This book of proceedings collectsfifty-one papers presented at the inaugural Colloquium of Administrative Science and Technology (CoAST 2013) event, held at Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia. It has been reviewed by 750 experts world-wide and covers three main areas Administrative Science and Technology, Management, and Arts and Humanities. The papers in this volume reflect:

the importance of the social sciences in academia and in the nations social-economic growth;

the multi-disciplinary and trans-disciplinary nature of academia that transcends the broad areas of the social sciences;

the increasing trend towards fundamental studies in the social sciences, management, and the arts and the humanities, which have been characterized under the overarching theme of administrative science and technology;

the growing demand for research outcomes affecting the public and private sectors service processes. The other overlapping niche areas affecting the civil service scope will ensure more interest in and readability of the findings showcased in this proceedings book;

the popular and contemporary measurement techniques and methodologies employed within the scopes of the social sciences and humanities;

the noticeably changing trends in administrative science and technology, which will greatly impact the governments of the world, allowing the development of a better understanding of governmental processes and their impact on key performance and e-service deliveries. The reporting on technology-based services will improve the public sector s agility;

a knowledge-sharing agenda for other developing and less developed nations to emulate;

some of the major generic developments that have taken place in these thematic areas of CoAST 2013."

Business Principles for Landscape Contracting, fully revised and updated in its third edition, is an introduction to the application of business principles of financial management involved in setting up your own landscape contracting business and beginning your professional career. Appealing to students and professionals alike, it will build your knowledge of financial management tools and enable you to relate their applications to real-life business scenarios. Focusing on the importance of proactive financial management, the book serves as a primer for students in landscape architecture, contracting, and management courses and entrepreneurs within the landscape industry preparing to use business principles in practice. Topics covered include: Financial management and accountability Budget development Profitable pricing and estimating Project management Creating a lean culture Personnel management and employee productivity Professional development Economic sustainability.

Most business leaders struggle mightily when transitioning from working in the U.S. or any modern country to working in Shanghai, Dubai, Nairobi or Pune. Despite organizational efforts to facilitate this transition through training and coaching, leaders often find themselves bewildered and frustrated by the unwritten and often unacknowledged cultural dictates of a given country. These leaders struggle with everything from motivating direct reports to getting deals done. They discover that their best practices have little to do with the practices that have been ingrained in societies for thousands of years. This book is written to provide inside information about working outside traditional business environments. It presents nine rules that will serve leaders well no matter where they're stationed--Asia, South America, the Middle East and elsewhere. As readers will discover, these rules are not taught in typical global leadership courses. Instead, they have emerged from the work of the authors with leading companies in foreign countries or from our efforts to coach others in all parts of the globe.

Understanding the roles of editors, and the processes of editorship in knowledge dissemination, are highly relevant issues for most scholars. Written by leading scholars with strong editorial experience, this book will serve as a guide for editors and scholars wishing to become editors in management and behavioral sciences.

Effective Project and Change Sponsorship addresses the challenges that organizations face surrounding the sponsorship of projects and change initiatives. This long overdue book provides techniques, remedies, and approaches to improve the way these initiatives are sponsored, led, and executed to ensure context, alignment, and a focus on value creation. Readers will learn key concepts about specific aspects of project sponsorship, including overcoming the most common and challenging project-related obstacles, connecting the key elements of project and change management, and advanced techniques to effectively engage stakeholders and manage their expectations. This book provides a comprehensive and holistic approach to sponsoring initiatives across the organization. It gives sponsors a toolbox to deal with a variety of challenges and situations in any type of project life cycle (including agile and waterfall). Sponsors will learn how to lead their initiatives from inception to success by reducing waste, redundancies, misunderstandings, and misalignments. In addition, they will also discover how to overcome organizational silos, effectively handle organizational politics, and facilitate the building of high-performing teams. This guide is designed for senior managers, organizational leaders, project managers, change practitioners, and anyone who is involved in leading initiatives in the organization-including managers of PMOs, members of steering committees, and "accidental" project or change sponsors.

The long planning horizon of complex projects defy the traditional project management concepts of deterministic schedules, costs, risks, and assumptions. Large cost overruns and benefit shortfalls are all too common. Virtually all major projects involve complex interfaces among diverse stakeholders, many of which have no direct contractual relationships, yet they share critical interfaces that can mean the difference between great success and huge failure. This unique book presents a holistic view of a new discipline called project interface management, which is planning, coordinating, and controlling of the work of others at project interfaces. It includes numerous processes, tools, and techniques and aligns critical interactions among project management, systems engineering, and operations management to reduce project risk and increase successful system design, development, completion, and transition of major projects. This cutting-edge text is designed for use in graduate-level project management and system engineering courses, executive education programs, and will serve as a professional reference. It will show professional project managers, systems engineers, executives, managers, and students how to plan, implement, and manage interfaces in real-world practice using a simple cost-effective approach. It is a must-read for those dealing with complex industrial projects and in government, defense, aerospace, energy, information technology, education, transportation, and infrastructure. SOFTWARE TOOLS In addition to the WAV material mentioned below, and to enhance learning and provide readers with hands-on experience in the processes described in the book, the authors have entered into an agreement with Kongsberg to allow instructors who are using the book as a textbook, along with their students who are also using the book, six-month temporary limited access to Kongsberg Seaflex WIR. In addition, this agreement allows individual readers who purchase new copies of this book from authorized resellers limited access to predefined projects. Instructors and individual book purchasers may contact Kongsberg to sign up by navigating to https://www.interfaceregister.com/imbook.aspx. Key Features * Details how project interface management can address many of the issues contributing to large cost overruns and significant under-delivery on major projects * Articulates why interface planning is critical and must align with the project plan for design, development, and delivery * Destroys the common misconceptions that project interface management is only applicable within technical or engineering functions and that acquiring an applicable software tool is all one needs to improve major capital project outcomes * Discusses the need to systematically identify, document, and manage technical, project, organizational, and industry interfaces on major projects to ensure effective system integration and adherence to project constraints, while meeting stakeholder expectations and industry regulations * Describes ways to effectively and efficiently manage interfaces during project execution that minimize the risk of rework during integration * Demonstrates how to perform interface management during project execution using an engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) project execution model * Provides practical guidance on how to plan and implement a project interface management program that incorporates proven practices in a variety of domains * WAV material for all readers includes figures and tables from the book in color, an excel workbook for setting up an interface management project, and numerous project document templates-available from the Web Added Value Download Resource Center at www.jrosspub.com * WAV material for adopting professors include a PowerPoint slide deck for all chapters, an instructor Starter Guide, and a sample course outline-available from the Web Added Value Download Resource Center at www.jrosspub.com

Strategic alliances have gained widespread attention in the business community, but success factors for cooperation have not been studied rigorously enough. This book reviews new developments in business-oriented economics in order to establish convincing arguments for the efficiency and sustainability of collaborative ventures. It builds on the rich new literature on business process redesign and corporate renewal. Most of these new management concepts still focus on intracorporate restructuring, but have not explicitly dealt with strategic alliances or other types of Inter-institutional arrangements. This book develops process redesign further to enable the study of cooperative projects and (actual symbol not reproducible) networks.

This volume is a guide to developing superior project-manager skills and competencies. Effective project management is becoming a critical mission skill for individuals and organizations in every industry. Faster product life cycles, the widespread adoption of cross-functional teams, and the increasing demands of customers are all contributing to the growing need for professional managers who know how to marshal resources, make decisions, and ensure the smooth flow of projects from idea to launch. In this work Robert Wysocki and James Lewis offer a highly practical handbook for anyone who aspires to achieve superior project-manager skills. Featuring self-assessment tools, showcasing best practices from the field, and drawing on their own experience in training project managers around the world, the authors provide a comprehensive program for crafting a career development plan and putting it into action.

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

Project management tools and techniques are an essential and integral part of all disciplines and industries. Project Management provides readers from different backgrounds with an essential toolkit to develop their knowledge, starting from the first principles progressing to a more complex understanding, with the help of an assortment of case studies, practical examples and numerical worked examples. Project Management is a user friendly guide to facilitate the learning of students regardless of their mode of study. In addition, practitioners and independent learners who are seeking to enhance their knowledge base and develop their project management skills will benefit from the practical approach adopted in this textbook; simplifying some of the challenging concepts and numerical aspects. This textbook comprises 12 chapters covering the key areas in the context of managing projects, providing a comprehensive overview of key project management skills and techniques including: * An exploration of soft and hard skills via theoretical explanation and real life cases studies; * Discussion of leadership theories and the challenges of managing multi-disciplinary project teams within varied organisational contexts, including virtual teams. * Thorough analysis and explanation of numerical techniques required for project financial appraisal, project cost estimating, budgeting, time scheduling (CPM), crashing and project performance measurement (EVA); * Recognition of varied project success criteria and the pros and cons of the traditional project management methodology versus more contemporary approaches such as agile methodologies. To help support their learning, readers have access to a range of online resources including chapter-by-chapter multiple choice questions which will enable them to assess how well they have grasped individual chapters. The text also features a range of supplementary readings, in text exercises and cases/examples to help bring concepts to life. Visit www.goodfellowpublishers/projmgmt for details. The Global Management Series is a complete portfolio of global business and management texts that successfully meets the needs of students on international undergraduate and postgraduate business and management degree courses. Each book is clear, concise and practical and has a thorough pedagogic structure to suit a 12 week semester. The series offers a flexible 'pick and mix' choice of downloadable e-chapters, so that users can select and build learning materials tailored to their specific needs. See www.goodfellowpublishers.com/GMS for details. Each book in the series is edited and contributed to by a team of experienced academics based in the UK, Dubai and Malaysia it provides an essential learning aid for students across a wide range of business and management courses and an invaluable teaching tool for lecturers and academics. Series Editors: Robert MacIntosh, Professor of Strategy and Kevin O'Gorman, Professor of Management, both at Heriot-Watt University, UK. About the Editors: Amos Haniff is Associate Professor of Project Management at Heriot Watt University, UK and Deputy Head of the Department of Business Management within the School of Management and Languages. Mohamed Salama is Associate Professor and Director of Corporate Executive Relations within the School of Management and Languages, Heriot Watt University, Dubai Campus.

This volume goes beyond the theory of team dynamics and project management to present real world applications. The culmination of years of experience and research, the book describes practical techniques for building successful high performance project teams using actual examples from high tech companies. A concise guide for both new and experienced managers, this resource enables the reader to: select the right projects for an organization; reduce the time needed for team development and productive operation; learn motivational and retention strategies for technical project personnel; avoid project management pitfalls; and inject quality into current and future projects. The book examines the typical life cycle of team development and the general mechanics of team and project formation in today's project management setting. It scrutinizes both successes and failures in nurturing and developing a team, offering techniques and suggestions on building better teams in the future.

The problem of allocating scarce resources over time to perform a given set of activities - that is, project scheduling - appears in the vast spectrum of real-world situations. Over the last forty years project scheduling problems have been carefully studied, resulting in a considerable body of knowledge. Recently, however, the power and ubiquity of the computer has had a pronounced effect on research in project scheduling and project scheduling models. As a result, considerable progress has been made in all directions of modeling and finding solutions to these problems. This volume is a state-of-the-art treatment of Project Scheduling in general and of recent developments in particular. Part I deals with classical models. By classical model' we mean the deterministic problems involving discrete resources only and the evaluation of schedules on the basis of a single criterion. This term covers a wide variety of problems, including (discrete) resource-duration interaction, i.e. multi-mode models. Part 2 deals with heuristic algorithms for these models. It is complemented by chapters treating such important problems as benchmark instances, interval capacity consistency tests, and the evolution of software quality for (classical) project scheduling problems. In Part 3 the most important new or non-classical' models are considered. These include probabilistic and fuzzy models, and continuous resources as well as multi-criteria formulations and knowledge-based systems. Part 4 contains some important extensions and/or applications of the project scheduling problems considered in the previous chapters.

Technology breakthroughs in sustainable renewable energy and energy conservation technologies require that there be a strong institutional ecosystem in place which supports innovation, but the nature of this foundation and how it works is not well-known. Becoming a leader necessitates new forms of cross-sector cooperation.

The primary aim of Project Management is to facilitate the successful completion of projects. For this reason it puts particular emphasis on the importance of careful preparation and strategic co-operation within the project team. The first part of this new textbook offers a description of the project-based approach to the work environment, an analysis of when such an approach is appropriate and an account of how to make projects work. In addition, this part of the book discusses the role of planning software within the project environment. Part Two of the book describes the practical tools and skills needed to tackle projects. A number of the skills outlined in Part Two are also relevant to learning contexts other than projects. This new edition offers additional material on the life-cycle of the project: from setting up to completing a project. New sections deal with skills such as brainstorming and decision making in the project group. The text makes for required reading for project management students everywhere.

This book explores coordination within and between teams in the context of large-scale agile software development, providing readers a deeper understanding of how coordinated action between teams is achieved in multiteam systems. An exploratory multiple case study with five multiteam systems and a total of 66 interviewees from development teams at SAP SE is presented and analyzed. In addition, the book explores stereotypes of coordination in large-scale agile settings and shares new perspectives on integrating conditions for coordination. No previous study has researched this topic with a similar data set, consisting of insights from professional software development teams. As such, the book will be of interest to all researchers and practitioners whose work involves software product development across several teams.

Addressing a topic of critical importance to every business, this book provides managers at all levels the tools to conduct a successful cost-cutting and productivity-improvement program. Cost cutting and improving productivity are objectives that have always been-and continue to be-critically important to businesses. Today, being efficient isn't simply "best practice;" it's essential to preventing layoffs and facility closures. In Cutting Costs: Successful Strategies for Improving Productivity, a certified management consultant with nearly four decades of experience presents his highly relevant and extensive knowledge to help businesses make significant improvements and be more successful. Providing a practical progression of information that is simple to understand and easy to put to use and benefit from, Fred H. Neu's advice and insights will be invaluable to all business owners, managers with budget responsibility, business finance and accounting professionals, management consultants, business school instructors, and business school students. Presents many topics applicable to all businesses, both manufacturing and nonmanufacturing Describes examples of successful cost-cutting and productivity-improvement projects written by the consultants and managers who implemented them Explains how to measure results of a cost-cutting and productivity-improvement program and reward positive efforts