Buying For Business provides a simple but comprehensive guide to purchasing and supply. With current literature often academic in focus and unsuited to modern business readers, it offers straightforward and engaging information on the principles and practice of purchasing and supply management that will be of great value to anyone in business who deals with suppliers. Experts Mark Whitehead and Christopher Barrat answer all the key questions facing purchasing in business today, and offer advice on everything from ethics to outsourcing. Diagrams, analysis tools and pro-formas aid understanding, while case studies and bench-marking exercises illustrate and reinforce the learning.
Business is changing. Will you adapt or be left behind? Get up to speed and deepen your understanding of the topics that are shaping your company's future with the Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review series. Featuring HBR's smartest thinking on fast-moving issues, each book provides the foundational introduction and practical case studies your organization needs to compete today and collects the best research, interviews, and analysis to get it ready for tomorrow. You can't afford to ignore how these issues will transform the landscape of business and society. The Insights You Need series will help you grasp these critical ideas—and prepare you and your company for the future. This specially priced 8-volume set includes: Agile Artificial Intelligence Blockchain Climate Change Customer Data & Privacy Cybersecurity Monopolies & Tech Giants Strategic Analytics
The Future of Business explores how the commercial world is being transformed by the complex interplay between social, economic and political shifts, disruptive ideas, bold strategies and breakthroughs in science and technology. Over 60 contributors from 21 countries explore how the business landscape will be reshaped by factors as diverse as the modification of the human brain and body, 3D printing, alternative energy sources, the reinvention of government, new business models, artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, and the potential emergence of the Star Trek economy.
Find out what Joseph Conrad, Arthur Miller, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Mark Twain can tell you about being a more effective manager. Looking for business insights? Forget the Wall Street Journal. You can learn a lesson or two from Arthur Miller and David Mamet. Put down Forbes and Fortune for once and spend an evening with Chaucer and George Bernard Shaw. Not only will you enjoy yourself, you're also likely to discover some fresh management perspectives and ideas! Written by a former CEO of a global corporation who has also been an English literature professor, this provocative new business book proves that great novels and plays are a rich, untapped resource for businesspeople looking for solutions to problems they confront on the job. Robert A. Brawer digs deeply into fictions by literary legends such as Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad, Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, and Joseph Heller to unearth vital lessons that managers can readily apply to the real world of work. From tips on resolving office conflicts in James Thurber's "The Catbird Seat" to pointers on gaining client confidence found in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Brawer finds nuggets of business wisdom in places where most businesspeople never think of looking. Focusing mainly on fiction that explores business themes, Brawer uses Heller's Something Happened and Shaw's Major Barbara to illustrate the dangers of allowing excessive faith in corporate hype to impair a manager's ability to accurately assess serious problems. From Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross and Dreiser's Sister Carrie, he infers important lessons about the art of salesmanship. He explores the problems of alienation and maintaining personal integrity in a corporate world through a close reading of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and Sloan Wilson's The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit. And out of his analysis of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and John Dos Passos's The Big Money, among other major nineteenth- and twentieth-century works, Brawer develops an inspiring discourse on self-interest and efficiency versus ethical responsibility and compassion in a Darwinian business world. As instructive as it is entertaining, Fictions of Business shows you how to take advantage of great novels and plays in solving the human problems of management. Praise for Fictions of Business "What a fabulous concept: the bringing together of great literature and management theory. This is a business book that challenges the intellect and goes about unveiling the basic principles of management in a way that forces you to think about what you know in a completely different way. It's a business book that stays with you long after you've read it." -Shelly Lazarus, Chairman and CEO, Ogilvy & Mather "A truly refreshing contribution to the multitude of books on corporate management. Brawer has cleverly crafted a set of essays that are both inspirational and practical." -Robert A. Kavesh, Professor of Finance and Economics, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University. "Robert Brawer is both a successful entrepreneur and a distinguished literary scholar, and his book, Fictions of Business, is wise about both trade and fiction. Brawer writes with ironic wit and sharp observation about the culture of the corporation and the workplace." -Martin Peretz, Editor-in-Chief, The New Republic and Professor of Social Studies, Harvard University. "Brawer's message is clear and true: good literature enriches business leaders, making them more productive in their careers." -Richard D. Franke, former Chairman and CEO, John Nuveen Company. "Although commerce and literary analysis might seem worlds apart, Robert Brawer's book brilliantly weaves together fictional characters with larger-than-life figures from the corporate world. In Brawer's compelling narrative, literature offers striking models for good corporate practice." -Philip Gossett, Dean of Humanities, University of Chicago.
As a business owner or (senior) leader, bringing success in the arena in which we operate can be tough, but failing can place an even greater burden on us all. So, the quest to succeed becomes all-consuming. However, in one sense, we must be able to accurately predict the future of the business that we operate. That is, the executives entrusted with such responsibility must not fall short of having good insights into the business. In other words, the more accurate these findings, the more sustainable and profitable the company or industry they operate in. At a time when computers were not invented or manual analytic models developed yet, business owners, merchants, or executives relied on the predictions of fortune tellers to gain insight into the future of their business and set their industry on a more sustainable path. But that form of insight comes with too many inaccuracies, which could make situations unpredictable. The advancements we have achieved today allow us a more accurate prediction; with it, one would have no reason to screw up on their business insight. In this book, I take you on the journey of how not to use your data—and avoid any pitfalls that might screw up your business insights. All examples come with and from actual life experience, and they will help you ask your analytics experts the right questions.
Increasingly open to foreign investment and with a burgeoning consumer market, China represents an enormous commercial opportunity - but how can businesses succeed? Business Insights: China gives you an overview of the corporate business achievements already made in China and a comprehensive guide to the opportunities available for other businesses, wherever they are in the world. Based on the real-life experiences of, and lessons learned by, companies who have moved into the Chinese business arena, the book highlights the successes and failures of operating in such a challenging market. With practical advice and many comprehensive case studies, Business Insights: China offers invaluable assistance for anyone looking to initiate or develop their business activities in China. From the consultant editor of Managing Business Risk (also published by Kogan Page) this second edition of Business Insights: China includes a significant focus on risk management, providing a detailed examination of the unique challenges facing anyone establishing or developing a business in one of the world's most dynamic markets.
High-growth, high-return Africa is the most sought after frontier destination for global investment today. But with 54 countries on the continent, even rigorous business plans can run aground on the unique and complex circumstances found within them. Business in Africa: corporate insights takes the reader to the coal face of doing business on the continent, drawing on the experience and insight of people at the leading edge of developments. Introducing the reader to the challenges and peculiarities of operating in Africa, and identifying trends and likely opportunities, this book is an essential tool for everyone who wishes to be part of the remarkable awakening of the African giant.
In some parts of the world, especially in developing markets, category management today remains a stretch goal – a new idea full of untapped potential. In other areas, the original eight-step process that emerged in the late 1980’s forms the foundation of many companies’ approach to category management. In still others, particularly in developed countries like the U.S., the U.K., and others, refinements are being made – most of them designed to place consumer understanding front and center. New ideas are emerging – from "trip management" to "aisle management" to "customer management." Whether a new descriptor emerges to replace "category management" is yet to be seen. Even if that does happen, what won’t change is the overall objective – to help retailers and their manufacturer partners succeed by offering the right selection of products that are marketed and merchandised based on a complete understanding of the consumers they are committed to serving. This book, which explores both the state of and the state-of-the-art in category management, is for everyone with a vested interest in category management. It can serve such a broad audience because category management is about bringing a structured process to how executives think and make decisions about their businesses, no matter what information and information technology they have access to.
