This book is intended for both practising managers who require a thorough knowledge of the principles of making investment decisions in the real world and for students undertaking financial courses whether at undergraduate, MBA or professional levels. The subject matter encompasses relevant aspects of the investment decision varying from a basic introduction to the appraisal techniques available to placing investment decisions within a strategic context and coverage of recent developments including real options, value at risk and environmental investments.
Customers are increasingly demanding higher levels of speed and quality, yet leaders often focus mainly on reducing the costs of operations. This book outlines the needed evolution in leadership attitudes and behaviors in the key operational areas such as new product development, sales, operations, customer service, human resources, finance, and information technology.
Contemporary sales organizations are spending billions of dollars or euros on sales technologies with the objective of streamlining the sales process, enhancing sales force productivity, and improving customer relationships. A variety of sales technologies exist such as customer relationship management (CRM) software, mobile sales force automation (SFA) applications, contact management software, and territory planning applications, to name just a few. In spite of the amount being invested in such technologies, however, few firms can claim to be enjoying performance improvements. In fact, the majority of companies are struggling to gain salesperson buy-ins and are failing to realize the intended return on investment (ROI). In addition, the introduction of such technological applications may cause stress to the sales force or disturb customer relationships. Against this backdrop, this textbook is concerned with how executives can effectively manage a complex and costly sales technology initiative in order to get the most out of it. In particular, the textbook begins by providing the reader with a detailed discussion on the various technologies that are being used by sales organizations. It then provides an exhaustive review of the factors that might lead to effective sales technology implementation and presents a managerially relevant conceptual framework, which illuminates the mediating pathways from using the system to salesperson productivity. Moreover, the textbook offers a wide array of key performance indicators (KPIs) that can be readily employed in order to monitor the progress and success of the implementation effort. Next, it offers a comprehensive method that executives can use to calculate the return on sales technology investment (ROSTI) in order to substantiate the business case for the technology. Finally, the textbook provides executives with a detailed three-stage process of sales technology implementation and discusses what essential work should be conducted in each stage.
This workbook is designed for CEOs, Executives and Senior Managers who have been assigned to a new position with sufficient authority, if not a mandate, to enact change in the organization. Even in situations where there is no overt instruction to effect change, the New Executive is expected to improve the situation, which in fact means to change things. It is expected of him or her, wittingly or unwittingly. However, the high failure rate of New Executives can be explained either by a too-rapid rush to change, or, its opposite–waiting until it’s too late. New Executives lack a roadmap of how to proceed in a new position requiring change.
This workbook provides the roadmap from the beginning of the process to that point where the New Executive is safely ensconced in her position, with explanations and new ways of thinking about organizations and change, charts that illustrate subject matter and assignments that aid the transitions. The roadmap begins with the New Executive’s personal goals and expectations, as well as the expectations of the people hiring her. It proceeds to analyzing the situation and the organization, including its key players, and provides guidelines as to how to do so. Convincing others that he indeed knows what he is doing is based on the small changes he introduces. The roadmap then takes a bit of a detour and goes into some depth about key concepts in organizational behavior, concepts that if mastered can be very helpful for the New Executive in understanding what is the situation he faces.
Implementing a strategy and settling in brings the roadmap nearer to the end. The “end state”, however, is really what happens throughout her career as Executive and is as much a part of the roadmap as the various stages discussed in the book.
For the first time, internationalists are identified for their critical capabilities. This book identifies the six key practices of successful internationalists and posits that recognizing them will have a profound effect on corporate mindset and how global companies plan and execute cross-border strategies.
Based on extensive research and interviews with international executives on four continents, The Internationalists identifies problems common to international business ventures and analyzes them for lessons learned. From there, Scherer outlines steps and strategies for creating thoughtful and sensible international projects using the talents of those most capable of carrying out cross-border ventures.
“I just finished reading Catherine Scherer’s new book, The Internationalists: Masters of the Global Game. [Scherer] focuses on the importance of people in organizations that have a unique set of skills and attributes (“internationalists”) that make them effective in operating in a global arena. I particularly like her metaphorical reference to internationalists as gaskets that help to make an effective seal between headquarters and field operations where the strategy gets implemented in a multitude of cultural environments, all with different norms, values, acceptable behaviors, and visions of reality. The challenge for organizations, and particularly for Human Resource departments or personnel, is to find better ways to identify “internationalists” or those that have the potential to fill those roles. These people must be identified, recruited, developed, placed, evaluated, rewarded, and perhaps most importantly, retained. This book provides specific suggestions for doing just that.” — David Hopkins, Associate Professor Emeritus, Daniels College of Business, University of Denver
“Scherer has captured the essence of the “internationalist” through interviews and analysis, then condensed the findings into usable information that isn’t found in any other book. This is a must-read for strategic human resources professionals, global business leaders and anyone considering international assignments.” — Carolyn H. Byram, Senior Human Resources Executive
This book explores the topic of international social entrepreneurship. It will explore current definitions, concepts, as well as methodologies pertaining to social entrepreneurship. Furthermore, it will showcase real-life cases and stories of individuals and companies that have made a positive impact in various parts of the world.
The book is attractive to the target readers for the following reasons:
The book is attractive to the target readers for the following reasons : 1) there has been a growing interest in the topic of social entrepreneurship and yet there are limited academic materials, this book will offer a concise, straight-forward compilation of theories, concepts, and cases, 2) with globalization, students and executives have been empowered to make positive impact around the world; this book will identify and discuss viable strategies, 3) in today’s business environment, many students and executives have been responsive to global issues, this book will provide fresh insights on citizenship in a global environment.
There is a myth in American and other first-world business cultures that being tough and unreasonable are keys to extracting high productivity from employees. Not true. Profound economic, demographic, and cultural change is creating a workplace where that myth can no longer be believed. If your organization has people who are hard to work for or is facing increasing difficulty in finding top-quality employees, this book will help you learn more about positive management and how to reach your strategic objectives. This book explains how to use this positive management (PM) as an organization-wide strategy to motivate employees, increase productivity, and accomplish organizational goals by creating upbeat and dignified relationships in the workplace. It covers the use of PM in a variety of situations, including difficult and negative ones, to achieve higher employee commitment and motivation, to lower communication inefficiencies, and to reduce absenteeism and turnover. Any manager, business owner, or student of management will want to have this book on hand when positive management is the next step and the right step.
This book will examine the profession of investor relations from the practical standpoint. The book will define what investor relations is, what investor relations professionals do, what skills and competencies are required to become a successful investor relations practitioner and, finally, how to outsource investor relations services. Investor relations is a profession on the borderline between communication, finance and law. This book will address each of these three competencies as essential for successful practice. The book will discuss how these areas contribute to the day-to-day practice of investor relations and what demands they impose on the investor relations professionals.
The ideas presented in this book explain marketing thinking and how to cultivate it, and ultimately, the ways in which marketplace differences are created. Instead of offering marketing steps, processes, and models, the focus here is on developing the practitioner’s thinking rather than providing some formulaic series of steps, processes, and/or models based upon someone else’s thinking. This provocative perspective requires a deeper reading and thinking about many of the familiar notions found in marketing. For example, why compete? It is written for serious practitioners interested in breaking from the familiar ways of doing things and in search of unique approaches to stimulate their own thinking that is effective for any organization large or small.
In this book we show how seemingly ideal boards, those with “best practice” size, composition, and structure, can still fail to provide good governance simply because they fall victim to problems inherent in all groups. While having groups of board members provide corporate oversight is probably necessary, and even advantageous in some respects, groups have a dark side too.In this book we argue that as a first step it is important to recognize these group dynamics and the problems they cause. Some of them can be minimized through, for example, properly designed decision processes. Others are more complicated. But all of them need to be recognized and understood so that we can properly shape our expectations of the degree and quality of oversight corporate boards of directors can provide, and so that we can turn our energy toward the many group level factors that could improve board performance going forward.
