Value Added Decision Making For Managers

Developed from the authors' longstanding course on decision and risk analysis, Value-Added Decision Making for Managers explores the important interaction between decisions and management action and clarifies the barriers to rational decision making. The authors analyze strengths and weaknesses of the best alternatives, enabling decision makers to

The Inside Ring is the first novel in Mike Lawson’s critically acclaimed series of political thriller starring Joe DeMarco, fixer for the Speaker of the House. It opens with an assassination attempt on the president. He is only wounded, but his best friend and a Secret Service Agent are killed. It turns out that the attack wasn't without warning. General Andrew Banks, the Secretary of Homeland Security, received a note that the president was in danger, and even more alarming, that Secret Service agents guarding the president had been compromised. General Banks is reluctant to tell the FBI about the note, partly for self-serving political reasons, and partly because he doesn’t want to damage the Secret Service’s reputation based on something that might very well be a hoax. So he requests help from his friend, Speaker Mahoney, and Mahoney assigns his man DeMarco to determine if the Secret Service was really involved. Moving at a breakneck pace, and packed with plenty of humor and suspense, The Inside Ring is a must-read for fans of political thrillers.

This introductory text covers the basic principles and underlying concepts with a strong practical emphasis and plenty of examples taken from the real world as well as numerical examples with step-by-step explanations.

Everybody has to make decisions—they are unavoidable. Yet we receive little or no education or training on how to make decisions. Business decisions can be dif_ cult: which people to hire, which product lines or facilities to expand and which to sell or shut down, which bid or proposal to accept, which process to implement, how much R&D to invest in, which environmental projects should receive the highest priority, etc. This book gives you all the tools you need to... • clarify and reach alignment on goals and objectives and understand trade-offs in reaching those goals, • develop and examine alternatives, • systematically analyze the effects of risk and uncertainty, and • maximize the chances of achieving your goals and objectives. Success (getting what you want) depends on luck and good decision making. You can’t control your luck, but you can maximize your odds by making the best possible decisions, and this book gets you there. Broadly speaking, this book organizes and presents otherwise formal decision-making tools in an intuitively understandable fashion. The presentation is informal, but the concepts and tools are research-based and formally accepted.

"This book provides the latest research studies, market analysis, and best practices utilized in emerging markets to gain competitive advantage and market leadership"--Provided by publisher.

Economic Value Added (EVA®) has been a much discussed concept that has assisted in the turnaround of a number of multinational enterprises across the world. It is based upon the theory of ‘economic profit’ that enables companies to capture and create wealth both for themselves and their stakeholders. The strategic decisions of performance and posturing can be grounded upon gaining competitive advantage through mapping economic profits. Existing studies on competitive advantage primarily discuss the meaning, definitions, and sources thereof. However, there are few contributions that discuss how competitive advantage can be measured specifically with respect to Indian companies. This book bridges that gap and advocates that the EVA® can be used to measure and establish the competitive advantage for Indian firms. It is based upon an in-depth study of such companies to explore the extent of use of EVA® in the top BT500 companies in India. It shows that the companies that use EVA® have a distinct competitive advantage over their competitors.

"Schragenheim, Camp and Surace, three leaders of TOC community, are tackling one of value destroyers of corporations—the misuse and abuse of traditional cost accounting. This book develops a practical methodology for better decision making by looking at the impact of certain types of decisions on a company’s bottom line. This well-defined methodology allows mid-managers, higher level managers and financial staff to create real value by concentrating on what truly matters." Boaz Ronen, Professor Emeritus, Coller School of Management, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel "Throughput Economics is a must read for entrepreneurs and managers who want to make their organizations more and more antifragile." Andrea Zattoni, CEO of Antifragility, Italy "Management accounting is a dry topic. Throughput Economics is not—managers can learn a lot they can apply to their company from it." Rudolf Burkhart, Business Development Director, Vistem Gmbh, Germany Throughput Economics challenges the current thinking of how to evaluate cost, risks and rewards of any deal or any other new market opportunity being considered, especially the practice of calculating cost-per-unit. Instead, this book offers a process that directly answers the critical question: If we accept the proposed decision, will the performance of the organization improve? The process involves the intuition of the key people in the organization, together with the relevant data, to come up with the best available information from which to form a reasonable range of net profit, when the considered decision is added on top of all the other activities undertaken by the organization. The process is explained and demonstrated using a variety of cases where the organization faces a new non-trivial idea, along with a detailed explanation of how it should work, including software support that provides very quick response to many what-if suggestions. This book offers a new and well-defined process, applicable to every organization, that considers both financial impacts and capacity limitations and, also, includes the impact of uncertainty by providing the range of reasonable results rather than one number, which is always proven wrong in the end. Overall, the book provides a holistic method for simplified decision making in seemingly complex or shifting environments using a constraints mindset to facilitate companies’ realization, for the first time, their true potential.

The modern manager faces a bewildering range of challenges every single day. Their ability to make critical decisions, often under pressure, can directly determine the future success of the company and their career. It is therefore surprising that so few managers take the time to learn the art of decision making. In this groundbreaking book from Caroline Wang, readers will learn that quality decision making is a competence that can be acquired according to a simple framework. The framework is practical and easy-to-remember, consisting of two acronyms: GPA and IPO. GPA for decision content quality (Goal, Priority, Alternatives); and IPO for decision process quality (Information, People, Objective reasoning). The book places emphasis on leading a team to make decisions, even though the framework can be used for personal and individual decisions. By using this common decision-making framework, managers and leaders will gain credibility and team support for the decision, will confidently articulate, promote, and defend the decision, and will have made the necessary preparations for successful implementation when the decision-making process is complete. This proven framework from one of Asia's most dynamic leadership experts will improve the quality of your decisions and change the way you do business.