French and Bell explore the improvement of organizations through planned, systematic, long-range efforts focused on the organization's culture and its human and social processes. They present a concise but comprehensive exposition of the theory, practice and research related to organization development. The Fifth Edition reflects recent developments, advances and expansions, and research.
Entrepreneurship is very important for both entrepreneurs and economic development. It helps boost innovation and competitiveness in every country and facilitates the creation of new jobs and new opportunities, especially for family businesses and small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Both entrepreneurship and innovation constitute a subject that is both topical and timeless, since institutions and the various institutional processes have always affected a country’s sustainability. Entrepreneurial Development and Innovation in Family Businesses and SMEs is an essential scholarly publication that contributes to the understanding, improving and strengthening of entrepreneurial development, and innovation’s role in family businesses and SMEs by providing both theoretical and applied knowledge in order to find how and why entrepreneurship and innovation can produce inefficient and dysfunctional outcomes. Featuring a wide range of topics such as women entrepreneurship, internationalization, and organizational learning, this book is ideal for researchers, policymakers, entrepreneurs, executives, managers, academicians, and students.
Clusters are geographic concentrations of interconnected companies, specialized suppliers, service providers, and associated institutions in a particular field that are present in a nation or region. The development and upgrading of clusters is an important agenda for governments, companies, and other institutions. Cluster growth initiatives are an important new direction in economic policy, building on earlier efforts in macroeconomic stabilization, privatization, market opening, and cost reduction related to doing business. Comparing High Technology Firms in Developed and Developing Countries: Cluster Growth Initiatives is the leading source of information for readers interested in this field of study as it promotes scientific discussion on policies and practice of cluster growth, as well as covers the emerging research topics which are going to define the future of the management of technology. Furthermore, this book demonstrates the effectiveness and efficiency of technology policy based on observations of differential growth rate of high technology firms in clusters, and explores the factors that explain superior performance of high technology firms to contribute the improvement of technology policy in both developed and developing countries.
"This book analyzes different types of virtual communities, proposing Knowledge Management as a solid theoretical ground for approaching their management"--Provided by publisher.
Como líder, directivo, empleado o ciudadano, tu activo más valioso no está encerrado en una caja de seguridad de un banco, ni en ladrillos y cemento, ni en el balance de una compañía; se guarda en un lugar mucho más seguro aunque bastante frágil, tu cabeza, y es una cartera de valores gemelos: tu mente analítica y tu mente intuitiva
Most managers today understand the value of building a learning organization. Their goal is to leverage knowledge and make it a key corporate asset, yet they remain uncertain about how best to get started. What they lack are guidelines and tools that transform abstract theory—the learning organization as an ideal—into hands-on implementation. For the first time in Learning in Action, David Garvin helps managers make the leap from theory to proven practice. Garvin argues that at the heart of organizational learning lies a set of processes that can be designed, deployed, and led. He starts by describing the basic steps in every learning process—acquiring, interpreting, and applying knowledge—then examines the critical challenges facing managers at each of these stages and the various ways the challenges can be met. Drawing on decades of scholarship and a wealth of examples from a wide range of fields, Garvin next introduces three modes of learning—intelligence gathering, experience, and experimentation—and shows how each mode is most effectively deployed. These approaches are brought to life in complete, richly detailed case studies of learning in action at organizations such as Xerox, L. L. Bean, the U. S. Army, and GE. The book concludes with a discussion of the leadership role that senior executives must play to make learning a day-to-day reality in their organizations.
The impetus for this work emerged from Savall’s belief that there is a doubleloop interaction between social and economic factors in organizations, between behaviors and structures, and between the quality of life in organizations and their economic performance. When managers underestimate this dynamic interaction, the resulting tension ultimately manifests in lowered performance and increased costs, what he refers to as the “hidden costs” of organizational life. Only by delving into the depths of these organizational dynamics can we hope to fully understand – and create the basis for improving – organizational performance. The Qualimetrics Approach presents a different and challenging way of thinking about analyzing organizations, one that draws together quantitative information, financial analysis and qualitative insights into organizational dynamics. As Savall and Zardet argue, to gain a true understanding of what is happening in organizations, intervener-researchers must focus on all three perspectives, as ignoring any one of them will lead to incomplete understandings. Their approach underscores the importance of using qualitative data to validate quantitative depictions (“the numbers”) of organizational performance in understanding the construction of financial statements. The strength of Savall and Zardet’s approach is that it pushes us to go deeper, to fully understand the narratives underlying the numbers and the social construction of our financial assessments.
Knowledge management (KM) is a set of relatively-new organizational activities that are aimed at improving knowledge, knowledge-related practices, organizational behaviors and decisions and organizational performance. KM focuses on knowledge processes—knowledge creation, acquisition, refinement, storage, transfer, sharing and utilization. These processes support organizational processes involving innovation, individual learning, collective learning and collaborative decision-making. The “intermediate outcomes” of KM are improved organizational behaviors, decisions, products, services, processes and relationships that enable the organization to improve its overall performance. Knowledge Management and Organizational Learning presents some 20 papers organized into five sections covering basic concepts of knowledge management; knowledge management issues; knowledge management applications; measurement and evaluation of knowledge management and organizational learning; and organizational learning.
Drawing the reader's attention with ample real-business examples, the authors discuss corporations as entities that must adapt, generate ideas and act upon new information. The writing team - Arthur K. Yeung, David O. Ulrich, Stephen W. Nason and Mary Ann Von Glinow - delve into learning styles, basing their work on research and material gleaned from a widespread survey of corporations and organizations. They stack up the building blocks necessary for organizational learning, the corporate ability to generate and implement ideas. Although based on scholarly research, the book is concisely written in an easily accessible, conversational tone, and comes to life with corporate case studies. getAbstract recommends this book to managers, executives and owners whose organizations might need to learn a thing or two.
