More than two hundred CEOs reveal their candid insights on how to build and foster a corporate culture that encourages innovation and drives results

In "Quick and Nimble," Adam Bryant draws on interviews with more than two hundred CEOs to offer business leaders the wisdom and guidance to move an organization faster, to be quick and nimble, and to rekindle the whatever-it-takes collective spark of a start-up, all with the goal of innovating and thriving in a relentlessly challenging global economy. By analyzing the lessons that these leaders have shared in his regular "Corner Office" feature in "The New York Times," Bryant has identified the biggest drivers of corporate culture, bringing them to life with real-world examples that reflect this hard-earned wisdom.

These men and women--whose ranks include Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn, Tony Hsieh of Zappos, Angie Hicks of Angie's List, Steve Case of Revolution (and formerly AOL), and Amy Gutmann of the University of Pennsylvania--offer useful insights and strategies for creating a corporate culture of innovation and building a high-performing organization that unleashes the passion and energy of its employees.

As the world shifts to more of a knowledge economy, the winners will be companies that can attract and retain the best and brightest employees by creating an environment where they can grow, contribute, and feel rewarded. Through the wisdom of these leading chief executives, "Quick and Nimble" offers a keen understanding of the forces that shape corporate culture and a clear road map to bring success and energy to any organization.

Preventing and managing workplace bullying, including sexual harassment, is not just a 'feel good' exercise, or something organisations should only do when they are faced with a complaint. It is part of core business. Employers and managers have a duty of care as part of occupational health and safety laws to prevent hazards that might contribute to workplace injuries. This book shows you how to meet these responsibilities using practical, sensible strategies based on a framework of: understanding what bullying and sexual harassment really mean, using a risk management approach to identify issues in the workplace, implementing procedures to control risk, taking action when things go wrong. A range of tools and tips are included throughout the text to help the reader get started quickly. Stemming from a solid and extensive research base and with reference to up-to-date legislative requirements, Preventing and Managing Workplace Bullying and Harassment is essential reading for anyone in business today.

Tom Klobucher's new book The Great Workplace Transformation is written in a serial entrepreneurial style, a "once upon a time" learning parable about failure meeting WOW in the workplace and living happily ever after. This practical, "how to get it done" sequel (Book Two) takes us from joining The Great Workplace Revolution (Book One), the revolution where everybody wins, to a positive workplace transformation. A must-read for all employees and a learning tool for organizations that have been stalled in the "my way or the highway" management style of generations past.

Delivers expert guidance on balancing the inherent opportunities for growth with the risks inherent in a hybrid workplace. Remote or office? It's an ongoing debate overtaking productive conversation in many companies. The great debate of remote versus office begins with the myth of separate worlds we all live in: work-life and personal-life. For centuries, work and home were separated by physically going to and from the office. The separation was actually a myth because while we went between two different locations, each of us is one person. Our bosses may have not known anything about our or friends, and vice versa, but we did. Two worlds. One person. Multiply that reality by 6 million workplaces in the United States alone, and it becomes clear how much of a difference to employee and employer satisfaction--and GDP--a healthy hybrid model for work might represent. In this book, Julie Kantor and Felice Ekelman deliver expert guidance on balancing the inherent opportunities for growth with the risks inherent in a hybrid workplace. Given hybrid work is now the norm, leaders need to ensure that remote work is productive, and employees are engaged, both within legal guardrails. This will begin with organizations defining a flexible approach to remote work that aligns with values and business needs. Then, leaders need to be empowered to make decisions regarding how, where and when work is done. These decisions include and impact achieving success, facilitating engagement, attracting, and retaining talent, clarifying roles and responsibilities, maximizing equity, minimizing bias, and establishing a culture in which employees can thrive. Thrive provides an explanation of the various new work arrangements, with insights as to the benefits and shortcomings of each arrangement. Central to the work is a comprehensive outline of the "7-C's" which include culture and communication as a centerpiece to successful leadership. Leaders will find Thrive's practical advice useful: each section includes a host of action items which will enable leaders to implement change in their workplace. For those companies who seek to be known as a "best-in-class" employer, Thrive is a must-read for leadership. Thrive is a resource leaders will turn to again and again for encouragement and advice.

Hyden explains how to look at every facet of one's business to add value for the customer, from the customer's point of view.

Your company will soar when you embrace the insights and initiativesin this guidebook.
Based on 25-years of facilitating growth and productivity in small and medium-sized companies, Larry Smith shares the "how to" of creating a culture of high performance and then sustaining it. It is not that difficult. But it does take courage, because you begin with an Assessment; i.e. a reality check. You'll be taking a measure of management's stewardship. Removal of rose-colored glasses is the first requirement.Bottom line is: How your employees behave is a critical ingredient. How you lead determines how they behave.

Being laid off can be a traumatic event. The unemployed worry about how they will pay their bills and find a new job. In the American economy's boom-and-bust business cycle since the 1980s, repeated layoffs have become part of working life. In A Company of One, Carrie M. Lane finds that the new culture of corporate employment, changes to the job search process, and dual-income marriage have reshaped how today's skilled workers view unemployment. Through interviews with seventy-five unemployed and underemployed high-tech white-collar workers in the Dallas area over the course of the 2000s, Lane shows that they have embraced a new definition of employment in which all jobs are temporary and all workers are, or should be, independent "companies of one."

Following the experiences of individual jobseekers over time, Lane explores the central role that organized networking events, working spouses, and neoliberal ideology play in forging and reinforcing a new individualist, pro-market response to the increasingly insecure nature of contemporary employment. She also explores how this new perspective is transforming traditional ideas about masculinity and the role of men as breadwinners. Sympathetic to the benefits that this "company of one" ideology can hold for its adherents, Lane also details how it hides the true costs of an insecure workforce and makes collective and political responses to job loss and downward mobility unlikely.

Building a Culture of Distinction is an organizational change management program. This Facilitator Guide is designed for those individuals who will be leading the program. This book provides a comprehensive, step-by-step process to define and shape your organizational culture and manage organizational change.

This program addresses many of the challenges an organization faces that can threaten its success and its bottom line. For example: Have you lost key talent? Do your employees seem stressed and unhappy at work? Are employees neither united by values nor vision? Is the organization growing fast but losing focus? Does your organization need a new direction? Is your organization experiencing a merger or acquisition? Is your strategic planning disconnected from the culture that must support it? Is change needed but no one has a process to make it stick?

This Facilitator Guide provides activities and tools to build a culture of distinction. The process has a four-phased cycle. In Phase 1, you will facilitate a Core Culture Assessment where all employees participate in defining the organization s Core Culture. In Phase 2, you will facilitate a Core Culture Alignment Audit where employees will identity the degree of alignment of the Practices and Projections with the Core Culture, and they will make recommendations to increase alignment. In Phase 3, you will guide the development of a Core Culture Alignment Plan and set measures to monitor change. Finally, in Phase 4, employees will execute and monitor the plan, tracking measures to ensure progress in implementing change.

This Facilitator Guide is divided into two sections. Section A: Planning the Program includes materials to guide the facilitator in planning the implementation of this culture and change management program. This section includes background information, definitions, suggestions on when to use this program, an explanation of the program cycle, a review of the implementation steps, a worksheet tool, and sample questions for interviews, open-ended surveys and focus groups. Section B: Conducting the Program has the same content as the companion workbook Building a Culture of Distinction: Participant Workbook for Defining Organizational Culture and Managing Change. The only difference is the inclusion of Facilitator Notes inserted in the side margins to guide you in implementing the program. Section B provides information, activities, tools and techniques to define and shape your organizational culture, audit it for alignment with your workplace Practices and Projections, and create and implement a plan to live the Core Culture principles that will generate success. Some activities work best in a group setting. Others can be completed individually. Adapt the program to fit your needs.

To support program implementation, there is the Building a Culture of Distinction: Participant Workbook for Defining Organizational Culture and Managing Change. This workbook is for employees who take part in the Building a Culture of Distinction Program. An additional resource is the book There Is No Place Like Work, an ideal reading assignment for employees to jumpstart the learning process.

Begin Building a Culture of Distinction in your organization. Lead the process to craft your organization's culture and facilitate change. Use culture to drive your organization's success.

A leadership blueprint for managing cross-cultural issues in any M&A deal

In our rapidly expanding and increasingly volatile global economy, mergers and acquisitions are becoming the strategy of choice for businesses seeking to stimulate growth while managing risk. As more and more M&A deals are struck between global organizations, difficult new issues involving cultural differences have arisen.

In "The Global M&A Tango," international management experts Fons Trompenaars and Maarten Nijhoff Asser explain how to detect and manage these issues before they become major problems.

Drawing on the world-renowned Trompenaars Hampden-Turner Cross-Cultural Database and Culture Compass, the authors illustrate how widely cultures can differ and, by reconciling the dilemmas created by that difference, how they can be integrated quickly, efficiently, and effectively.

"The Global M&A Tango" helps you meet all the challenges of cross-national M&A by: Creating common mission, vision, strategy, and values Developing trust across value boundaries Enabling people with different cultural perspectives to engage in valuable discussions

Change-management programs all too often ignore the culture perspectives of the individuals and groups involved--and it's often why organizations fail to realize the benefits that prompted the integration in the first place.

With "The Global M&A Tango," you have everything you need to integrate two old entities into a powerful new organization poised for dramatic growth in the coming decades.

Thirty years ago, the bestselling "letter to the government" "Work in America" published to national acclaim, including front-page coverage in "The New York Times, Wall Street Journal," and "Washington Post." It sounded an alarm about worker dissatisfaction and the effects on the nation as a whole. Now, based on thirty years of research, this new book sheds light on what has changed--and what hasn't. This groundbreaking work will illuminate the new critical issues--from worker demands to the new ethical rules to the revolution in culture at work.

Women - have you forgotten who you are? Ever wish you had an instruction manual for yourself? Feel there is part of you missing? Spent years battling your way up the ladder in the corporate market or being chauffeur, decorator and general skivvy bringing up your children? Susie Heath's The Essence of Womanhood - re-awakening the authentic feminine is the book you've been waiting for. Reveal the gorgeous, beautiful, powerful, feminine being you were born to be, and let her out to play! Clear your unconscious limiting beliefs that have prevented you living the life of your dreams. Become an attraction magnet for men in your life. Use your mind and your body in new and exciting ways. Fall in love with both the real inner and outer you. Enjoy every moment of being a real woman however many times you have been round the sun. With many more essential answers about love, life, your body and feeling like a natural woman. "The author has managed to beautifully combine profound concepts with practical exercises that ensure the leap from intellectual appreciation to a real understanding of what it means to be feminine. Her light and humorous style makes it very easy to read. This is a fabulous book and one I would thoroughly recommend to any woman who wants to really know herself." Kate Mottershead - Hampshire.

"The ""numbers"" were achieved. The workshops attended. Most people in your organization have gotten their ""isms"" under control. But here you are again, recycling yet another round of costly diversity programs -- and still unable to overcome the problems and reap the benefits of your diverse workforce.

That's because most organizations, despite good intentions and hard work, are stuck in their diversity efforts, says R. Roosevelt Thomas, Jr., a leading diversity expert who has continually raised the bar on how we think and act on a complex array of diversity issues. In our communities as well as in our workplaces, a feeling of frustration has emerged as the promise of the Civil Rights Movement and affirmative action has become overly politicized and polarizing. But managing diversity is not a new issue. In fact, it is both a hallmark and core challenge that organizations and society have confronted since the founding of America, ""an experiment in diversity.""

Building on the Promise of Diversity is Thomas's impassioned wake-up call to bring diversity management to a wholly new level -- beyond finger-pointing and well-meaning "initiatives" and toward the shared goal of building robust organizations and thriving communities. This original, thoughtful, yet action-oriented book will help leaders in any setting -- business, religious, educational, governmental, community groups, and more -- break out of the status quo and reinvigorate the can-do spirit of making things better.

The book includes a deeply felt analysis of the sometimes tangled intersections between diversity management and the Civil Rights Movement and affirmative action agendas . . . a personal narrative that charts Thomas's own evolution in diversity thinking . . . and a roadmap for mastering the powerful craft of Strategic Diversity Management(TM), a structured process that helps you:

* Realize why multiple activities and good intentions are not enough for achieving sustainable progress.

* Recast the meaning of diversity as more than just race and gender, but as any set of differences, similarities, and tensions -- such as workplace functions, product lines, acquisitions and mergers, customers and markets, blended families, community diversity, and more.

* Accept that a realistic goal is not to eliminate diversity tension but to use it as a catalyst to address key issues.

* Recognize diversity mixtures, analyze them accurately, and make quality decisions in the midst of differences, similarities, and tensions.

* Build an essential set of diversity skills and develop your "diversity maturity" -- the wisdom, judgment, and experience to use those skills effectively.

* Reflect on the ways you might be "diversity challenged" yourself.

Diversity is the reality of America today. Whether you let diversity be a drain on your organization or a dynamic contributor to your mission, vision, and strategy is both a choice and a challenge. Building on the Promise of Diversity gives you the insights and skills you need to navigate through simmering tensions -- and find creative solutions for achieving cohesiveness, connectedness, and common goals."

In the modern business world, there is a shortage of effective yet culturally diverse leadership. Most attempts to develop multicultural leaders are limited to one-way training, coaching, and mentoring programs. Individuals are expected to quickly fit in and adjust to the corporate culture. All too often, the result of such programs is highly qualified people who are uncomfortable and uncommitted-and who eventually leave the organization. Everyone is Multicultural: Bridging Cultural Influences for Business Success is designed to help organizational leaders, leadership candidates, and the general public gain new insight and direction into the current workplace diversity agenda. Dr. Pamela Johnson draws on more than twenty years of experience in multicultural leadership development to explain the past elements of the diversity movement, redefine the meaning of true diversity, and present a new theory of multicultural leadership development. Developmental change takes time-time to think, time to feel, and time to grow-and only an ongoing process of multicultural leadership development will produce sustainable results. and others and learn what it takes to succeed in the business world today. It's the perfect guide for individuals of all cultural influences who want to improve performance, workplace relationships, and diversity initiatives.

In recent years, Congress has enacted several federal laws addressing telemarketing fraud and practices. As a result, both the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have established regulations covering the $720 billion telemarketing industry in the United States. It is estimated that consumers lose over $40 billion a year to fraudulent telemarketers. Although the vast majority of telemarketers are legitimate business people attempting to sell a particular product or service, there are unscrupulous individuals and companies violating telemarketing rules and promoting various fraudulent schemes aimed at parting consumers from their money. The FCC, FTC, and several consumer groups and government/business partnerships identified in this book provide extensive information on telemarketing. This book provides summaries of the federal laws and regulations particular to telemarketing, the establishment of a national do-not-call registry, and on the options that are available to consumers to attempt to limit the calls that they receive from telemarketers and to report questionable telemarketing practices to local or federal authorities.

The Back On Track manual delivers more than a step-by-step system guaranteed to successfully recover projects that have gone off-track. Using examples garnered from the author's sixteen-year experience, it presents common-sense but highly effective techniques that will help you, as a project manager, stand out from the "pack."
Written in a straight-forward, conversational style, the manual is filled with practical tips for the new or inexperienced project manager and is a fresh alternative to other management texts.
You will learn how to elegantly recover a project that has gone off-track by understanding: Which critical actions need to be taken immediately; The key to becoming a project leader - not just a manager; How to foolproof your project plan; Why you must never rely on "percent complete"; How to maintain control-even when things are falling down all around you; And much, much more!
Here's what practicing project managers have to say:
"Having managed multi-million dollar projects, I can highly recommend this book to anybody that needs to diagnose and more importantly correct any project, large or small. Read this and make disastrous projects a thing of the past."
Alex Nghiem
Author of "Web Services: A Roadmap for the Enterprise"
"'Back on Track' is exactly what I needed. It is both motivating and enlightening, filled with the wisdom and experience of a seasoned, successful project manager. I loved this book and I know that I will refer to it again and again."
Cynthia Cormier, Project Manager, Micromedia ProQuest
"This is a great guide for new managers and those who do not have established project management methodologies. Because I had theopportunity to read this book, I'm positive that I'll get my project back on track."
Gerardine delos Santos, Project Leader, BMO Financial Group

Despotism on Demand draws attention to the impact of flexible scheduling on managerial power and workplace control. When we understand paid work as a power relationship, argues Alex J. Wood, we see how the spread of precarious scheduling constitutes flexible despotism; a novel regime of control within the workplace. Wood believes that flexible despotism represents a new domain of inequality, in which the postindustrial working class increasingly suffers a scheduling nightmare. By investigating two of the largest retailers in the world he uncovers how control in the contemporary "flexible firm" is achieved through the insidious combination of "flexible discipline" and "schedule gifts." Flexible discipline provides managers with an arbitrary means by which to punish workers, but flexible scheduling also requires workers to actively win favor with managers in order to receive "schedule gifts": more or better hours. Wood concludes that the centrality of precarious scheduling to control means that for those at the bottom of the postindustrial labor market the future of work will increasingly be one of flexible despotism.

The more I live the more I learn. The more I learn the more I realize the less I know (Alan and Manly Bergman) This book is a slightly revised version of my dissertation thesis "Wages, hours restrictions and employment" accepted in July 2001 by the Department of Economics at Mannheim University. Most of the studies are part of the re search project "Working hours flexibility and employment" (Arbeitszeitjlexi bilisierung und Beschiijtigung) which was conducted at the Centre for Euro pean Economic Research (ZEW) with financial support by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung. Now that all the work is complete, nothing remains but to thank all the people who supported the writing of my thesis. Firstly, I am indebted to my advisor Prof. Wolfgang Franz, who always furthered my academic work and encouraged me to take opportunities beyond the standard path. His guiding questions and comments were very valuable in gaining an overview of the whole issue. Furthermore, I am especially grateful to Prof. Daniel Hamermesh, my second advisor. I gained tremendously from the fruitful discussions during my stay at the University of Texas in Austin. His encouragement and verve were essential support factors in the completion of my work. Prof. Arthur van Soest and Prof. Franc;ois Laisney both contributed to the technical and methodological standard of my analysis by patiently discussing various model specifications and nerve-racking convergence problems."

A game-changing book about the revolutionary potential of working from home, by two experts who work - and live - together. When the COVID-19 pandemic closed offices around the world, sending millions into makeshift home offices, it was a forced compromise made under duress. But 2020 taught us that there may be another way to work: one that doesn't involve hellish commutes and set schedules that no longer make sense, especially for companies with international reach. While working from home can make people happier and make companies more productive, it has its pitfalls. Doing it well takes some thought. Out of Office combines Charlie and Anne's first-person experiences of moving to a rural area and working remotely - for years before the pandemic hit - to demonstrate how workers everywhere can find new ways of working anywhere.

Vocational education and training are vital components of any dignified job, especially during this era of rapid technological change. This volume examines vocational training institutions and practices in Latin America and the Caribbean and demonstrates how the ILO's decent work objectives are essential elements to their success.

The network is the pervasive organizational image of the new millennium. This book examines one particular kind of network - the 'knowledge network' - whose primary mandate is to create and disseminate knowledge based on multidisciplinary research that is informed by problem-solving as well as theoretical agendas. In their examination of five knowledge networks based in Canadian universities, and in most cases working closely with researchers in developing countries, the authors demonstrate the ability of networks to cross disciplinary boundaries, to blend the operational with the theoretical, and to respond to broad social processes. Operating through networks, rather than through formal, hierarchical structures, diverse communities of researchers create different kinds of knowledge and disseminate their results effectively across disciplinary, sectoral, and spatial boundaries. Analysis of networks in health, environment, urban, and educational fields suggests that old categories of 'north' and 'south' are becoming blurred, and that the new structures of knowledge creation and dissemination help to sustain collaborative research.

This text describes how government and industry have failed working families and what we can do to get beyond this critical impasse. It draws on systematic national research on how the need to meet family obligations is affecting working Americans of all social classes and ethnic groups. What happens when kids get sick? When an elderly parent is hospitalized? How do poor families - who have been studied in less depth than their middle-class peers - cope with work-family demands? Jody Heymann's documented research points to a widening gap between working families and the health and development of children. She demonstrates how lack of essential services and support lead to increased school failure, chronic illness, and diminished chance of success for adults and children. Outdated labour policy and practice must be brought into the 21st-century argues Heymann.