Shaping the Future of Work: What Future Worker, Business, Government, and Education Leaders Need To Do For All To Prosper

$21.99

Shaping the Future of Work lays out a comprehensive strategy for changing the course the American economy and employment system have been on for the past 30 years. The goal is to create more productive businesses that also provide good jobs and careers and by doing so build a more inclusive economy and broadly shared prosperity. This will require workers to acquire new sources of bargaining power and for business, labor, government, and educators to work together to meet the challenges and opportunities facing the next generation workforce.
The book reviews what worked well for average workers, families, and the economy during the era of the post-World War II Social Contract, why that contract broke down, and how, working together, we can build a new social contract suitable to today’s economy and workforce. The ideas presented here come from direct engagement with next generation workers who participated in a MIT online course devoted to the future of work and from the author’s 40 years of research and active involvement with business, government, and labor leaders over how to foster innovations in workplace practices and policies.

Mapping Workflows and Managing Knowledge: Using Formal and Tacit Knowledge to Improve Organizational Performance, Volume I

$21.99

This is a book that does what the title says, and is different from most business process mapping information in three key ways. First, it lets users capture all the knowledge that goes into a workflow in any kind of organization, including the most difficult kind of all; the tacit knowledge people bring to the job and carry in their heads. Second, it is simple, powerful, flexible, and easy to learn. Third, it does not require installing, learning, and applying a complicated program (sometimes requiring reorganization to support the software rather than the software supporting the organization).
It was developed by the author in a 15-year long program of studying, analyzing, and improving avionics maintenance processes for the U.S. Navy and the Royal Canadian Air Force, and then applied to organizations of all kinds ever since, for more than two decades. It has been taught and applied by the author and others in many short courses. It works.

Managing and Improving Quality: Integrating Quality, Statistical Methods and Process Control

$21.99

Quality is a discipline that focuses on product and service excellence. This book is about improving the quality of products and services. The improved quality and reliability lead to higher perceived value and increased market share for a company, thereby increasing revenue and profitability.
The book discusses the concepts and dimensions of quality, costs of poor quality, the importance of quality in this highly competitive global economy, and quality programs—Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma that focus on improving quality in industries. The text integrates quality concepts, statistical methods, and one of the major tools of quality—Statistical Process Control (SPC)—a major part of Six Sigma control phase. A significant part of the book is devoted to process control and the tools of SPC—control charts—used for monitoring, controlling, and improving the processes by identifying the causes of process variation. The fundamentals of control charts, along with SPC techniques for variables and attributes, and process capability analysis and their computer applications are discussed in detail. This book fills a gap in this area by showing the readers comprehensive and step-wise solutions to model and solve quality problems using computers.

Modeling Service Systems

$21.99

This book invites the reader on a journey of discovery of service systems. From a Service-Dominant-Logic perspective, such systems are the building blocks of all economic activity, and innovation of new service systems holds the promise of a new industrial revolution. Users navigating web sites, customers interacting with intelligent mobile retail applications, patients interpreting advice from health-care professionals and other sources, students interacting with teachers and learning materials, city dwellers invoking smart service applications for transportation routing, and the unlimited variations of smart service systems that will be enabled by the Internet of Things and other technologies provide ample evidence of the need for service innovation.
This book presents an overview of the foundational constructs of service science and models of co-creative systems, with the aim of enabling the reader to be a service innovator. The value proposition of this book is the opportunity to fill each reader’s knowledge gaps and offer a comprehensive, coherent, and introductory overview of service system modeling.

Marketing Plan Templates for Enhancing Profits

$21.99

This workbook presents 12 marketing strategies for enhancing profits with the 80/20 rule, including templates of marketing plans for a contractor, manufacturer, healthcare provider, non-profit, broker, consultant, and award-winning business. These templates demonstrate how a part-timer, immigrant, professional, corporation, franchisee, stay-at-home mom, and family business use the 80/20 rule to enhance their profits. The workbook guides students to make wise decisions for each component of a marketing plan.

Professors can use the decision rules in this workbook to evaluate a marketing plan or similar project by students in a principles of marketing class or marketing strategy/management class.

The Economics of Civil and Common Law

$21.99

Law is supposed to encourage innovation, morality, and conformity with societal expectations, yet it may provides perverse incentives causing individuals, or even the State, to act in discordant, inefficient, and even immoral ways. This book will explore the inefficiencies that are created that serve to deny individuals work and shelter in a haphazard and capricious manner. The author examines property rights, including eminent domain, that lets the State take property away with seemingly arbitrary compensation to the owner. Individuals must understand both civil law, codified by statutes, and common law, enshrined in precedential judicial decisions. This book is written for economists and non-economists and has an extensive glossary of economic, political and legal terms. Two items that are not formally treated in other economics of law textbooks are the legal organization of businesses and tax law from an economics perspective.

Managerial Forensics

$21.99

Check out this April 2019 article in CoBank Magazine by Munoz!
Managerial forensics is the practice of gathering relevant corporate information for the purpose of analyzing and identifying reasons for managerial obstacles, mismanagement, bankruptcy, and corporate demise. This book assembles a cast of leading academic and business experts and shares their views on the best practices in corporate analysis. Following the notion that the past offers insights into the future, the book examines the maladies in contemporary business and offers strategies for corporate revival and turnaround.

Operations Methods: Waiting Line Applications, Second Edition

$21.99

Updated to integrate the management of associated information processes, expand some application discussions, and provide additional reference material, the intent of this monograph is to help business professionals use waiting line (queuing) analysis methods to improve both service and manufacturing business applications of queuing situations. Emphasis is given to discussing the caveats in applying waiting line theory and becoming aware of the assumptions used in developing that theory. The importance of accounting for variability in waiting line processes is discussed in some detail because the basic queuing equations provide only average performance data under steady-state conditions.

Understanding how much variability can exist for a given waiting line scenario provides a manager with the insight required to reduce these effects and develop innovative solutions for improving service while reducing operating costs. In general the mathematical tone of the book is focused on applications, not the derivation of the formulas presented. The few derivation exceptions illustrate some approaches not commonly discussed in textbooks—for example, the use of state diagrams and random number approximations of the probability distributions for use in simple simulation models. To aid in understanding the material presented, some practical examples are given at appropriate points in the text and some simulation approaches using common spreadsheet software are described.

Writing Online: A Guide to Effective Digital Communication at Work

$21.99

Online writing plays a complex and increasingly prominent role in the life of organizations. From newsletters to press releases, social media marketing and advertising, to virtual presentations and interactions via e-mail and instant messaging, digital writing intertwines and affects the day-to-day running of the company – yet we rarely pay enough attention to it. Typing on the screen can become particularly problematic because digital text-based communication increases the opportunities for misunderstanding: it lacks the direct audio-visual contact and the norms and conventions that would normally help people to understand each other.
Providing a clear, convincing and approachable discussion, this book addresses arenas of online writing: virtual teamwork, instant messaging, emails, corporate communication channels, and social media. Instead of offering do and don’t lists, however, it teaches the reader to develop a practice that is observant, reflective, and grounded in the understanding of the basic principles of language and communication. Through real-life examples and case studies, it helps the reader to notice previously unnoticed small details, question previously unchallenged assumptions and practices, and become a competent digital communicator in a wide range of professional contexts.