehensive guide to the entire supply chain management process as applied specifically to the fashion industry * Each chapter is complemented by an in-depth case study from a relevant global organization, alongside pedagogy to aid student comprehension, including quizzes, end-of-chapter activities, and role play scenarios. Online resources include chapter-by-chapter PowerPoint slides and a test bank. * Designed as a core textbook for Fashion Supply Chain and Operations Management modules at advanced undergraduate and postgraduate level.