Working with Excel: Refreshing Math Skills for Management

$21.99

Managers and analysts routinely collect and examine key performance measures to better understand their operations and make good decisions. Being able to render the complexity of operations data into a coherent account of significant events requires an understanding of how to work well in the electronic environment with raw data. Managers and analysts routinely collect and examine key performance measures to better understand their operations and make good decisions. Being able to render the complexity of operations data into a coherent account of significant events requires an understanding of how to work well in the electronic environment with raw data. Although some statistical and financial techniques for analyzing data are sophisticated and require specialized expertise, there are methods that are understandable and applicable by anyone with basic algebra skills and the support of a spreadsheet package. While specialized software packages may be used in a particular business setting, Microsoft Excel is routinely available on computer desktops. Managers who have been in the field any length of time may not be sufficiently familiar with the capabilities of Excel to make optimal use of its functionalities. Prior to undertaking a program to pursue executive training, managers who are refreshed with basic algebra skills and the capabilities of Excel will be prepared to develop a richer understanding from their more advanced work. The primary foci of this text are (1) to refresh fundamental mathematical operations that broadly support statistical and financial equations and formulas, (2) to introduce work with equations and formulas in Excel spreadsheets, (3) to expand statistical and financial analysis with the programmed Excel functions readily available through the ‘Insert Function’ toolbar button and the more advanced Data Analysis Toolkit, (4) to facilitate graphic representations of data, and finally (5) to prepare data mounted in differing file formats. This text is a companion to a series of books that addresses the analysis of sample data, time series data, managerial economics, and forecasting techniques. Together these books will equip the manager and the student with a solid understanding of applied data analysis and prepare them to apply the methods themselves.

Academic Ethos Management: Building the Foundation for Integrity in Management Education

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This topical and much needed book constitutes an important part of the debate on the integrity in an academic context as a sine qua non of responsible management education. This discussion in management education occurred partly in reaction to highly publicized corporate scandals and instances of management misconduct that have eroded public faith. Concomitantly, management scholars and educators have begun to question the assumptions underlying the traditional management education, which in their view not only contributed to a recent moral crisis but has also failed to prepare students and executives for coping with the responsible leadership challenges and ethical dilemmas that face managers in contemporary corporations. The last decade, which might be called an epoch of moral catastrophes, sets for universities the stage for effectively performing their missions through conscious and consequent incorporating the core values of university into academic activities. This book discusses with stimulating examples how universities should bring alive their core values. Using case studies and examples from universities from all over the world, this book offers what few other title are able to offer: practical advice and guidance, explaining in detail how administrators and educators should discover, articulate and institutionalization (implementation, securing and controlling by creating adequate policies, procedures process etc.) university core values into academic daily activities and create a foundation for academy integrity. The universities, educators and instructors committed to socially responsible management education will find many valuable tools and pragmatic strategies to effectively spread practices of integrity based on university core values across organizational institutions. It provides as well valuable teaching case studies and should be used by course leaders at undergraduate, master’s and MBA level in all business schools.

Mastering Self-Motivation: Bringing Together the Academic and Popular Literature

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This book is designed to provide a roadmap for business students worldwide. The broad scope of academic research coupled with real-world application makes this book unique. It describes the contemporary and historical premise of motivation today. Each chapter has one or two theoretical concepts interwoven with motivational literary scholars. The heart of the book is based on the premise that many people read motivational books by non-academics such as Tony Robins and miss out on the theoretical scholarly books that are empirically grounded. While this book does not offer research or metrics on the subject of motivation, it does provide theoretical concepts that can enhance individual motivation and presents it in a comprehensive and enjoyable manner. When comparing motivational best sellers, academic books are often shelved in place of the more practical books that people feel more comfortable with and that they can relate to.
Derived from many years of consulting with business executives worldwide, the author is offering a free workbook to accompany your purchase or adoption of this book. This workbook addresses each chapter with a comprehensive application of the the content in the book. Develop your personal Vision, your personal Mission, and your Strengths to succeed as an effective leader while helping those aspiring to become leaders in your organization, your classroom, or your institution.

Customer-Driven Budgeting: Prepare, Engage, Execute:The Small Business Guide for Growth

$21.99

This comprehensive budgeting book emphasizes that the customer drives the business organization and processes and becomes the overriding purpose for a company’s existence and success. Customer-driven Budgeting offers a complete guide that covers every step in the budgeting cycle from the basics of organization, processes, and funding to budget execution and monitoring. It emphasizes that the budget is the starting point and catalyst for gaining customers. The budget prepares the company to supply the sales and marketing team reinforcements for giving a compelling reason for customers to buy from it. The customer is the object of every effort and dollar and drives the business, its goals, practices, processes, and activities. The market-focused, customer-driven principle takes budgeting out of the Finance organization and pushes it into Production, Shipping and Receiving, Purchasing, Inventory Management, IT, and outside the doors to vendors, bankers, investors, and others business partners. This book explains the treatment of these constituents in the budget. This book is one that can be used immediately in business budgeting. Its modular format permits the reader to start at the beginning of the budget process and work through it entirely or select a budget area most challenging to the business and work from there to other areas of priority. Given that this book covers the entire budget process, the author recommends following the format as presented to coalesce around the budget team.

Managerial Communication: Evaluating the Right Dose

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The metaphor of dosage offers us a rich organizing principle for managers. It focuses our efforts on such fundamental, pragmatic communication issues as: amount, frequency, delivery system, sequencing, interaction with what other agents, and contraindications. It suggests compelling new answers to fundamental problems that all managers must face, with an appreciation of basic issues beyond our conscious awareness. In our day-to-day lives – whether we are discussing things with our housing contractor, our cable repair man, with our doctor – we must constantly decide how much communication we should engage in to pursue our projects. This work focuses on the dosage metaphor as a way of confronting this question — what level of communication, both in terms of amount and of depth, is really necessary to accomplish particular purposes? Most communication theories implicitly paint a picture of the prevalence and paramount importance of communication, with a ‘communication metamyth’ that more is necessarily better. This book provides the first truly comprehensive treatment of dosage. It also focuses on perhaps the most contemporaneously interesting issues of change and of productivity. While fundamental to any practitioner of communication, in modern communication theory these issues receive only cursory attention. In the final chapter I analyze the dosage metaphor in broad sweep and suggest a countervailing minimalist approach to communication before turning to broader practice issues raised by application of the metaphor of dosage.

Business Integrity in Practice: Insights from International Case Studies

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The quest for integrity in business is not only a reaction against malfeasance in business and associated calls for reform, but also a result of changes and new demands in the global business environment as well as the latest economic crisis. Among the sources of these new demands are the expectations of stakeholders that corporations and their leaders will take more active roles as citizens within society and in the fight against some of the most pressing problems in the world, such as poverty, environmental degradation, defending human rights, corruption, and pandemic diseases. The quest for integrity in business is not only a reaction against malfeasance in business and associated calls for reform but also a search that stems from changes and new demands in the global business environment. Among the sources of these new demands are the expectations of stakeholders that corporations and their leaders will take more active roles as citizens within society and in the fight against some of the most pressing problems in the world, such as poverty, environmental degradation, defending human rights, corruption, and pandemic diseases. This book presents and critically discusses key case studies from all over the world, offering essential insights, practical advice, and guidance for any business leader wishing to lead an organization with reliable and proven integrity. The authors provide valuable research results as well as real teaching tools for faculty and students.

Intellectual Property in the Managerial Portfolio: Its Creation, Development, and Protection

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Intellectual Property Rights have been a part of the American pantheon of types of Property Rights since the beginning of the nation, but using the term to describe a particular type of property right is a new phenomenon dating to the second half of the last century. The recognition of the importance of protection of intellectual property rights became extremely important and distinctly more difficult at that time as new technologies made it possible for unscrupulous ‘intellectual property pirates’ to steal, or otherwise make off with the intellectual property of the unaware. This book introduces the reader to the underlying logic of intellectual property rights – how one can acquire them, why they exist, the benefits derived from their ownership, and how they can be protected from the unscrupulous. Legal and common-sense alternatives that provide the keys to protection are outlined and instructions on their use revealed. The availability of intellectual property rights protection, both domestic and international, is outlined and discussed, as are the history of and current trends relevant to the legal rights of the intellectual property owner and the limits of protection provided by the law and by extralegal alternatives of providing protection. The author has published extensively in the field, and has been an expert witness in a number of significant legal cases in which the interpretation and application of intellectual property concepts were tested.

Lean Sigma Methods and Tools for Service Organizations: The Story of a Cruise Line Transformation

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Every business aspires to be competitive and profitable in its market. To do this, an organization needs to offer customers value propositions, which may be manifest in the product it produces or the service it provides. This in turn will create customer loyalty and growth. There are a number of organizational philosophies and strategies used by businesses to help accomplish this goal, among which are the concepts of Six Sigma and Lean. This book proposes to integrate the best practices from each of these philosophies and apply them to a customer-focused organization–a cruise ship–whose overriding mission is to deliver superior service to its customers. The authors demonstrate in this book how key components of both Six Sigma and Lean–such as identifying and removing defects, elimination of waste, metrics, speed of delivery, and the seamless integration of these concepts and practices throughout the operation–serve to enhance the kind of value propositions that customers recognize and that allow an organization to be successful.

Consumer Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Globalization

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Cosmopolitans are individuals with a distinctive kind of extended national and international orientation, a global vision, and sense of belonging to the world. These people are sophisticated and importantly engaged in the cultures outside of local geographical boundaries. But what do we know about them as consumers–their origins, values, media usage, and buyer behavior? This unique book details much about this group, and fills a knowledge gap that has long been overlooked largely because other related marketing areas have overshadowed and overlooked the notion of cosmopolitan consumers. Until this book, in fact, there has been no single authoritative source that directly and comprehensively covers the field of consumer cosmopolitanism. This book also includes original essays by an all-star cast of contributors, giving you an introduction to a powerful new approach to marketing, eclectically packed with novel ideas and insights that noticeably advance the marketing field and bring it more fully into the age of globalization.

Applying Scientific Reasoning to the Field of Marketing: Make Better Decisions

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Upcoming the February issue of MarketingPower.com from the AMA, is Terry’s article, How to Think, Not What to Think: Move beyond ‘flavor-of-the-month marketing problem solvers.’ See below for your advance copy. And check out Terry’s upcoming speaking engagements. Marketing decisions often misfire when driven more by beliefs than by knowledge. This book will guide you on how to differentiate between the two and to think more clearly and correctly when making those decisions, thereby increasing organizational success. The author has based this book on the fields of epistemology–the study of how knowledge is created–and the philosophy of science– the study of what it means for a science to be called a science. The motivation behind the book is quite simple: Given that science is so successful, why shouldn’t marketers borrow thinking and reasoning skills from science and apply them to marketing? Indeed, why not? The book details the groundwork for learning how to apply scientific reasoning to the field of marketing, such as some basic and important definitions (‘What is a belief?’ ‘What is knowledge?’), and identifies barriers to scientific reasoning, giving an example from the Dow Chemical Company and just how Dow uses critical thinking and reasoning skills to make more effective marketing and business decisions. You’ll also learn some real ‘thinking tools’ you will need to apply scientific reasoning to solving your marketing problems. It introduces topics relating to attributes versus constructs, the meaning of causation, the relationship between coherence and justified beliefs, the importance of logic to sound reasoning, and the avoidance of logical fallacies in making sound recommendations. The book concludes by giving you direction to further improve your ability to apply scientific reasoning to solving marketing problems.