Understanding And Contributing To The Business

Taking a systems perspective, this book enables the student to make sense of business behaviour by demonstrating how interrelated business processes determine the success of an organisation.

What really sets the best managers above the rest? It’s their power to build a cadre of employees who have great inner work lives—consistently positive emotions; strong motivation; and favorable perceptions of the organization, their work, and their colleagues. The worst managers undermine inner work life, often unwittingly. As Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer explain in The Progress Principle, seemingly mundane workday events can make or break employees’ inner work lives. But it’s forward momentum in meaningful work—progress—that creates the best inner work lives. Through rigorous analysis of nearly 12,000 diary entries provided by 238 employees in 7 companies, the authors explain how managers can foster progress and enhance inner work life every day. The book shows how to remove obstacles to progress, including meaningless tasks and toxic relationships. It also explains how to activate two forces that enable progress: (1) catalysts—events that directly facilitate project work, such as clear goals and autonomy—and (2) nourishers—interpersonal events that uplift workers, including encouragement and demonstrations of respect and collegiality. Brimming with honest examples from the companies studied, The Progress Principle equips aspiring and seasoned leaders alike with the insights they need to maximize their people’s performance.

Historically, members of the human resource management (HRM) community have remarked on the difficulty they have had aEURoegetting to the tableaEUR with top agency management. HRM is commonly consulted after decision has been made in order to help implement changes. HRM professional has been frustrated that they are not involved sooner in the planning process. (OPM, 1999, p.9)

This book gathers original, empirical and conceptual papers that address the complex challenges of conducting responsible research in the business and management professions. It includes contributions related to, and reflecting on, the vision of the Responsible Research in Business and Management (RRBM) network, which proposes that business can help provide a better world if it is informed by responsible research. The responsible research agenda requires new methods of scholarly assessment that include criteria for measuring impact, systemic solutions and practitioner relevance. Theories greatly influence business and management practices, and as the late Sumantra Ghoshal warned, bad management theories are destroying good management practices. The authors of this book believe that good management theories can help to create new and better business practices.

Now beyond its eleventh printing and translated into twelve languages, Michael Porter’s The Competitive Advantage of Nations has changed completely our conception of how prosperity is created and sustained in the modern global economy. Porter’s groundbreaking study of international competitiveness has shaped national policy in countries around the world. It has also transformed thinking and action in states, cities, companies, and even entire regions such as Central America. Based on research in ten leading trading nations, The Competitive Advantage of Nations offers the first theory of competitiveness based on the causes of the productivity with which companies compete. Porter shows how traditional comparative advantages such as natural resources and pools of labor have been superseded as sources of prosperity, and how broad macroeconomic accounts of competitiveness are insufficient. The book introduces Porter’s “diamond,” a whole new way to understand the competitive position of a nation (or other locations) in global competition that is now an integral part of international business thinking. Porter's concept of “clusters,” or groups of interconnected firms, suppliers, related industries, and institutions that arise in particular locations, has become a new way for companies and governments to think about economies, assess the competitive advantage of locations, and set public policy. Even before publication of the book, Porter’s theory had guided national reassessments in New Zealand and elsewhere. His ideas and personal involvement have shaped strategy in countries as diverse as the Netherlands, Portugal, Taiwan, Costa Rica, and India, and regions such as Massachusetts, California, and the Basque country. Hundreds of cluster initiatives have flourished throughout the world. In an era of intensifying global competition, this pathbreaking book on the new wealth of nations has become the standard by which all future work must be measured.

Social entrepreneurs are change makers that aim to solve society’s unsolved problems. Not surprisingly, social entrepreneurship has thus created high expectations. To better understand the potential as well as the limitations of social entrepreneurship, however, a more nuanced approach is needed in two ways. First, social entrepreneurship is a multi-level phenomenon. It spans macro-level questions as well as meso-level questions and, finally, micro-level questions. If we really want to understand social entrepreneurship, we need to bring together all three levels of analysis and see how they are connected. Second, while social entrepreneurship can certainly produce socially desirable outcomes, we also need a critical perspective to capture potential undesirable effects that social entrepreneurship can cause, often unintendedly, in society, in markets, in organizations, and for individuals. To this end, an ethical perspective can help complement the positive analysis of social entrepreneurship with a discussion of the normative implications of its potential "dark side". Looking at social entrepreneurship from both a multi-level analysis and an ethical perspective, Social Entrepreneurship and Business Ethics takes the reader on a journey through the "bright side" as well as the potential "dark side" of social entrepreneurship for societies, organizations, and individuals. Highlighting both, this book not only seeks to provoke researchers and students to advance their understanding of social entrepreneurship. It also hopes to help practitioners to better realize the positive contributions of social entrepreneurship for society.

From the ill-fated dot-com bubble to unprecedented merger and acquisition activity to scandal, greed, and, ultimately, recession -- we've learned that widespread and difficult change is no longer the exception. By outlining the process organizations have used to achieve transformational goals and by identifying where and how even top performers derail during the change process, Kotter provides a practical resource for leaders and managers charged with making change initiatives work.