• Provides a practical and theoretically sound insight to the contemporary management of operations, stressing that creating value for stakeholders is key. • Focuses on important topics that comprise an important component of senior Operation Managers’ activities such as Business Intelligence: Technology, Industry 4.0, Managing Supply Networks and Improving Global Operations. • Reflects recent developments in Operations Management theory and practice by taking a reflective organizational perspective of the task of the Operations Manager. • Promotes an understanding of operations in an international context, linking operations decisions with topics such as business strategy, creating and sustaining value, supply chain management.

• Provides a practical and theoretically sound insight to the contemporary management of operations, stressing that creating value for stakeholders is key. • Focuses on important topics that comprise an important component of senior Operation Managers’ activities such as Business Intelligence: Technology, Industry 4.0, Managing Supply Networks and Improving Global Operations. • Reflects recent developments in Operations Management theory and practice by taking a reflective organizational perspective of the task of the Operations Manager. • Promotes an understanding of operations in an international context, linking operations decisions with topics such as business strategy, creating and sustaining value, supply chain management.

On Easter Sunday 2017, with the retirement of the Vicar, the Benefice of Lanercost with Walton, Gilsland and Nether Denton entered a period of vacancy which lasted for over a year and a half. During this time, regular services were maintained, albeit with a little shaving of corners here and there. The author, a Reader in the Benefice, was one of a team of people leading services and preaching on a regular basis. The contents of this book provide a record of the vacancy in the form of sermons and reflections. The title is prompted by the phenomenon of `the flowering desert,' which occurs every ten years or so in the north of Chile, when unusually copious rainfall at the end of winter causes the arid semi-desert terrain to bring forth flowers in profusion. Cover photograph by Paul Bamford

This is a memoir of involvement with an English-speaking educational network in Latin America. The network, Latin American Heads Conference (known by its initials LAHC) was established with the aim of holding an annual educational conference for the membership and to provide Heads of schools of British inspiration with direct corporate and individual access to currents of educational thought, knowledge and expertise in the UK. Activities soon expanded into school evaluation, professional development training, student activities, consultancy, indeed anything educational that members and/or staff in member schools might request. The author was involved in the creation of this network and, in 2002, assumed the position of its sole salaried employee. The memoir records his journey of discovery into the expansion of an enterprise which began as a small fellowship of educational enthusiasts and which has become a recognised beacon of educational quality throughout Latin America.