Recovering from the Global Financial Crisis: Achieving Financial Stability in Times of Uncertainty

$21.99

Why are some global financial crises more dif_ cult to recover from and overcome than others? What steps are necessary in ensuring that financial stability and recovery is facilitated? And what kind of environment has the previous financial environment evolved to and what kind of financial products have contributed to greater vulnerability in the triggering of systemic risks? These are among some of the questions that this book addresses. In highlighting the role and importance of various actors in post-crises reforms as well as the huge impact of certain factors and products that are contributing in exacerbating the magnitude and speed of transmission of financial contagion, this book provides an insight into why global financial crises have become more complicated to address than was previously the case. Within this book, the author doesn’t merely identify and highlight the general root causes of global financial crises and the current issues, but gives each chapter recommendations and measures that contribute to the magnitude and severity of global financial crises.

Project Strategy and Strategic Portfolio Management: A Primer

$21.99

The success of a project depends on how well it is implemented; and the success of its implementation depends on how well the project is planned. Few would dispute these truisms because they are the basic tenets of successful project management. Managing a project is an operation and these are the basic operational aspects of project management. They represent the traditional wisdom about projects and the methods used in managing them. Projects have become the de facto method of implementing business strategy and operations. As such, understanding how projects relate to business strategy and managing projects strategically is increasingly important to effective and efficient business management This book is designed as a short and concise treatise on how to go about doing that. The authors start by figuring out how the project relates to the rest of the business and environment and what separates it from other projects and functions. They go on to discuss how you can use principles of strategic management to better organize and manage the various projects you may be dealing with on a daily basis so that they are strategic in nature. In essence, this book details how to approach answering the important strategic questions in project management like–‘Why is the project being implemented? How does the project relate to the major strategic goals of the organization? How do we accomplish the performance goals for the project so that they help achieve the major strategic goals of the organization?’

Effective Interviewing and Information Gathering: Proven Tactics to Improve Your Questioning Skills

$21.99

This book is an invaluable, instructional field manual for any professional who needs to obtain and interpret information gathered directly by and from people, without recourse to a technological intermediary, such as online search. In the role of interviewer, interrogator, or evaluator, there are many opportunities to get it wrong. Good information can go bad . . . bad information can go good, but for the wrong reasons. Either way, without an understanding of process and context, free standing information runs the risk of sending one in the wrong direction.
This book is an invaluable, instructional field manual for you or any professional who needs to obtain and interpret information gathered directly by and from people, without recourse to a technological intermediary, such as online search. In the role of interviewer, interrogator, or evaluator, there are many opportunities to get it wrong. As advanced as our information-gathering technology may be, it is still impossible to get inside the head of an interviewee by conducting a Google search; so hit them with the tactics spelled out in this book instead in order to protect yourself from being sent in the wrong direction. Inside, you’ll learn practical information regarding all aspects of obtaining and evaluating information. This book serves as a tool-kit that helps build the skills necessary for conducting good interviews and extracting information that is critical for the enterprise in which the interviewer is engaged. As you progress through the book, you will acquire an understanding of research-based behavioral techniques that bolster the success rate of interviews. In addition, the legal factors you need to be aware of prior to conducting an interview for hiring purposes are spelled out. Finally, you’ll acquire the skills necessary to help you evaluate interview information so that decisions made are based on evidence.

A Primer on Corporate Governance, Second Edition

$21.99

This long-awaited second edition book is a primer on corporate governance for large, publicly held companies in the United States–the system that defines the distribution of rights and responsibilities among different participants in a corporation, and spells out the rules and procedures for making decisions on corporate affairs. As with any complex system, corporate governance functions best when all of its constituent elements work in harmony, when each performs its assigned role, with the right incentives, properly aligned interests, and the right tools for the job. The turbulent history of corporate governance in recent years is a testimony that this has not always been the case. A good number of the books written on corporate governance focus on legal issues–the rights and obligations of the various stakeholders under federal and state laws–or take the perspective of individual or institutional external shareholders. This book, with much updated material, is positioned differently; it approaches corporate governance from an executive perspective and is designed to help the reader become a more effective participant in the corporate governance system–as an executive dealing with a board, as a director, or as a representative of a company’s other numerous stakeholders.

Marketing Strategy for Small- to Medium-Sized Manufacturers: A Practical Guide for Generating Growth, Profit, and Sales

$21.99

Does this sound familiar? You’ve tried to grow your business but have produced less-than-desired results. You’ve learned that your working capital, cash flow, financial ratios, and overall profitability are insufficient to afford the costs of needed sales, marketing, and promotional strategies typically called for to find and develop new customers, markets, and products. It’s very common that company executives do not follow generally accepted basic business practices such as knowing product costs and margins, obtaining strategically useful information about customers, conducting market research to identify prospective customers, and understanding competitors’ advantages and disadvantages needed to build effective growth strategies. Based on 21 case studies and 126 reviews of manufacturers’ sales and marketing practices, this book explains the common pitfalls so many companies experience, and it offers common sense, practicable, and affordable step-by-step ‘how to’s’ for cost and profitability analyses on products and customers. It will help you find prospective new customers, conduct smart market research, and decipher and use competitor intelligence. It also provides guidelines for determining the best combination of sales coverage for inside/outside sales and independent reps and for estimating the cost to implement sales, marketing, promotional, and growth strategies.

Multi-objective Decision Analysis: Managing Trade-offs and Uncertainty

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Whether managing strategy, operations or products, knowing how to make the best decision in a complex, uncertain business environment is dif_ cult. You might be faced with multiple, competing objectives, which means making trade-offs. To complicate matters, any uncertainty makes it hard to explicitly understand how different objectives will impact potential outcomes. This book will help you face these problems. It provides a decision analysis framework implemented as a simple spreadsheet tool. This multi-objective decision analysis framework helps you to measure trade-offs among objectives and incorporate uncertainties and risk preferences. With this book, you will be able to identify what information is needed to make a decision, de_ ne how that information should be combined, and, finally, provide quantifiable evidence to clearly communicate and justify the decision. The process involves minimal overhead and is perfect for busy professionals who need a simple, structured process for making, tracking, and communicating decisions. This process makes decision making more efficient by focusing only on information and factors that are well-defined, measureable, and relevant to the decision at hand. The framework requires clear characterization of a decision, ensuring that it can be traced and is consistent with the intended objectives and organizational values. Using this structured decision-making framework, anyone can consistently make better decisions to gain competitive and strategic advantage.

Revenue Recognition: Principles and Practices

$21.99

Revenue is the ‘top’ line on the income statement and is the fundamental driver of business success. To understand all the complexities involved in recognizing revenue under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) you should primarily be concerned with two things: (a) the timing aspect (the when issue) and (b) the amount to be recorded (the how much issue). This book will provide just that–extensive guidance in assisting you with the appropriate answers and much more. This book is designed for you and all the organizational responsibility you carry for your company in order to deliver real profits. It’s a comprehensive yet readable examination of the existing rules of revenue recognition for corporate entities, and after reading the book, you’ll have a thorough understanding of how accountants measure and record revenue. This ‘skill-set’ will prove invaluable in understanding the impact that your business decisions will have on the financial statements with an emphasis on the income statement and the statement of cash flows. (It will also have an executive-level overview of the proposed ‘IASB and FASB Standard: Revenue from Contracts with Customers.’)

Decision Analysis for Managers: A Guide for Making Better Personal and Business Decisions

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Everybody has to make decisions–they are unavoidable. However, we receive little or no education or training on how to make decisions. Business decisions are difficult: which people to hire, which product lines or facilities to expand, which proposal to accept, how much R&D to invest in, which environmental projects are high priority, etc. Personal decisions (college, getting married, changing jobs, buying a house, retiring, dealing with a health problem) can be even more difficult.
This book gives you the tools you need to…
‧ Clarify and reach alignment on goals and objectives,
‧ Understand trade-offs associated with reaching those objectives,
‧ Develop and examine alternatives, ‧ Systematically analyze the effects of risk and uncertainty, and
‧ Maximize the chances of achieving your goals.
Success (getting what you want) depends on luck and good decision making. You can’t control your luck, but you can maximize your odds by making the best possible decisions, and this book gets you there. The author organizes and presents otherwise formal decision-making tools in an intuitively understandable fashion. The presentation is informal, but the concepts and tools are research-based and formally accepted. Whether you are a business owner, a manager or team leader, or a senior professional, these tools will help both your personal and your business life.

David Charlesworth is a licensed chemical engineer, obtained his MBA from the University of Florida, and obtained a BS ChE from Indiana Tech. He has experience in a broad range of businesses, completing decision analysis and portfolio analysis projects in oil and gas, LNG, pharmaceutical, and chemicals, both as a consultant (Decision Strategies, Inc.) and as an in-house resource (Conoco and Chevron). He has presented a variety of technical talks at conferences and has been an invited guest lecturer at the University of Texas, Rice University, JPL, and Virtual-workshops.com.

Customer-Oriented Marketing Strategy: Theory and Practice

$21.99

What is customer orientation? And how does it fit in your idea of a good marketing strategy? This book can help you understand more about the relationships, applications, and steps to take to drive continuous relationships with customers to aid in the process of defining and implementing niche strategies, international marketing efforts, and electronic commerce. Inside, the authors start with classic marketing concepts and then review important developments and research of the latest findings (both from the theoretical and applied points of view) to present specific examples, methodologies, policy measures, and strategies that can be implemented to increase and perfect customer satisfaction. Both manufacturing and service businesses are addressed, and the results will give you a combination of the major studies in this specific field of marketing and strategy to offer a comprehensive strategic tool for decision makers in organizations.

Transfer Pricing in International Business: A Management Tool for Adding Value

$21.99

For centuries, trade has endured stumbling blocks, mistakes, and moments of inspiration. It has contributed to the modern, globalized world in which we live, and the increasing economic, social, and political importance of trade has spawned a phenomenon called the multinational organization. However, these organizations have a national home to where profits will ultimately have to come, and in their effort to maximize the amount repatriated, they often engage in internal-pricing practices, known more commonly as transfer pricing This book reminds us all of the important issues of transfer pricing, and how easy it is to create friction between all of the interested parties. This book also goes on to provide an insight into how such conflicts can be assuaged or avoided altogether, and explains how transfer pricing may become a managerial tool by establishing a common language that may be used as one driver for creating added value throughout the organization. Transfer pricing is not simply about maximizing income. It is a much more important strategic management issue that, treated unwisely or with ignorance, is likely to lead to an incongruity in the added value of an organization’s products and services as well as its crucial return on capital employed.