Integrated Management of Processes and Information

Integrated Management of Processes and Information

$21.99

Many process management books focus on manufacturing applications. A few discuss services applications and occasionally some comment on the information processes outside of the normal information technology (IT) function. When a business seeks to improve the processes it uses in order to provide efficiency and cost savings to a product or service, that business needs to consider its manufacturing, service, and information handling processes together because they are not independent. This book has two goals: First, to help business practitioners integrate their management of manufacturing or service processes with information processes; and second, to provide business schools with a textbook that can be used for a basic process management course to precede or accompany the typical operations management course Because information handling approaches vary considerably with organizational size, both large and small business approaches are discussed. This discussion is focused on basic concepts rather than specific technical aspects like what type of information hardware to be used. One chapter will discuss the considerations necessary when adding information process management to enterprise resource planning (ERP), statistical process control (SPC), and supply chain logistics approaches from both large and small business perspectives.

International Economics: Understanding the Forces of Globalization for Managers

International Economics: Understanding the Forces of Globalization for Managers

$21.99

Today’s news media displays an intense fascination with the global economy–and for good reason. The degree of worldwide economic integration is unprecedented, and rising globalization has lifted living standards and reduced poverty. Foreign markets and new technologies continue to present opportunities for entrepreneurs and corporations. Still, economic shocks can spread across the world in minutes, impacting billions of lives. This book will help you learn about economics in everyday language, using little or no math, giving you better tools to interpret current events as well as long-term economic and political developments. Modern economics offers a powerful framework for understanding globalization, international trade, and economic growth. You may possess years of hands-on experience dealing with business cycles and foreign competitive pressures, but lack a solid grounding in economic concepts that shed light on the forces of globalization. This book is here to help.

Basics of Branding: A Practical Guide for Managers

Basics of Branding: A Practical Guide for Managers

$21.99

Smart branding is essential for success, yet it is often misunderstood. Developing a brand that is relevant, distinct, and emotionally compelling can be very dif_ cult for many managers, mainly because they don’t realize exactly what and how much goes into this branding process. This book will explain this process. In an easy-to-understand writing style, Gronlund will show you the fundamentals that will help develop a value proposition that will excite customers. Branding is all about creating a message or an impression that makes an impact and creates a rational and emotional connection with a customer. Forming a bond of trust and comfort will build brand equity (i.e., how people value your brand) and customer loyalty. We are living in a dynamic, transformative global economy with mind-boggling advances in technology. Managers today can easily become preoccupied with social media vehicles and the innovative features of electronic devices, and hence neglect the importance of the content or the message. Adhering to the core elements of positioning and branding will help them develop more emotionally rich and powerful content. And B2B managers will better understand and discover the real value of good branding, so that their marketing and sales communications will go beyond product features and emphasize relevant benefits that will strengthen their relationships with targeted customers.

Intercultural Communication for Managers

Intercultural Communication for Managers

$21.99

People have always found a way to trade with one another, overcoming enormous barriers. Business and trade relationships are often the foundation for nations to thrive in peace. This book will help you learn about building a successful global relationship for your company, working together in peace while educating yourself and co-workers. Inside, the author teaches you about the essential responsibility to a global environment–knowledge of the people, organizations, and companies you want to work with. Becoming acquainted and eventually immersed in the history, geography, values, traditions, taboos, mindset, prejudices, and legal systems of someone else is an essential step to successful relationships with people from other parts of the world. Knowledge of the culture and management practices of their company is the second step toward success–how they make decisions; how they organize; how they work together; how they view the outside world; how they tolerate risk; how they settle disagreements; how they run meetings; how they view time; how they demonstrate their mission and values. This book will detail all of that so that you can make yourself and your company a real success in a global world.

A Practical Guide to Educating for Responsibility in Management and Business

A Practical Guide to Educating for Responsibility in Management and Business

$21.99

What does it mean to ‘educate for responsibility’? The author of this book will teach you about the new way of engaging young people with the challenge of changing their world for the better. Designed for application in any educational context dealing with ethics, responsibility, or human development, this book explains in detail how to facilitate anyone’s ability to think and act in more fully responsible ways. In contrast to the predominant model of teaching, which is almost exclusively an intellectual education about responsibility, educating for responsibility integrates emotion, insight, observation, and action so anyone can learn the true dynamics of exercising this resilient capacity. Inside, educating for responsibility is explained and a template offered for a creative way of teaching that has proven to be extremely effective in practice. Written particularly for those offering courses or training in social responsibility, sustainability, or business ethics, it offers a new way of thinking about how we might better serve the interests of a generation of young people entering a rapidly changing, and by all accounts, rapidly destabilizing world.

Economic Decision Making Using Cost Data: A Guide for Managers

Economic Decision Making Using Cost Data: A Guide for Managers

$21.99

A firm maximizes profits if each decision adds more to the firm’s revenue than to its costs. Although the concept sounds rather simple, it is difficult to do in practice. To ease this difficulty, the authors are giving you the inside knowledge to ‘economic theory.’ This book will help you understand economic theory and much more to accurately infer changes in revenues that may be associated with a decision. And since economic theory suggests that the costs reported by accountants rarely reflect the true cost associated with the decision, this book will help you understand how to assess the changes in revenues and costs. Demand and price sensitivity analysis allow you to infer revenue changes, and this book helps you reconcile the economic theory of cost with common accounting practices so the differences can be reconciled and better decisions can be made.

Crisis Management in the Age of Social Media

Crisis Management in the Age of Social Media

$21.99

Social media has fundamentally changed the contract between institutions and the public. Today, people expect a conversation, not a one-way diatribe. That, combined with the speed of the Internet, changes the game for many companies in anticipating, managing, and ultimately avoiding an ‘instant crisis’–an instant crisis example is when Verizon added a $2 charge for all their customers; one hour later 100,000 signatures appeared on a Twitter petition, and soon Verizon was in the middle of a huge public relations crisis. Inside this book, you’ll learn just how to manage this type of situation and meet the challenges of social media. Each chapter includes a description of a crisis, the timeliness of a good response, the effectiveness of this response, and an assessment of what works and what doesn’t. Some examples of social media crises include Apple Computer, Netflix, JetBlue, Bank of America, Fed Ex, and public figures such as Anthony Weiner, Ashton Kutcher, and Jon Bon Jovi.

Value Creation in Management Accounting: Using Information to Capture Customer Value

Value Creation in Management Accounting: Using Information to Capture Customer Value

$21.99

Value creation is at the heart of an economic enterprise, defining its capability to serve customers and generate profits and growth. This fact has led to an ever-increasing set of tools and techniques that start with customers, focusing on serving their preferences from the very inception of a product until its disposal. To date, most of these techniques have been only partially adopted in management accounting. This is unfortunate, because much of the data required to adequately implement a value creation approach has its roots in the Management Accounting System (MAS). The resulting model is called the Value Creation Model (VCM). This book is principally designed for managers who want to take the lessons learned in product development, process management, and marketing and extend it to their MAS. It seeks to make this transformation of the MAS both logical and easy to implement, with a focus on the new types of information that can be garnered when the MAS is modified to fit the value creation approach. After reading this book, a manager or executive will be equipped with the tools and techniques to both implement and use the VCM. The resulting information will allow the company to align its efforts by creating a common language which uses the transformed accounting language to compare, evaluate, and choose the best strategic and tactical options available. After making these choices, the VCM also allows managers to subsequently track how closely actual results come to the projected outcomes. The results and recommendations in this book are based on action field research, where the authors have personally supported the analysis and subsequent use of the data generated. The authors of the book will provide, upon request, a simplified automated data collection template that will ease the implementation process. In total, then, this book provides a unique perspective on the organization and creates an actionable common language that allows the unification of the continuous improvement efforts of managers across an organization.

Production Line Efficiency: A Comprehensive Guide for Managers, Second Edition

Production Line Efficiency: A Comprehensive Guide for Managers, Second Edition

$21.99

In today’s production world, many of the lines seem unpaced and unbalanced. Inside this book, you will learn new designs for these lines that can lead to more efficiency by taking advantage of inherent imbalance–for example, operators who work at different speeds–a concept that has traditionally been seen as an obstacle to efficient production. The authors have included a series of experiments that illustrate the issues involved in improving performance through production line imbalance, as well as some surprisingly easy ways to improve performance with low or zero costs. Emphasis is placed on reducing the amount of time production lines lie idle, and on reducing work in process. This is a timely contribution to the field when managers are casting around for new ways to cut waste and reduce their use of natural resources.

Project Strategy and Strategic Portfolio Management: A Primer

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?’