Management and management techniques Books

Table of ContentsContentsAcknowledgmentsChapter I. IntroductionA New Way of Interacting with the PublicWhy We All Should Be Concerned About Angry PublicsThe Public Is Not Easily AppeasedThe Typical Approach to Public Relations Does Not WorkA Different Approach Is NeededChapter II. Why Is the Public Angry?What Is Anger?Why Are People Angry?Rational and Irrational AngerTypical Responses to an Angry PublicDealing with an Angry Public: The Conventional WisdomChapter III. The Mutual-Gains ApproachThe Mutual-Gains Approach: Six PrinciplesThe Old Plastics FactoryBackgroundApplying for a WaiverFurther StudyThe Public PresentationA Disaster ThreatensThe FalloutChapter IV. Accidents Will HappenThree Mile Island: To Tell or Not to TellThe First Day: March 28, 1979The Second Day: March 29, 1979The Third Day: March 30, 1979The Final Days: March 31 and April 1, 1979Telling the Truth: The Mutual-Gains ApproachThe Advantages of Disclosure Outweigh the DisadvantagesAct in a Trustworthy FashionSelect a Capable SpokespersonEnlist Support on the OutsideGovernment and Business Should, Can, and Do CooperateThe Exxon Valdez: When Paying Out Doesn't Pay OffCleaning UpA Modest ProposalExxon's ResponseMitigation EffortsCompensation for DamagesThe AftermathDoing It Differently: The Mutual-Gains ApproachThe Company's Failure to Accept ResponsibilityThe Company's Failure to Establish Clear Lines of CommunicationThe Company's Failure to First Mitigate, Then Compensate (and Ultimately Leave People Better Off)The Company's Failure to Convene an Effective Problem-Solving ForumConclusionChapter V. Risky BusinessWhat Is Risk?Assessing RiskPerceiving RiskCommunicating RiskRisky BusinessThe Breast Implant ControversyThe Story UnfoldsThe Story Is RetoldWhat Should the Company Do?Implant RuptureDrawing Conclusions in the Face of UncertaintyKnowing Your Product and Presenting It Truthfully: The Mutual-Gains ApproachSet Clear Performance StandardsMinimize the Risk, Not the Concerns of OthersMake Commitments You Can KeepSeek to Know, Not to HideEngage Stakeholders in Making Risky DecisionsMake Contingent CommitmentsChapter VI. When Values CollideWhat Are Values?Why Are Value Conflicts So Difficult to Resolve?A Model for Deescalating Intractable ConflictsHydro-Quebec and the Cree: Clashing CulturesHydro-Quebec's Response to the CreeTalking With, Not At, the Other: The Mutual-Gains ApproachSeek Common Principles -- Despite Seemingly Stark DifferencesConsider That You Might Be WrongConsider Substantial Community Improvement Through a Fair Process, Not Compensation Only for the FewIgnoring the Principles of the Mutual-Gains Approach Intensifies Cultural ConflictAnimal RightsListening Whether You Agree or Not: The Mutual-Gains ApproachExamine History to Better Understand TodaySeek Reason Amid Emotion, Not Reason at the Expense of EmotionRecognize Diversity on the Other SideBeware the Pitfalls of "Rights Talk"Seek Forums for DialogueChapter VII. The MediaThe Conventional Wisdom of Media RelationsThe Media as AdversaryThe Media as a ToolThe Media Can Be ControlledMedia Policy by DefaultThe Mutual-Gains Approach to Dealing with the MediaTake into Account the Interests of the MediaTell the Media What You Know and Don't KnowMake Available People with Authority Who Can Share Their Views OpenlyWork to Convince Media They Have an Educative RoleUse a Neutral to Speak in a Single VoiceIn a Consensus-Building Process, Establish Ground Rules to Guide Media InteractionsUse Additional Means of CommunicationSet an Example for the Media to FollowSummaryChapter VIII. Principled LeadershipDoing the Right ThingIntegrity, Honesty, and TrustHow to Inspire TrustSharing, Listening, and LearningWhat Leaders ValueLeadership and InstitutionsConcluding RemarksNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisGoing far beyond previous empirical work, John Kotter and James Heskett provide the first comprehensive critical analysis of how the culture of a corporation powerfully influences its economic performance, for better or for worse. Through painstaking research at such firms as Hewlett-Packard, Xerox, ICI, Nissan, and First Chicago, as well as a quantitative study of the relationship between culture and performance in more than 200 companies, the authors describe how shared values and unwritten rules can profoundly enhance economic success or, conversely, lead to failure to adapt to changing markets and environments.With penetrating insight, Kotter and Heskett trace the roots of both healthy and unhealthy cultures, demonstrating how easily the latter emerge, especially in firms which have experienced much past success. Challenging the widely held belief that strong corporate cultures create excellent business performance, Kotter and Heskett show that while many shared values and institutionalized practices can promote good performances in some instances, those cultures can also be characterized by arrogance, inward focus, and bureaucracy -- features that undermine an organization''s ability to adapt to change. They also show that even contextually or strategically appropriate cultures -- ones that fit a firm''s strategy and business context -- will not promote excellent performance over long periods of time unless they facilitate the adoption of strategies and practices that continuously respond to changing markets and new competitive environments.Fundamental to the process of reversing unhealthy cultures and making them more adaptive, the authors assert, is effective leadership. At the heart of this groundbreaking book, Kotter and Heskett describe how executives in ten corporations established new visions, aligned and motivated their managers to provide leadership to serve their customers, employees, and stockholders, and thus created more externally focused and responsive cultures.Table of ContentsContentsPrefaceI. Introduction1. The Power of CultureII. The Performance Question: What Kind of Corporate Cultures Enhance Long-Term Economic Performance?2. Strong Cultures3. Strategically Appropriate Cultures4. Adaptive Cultures5. The Case of Hewlett-Packard6. The Nature of Low-Performance CulturesIII. The Change Question: How Can Corporate Cultures Be Purposefully Changed to Make Them More Performance Enhancing?7. People Who Create Successful Change8. Leaders in Action9. The Case of ICI10. The Case of NissanIV. Summary and Conclusions11. On the Role of Top ManagementAppendixNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisWhich Corporate Governance Model will Reign Becomes a Matter of Public Debate.- Convergence or Divergence: Evidence from the Corporate Governance Literature.- Convergence or Divergence in Corporate Governance: Empirical Evidence.- European Convergence or Divergence: An Evaluation by Practitioners and Academics.- Divergence within a Converging Trend: A Tentative Framework for Further Analysis and Discussion.- Executive Summary.- Concluding Remarks and Suggestions for Further Reflection and Research.Table of ContentsWhich corporate governance model will reign becomes a matter of public debate. Convergence or divergence: evidence from the corporate governance literature. Convergence or divergence in corporate governance: Empirical evidence. European convergence or divergence: an evaluation by practitioners and academics. Divergence within a converging trend: a tentative framework for further analysis and discussion. Executive summary. Concluding remarks and suggestions for further reflection and research. Bibliography. Appendices.

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Book SynopsisThere are a number of strategy books, international and local, available in the South African market. Why another one? What makes this book different?

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Book SynopsisDHL: From Startup to Global Upstart is the story of a startup that became the first worldwide logistics service organization, fighting regulation, trade restrictions, customs, and many other technical issues to develop processes that have stood the test of time to become the accepted norm in delivery throughout the world. It is a story of using soft powers, persuasion, and ingenuity, working with, and around, emerging technologies to eliminate barriers to success. This book provides an extraordinary look into how a little startup with grit and perseverance succeeded in the face of overwhelming odds and revolutionized many of what are now accepted transportation and supply chain practices. Po Chung, DHL International co-founder, and Roger Bowie, former DHL Worldwide Services Director, discuss how DHL paved the way for one day international package delivery and how they have maintained their global leadership position against powerful American titans.Table of ContentsChapter 1: Born Global | 1 The Little Company Which was Seen as Illegal in Every Country | 1 Chapter 2: The 70s | 5 Chapter 3: The Start-up Years | 9 Chapter 4: The Start-up Years: Business Innovation | 13 Door to Door, Desk to Desk | 13 Just Like Taking It There Yourself | 14 Still Expensive, However, for a Start-Up ... | 15 ... and Increasingly Complex | 16 So, Try and Keep It Simple | 17 So Simple, Almost Too Good to Be True | 18 Proof was Needed, and So Proof was Provided | 19 With the Airlines as Friends (Albeit Fair-Weather) | 20 Chapter 5: Innovation and Its Broader Impact on Business Dynamics | 23 The Infectious Nature of Speed | 23 Size Doesn’t Matter, Content Does | 24 Keeping It Dense | 25 But Keeping It Simple | 25 And Everyone Sells | 25 Service Is Not Servitude | 26 Creating a Time-Based Value Proposition | 27 Challenging Traditional Work Habits | 27 And in the Spirit of Partnership | 28 Chapter 6: Cultural Dynamics: What was Going on Here? | 29 Against All Odds | 29 Ahead of its Time | 29 It was also the People | 29 An Emerging Company Culture | 33 The Nature of the Business Helped | 33 But it Wasn’t Just the Business | 34 Chapter 7: Barely Legal—Early Regulatory Battles | 35 First, What Kind Of Business Is This? | 36 Ah, You Mean You Carry Mail? | 37 And What About This “Smuggling” Theory? | 41 Airline Schizophrenia | 43 Okay, Understand The Challenges With Post Offices, Customs And Airlines, But Surely You Were Doing Everything Else By The Book? | 45 Chapter 8: 1970s Vignettes and Bloopers | 47 Strange Bedfellows | 47 Caught Napping | 47 Plenty of Space, and Not So Much | 48 Strange Passengers | 48 Delivery Heroics | 48 It’s Tough Being Ahead of Your Time | 49 Chapter 9: Transition | 53 Taken Off, but Not Yet Landed | 53 A Biological Phenomenon | 54 With Intuitive, Instinctive Leadership | 56 Which Attracted and Inspired | 57 Cowboys with Wing | 58 And an Ounce of Luck | 58 Underpinned by Trust | 59 A Common Language | 59 And the Rule of Common Law | 60 But it was Precarious | 60 Chapter 10: The 80s | 63 Economic and Political Turbulence… | 63 Presaging Fundamental Geopolitical Change | 63 Policed by America | 64 With Asia Awakening | 64 Business Models Must Change | 65 A New Age of Consumerism | 65 And Speed to Market | 66 The End of History? | 67 Perhaps a Hybrid Would be the Answer | 68 Chapter 11: The Walden Years—Structure and process | 69 Nascently Global | 69 But Not Sustainable | 71 Structure to Support a Growth Strategy | 72 With A New Confidence | 73 Coming Out | 74 And Cash is the King | 75 Chapter 12: Business Innovation | 77 Getting it There in No Time at All | 77 Tentative Steps to Expand the Offering | 78 If you can get to the internationally remote places, why not just down the road? | 80 Europe Overnight | 80 And What About a Second Brand? | 82 Early Computerization | 82 What Aided and Abetted Also Threatened | 83 But Also Provided Opportunity | 84 Building a Brand | 85 Ongoing Geographical Expansion | 86 Less than Door-to-door | 87 Early Steps in Logistics | 88 Answer the Phone, Dammit! | 88 Chapter 13: Business Context—What Was Going on Here? | 91 A New Era of Globalization Begins | 91 What was DHL Carrying? | 93 This was an Outbound Phenomena | 93 The Information Age Beckoned, but Expensively | 95 Airports Grew Up | 95 Strategic Disconnect | 97 Chapter 14: Business Context—Competition Explodes | 99 Competition? (What, Really?) | 99 Finally, Strength Through Numbers | 99 But in Context | 100 Those Pesky Airlines Again | 101 The “Empires” Try to Strike Back | 102 But FedEx Strikes First | 102 And Starts to Force the Pace | 103 The Enemy of My Enemy can be my Friend | 103 Chapter 15: Regulatory Battles | 105 Postal Battles Heat Up | 105 Progress with Customs | 110 Tax, Cashflows and Blocked Funds | 112 The Dutch Sandwich | 113 Chapter 16: Cultural Dynamics | 117 Heroism | 117 It Wasn’t Just the Cowboys | 117 Growing Up | 118 Some Contextual Frameworks | 122 And Perhaps a Modern Example of Another, More Natural Law, is in Play Here | 124 Change Agents | 124 Pirates of the Caribbean (Never Waste a Good Crisis) | 126 Expat Versus Local | 127 Persistence at Heathrow, with Help from the US | 128 Chapter 17: Anecdotes, Accidents, and Altruism | 131 Excellence Discovered | 131 Going the Extra Mile | 131 Going Many Extra Miles | 132 Making Calls was a Shoe-In | 132 The Green Bags must go Through | 132 Shenanigans in Bahrain | 133 The Future Sometimes Takes Longer | 133 DHL Never Sleeps | 133 Never Fear, DHL is Here | 133 Be Bold, Be Fearless, Be an Upstart | 134 The Worm Turns | 135 Unblocking the Funds | 135 Thank Goodness for Unintended Consequences | 136 Unintended Consequences Version Two | 136 Bill Walden’s Office | 137 Crazy Texans | 138 Negotiations in China | 138 Pat Lupo’s Story: The Most Employee-Motivational Thing We Did | 138 Chapter 18: Adolescence to Adulthood | 141 Mission Almost Accomplished | 141 A New Man in Charge | 141 Bring in the Suits | 143 A Deal Made in Heaven, But | 144 Finally, A Head Office | 145 Organizational Innovation | 146 An Ongoing Emphasis on Data Networks | 146 And a New Sense of Mission | 148 WORLDWIDE MISSION STATEMENT | 149 FedEx Loses a Battle | 150 With the Best Good Will in the World, it Didn’t Work Out | 151 The Ultimate Compliment | 151 Chapter 19: Powers | 153 Chapter 20: From Start-up to Upstart to the Most International Company in the World | 169 Chapter 21: Epilogue: The 2008–16 Reincarnation | 173 Market Growth | 173 A Much and Long Desired Prize Becomes the Bogeyman | 174 Somebody Press the Reset Button, Quickly | 175 Focus, Connect, Grow: Pressing the button | 176 We Have a Strategic Plan: It’s Called Doing Things | 178 Ubiquity | 180 Motivated People: The CIS story | 180 Discipline, Process and the Power of Routine | 182 Great Leadership | 184 Ubiquity again | 184 Results are the only True Sign of Excellence | 185 Going Global, Staying the Course: The Powers Revisited | 185 Focus, discipline and routine | 188 Synthesis | 188 Renewal | 189 Index | 191

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Book SynopsisRediscovering the Vikings explores the changing perception of the Vikings across different cultural forms and reassesses the many complex roles that Norse cultures play in the contemporary world.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Figures Introduction by Tom Birkett 1. Vikings! by M. J. Driscoll 2. My Vikings and Real Vikings: Drama, Documentary and Historical Consultancy by Neil Price 3. (Re)discovering the Vikings in Poland: From Nineteenth-Century Romantics to Contemporary Warriors by Leszek Gardeła 4. Women in Viking Reenactment by Klaudia Karpińska 5. Who’s Afraid of an Electric Torch?: Reimagining Gender and the Viking World in Contemporary Picturebooks by Jessica Clare Hancock 6. The Terrible Njorl’s Saga: Comedic Reimaginings of the Íslendingasögur from the Victorians to the Present Day by Thomas Spray 7. The One that Got Away in Old Norse Myth, Moby-Dick, and the Work of Hugh MacDiarmid by Heather O’Donoghue 8. Death ere the afternoon: Jómsvíkinga saga and a Scene in Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls by Richard North 9. "(No More) Reaving, Roving, Raiding, or Raping": The Ironborn in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO’s Game of Thrones by Carolyne Larrington 10. A Saga King in a Finnish Beijing Opera by Kendra Willson 11. "Pick up Rune": The Use of Runes in Digital Games by Maja Bäckvall 12. From Barbarian to Brand: The Vikings as a Marketing Tool by Roderick Dale 13. Raiding the Vikings: How does Ireland Consume Its Viking Heritage? by Rebecca Boyd 14. The Great Viking Fake-Off: The Cultural Legacy of Norse Voyages to North America by Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough Afterword: Tell These Stories Yourself by Kevin Crossley-Holland Index

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Book SynopsisSo much to read, so little time? Get a brief overview of The Innovator’s Dilemma—the bestselling business book about disruption and how companies adapt. Named one of the most important business books ever written by the Economist and the winner of the Global Business Book Award, The Innovator’s Dilemma uses true stories of the successes and failures of prominent companies to analyze why great firms fail when faced with critical market and technological innovation. In this summary of Clayton Christensen’s book for entrepreneurs, managers, CEOs, and business leaders, you’ll learn: Why sometimes “doing the right thing” can be the wrong thing, especially when faced with disruptive technology Why most companies, even good ones, struggle to adapt their business practices What executives can do to ensure both the short-term health and long-term survival of their organizations With historical context, chapter-by-chapter overviews, important quotes, definitions of key terms, and other features, this summary and analysis of The Innovator’s Dilemma is intended to complement your reading experience and bring you closer to a great work of nonfiction.

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