One of the most significant and yet largely overlooked factors influencing performance and workplace problem solving in many large organizations is that of national culture. Managers, and the organizations for which they work, need to be able to understand the influence of cultural values and beliefs on performance in order to identify appropriate solutions; strategies appropriate in one part of the world may be ineffective or even counter-productive in another. Bryan Hopkins' ground breaking book relates the concept of cultural dimensions, as developed by writers such as Hofstede and Trompenaars, to the performance engineering approaches of Gilbert and Mager and Pipe, to show how strategies for solving workplace performance problems need to consider the cultural composition of the workforce. It then provides a practical structure for problem solving within the context of an international, multi-cultural environment. This is a book for both managers working in an international setting or for those in national organizations who are dealing with the challenge of culturally diverse workforces. It's also a book for governments seeking to understand the potential implications of national culture on civilian or even military interventions.
The structure of corporate governance has made significant progress in OECD countries but it remains imperfectly linked to the activities of many businesses. Its advance on the global stage will be hesitant and slow until its practice in OECD countries is more consistent and convincing. Weaknesses in corporate governance and law enforcement are impeding the investment needed to build the global economy to its full potential. The Globalisation of Corporate Governance: The Challenge of Clashing Cultures, explores the challenges of making corporate governance effective for all participants in a global economy. The tasks of: o reappraising the purpose of corporate governance in a global context; o reassessing ownership and the "agency principle" in a global context; o potential clashes of culture and how they may affect corporate governance; o understanding human motivation and how it can help to drive better governance; o relating corporate governance to a changing and uncertain external world; o coping with a lack of effective global institutions to underpin the globalisation of corporate governance and enforce the rule of law; and o using corporate governance to build resilience and sustainable success; need to be met if corporate governance is to succeed in driving globalisation and encouraging investment worldwide.
For many organisations, training and development remain an aspiration rather than fundamental to their business, and the consequent investment is subject to reductions or reallocations when times get tough. Yet increasing pressures from business globalisation mean that organisations are absolutely dependent on the skills of their workforce if they are to remain competitive. John Talbot's Training in Organisations: A Cost-Benefit Analysis, provides the basis for measuring and analysing the cost and value associated with training. It looks both at manual skills and management training analysis to explore the various approaches for costing training, controlling those costs and applying value analyses to the investment that is being made. Also included is a series of international comparisons across a variety of industry sizes and types which provide organisations with an important benchmark for their own spending.
Transparency and accurate management information are essential if you want to ensure that the supply chain is working for your business. Supply Chain Visibility is a critical primer for readers with backgrounds in supply chain management, system integration, strategy consulting, and enterprise software. Jonah McIntire sets the stage for a new framework that empowers business leaders to connect their projects, tasks or work streams back to the strategic message that it is worth applying organizational resources to supply chain visibility. Drawing on research findings, he reviews the prerequisites needed for a successful visibility solution and suggests a visibility fitness scorecard to compare the quality of widely varying approaches. The second section of the book reviews in detail the eight most common types of supply chain visibility and offers a set of indicators of potential fit for each one. The book also explains how to acquire visibility technology and the available options, and includes guidance on best practice for in-house designed systems. If you or your organization are moving into this area, Jonah’s insights will place you in a far stronger position to decide exactly how to leverage the benefits of supply chain visibility solutions; they also walk you carefully through the minefields of ineffective approaches or technologies to give you the greatest chance of success.
Extremism, Counter-terrorism and Policing brings together a diverse range of multidisciplinary studies to explore the extent of extremism and how communities are policed. Through analysing the historical development, the present situation, and future trends in the forms and ability to police violent extremism and terrorism, this text provides a detailed contribution towards both academic and policy debate surrounding extremism, its causes, and treatments. With chapters written by experts in their fields, this book provides the reader with detailed definitions of extremism; the psychology of extremists and the causes of radicalisation; policing extremism within a counter-terrorism context; community policing approaches to combating extremism; the legal frameworks and legislation regarding extremism and its limitations in an international setting; and public perceptions and understanding of extremism. It is crucial for policing professionals, policy-makers and academics to have a detailed understanding of government policy and the methods towards tackling extremism from a policing and community level. Extremism, Counter-terrorism and Policing gives a policing rationale alongside specific community approaches towards tackling extremist threats and provides key details for policy readers as well as academics.
The focus of this study is court literature in early sixteenth-century England and Scotland. Author Jon Robinson examines courtly poetry and drama in the context of a complex system of entertainment, education, self-fashioning, dissimulation, propaganda and patronage. He places selected works under close critical scrutiny to explore the symbiotic relationship that existed between court literature and important socio-political, economic and national contexts of the period 1500 to 1540. The first two chapters discuss the pervasive influence of patronage upon court literature through an analysis of the panegyric verse that surrounded the coronation of Henry VIII. The rhetorical strategies adopted by courtiers within their literary works, however, differed, depending on whether the writer was, at the time of writing the verse or drama, excluded or included from the environs of the court. The different, often elaborate rhetorical strategies are, through close readings of selected verse, delineated and discussed in chapter three on David Lyndsay and chapter four on Thomas Wyatt and Thomas Elyot. Wyatt's integrity, his honest persona is, however, in chapter five, shown to have been a façade deliberately and adroitly crafted by the poet that allowed him to survive and flourish within a world of political intrigue at the Henrician court. Literature at times could be appropriated by the sovereign and specifically crafted on his behalf to further national and personal political objectives. The possibilities of this appropriation are explored in the final chapter through a scholarly informed imaginative analysis of the works of Buchanan, Dunbar and Wyatt.
In a 24/7 world and a global economy, there is no doubt that relationships impact virtually every economic transaction. In Relationship Economics, Lindon Robison and Bryan Ritchie argue that what needs to be understood is not just whether relationships matter (which, of course, they do), but also, how much, and in what circumstances they should matter. Providing a rigorous and measurable definition of the way that relationships among individuals create a capital, social capital, that can be saved, spent, and used like other forms of capital, Robison and Ritchie use numerous examples and insightful analysis, to explain how social capital shapes our ability to reduce poverty, understand corruption, encourage democracy, facilitate income equality, and respond to globalization. The first part of the book explains how social capital can be manipulated, stored, expended, and invested. The second part explores how levels of social capital within relationships influence economic transactions both positively and negatively, which in turn shape poverty levels, economic efficiency, levels and types of political participation, and institutional structures.
Francis Watkins was an eminent figure in his field of mathematical and optical instrument making in mid-eighteenth century London. Working from original documents, Brian Gee has uncovered the life and times of an optical instrument maker, who - at first glance - was not among the most prominent in his field. In fact, because Francis Watkins came from a landed background, the diversification of his assets enabled him to weather particular business storms - discussed in this book - where colleagues without such an economic cushion, were pushed into bankruptcy or forced to emigrate. He played an important role in one of the most significant legal cases to touch this profession, namely the patenting of the achromatic lens in telescopes. The book explains Watkins's origins, and how and why he was drawn into partnership with the famous Dollond firm, who at that point were Huguenot incomers. The patent for the achromatic telescope has never been satisfactorily explained in the literature, and the author has gone back to the original legal documents, never before consulted. He teases out the problems, lays out the evidence, and comes to some interesting new conclusions, showing the Dollonds as hard-headed and ruthless businessmen, ultimately extremely successful. The latter part of the book accounts for the successors of Francis Watkins, and their decline after over a century of successful business in central London.
The statutory duty of public service ombudsmen (PSO) is to investigate claims of injustice caused by maladministration in the provision of public services. This book examines the modern role of the ombudsman within the overall emerging system of administrative justice and makes recommendations as to how PSO should optimize their potential within the wider administrative justice context. Recent developments are discussed and long standing questions that have yet to be adequately resolved in the ombudsman community are re-evaluated given broader changes in the administrative justice sector. The work balances theory and empirical research conducted in a number of common law countries. Although there has been much debate within the ombudsman community in recent years aimed at developing and improving the practice of ombudsmanry, this work represents a significant advance on current academic understanding of the discipline.
In this genuinely interdisciplinary work, Clack breaks new ground by using detailed explorations of the phenomena of drug-use, romantic love and the enjoyment of art in order to throw light on the meaning and nature of religion. This book will be vital reading for anyone concerned with the fundamental questions of religious belief, the psychoanalytic approach to culture, or simply the unavoidable existential problems lying at the very heart of human life.
The English Civil War and its aftermath was a time of human devastation, political uncertainty and religious instability. Amid the turmoil of those times, however, the Church of England also saw intense liturgical inventiveness. The Directory for Public Worship, Jeremy Taylor's Communion Office, and Richard Baxter's Reformed Liturgy, are all examples of resourceful liturgies born out of the ashes of the English Civil War. The Church of England had not witnessed such liturgical innovation since Thomas Cranmer, and would not see such creativity again until the end of the twentieth century - at least in terms of liturgical texts. In Richard Baxter's Reformation of the Liturgy, Glen J. Segger examines the theology and ecclesiology of Baxter’s liturgical opus. While never approved for public use, the Reformed Liturgy remains an important and creative liturgy representative of those who fought for their Puritan convictions, but lost.
Information services are currently going through what is probably the most significant period of change in their history. At the same time, thinking about organisational change in general management has continued to develop, and many of the emerging ideas, strategies and processes are increasingly relevant to information services. Since the first edition of this highly regarded book was published in 2000 the pace of change has accelerated because of the influence of digitisation and technological developments in general, the emergence of what might be called a business culture, changes in skills and knowledge requirements, and changes in user and personnel attitudes. Despite these rapid developments the current literature tends to reflect a preoccupation with technological developments at the expense of consideration for the broader managerial base. This second edition fills the gap in the literature and is fully updated with the inclusion of a number of new chapters and new case studies.
Based on the re-discovery of a lost sociological project led by Norbert Elias at the University of Leicester, this book re-visits the project: The Adjustment of Young Workers to Work Situations and Adult Roles. Norbert Elias's Lost Research makes use of the interview booklets documenting the lives of nearly 900 Leicester school leavers at the time, to give a unique account of Elias's only foray into large-scale, publicly funded research.
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