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The book uses distance functions, a generalization of the more familiar production function, as the theoretical and empirical tools to construct Lerner indexes of market power in both the input and output markets. The use of distance functions enables us to explicitly account for the effects of firm inefficiency and price markups in the evaluation of market power. The book focusses on the theory and provides a menu of applications to construct measures of firm efficiency and market power in the financial and public sectors.

The popular expression'Do more with less'really sums up one of the many challenges of living in modern times. Because, in addition to the country's faltering politics and economy, as always, the impression we have is that - with the advancement of science and technology - the world is getting faster and faster. Now I ask you: faced with such an uncertain scenario, with days getting shorter and businesses more demanding, what can an ordinary person, like you and me, for example, do to stand out in the job market? Prayer might help - someone might ask - but the truth is, if you don't produce more than others - continuously and with better quality, of course! - your future will be forgotten.

As organizations grapple with the challenges of a dynamic market, the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) emerges not only as a technological progression but a strategic necessity. The transformative potential of AI, particularly through OpenAI, holds the promise of redefining operational paradigms, accelerating innovation, and unlocking unprecedented growth opportunities. However, lurking beneath this promise are challenges that demand urgent attention – from tailoring relevance for specific business units to ethical and safe integration practices. The specifics of how OpenAI can amplify labor productivity and enhance decision-making processes remain elusive. Generative AI and Multifactor Productivity in Business offers a guide surrounding the complexities of OpenAI's role in business operations. It contends that understanding OpenAI is not just beneficial; it is essential for organizations seeking to navigate economic uncertainties and unlock high levels of efficiency and growth. The book delves into the effects of OpenAI on business, with a primary objective of illuminating the scholarly and practitioner-based contributions that push the boundaries of OpenAI in business research. This exploration encompasses applications of advanced generative AI tools, language models, and innovative technologies specific to diverse businesses across sectors, scales, and regions. It emphasizes that as AI becomes more seamlessly integrated into business processes, the potential for multifactor productivity to fuel economic growth, new industries, and job opportunities is unparalleled. The book caters to businesses, industry leaders, academics, researchers, and policymakers. It beckons readers into a world where empirical and theoretical research converge to shape the future of OpenAI and multifactor productivity. With a wide variety of recommended topics, spanning from international business and global economic dynamics to labor market adaptation, ethical implications, and environmental sustainability, the book establishes itself as a resource for anyone seeking to understand, navigate, and capitalize on the intersection of OpenAI and multifactor productivity in the ever-evolving landscape of business.

The Stepped Approach: Onboard Better, Systemize Smarter, and Bring Out the Best in Your Sales TeamIt is a mystery why sales leaders are often thrown into their positions without a clue as to how to go about guiding a sales team. In most professions, training is a requirement, but many times sales leaders are simply hired with the expectation that they intrinsically know how to motivate and encourage a team. Most often this is not the case and author Dionne Mejer has spent the last several decades training sales leaders how to effectively lead using a simple-to-follow stepped approach that consistently gives great results. In The Stepped Approach: Onboard Better, Systemize Smarter, and Bring Out the Best in Your Sales Team, Dionne lays out a simple but effective system that will have your sales team buzzing with productivity, team spirit, and positivity. She holds nothing back when sharing a system that she has proven to be highly effective and manageable. Using worksheets, scorecards, and accountability activities, sales leaders are taught not only how to bring out the best in their teams, but to use what they've learned to become great all-around leaders both in their professional and personal lives.

A rallying manifesto for the innovative problem-solving we need to build a better, more verdant, and sustainable planetary existence.Academics are letting Africa down. With all that we know, what do we have to show for it? Whose lives have been changed for the better by it? What have we done for and with our communities lately? In this provocative book—the first in a trilogy—Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga argues that our critical thinkers must become actual thinker-doers. Taking its title from one of Thomas Sankara's most inspirational speeches, Dare to Invent the Future looks for moments in Africa's story where precedents of critical thought and knowledge in service of problem-solving are evident to inspire readers to dare to invent such a knowledge system.Mavhunga revisits insights from Edward Wilmot Blyden, Booker T. Washington, Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Amílcar Cabral, Julius Nyerere, and Thomas Sankara to illustrate how the academic disciplines have been, and could be, deployed in the service of and through problem-solving, building on what people are doing and know. At its core, he writes, knowledge in the service of and through problem-solving derives from reading the past for new questions, doing due diligence in the present, and contriving an anticipatory approach toward the future.Questioning the fundamental premises of Western and white knowledge production, especially regarding science and technology, Mavhunga proposes in this book refreshingly new approaches to thinking-doing that stem from African realities, in the hopes of inspiring a generation that will run toward, not away from, problems to solve them.

This book is an easy-to-understand guide to modeling productivity and efficiency using modern statistical tools. It introduces readers to the fundamentals of stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and gradually takes them to the forefront of academic research in this area, examining the latest concepts and methods related to the use of copulas in SFA.Following a comprehensive review of classic methodology, Professor Artem Prokhorov covers topics in panel data modeling, in endogeneity in SFA, in joint modeling of technical and allocative inefficiency, and in optimal and robust prediction of inefficiency scores. This is done using copulas to capture various kinds of statistical dependence that have been previously ignored when modeling production. The classic and advanced topics are illustrated using practical examples and codes written in modern programming languages. As an important example, the book spells out the case where both the values of output and the ratio of inputs used in production are optimized simultaneously. Such simultaneity, if ignored, leads to biased estimates of productivity and returns-to-scale and may understate inefficiency.The book offers a useful reference for those interested in the newest robust methods of business analytics in the area of productivity and efficiency, with implications for strategy, budgeting, resourcing and benchmarking of firms, industries and production units more generally.

This textbook provides an overview of organisation models used in practice from over a century ago to the present day. It outlines the effects these models have on efficiency, learning, innovation and workers'health and offers critical reflections for students. Some of the models covered are Taylorism, bureaucracy, the socio-technical school, process organisation such as lean production, learning organisations, knowledge management, project organising including agile, platform economy, professional organisations, new public management and sustainable organisations. Featuring learning objectives and reflective questions for students of organisation studies and design, this textbook has a pedagogical structure based on the division of work and the coordination of work. Conclusions are presented on contemporary work organisation models'impact on working life, ultimately encouraging students to ask the question, how can we create more sustainable work organisations.

Begrijp de essentie van de wet van de afnemende meeropbrengsten (ook bekend als de wet van variabele verhoudingen, principe van afnemende marginale productiviteit of afnemende marginale opbrengsten) in slechts 50 minuten met dit praktische en beknopte boek. Deze fundamentele economische wet, ontwikkeld door de invloedrijke Britse econoom David Ricardo, toont aan dat, als de hoeveelheid van een bepaalde productiefactor wordt verhoogd, de marginale output van het productieproces afneemt, wat leidt tot een lager rendement. Dit boek biedt u een handige inleiding tot de toepassingen van de wet van de afnemende meeropbrengsten in de bedrijfseconomie, de sectoreconomie en de innovatietheorie. Het bevat ook een onderzoek van een casus, die de implicaties van de wet van de afnemende meeropbrengsten voor de olie-industrie illustreert, een bespreking van de tekortkomingen van de theorie, en een inleiding tot verwante modellen en uitbreidingen, zoals schaalopbrengsten en isoquanten.

Since Masaki Imai connected the term KAIZEN with the world management arena in 1986, this approach has been used as a strategy for company development that is propelled by the participation and motivation of its employees. Centering the human being as the guiding axis of change and innovation, KAIZEN-21 establishes a practical and theoretical guide for organizations to easily implement this ancestral philosophy within their operational processes in the midst of the chaotic and complicated global environment of the 21st century. Presenting an updated model of guiding principles, techniques, and tools, Manuel F. Suárez Barraza demonstrates how KAIZEN can be successfully applied in the context of pandemics, supply chain crises, and regional war. Beginning with the definition and origins of KAIZEN, chapters explore 5'S, standardization (Hiojunka), SDCA and PDCA cycles, as well as process innovation and kodawari-KAIZEN, or hitosukuri (management of people), closing with techniques for improving daily work, such as the the Kata of Improvement, and the author's links with the Toyota Production System (TPS) and the Mayan work model (K'AAT-KAIZEN). If you are ready to energize your business team and revolutionize workplace practices, then KAIZEN-21 is your essential resource for prioritizing internal change and development despite all adversity.

Lean is about building and improving stable and predictable systems and processes to deliver to customers high-quality products/services on time by engaging everyone in the organization. Combined with this, organizations need to create an environment of respect for people and continuous learning. It's all about people. People create the product or service, drive innovation, and create systems and processes, and with leadership buy-in and accountability to ensure sustainment with this philosophy, employees will be committed to the organization as they learn and grow personally and professionally. Lean is a term that describes a way of thinking about and managing companies as an enterprise. Becoming Lean requires the following: the continual pursuit to identify and eliminate waste; the establishment of efficient flow of both information and process; and an unwavering top-level commitment. The concept of continuous improvement applies to any process in any industry. Based on the contents of The Lean Practitioners Field Book, the purpose of this series is to show, in detail, how any process can be improved utilizing a combination of tasks and people tools and introduces the BASICS Lean® concept. The books are designed for all levels of Lean practitioners and introduces proven tools for analysis and implementation that go beyond the traditional point kaizen event. Each book can be used as a stand-alone volume or used in combination with other titles based on specific needs. Each book is chock-full of case studies and stories from the authors'own experiences in training organizations that have started or are continuing their Lean journey of continuous improvement. Contents include valuable lessons learned and each chapter concludes with questions pertaining to the focus of the chapter. Numerous photographs enrich and illustrate specific tools used in Lean methodology. Suggesting Solutions: Brainstorming Creative Ideas to Maximize Productivity explores the process block diagram tool, how to do a Lean layout and Lean master layout and how to create standard work and visual management systems. The goal of this book is to introduce the balance of the tools and how to proceed once the analysis is completed. There are many pieces to a Lean implementation and all of them are interconnected. This book walks through the relationships and how the data presented can be leveraged to prepare for the implementation. It also provides suggest solutions for improvements and making recommendations to management to secure their buy-in and approval.

PRODUCTIVITY IN CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS From planning/design to post-construction, this valuable guide provides the construction industry the key to understanding the importance of properly tracking and measuring productivity, resulting in increased efficiency and profitability for contractors, subcontractors, owners, civil and construction engineers, and attorneys. Productivity in Construction Projects anticipates and answers the questions of owners, contractors, sub-contractors, and construction professionals to avoid cost overruns in a specific area of work, or when activities are taking more resources to perform than planned. Packed with real-world case studies, Productivity in Construction Projects'thirteen chapters move beyond the symptoms and provide a remedy. This book provides a comprehensive look at how to: Complete more projects on time and budget, and earn greater profits and future business. Track and analyze productivity on construction projects, and quantify additional costs resulting from productivity losses. Select the right experts and attorneys should litigation or arbitration occur, and employ credible and reliable methods of analysis. Solve problems on the project instead of incurring lengthy and costly litigation or arbitration.

Productivity varies widely between industries and countries, but even more so across individual firms within the same sectors. The challenge for governments is to strike the right balance between policies designed to increase overall productivity and policies designed to promote the reallocation of resources towards firms that could use them more effectively. The aim of this book is to provide the empirical evidence necessary in order to strike this policy balance. The authors do so by using a micro-aggregated dataset for 20 EU economies produced by CompNet, the Competitiveness Research Network, established some 10 years ago among major European institutions and a number of EU productivity boards, National Central Banks, National Statistical institutes, as well as academic Institutions. They call for pan-EU initiatives involving statistical offices and scholars to achieve a truly complete EU market for firm-level information on which to build solidly founded economic policies.

This book guides process-industry professionals from the implementation of the basic foundations of Continuous Improvement (CI) through to an organization where CI is a “way of life” and a defining feature of the culture of the organization. The readers of this book are seeking solutions to such pressing issues as:• Eliminating accidents and near misses.• Reducing customer complaints. • Improving customer delivery performance. • Elimination of accidents and near misses.• Reducing customer complaints. • Improving customer delivery performance. • Introducing new products. • Improving staff productivity. • Removing costs to meet the budget. • Dealing with absence and poor morale. • Improving staff retention.This book provides them with guidance on how to address issues in these areas in a way that enables improvements to be realized quickly but not at the expense of a long-term goal of a sustainable Continuous Improvement culture. In addition, this book presents the implementation of CI as a cyclical journey with no endpoint. The stages are ordered in a sequence that enables the reader to get started in their area of the company and build up the elements without the need for an overall organizational strategy at the beginning. Continuous Improvement is a vast subject with many takes on principles, approaches, and tools. This book is about how all the fundamentals of these areas fit together and, as such, covers only some of them. However, within the bibliography, I have signposted the books that have guided me during my career and which go into the principles, approaches, and tools further.

Comme toutes les activités stratégiques, la communication nécessite d'être évaluée. S'il est possible de se fixer des objectifs pour guider les actions, il est complexe de mesurer réellement leurs effets. Les mesures existantes posent problème, car elles varient en fonction des besoins, des contextes ou encore des outils utilisés. S'il n'y a pas de recette miracle, il existe cependant des questionnements pertinents et des méthodes éprouvées afin d'accompagner au mieux les praticiens actuels et futurs dans l'évaluation de leurs pratiques. L'ouvrage Évaluer la communication des organisations est destiné aux praticiens, aux étudiants et à leurs enseignants. Il a pour visée de les guider dans l'évaluation de stratégies de communication. Pour cela, cet ouvrage court, didactique, et fondé sur les dernières avancées de la recherche, est construit autour de sept concepts fondamentaux. Chacun des concepts fait l'objet d'un chapitre long rédigé par un universitaire et d'un chapitre court, rédigé par un praticien, abordant leurs aspects numériques. Évaluer la communication des organisations participe ainsi à la formation de professionnels réflexifs, aptes à s'adapter aux contextes pour évaluer les stratégies qu'ils déploient.