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Professionals are challenged each day by a changing landscape of technology and terminology. In recent history, especially the last 25 years, there has been an explosion of terms and methods born that automate and improve decision-making and operations. One term, called'analytics,'is an overarching description of a compilation of methodologies. But artificial intelligence (AI), statistics, decision science, and optimization, which have been around for decades, have resurged. Also, things like business intelligence, online analytical processing (OLAP) and many, many more have been born or reborn. How is someone to make sense of all this methodology, terminology? Extending on the foundations introduced in the first book, this book illustrates how professionals in healthcare, business, and government are applying these disciplines, methods, and technologies. The goal of this book is to get leaders and practitioners to start thinking about how they may deploy techniques outside their function or industry into their domain. Application of modern technology into new areas is one of the fastest, most effective ways to improve results. By providing a rich set of examples, this book fosters creativity in the application and use of AI and analytics in innovative ways.

With AI, cryptocurrency, and more in the news, it seems that being an entrepreneur means being in IT, but humanities graduates are launching new businesses every day, turning a profit and having social impact. This book explores how a humanities background can enable entrepreneurs to thrive. Across all levels of education, students are given the message that to change the world - or make money - the arts and humanities are not the subjects to study. At the same time, discussions of innovation and entrepreneurship highlight the importance of essential skills, such as critical thinking, storytelling, cultural awareness, and ethical decision-making. Here's the disconnect: the subjects that help to develop these vital skills are derided at critical points in any aspiring entrepreneur's education. This collection of perspectives from entrepreneurs in a range of fields and humanities educators illustrates what individuals, and the wider world, are missing when humanities are overlooked as a source of inspiration and success in business. Featuring a foreword by Sensemaking author Christian Madsbjerg, this is a thought-provoking guide for aspiring entrepreneurs in all sectors, and for educators, a window on the practical value of the humanities in an ever more mechanized world._

The world is changing faster and faster, with increasing uncertainty and threat of disruption in every business and nonprofit segment. Conventional approaches to strategy development and problem solving no longer work—there is no stable industry or market equilibrium structure that we will return to “when change abates.” Most company planning processes are fantasy; market conditions are changing too quickly for arm-chair strategizing to be useful. As a consequence, many management teams are stuck in a wait-and-see posture in response to extreme uncertainty in the post-Covid environment, while others are making panicky bets, including ‘leap before you look'acquisitions. In this sequel to their Amazon-bestseller, Bulletproof Problem Solving, Conn and McLean introduce a novel approach to strategic problem solving. Based on a decade of research and 30 new case studies, The Imperfectionists posits a dynamic approach to developing organizational direction under uncertainty based on harnessing six reinforcing strategic mindsets, which they call curiosity, dragonfly eye, occurrent behaviour, collective wisdom, imperfectionism, and show and tell. Imperfectionists are curious, they look at problems from several perspectives, and gather new data and approaches, including from outside their current industry. They deliberately step into risk, proceeding through trial and error, utilizing nimble low consequence and reversible moves to deepen their understanding of the unfolding game being played, and to build capabilities. They accept ambiguity and some apparent failures in exchange for improved learning and market position. Imperfectionists succeed with dynamic, real time strategic problem solving, confidently moving forward while others wait for certainty, or make impetuous and foolish bets. These strategic mindsets for solving tough problems in uncertain times help you fight decision biases and give you the data to develop informed strategies to win. In the fast changing world we all find ourselves in, being an imperfectionist is a critical advantage for you and your organization.

Risk is the single most prevalent and enduring factor that influences every individual, organization, and society. People often seek protection from negative risk events, but also seek to take advantage of opportunities arising from positive risk events. We may feel overwhelmed by messages encountered in daily interactions with media and society, contributing to a sense of ambiguity over how to act in response to risk-related information and misinformation. We seek to leverage evidence and reason to find our own balance between both positive and negative outcomes in an uncertain world. This groundbreaking book delivers practical concepts and tools that empower readers to leverage innovations in risk science to improve their abilities to interpret, assess, communicate, and handle risk. It provides a practical non-quantitative approach to understanding the risk and making better decisions involving risk. Think RISK covers several key themes in risk science: a) the main goals and strategies for understanding and managing risk; b) how readers can inform their risk stances by considering their own individual values and mission; c) the difference between risk and safety, and how that difference is critical for managing the risk; d) the role of psychological factors when understanding and managing the risk; e) the role of communication when understanding and managing the risk; and f) the general importance and incentives for effectively understanding and managing the risk. Written for business professionals in all private and public sectors, this book will also be relevant to non-business professionals such as medical practitioners and policymakers and would be an ideal fit for executive education and seminar-style courses in universities, corporate book clubs, and training seminars. Because it's based on foundational and scientifically accepted ideas and principles, the book should remain relevant for many years.

One of the most significant management challenges in modern companies and organizations is dealing with unavoidable, complex paradoxes. Today's world is multidimensional, multipolar, and multipurpose, and increasingly, classic management challenges such as leadership vs. management; exploitation vs. exploration, virtual vs. physical presence, economic sustainability vs. environmental sustainability, localization vs. globalization, etc. assume the characteristics of paradoxes rather than problems or dilemmas. Leadership of paradox is not about making a decision once and for all or prioritizing tough trade-offs, but about navigating between opposing considerations. Navigating Leadership Paradox argues that academic knowledge pools can support leaders'decision-making and sense-making in organizations and navigating paradoxes. The book outlines a practical pathway for management leaders and professionals for steering through paradox using 5 phases, 10 paradoxes, 15 tools, 20 cases, and 25 learning points. It delineates how to identify a paradox by assessing the nature of your challenge and discusses the appropriate courses of action individually as well in collaboration with other stakeholders. It also gives inspiration and advice for professional helpers assisting others in navigating paradox as part of organizational development or other educational purposes. This book will be essential reading for practitioners and academicians in the fields of leadership paradox, complexity management, change management, leadership dilemmas and organizational paradox.

Organizations provide mind-boggling compensations to their leaders as compared to an average employee. Is it because they work more? Just like the saying ‘we are the decisions we make', the very existence of an organization depends on the decisions its leaders make! Decision-making is not just a process. It is an interplay among competitive strategies, processes, design, values and culture. Narrating the experiences of industry decision-makers, the book demonstrates that organizational decision-making is about making tough choices—navigating through a minefield of biases and execution issues. It walks the readers through the challenges faced by every decision-maker and how these decisions affect the organization. It also goes on to lay out a series of tools that readers can immediately use to enhance their organizational decision-making skills. From analysing key decisions of the past to shaping new ones, this book will equip readers with effective strategies that will allow them to become an integral part of their organization's decision-making environment. Businesses are always on the lookout for effective decision-makers. Whether you are looking to move up the career ladder or do well in your personal life, with How Leaders Decide you will be well on your way!

The systematic approach to innovation development today is one of the world's most prominent scientific fields, and with good reason. When applied correctly, such system produces regular outcomes, which consistently drive lasting competitive advantage. Unfortunately, as much as it is beneficial, the orchestration of an undisturbed flow of multiple complex, dynamic, and flexible innovation development processes is structurally demanding.In this book, a recognised innovation management specialist sets the record straight, offering a comprehensive approach to the improvement of innovation efficiency with the use of management control system. Unlike other books on the subject, it proposes original representation – the CDI model – of the relationships between management control system, decision-making quality, and innovation system efficiency and explains why management control is fundamental to innovation management. In addition to that, inside the reader will find several original developments. These include: the info-deficiency (I-D) model, depicting the various parameters hindering decision-making in innovation development; the product innovation development (PID) system, offering the original function-based approach to innovation management; and the composite innovation index – specially designed tool intended to evaluate the efficiency of an innovation development system.It will be of interest to researchers, academics, practitioners, and advanced students in the fields of management, strategy, and innovation.Chapter 4 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com

We are in the midst of a leadership crisis that is derailing business success, and it's time to get rigorous about talent. This book will show you how, with an effective and consistent framework, to help galvanize decision-makers around leadership potential.Time and time again, organizations place too many leaders in roles they are not a good fit for. The financial, strategic, and human costs of poor leadership are staggering and unnecessary. But organizations that effectively identify high-potential talent are likely to financially outperform those that do not do this work by a factor of 4.2 to 1, not to mention all the other positive impacts. Backed by the authors'research, including a study with 50+ global CEOs, the insights and strategies packed into this book will help you eliminate the shocking variation that exists in how people think about determining leadership potential – and empower decision-makers to be game-changers to optimize their organizations.For too long, leadership potential has been treated as an imprecise art and inconsistently applied. CEOs, board members, senior managers, and HR professionals will welcome the thought-provoking insights and practical tools this book gives to build a pipeline of strong leaders.

Business Model Innovation Process: Preparation, Organization and Management examines a range of critical questions that merit thoughtful interdisciplinary consideration, such as: Why do business models, and their innovation in particular, matter today? How can the process of business model innovation be understood, organized and managed adequately under increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous technological, business and geo-political conditions? What should decision-making and risk-management look like under these conditions, with managers whose rationality is bounded?The book offers a detailed account of the relatively unknown process of business model innovation by looking into the intersection of strategic, operations and innovation management, organizational design, decision-making and performance management. In doing so, this book addresses fundamental issues, and introduces new ideas and theoretical perspectives. In envisioning and thinking about various potential scenarios of business model innovation and understanding how to organize for each of these under different conditions, the book provides original arguments and suggestions for practitioners. For that purpose, the book also offers many compelling real-life examples of business models and their innovation.Combining theory and practice, this book is an essential read for researchers and academics of business model innovation, as well as strategic management, digital transformation, innovation management and organizational change. It will also be of direct interest to practitioners and business leaders seeking new perspectives to increase their competitive advantage.

The world we live in presents plenty of tricky, impactful, and hard-tomake decisions to be taken. Sometimes the available options are ample, at other times they are apparently binary, either way, they often confront us with dilemmas, paradoxes, and even denial of values.In the dawn of the age of intelligence, when robots are gradually taking over most decision-making from humans, this book sheds a bit of light on decision rationale. It delves into the limits of these decision processes (for both humans and machines), and it does so by providing a new perspective that is somehow opposed to orthodox economics. All Economics reflections in this book are underlined and linked to Artificial Intelligence.The authors hope that this comprehensive and modern analysis, firmly grounded in the opinions of various groundbreaking Nobel laureate economists, may be helpful to a broad audience interested in how decisions may lead us all to flourishing societies. That is, societies in which economic blunders (caused by over simplification of problems and super estimation of tools) are reduced substantially.

The Theory of the Firm is commonly viewed as axiomatic by business school academicians. Considerations in spanning organizational structures, their boundaries and roles, as well as business strategies all relate to the Theory of the Firm. The dominant Theory of the Firm poses that markets act perfectly to maximize the well- being of society when people act to maximize the personal utility of their individual purchases and firms act to maximize financial returns to their owners.However, burgeoning evidence and discourse across the scientific and policy communities suggests that the economic, social, and environmental consequences of accepting and applying this theory in the organization of business and society threaten the survival of the human species, among countless others. This book provides the latest thinking on alternatives to the Theory of the Firm as cornerstone of managerial decision-making. Authors explore and elucidate theories that help us understand a firm differently and suggest alternatives to the Theory of the Firm.This book will be of value to researchers, academics, practitioners, and students interested in leadership, strategic management, and the intersection of corporate interests and the well-being of the society.

Supply Chain Analytics introduces the reader to data analytics and demonstrates the value of their effective use in supply chain management. By describing the key supply chain processes through worked examples, and the descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analytic methods that can be applied to bring about improvements to those processes, the book presents a more comprehensive learning experience for the reader than has been offered previously.Key topics are addressed, including optimisation, big data, data mining and cloud computing. The author identifies four core supply chain processes – strategy, design, execution and people – to which the analytic techniques explained can be applied to ensure continuous improvement. Pedagogy to aid learning is incorporated throughout, including an opening section for each chapter explaining the learnings designed for the chapter; worked examples illustrating how each analytic technique works, how it is applied and what to be careful of; tables, diagrams and equations to help ‘visualise'the concepts and methods covered; chapter case studies; and end-of-chapter review questions and assignment tasks.Providing both management expertise and technical skills, which are essential to decision-makers in the supply chain, this textbook should be essential reading for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of supply chain analytics, supply chain leadership, and supply chain and operations management. Its practice-based and applied approach also makes it valuable for operating supply chain practitioners and those studying for professional qualifications.Online resources include chapter-by-chapter PowerPoint slides, tutorial exercises, written assignments and a test bank of exam questions.

Risk science is becoming increasingly important as businesses, policymakers and public sector leaders are tasked with decision-making and investment using varying levels of knowledge and information. Risk Science: An Introduction explores the theory and practice of risk science, providing concepts and tools for understanding and acting under conditions of uncertainty. The chapters in this work cover the fundamental concepts, principles, approaches, methods and models for how to understand, assess, communicate, manage and govern risk. These topics are presented and examined in a way which details how they relate, for example, how to characterize and communicate risk with particular emphasis on reflecting uncertainties; how to distinguish risk perception and professional risk judgments; how to assess risk and guide decision-makers, especially for cases involving large uncertainties and value differences; and how to integrate risk assessment with resilience-based strategies. The text provides a variety of examples and case studies that relate to highly visible and relevant issues facing risk academics, practitioners and non-risk leaders who must make risk-related decisions. Presenting both the foundational and most recent advancements in the subject matter, this work particularly suits students of risk science courses at college and university level. The book also provides broader key reading for students and scholars in other domains, including business, engineering and public health.

Drawing on knowledge from process improvement, organisation theory, human resource management, change management, occupational health and safety, and other fields, the book is a practical, easy-to-read guide to problem solving. Illustrated with a series of short case studies, this book provides an integrated approach to problem solving in the workplace. Collaborative Problem Solving walks through the steps in the problem solving process, introducing dozens of tools, techniques, and concepts to use throughout. Chris J. Shannon describes the behaviours to practice which are most conducive to creating a positive problem solving culture based on curiosity, collaboration, and evidence-based thinking. This book explains why successful problem solving is a collaborative process and provides tools and techniques for responding to other people's behaviour when designing and implementing solutions. Offering practical advice on problem solving in an easy-to-understand way, this book is aimed at people working in office environments, service industries, and knowledge organisations, enabling them to feel confident in applying the knowledge from the book in their own workplace.

In organizations, accounting produces organizational knowledge that affects decision-making and managerial action. Companies placing importance on shareholder value sometimes tend to elevate accounting to a higher truth criterion for justifying managerial actions. Yet, the nature of accounting renders it difficult to argue that accounting information necessarily produce a better basis for decision-making than arguments which are not based on accounting. This is because, as previous research has also argued, accounting counts some things but omits many others, while managers are accountable for much more than what accounting actually counts. Using a theoretical apparatus from Deleuze and Guattarí, this book illustrates that accounting-based actions such as making management decisions, maintaining organisational responsibility and hierarchical control are manifestations of the ways in which accounting is composed. This concise introduction will be invaluable for researchers and advanced students of management accounting exploring responsibility accounting and accountability.

Can employees be trained to make more ethical decisions? If so, how? Providing evidence-based and practical answers to these critical questions is the purpose of this book. To answer these questions, the authors—four organizational psychologists who specialize in the study of ethical decision making—translate insights based on decades of scientific research. Whether you are a student, educator, HR manager, compliance professional, or simply someone interested in the topic of ethics education, this book offers a road map for designing ethics training programs that work.

Get the Summary of Damon Zahariades'How to Make Better Decisions in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. Original book introduction: Smart decisions lead to promising opportunities, greater happiness, and richer experiences. Poor decisions get us into trouble and often impose serious consequences. That's why making decisions can be so difficult. There's a lot at stake. HOW TO MAKE BETTER DECISIONS shows you, step by step, how to choose wisely every time. You'll discover how to stop agonizing and make smart decisions quickly and confidently with zero regret. You'll also learn how to recognize influences, both internal and external, that threaten to sabotage your choices.

Herbert Simon's renowned theory of bounded rationality is principally interested in cognitive constraints and environmental factors and influences which prevent people from thinking or behaving according to formal rationality. Simon's theory has been expanded in numerous directions and taken up by various disciplines with an interest in how humans think and behave. This includes philosophy, psychology, neurocognitive sciences, economics, political science, sociology, management, and organization studies.The Routledge Handbook of Bounded Rationality draws together an international team of leading experts to survey the recent literature and the latest developments in these related fields. The chapters feature entries on key behavioural phenomena, including reasoning, judgement, decision making, uncertainty, risk, heuristics and biases, and fast and frugal heuristics. The text also examines current ideas such as fast and slow thinking, nudge, ecological rationality, evolutionary psychology, embodied cognition, and neurophilosophy. Overall, the volume serves to provide the most complete state-of-the-art collection on bounded rationality available.This book is essential reading for students and scholars of economics, psychology, neurocognitive sciences, political sciences, and philosophy.

Internationalisation has been a binding request for firms dealing with the challenges of the present-day realities. Extant international business publications have recently begun to point out the relationship between the notions of ‘business model'and ‘internationalisation', yet the filed needs considerably more attention. The core aim of this book is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the ways in which business models and internationalisation impact one another in the process of initiating and expanding international business activities. The analysis makes it feasible to detect the core issues of the interdependences between business models and internationalisation to facilitate management decision-making and implementation of pertinent firm internationalisation incorporating the application of appropriate business models. In this book, the business model is applied to explore the specifics and aspects of firm internationalisation processes. Innovating the business model is analysed as a persuasive means for augmenting the propensities of firms to internationalise. The book enriches the comprehension of the significance of business model innovation as an enabler of firm internationalisation, in view that scares in what manners business model innovation facilitate firm internationalisation. The book chapters address a broad range of issues encompassing: the general roles of business model in firm internationalisation, the relationships between digital business models and platforms on one side and firm internationalisation on another, how business models determine the internationalisation of services firms, the interplay between business models and firm internationalisation in specific contexts. It will, therefore, be of interest to researchers, academics and advanced students in the fields of international business and management.

This book presents a comprehensive and updated account of concepts, methods and techniques of decision-making. It has derived strength from advances in several branches of knowledge including mathematics, computer science, behavioural economics, logic and related areas, besides statistical decision theory. The reader will find here an integrated picture of concepts, methods and analytics to aid decision-making in a wide array of situations, ranging from classical optimization to computational social choice and organizational responses to emergency and stress. Decision-making: Concepts, Methods and Techniques lucidly presents the decision-making tools aided and strengthened by decision theory in all its domains and dimensions, at the same time emphasizing the role of human behaviour in all its diversity.

Fad-Free Strategy provides a ground-breaking approach to making better business strategy decisions: more efficient, open to out-of-the-box opportunities and evidence-based. Most strategy books focus on Grand Strategy, the process that leads to high-level recommendations or, more accurately, hypotheses about where and how to compete. While this book briefly covers critical Grand Strategy practices, it deep dives into Operational Strategy, the process of validation, adaptation and possible rejection of those hypotheses.Operational Strategy is based on an in-depth understanding of customer preferences and anticipating the choices they make. Those choices rather than managers'ambitions determine whether a strategy will generate the aspired financial results. The book explains, by means of detailed real-world cases across industries, how to generate validated solutions to any strategic problem such as: how to enter successfully into new markets, either as an innovator or as a latecomer? How to defend one's position against aggressive new entrants? Or how to sustain margins when price is the only thing customers seem to care about?This remarkable book contains expert advice from accomplished strategic advisors and thought leaders Daniel Deneffe and Herman Vantrappen. Fad Free Strategy will be a useful tool for smart business executives at mainstream companies who are disappointed with strategy fads and simplistic solutions based on cherry-picked, anecdotal evidence from today's hero companies. It will also appeal to economics faculty members teaching graduate courses in business strategy who are looking for an economics-based strategy textbook that is both rigorous and comprehensive. The book's core ideas have been taught successfully in continuing and executive education programs at Harvard University and Hult International Business School.

Choosing the things you keep in your life and where you focus your energy is doable, and Gail Golden shows you how. Curating your life means selecting those activities that are most important, meaningful, and joyful for you and fiercely focusing your energy on those endeavors. It also means putting a whole bunch of stuff in the back room, to be reconsidered at another time.Curating your life means sorting your activities into three categories:The things you are not going to do, at least not right nowThe things you will be mediocre at The things you will be great atThis is not simple. But the payoff is amazing. Living a well-curated life is doable. You get to succeed at the things that really matter to you, and you still get to enjoy life. Join Gail Golden on a tour of how to curate your life for success, happiness, and fulfillment.

The complete understanding of organizational culture and personal values is fundamental for running and improving modern organizations. By identifying the underlying building blocks for behavior, strategy, and actions of organizations and their members, companies and researchers may discover innovative techniques to encourage productive and satisfying working environments. Recent Advances in the Roles of Cultural and Personal Values in Organizational Behavior is a collection of innovative research on how culture and personal values shape and influence leadership styles, decision-making processes, innovativeness, and other management practices. While highlighting topics including employee motivation, leadership style, and organizational culture, this book is ideally designed for managers, executives, human resources professionals, recruiters, researchers, academics, educators, and students seeking current research on cultural backgrounds and personal values for organizations.

Strategy, risk management and project management are often considered separately by those applying their principles—but at their most effective, all are dependent upon each other for success. Enlightened Planning teaches this holistic perspective and demonstrates how a synthesis of these approaches yields far greater opportunities. A strategic, calculated risk, for example, can be less inherently risky than chronic risk aversion over time. Here, a respected specialist and teacher demonstrates how to become an'enlightened planner', one that is aware of project, strategy and risk concerns, and their potential interplay. Following the core principle of Keep It Simple Systematically, he shows how organised, systematic thought processes can demystify the complexities of decision-making when considering a huge variety of concerns at once. Supported throughout with real-life cases from the author's considerable experiences with commercial organisations, it is also supported by a website containing even more cases, learning and teaching materials. This book is essential reading for any practitioner specialising in risk management, project management or strategy; as well as those teachers or participants in executive programmes.

To date, a plethora of companies and organizations are investing vast amounts of money on the latest technologies. Information technology can be used to improve market share, profits, sales, competitive advantage, and customer/employee satisfaction. Unfortunately, the individuals meant to use these technologies are not well equipped on how to effectively and efficiently use these tools for competitive advantage and decision making. The Handbook of Research on IT Applications for Strategic Competitive Advantage and Decision Making is a collection of innovative research relevant to the methodologies, theoretical frameworks, and latest empirical research findings in information technology applications, strategic competitive advantage, and decision making. While highlighting topics including agility, knowledge management, and business intelligence, this book is ideally designed for information technology professionals, academics, researchers, managers, executives, and government officials interested in using information technology for strategic competitive advantage and better decision making.

Neuroscientific research shows that the great majority of purchase decisions are irrational and driven by subconscious mechanisms in our brains. This is hugely disruptive to the rational, logical arguments of traditional communication and marketing practices and we are just starting to understand how organizations must adapt their strategies. This book explains the subconscious behavior of the'neuro-consumer'and shows how major international companies are using these findings to cast light on their own consumers'behavior.Written in plain English for business and management readers with no scientific background, it focuses on: how to adapt marketing and communication to the subconscious and irrational behaviors of consumers; the direct influence of the primary senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch) on purchasing decisions and the perception of communications by customers'brains; implications for innovation, packaging, price, retail environments and advertising; the use of'nudges'and artifices to increase marketing and communication efficiency by making them neuro-compatible with the brain's subconscious expectations; the influence of social media and communities on consumers'decisions – when collective conscience is gradually replacing individual conscience and recommendation becomes more important than communication; and the ethical limits and considerations that organizations must heed when following these principles. Authored by two globally recognized leaders in business and neuroscience, this book is an essential companion to marketers and brand strategists interested in neuroscience and vital reading for any advanced student or researcher in this area.

Systems Thinking for a Turbulent World will help practitioners in any field of change engage more effectively in transformative innovation. Such innovation addresses the paradigm shift needed to meet the diverse unfolding global challenges facing us today, often summed up as the Anthropocene. Fragmentation of local and global societies is escalating, and this is aggravating vicious cycles. To heal the rifts, we need to reintroduce the human element into our understandings – whether the context is civic or scientific – and strengthen truth-seeking in decision-making. Aided by appropriate concepts and methods, this healing will enable a switch from reaction to anticipation, even in the face of discontinuous change and high uncertainty. The outcome is to privilege the positive human skills for collaborative navigation through uncertainty over the disjointed rationality of mechanism and artificial intelligence, which increasingly alienates us. The reader in search of new ways of thinking will be introduced to concepts new to systems thinking that integrate systems thinking and futures thinking. The concept of anticipatory present moment (APM) serves as a basis for learning the cognitive skills that better enable navigation through turbulent times. A key personal and team practice is participative repatterning, which is the basis for transformative innovation. This practice is aided by new methods of visual facilitation. The reader is guided through the unfolding of the ideas and practices with a narrative based on the metaphor of search portrayed in the tradition of ox herding, found in traditional Far Eastern consciousness practice.

In a complex and changing world, current scientific approaches to problem solving have drastically evolved to include complexity models and emerging systems. Breaking problems into the smallest component and examining its position inside a system allows for a more regulated and measured technique in investigation, discovery, and providing solutions. Systems Research for Real-World Challenges is an essential reference source that explores the development of systems philosophy, theory, practice, its models, concepts, and methodologies developed as an aid for improving decision making and problem solving for the benefit of organizations and society as a whole. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as complexity models, management systems, and economic policy, this book is ideally designed for scientists, policy makers, researchers, managers, and systematists seeking current research on the benefits and approaches of problem solving within the realm of systems thinking and practice.

This book explores experiences and reflections of an extreme sports athlete within the context of business, the latest scholarly works and research on topics that are relevant and timely for today's managers and business leaders, and the daily challenges they face.Conviction, discipline, managing fear in high stakes situations, leading, working with teams and making decisions in extreme conditions - what will help you in extreme sports can also get you to your goals in business. In From the Death Zone to the Boardroom, speed ski mountaineer Benedikt Boehm tells gripping and inspirational stories about his fears, pain, suffering and facing death during his expeditions to some of the world's highest mountains. Throughout, his co-author and professor of leadership and management, Stefan Gröschl integrates scholarly ideas and works beyond traditional business boundaries providing you with unusual insights and thought-provoking alternatives for managing your business. The combination of extreme athlete, company leader, and business school scholar is unique, and ensures the relevance and timeliness of the selected themes, and the pellucidity of the conceptual context to a readership beyond academic boundaries. The result is advice that is both highly personal and empirically tested; a combination that makes for an absorbing read and unparalleled advice for you and your career.

Stimulating and developing the creative potential of all members of an organisation is widely seen as contributing to performance and results. This prestigious textbook provides a complete overview of the creative problem-solving process and its relevance to modern managers in the private and public sectors. It introduces ideas, skills and models to help students understand how creative thinking can aid problem solving, and how different techniques may help people who have different thinking and learning styles.This updated fifth edition includes fresh case studies, exercises and suggested reading, alongside extensive diagrams and thought-provoking questions. A new chapter considers the use of heuristics in decision-making situations faced by managers, and examines how aspects of creative problem solving can relate to such situations. It also introduces a complex in-tray exercise, which demonstrates how the conflicting demands on an individual manager can be considered in practice. Supporting PowerPoint slides for lecturers are available for each chapter.Creative Problem Solving for Managers will continue to be an ideal resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students studying problem solving, strategic management, creativity and innovation management, as well as managers looking to develop their decision-making abilities.

Seize opportunity from uncertainty What if you could use strategy to turn market volatility to your competitive advantage? Rethinking Strategy shows you how to anticipate and benefit from emerging market shifts and free your organisation from a cycle of disruption and response. In this ground-breaking book, author and strategist Steve Tighe helps you use scenarios to envisage what your industry and organisation could look like in the future and prepare for what's to come. Through detailed case studies and practical tools, this guide reveals how to make strategy development your organisation's principal creative and learning activity. anticipate impending market shifts before they emerge slow down change by making the future familiar unlock the entrepreneurial talent that lies within your organisation mobilise an army of internal advocates to drive strategy execution embed foresight into your planning and innovation processes Have you ever wondered how some companies seem to always be ahead of the curve while others struggle to keep up in today's ever-changing competitive environment? With Rethinking Strategy, you'll learn how to make better decisions and thrive alongside increasing competition and uncertainty.

The world we live in is increasingly complex. It throws up complex problems. This book is about tackling them.At ThinkPlace, we've pioneered the application of design thinking to complex challenges like climate change, family violence and global malnutrition. We work globally with governments, organisations and communities using a methodology – the Design System™ outlined in this book – that has been developed over more than a decade.We bring together different voices and help them to create better futures. If you're one of those voices, or would like to be, this book is for you. It's part roadmap, part instruction manual, but mostly it's a clarion call for a new way of doing things: tackling the world's biggest problems in a way that brings people together and produces positive, lasting change.

Under the increasing influence of globalization, integration and technological progress, modern business systems have become highly complex in terms of their organization, strategies and management. Specifics of Decision Making in Modern Business Systems: Regularities and Tendencies concentrates on how this changing context of the modern business system affects the process of decision making within organizations and corporations. With a focus on the regularities and tendencies of decision making within modern Russian business systems, the numerous contributors provide alternative and innovative ways to optimize and develop the process of decision making within businesses globally. This includes the use of forecasting within the consumer market, a consideration of public-private partnerships, and the development of a cluster platform to unify large, medium and small businesses. Specifics of Decision Making in Modern Business Systems provides a useful insight into the optimization of decision making within businesses for researchers and practitioners working within information economy creation and development and management strategy.

This fifth volume of The Foundations of Behavioral Economic Analysis covers behavioral models of learning. It is an essential guide for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students seeking a concise and focused text on this important subject, and examines heuristics and biases in judgment and decision making, mental accounting, and behavioral finance and bounded rationality. This updated extract from Dhami's leading textbook allows the reader to pursue subsections of this vast and rapidly growing field and to tailor their reading to their specific interests in behavioral economics.

Evidence-Based Decision-Making: How to Leverage Available Data and Avoid Cognitive Biases examines how a wide range of factual evidence, primarily derived from a variety of data available to organizations, can be used to improve the quality of business decision-making, by helping decision makers circumvent the various cognitive biases that adversely impact how we all think.The book is built on the following premise: During the past decade, the new ‘data world'emerged, in which the rush to develop competencies around business analytics and data science can be characterized as nothing less than the new commercial arms race. The ever-expanding volume and variety of data are well known, as are the great advances in data processing/analytics, data visualization, and related information production-focused capabilities. Yet, comparatively little effort has been devoted to how the informational products of business analytics and data science are ‘consumed'or used in the organizational decision-making processes, as the available evidence shows that only some of that information is used to drive some business decisions some of the time.Evidence-Based Decision-Making details an explicit process describing how the universe of available and applicable evidence, which includes organizational and other data, industry benchmarks, scientific studies, and professional experience, can be assessed, amalgamated, and funneled into an objective driver of key business decisions.Introducing key concepts in relation to data and evidence, and the history of evidence-based management, this new and extremely topical book will be essential reading for researchers and students of data analytics as well as those working in the private and public sectors, and in the voluntary sector.

The challenges faced by 21st-century businesses, organizations and governments are characterized as being fundamentally different in nature, scope and levels of impact from those of the past. As problems become increasingly complex and wicked, conventional reductive approaches and data-based solutions are limited. The authors argue that practical wisdom is required.This book provides an integral and practical model for incorporating wisdom into management decision making. Based on a cross-disciplinary conceptualization of practical wisdom, the authors distinguish systematically between data, information, knowledge, and wisdom-based decision making. While they suggest that data, analytics, information and knowledge can assist decision-makers to better deal with complex and wicked problems, they argue that data-based systems cannot replace optimized human decision-making capabilities. These capabilities, the authors explain, include a range of qualities and characteristics inherent in philosophical, psychological and organizational conceptions of practical wisdom.Accordingly, in this book, the authors introduce a model that identifies the specific qualities and processes involved in making wise decisions, especially in management. The model is based on the empirical fi ndings of the authors'studies in the areas of wisdom and management.This book is a practical resource for professionals, practitioners, and consultants in both the private and public sectors. The theoretical discussions, critical arguments, and practical guidelines provided in the book will be extremely valuable to students at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, as well as upper-level postdoctoral researchers looking at business management strategies.

In this volume, the authors'two-fold objective is to lay out a methodology and approach that allows the reader to learn how to utilize existing technology in the form of computer software and hardware for forecasting and decision-making and to discuss factors that affect upcoming events that, in turn, shape future paradigms. With the sheer volume of information available and the ever-greater ease of access, it is becoming increasingly difficult to introduce an appropriate methodology of decision-making that is fast enough to be effective. The demand for real-time information processing and related data—both structured and unstructured—is on the rise. This rise makes it challenging to implement correct decision-making within enterprises at a level that keeps organizations robust and resilient against natural and man-made disasters. This volume provides an understanding of these factors and will help decision-makers be better prepared to face future challenges and will assist them in coping with unexpected circumstances. This volume is divided into two parts. Part one discusses a'technological infrastructure'so that readers can gain a greater understanding based on the knowledge of tomorrow's computing functionality. The second part goes on to discuss the key indicators in the areas of population, culture, economics, climate change, and the impacts of technology in commerce and socially—which all need to be considered when forecasting a future paradigm. The authors will follow this introductory volume with additional volumes that review and analyse other critical indicators in the areas of geopolitics, the nature of political power around the globe, and other applications of technology and energy.

'Success is Assured'was born from a pair using those design practices over a century ago: The Wright Brothers. They set about methodically learning the causal relationships between the different design decisions they needed to make and the performance of the airplane. The Wright Brothers fundamentally transformed the front end of development into a sharply focused learning and decision-making process, and thereby eliminated the late - process rework in which their competition was stuck.Similarly, Toyota built an amazing manual product development system that consistently created a cadence of high quality products that customers want. Myriads of Lean principles, jargon, and tools have been introduced and applied with minimal impact on design loopbacks, engineering productivity, and knowledge reuse within small to midsize engineering companies – and almost no penetration within highly complex engineering companies. This book teaches methodologies to relentlessly expose knowledge gaps and trade-offs early and optimize results before detailed design begins, thereby avoiding the expensive firefighting and engineering rework that consume most of our engineering capacity today. This book teaches new thinking and methodologies to convert the chaotic front end of product development into a convergent process of set-based learning and continuous innovation – a game changer for companies that depend upon a steady flow of innovative products.Watch this video and understand how to consistently satisfy your customers on-time and on-budget! Visit www.SuccessIsAssured.com

Today, it is essential for leaders to interact closely within an organization's community to effectively promote its organizational development. Understanding trust at the individual level allows for business improvement. Servant Leadership Styles and Strategic Decision Making provides the relevant theoretical framework and the latest empirical research on servant leadership styles and cognitive styles from an Eastern perspective. Featuring coverage on a variety of topics including autocratic leadership, leadership effectiveness, and organizational support, this book explores decision-making theories as moderators and mediators for leadership effectiveness. This book is designed for managers, professionals, researchers, educators, and administrators seeking current research on participative leader decision making and philosophy.

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do offers a unique perspective for leaders—those executives whose companies, reputations, and futures will thrive or fail because of a deal or a series of deals. This book for leaders helps decision-makers deal with the powerful undercurrents and interpersonal dynamics at play in every deal, and no one is more qualified to write it than Constance Dierickx and Linda Henman.Other books on mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures overwhelmingly have one characteristic in common: they're technical. Attorneys write books about the legal and contractual aspects of deals; project management experts write from the point of view of managing tasks and schedules; and investment bankers write about valuation and negotiation. Breaking Up Is Hard to Do presents an amalgamation of what Drs. Dierickx and Henman have observed—and in many cases, helped to create—in more than 65 cumulative years of consulting with Fortune 500 companies, privately-held firms, family-owned businesses, and military organizations. Their in-the-trenches experiences spurred them to arrive at this premise: To position their organizations for more success, leaders can't shy away from the high stakes, tough decisions about their futures.This book maps the key steps in the M & A journey. It takes the reader through how to make the decision to grow acquisitively, identify roadblocks and typical wrong turns, and ultimately shows how to unlock their decision-making potential while navigating an increasingly uncertain world. Through compelling stories and surprising research findings, readers will discover that there's much more to the decision-making that drives M & A deals than they ever imagined, and they will come away with tools to help them deepen their understanding of what it takes to succeed. A fascinating read, the text weaves lessons that surface from the stories with highly pragmatic advice about suggested mindset, checklists, processes, and diagnostic tools. Readers will understand that while M & A deals aren't simple, leaders don't have to overly complicate them either. Instead, they can simplify the process if they remember hope shouldn't serve as a strategy, and they can't abdicate or delegate their leadership responsibilities.The lessons from mergers and acquisitions are critical to those considering a deal, but applied elsewhere, they have equal value, even though noticing them takes more effort. This is the essence of leadership: doing the hard work of ensuring that the gulf between strategy and tactics does not lead to either over simplification or needless complexity.

In this book, John Arthur and Louise Moody introduce the concept of the reasoning chain, a new approach to risk-based reasoning systems in large, complex and distributed organisations. Arguing that large, complex and distributed organisations are particularly focussed on a triple-helix of chain metaphors – supply, value and reputation chains – the authors propose that there is overwhelming evidence that the accepted approaches to risk and resilience do not compliment this architecture. This is extremely problematic because risk and resilience constructs have been formally and informally regulated for these industries. The Reasoning Chain proposes and illustrates a holistic solution to the problems thrown up by existing norms. It is proposed that the reasoning chain be intentionally designed on an equal footing with supply, value and reputation; a quadruple helix. Through challenge of best practice, an argument unfolds to outline the novel approach for risk based resilience reasoning in large distributed organisations, illustrated through a series of case studies and guidance to implementation.This book is an accessible and valuable resource for risk managers and decision makers responsible for complex business decisions.

Getting what you want – even if you are the boss – isn't always easy. Almost every organization, big or small, works among a network of competing interests. Whether it's governments pushing through policies, companies trying to increase profits, or even families deciding where to move house, rarely can decisions be made in isolation from competing interests both within the organization and outside it.In this accessible and straightforward account, Hans de Bruijn and Ernst ten Heuvelhof cast light on multi-stakeholder decision-making. Using plain language, they reveal the nuts and bolts of decision-making within the numerous dilemmas and tensions at work. Drawing on a diverse range of illustrative examples throughout, their perceptive analysis examines how different interests can either support or block change, and the strategies available for managing a variety of stakeholders.The second edition of Management in Networks incorporates a wider spread of international cases, a new chapter giving an overview of different network types, and a new chapter looking at digital governance and the impact of big data on networks.This insightful text is invaluable reading for students of management and organizational studies, plus practitioners – or actors – operating in a range of contexts.

Executives in today's business environment have never been busier. Time constraints are ever present. Resources are strained. Strategic planning constantly competes with the tactical demands of running an organization. To make matters worse, most organizational leaders, when confronted with the need for strategic planning, have no idea about how to go about it. They have plenty of knowledge and information about the organization and their situation, but no effective tools to analyze their thoughts, to make decisions that will lead to effective strategies, and most importantly, to create a plan of action. In Performance Based Strategy, Steve Fairbanks and Aaron Buchko offer a practical set of simple, productive tools that will enable leaders to develop effective strategies. The book offers tools that have been tested in small, medium, and Fortune 100 companies, with for profit and not-for-profit organizations, and across a breadth of industries, such as manufacturing, health care, banking, distribution, transportation, government, and charities, among others. The authors have used these tools as insiders to turn around companies, and as outsiders in advisory and board roles. When properly applied, the strategies offered here enable leaders to see their situations and organizations in new ways. Managers will be able to present information in a way that everyone in the organization will understand. Executives can provide a sense of direction that will provide a framework for decision making that will give guidance to people. Above all, applying these tools will enable managers to improve their firm's performance.

This book, originally published in 1975, is an attempt to bridge the gap between economic theory and business practice by relating the tools of economic analysis to the decision making process itself. It is written from a decision making systems analysis viewpoint. This approach enables the reader to perceive the integrative nature of the subject matter in relation to the functioning of the business enterprise. Although the unifying theme of ‘decision making'is at the heart of the book, where necessary some of the theoretical underpinnings of traditional neo-classical theory of the firm are covered.

This title was first published in 2000. This text is part of the'International Library of Management', which aims to present a comprehensive core reference series comprised of significant and influencial articles by the authorities in the management studies field. The collection of essays is both international and interdisciplinary in scope and aims to provide an entry point for investigating the myriad of study within the discipline.

While many advances have been made in understanding the complexity of manufacturing and production engineering, the social and organizational context remains problematic due to the abstract nature of leadership and diverse personnel. Interdisciplinary perspectives to increase knowledge and understanding of engineering management and related processes are necessary in the industry. Enhancing Competitive Advantage With Dynamic Management and Engineering is an essential reference source containing scholarly research on the relevant theoretical frameworks and the latest empirical research findings of strategic administration in engineering. It also explores how to better merge, interrelationship organizations, management, and employee needs in order to increase efficiency, productivity, and profitability. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as business process orientation, diversity management, and enterprise architecture, this book provides vital research for managers, researchers, engineers, and other professionals within engineering and production management.

Consumer behavior is becoming increasingly complex in the current global market. A broader understanding of the psychologically driven motivation of consumers and characteristics of the consumer decision-making process is vital for effective customer engagement. Utilizing Consumer Psychology in Business Strategy provides emerging research on consumer behavior and decision-making processes through the lens of business advancement and innovation. While highlighting topics such as brand personality, consumer perception, and marketing strategy, this publication explores various types of consumer behavior and methods to maximize benefits and efficiency. This book is an important resource for business administrators, managers, practitioners, academics, and students seeking emerging research on the consumer markets.

Until now, there has only been a shallow understanding of how the leadership actions of project managers interact with ethics and social responsibility. The is the first study to investigate how the relationships among managers, team members, and other stakeholders can bring about personal and ethical conflicts that impact decision making. They examine the factors that enable and constrain responsible leadership, looking at the issues faced by project managers as they interact with team members and other stakeholders. Responsible Leadership also provides new insights into how project managers view the moral implications of conflicts that occur as they conduct their work and is a valuable addition to the project management toolkit.

This book was developed to help students and researchers in the fields of economics, finance, law and other social science areas to understand and apply neuroscience. With the use of neuroscience technologies, it is now possible to understand how people make decisions in practice, using friendly and ecological experimental setups. The first half of the book studies the decision-making process and explains how the brain is organized. It presents the brain as a distributed processing system, shows how to record brain activities, and how to combine neurosciences and statistical tools to design experiments. In the last chapters, experiments on stock market decision, dilemma judgment, vote decision and understanding of media propaganda are described and discussed.

Making Big Decisions Better is leading a global movement to equip present and next generation leaders with proven strategy tools that enable agile thinking that ignites stronger, more predictable, direct paths to profit. No more academic theories. These are real tools and a system that enables improved strategic thinking and leadership. This book bridges an unspoken gap in strategy thinking that until now, only provided leaders with just SWOT and Porter's 5 Forces as the language of strategy. By using the decision making tools in Making Big Decisions Better, you'll finally remove the mystique of those you manage up to, and lead those that report to you. You will standout and have a transportable set of tools for any role or industry. There's never been a better time to break away from the outdated, mainstream strategy planning process that misused scarce resources, burned out its leaders and never delivered the results. It's your turn to learn and lead!