A Critical Perspective from Latin America

Edited by Ana Guedes, Alex Faria

Over the last few decades, the field of management enlarged its boundaries, especially in international terms, in a very rapid fashion—mainly because of the arrival of the so-called era of globalization. Many renowned scholars have criticized the universal approach given to ‘management’ in the United States and its subsequent automatic conversion into ‘international management,’ but their arguments too can fall into the trap of universalism at times. This book has a more specific concern: to challenge the conversion of ‘management’ into ‘international management’ from a Latin American perspective. This challenge might be taken as a first step toward the construction of a Latin American perspective in International Management and a potential contribution to the development of this field in other parts of the world.

Drawing upon such critical standpoint, several authors in the book converge upon the idea that researchers, practitioners and authorities in Latin America should challenge the US dominance in International Management and foster interdisciplinary developments within International Relations. The critical perspective provided in this book challenges the US’s narrow viewpoint on management as it clearly does not fit the governance features of ‘international management’ in Latin America. So far, we have not observed the constitution of sub-areas such as international management of international organizations, international management of transnational institutions, international management of public-private networks, international management of public companies, and international public administration or international public management, all of which would be extremely important in Latin America.

ISBN: 9780415801690

Published March 12 2010 by Routledge.

Revolution or Rhetoric?

By Christopher J. Miles

This book critically examines the rhetoric surrounding current trends in the adoption of tropes of interactivity in marketing communication. Concepts such as viral advertising, customer-generated content, brand communities and the whole panoply of Web 2.0-mediated marketing technologies all have their foundations in an overt positioning of interactivity as the savior of effective marketing communication. Yet, what exactly is meant by interactivity in these contexts and how far does it represent a revolution in the methodologies of marketing? Anchoring his analysis in a critique of the assumptions of control embedded in current marketing communication models and the rhetorical analysis of exemplar texts from the Marketing Management, Customer Relationship Management, Viral Marketing and Buzz Marketing paradigms, Chris Miles investigates the constructions and reconstructions of discourse that surround the uses of interactivity in contemporary marketing discourses. In doing so, he offers a radical new model of marketing based upon a recursive, constructivist understanding of communication that uses metaphors of invitation and exploration to rebuild interactivity at the center of marketing. The work culminates in a reading of the theory of Relationship Marketing that uses autism as an allegory to interrogate the communicative paradox at the heart of this contemporary marketing panacea.

ISBN: 9780415801713

Published March 11 2010 by Routledge.

Edited by James L. Farr, Nancy T. Tippins

The Handbook of Employee Selection summarizes the state of science and practice in the field of employee selection. Chapters in this book cover issues associated with measurement such as validity and reliability as well as practical concerns around the development of appropriate selection procedures and implementation of selection programs. Several chapters discuss the measurement of various constructs commonly used as predictors, and other chapters confront criterion measures that are used in test validation. Ethical and legal concerns are dealt with in another set of chapters and highlight the concerns of the employer as well as the test taker and the psychologist responsible for the testing program. Final sections of the book include chapters that focus on testing for certain types of jobs (e.g., blue collar jobs, supervisory jobs) and describe important milestones in the development of selection programs.

ISBN: 9780805864373

Published March 10 2010 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

A Handbook of Essential Theory and Research

Edited by Arnold B. Bakker, Michael P. Leiter

This book provides the most thorough view available on this new and intriguing dimension of workplace psychology, which is the basis of fulfilling, productive work.

The book begins by defining work engagement, which has been described as ‘an opposite to burnout,’ following its development into a more complex concept with far reaching implications for work-life. The chapters discuss the sources of work engagement, emphasizing the importance of leadership, organizational structures, and human resource management as factors that may operate to either enhance or inhibit employee’s experience of work. The book considers the implications of work engagement for both the individual employee and the organization as a whole. To address readers’ practical questions, the book provides in-depth coverage of interventions that can enhance employees’ work engagement and improve management techniques.

Based upon the most up-to-date research by the foremost experts in the world, this volume brings together the best knowledge available on work engagement, and will be of great use to academic researchers, upper level students of work and organizational psychology as well as management consultants.

ISBN: 9781841697369

Published March 10 2010 by Psychology Press.

By Michael J. Best

Eschewing a more theoretical approach, Portfolio Optimization shows how the mathematical tools of linear algebra and optimization can quickly and clearly formulate important ideas on the subject. This practical book extends the concepts of the Markowitz "budget constraint only" model to a linearly constrained model.

Only requiring elementary linear algebra, the text begins with the necessary and sufficient conditions for optimal quadratic minimization that is subject to linear equality constraints. It then develops the key properties of the efficient frontier, extends the results to problems with a risk-free asset, and presents Sharpe ratios and implied risk-free rates. After focusing on quadratic programming, the author discusses a constrained portfolio optimization problem and uses an algorithm to determine the entire (constrained) efficient frontier, its corner portfolios, the piecewise linear expected returns, and the piecewise quadratic variances. The final chapter illustrates infinitely many implied risk returns for certain market portfolios.

Drawing on the author’s experiences in the academic world and as a consultant to many financial institutions, this text provides a hands-on foundation in portfolio optimization. Although the author clearly describes how to implement each technique by hand, he includes several MATLAB^® programs designed to implement the methods and offers these programs on the accompanying CD-ROM.

ISBN: 9781420085846

Published March 09 2010 by Chapman and Hall/CR.

By Ron S. Kenett, Emanuel Baker

Presenting the state of the art in strategic planning and process improvement, Process Improvement and CMMI^® for Systems and Software provides a workable approach for achieving cost-effective process improvements for systems and software. Focusing on planning, implementation, and management in system and software processes, it supplies a brief overview of basic strategic planning models and covers fundamental concepts and approaches for system and software measurement, testing, and improvements.

The book represents the significant cumulative experience of the authors who were among the first to introduce quality management to the software development processes. It introduces CMMI^® and various other software and systems process models. It also provides readers with an easy-to-follow methodology for evaluating the status of development and maintenance processes and for determining the return on investment for process improvements.

The authors examine beta testing and various testing and usability programs. They highlight examples of useful metrics for monitoring process improvement projects and explain how to establish baselines against which to measure achieved improvements. Divided into four parts, this practical resource covers:

• Strategy and basics of quality and process improvement
• Assessment and measurement in systems and software
• Improvements and testing of systems and software
• Managing and reporting data

The text concludes with a realistic case study that illustrates how the process improvement effort is structured and brings together the methods, tools, and techniques discussed. Spelling out how to lay out a reasoned plan for process improvement, this book supplies readers with concrete action plans for setting up process improvement initiatives that are effective, efficient, and sustainable.

ISBN: 9781420060508

Published March 09 2010 by Auerbach Publicatio.

Edited by Teresa da Silva Lopes, Paul Duguid

This book examines trademarks and brands, and their historical role in national competitive and comparative advantage and in overall economic growth. The contributors provide an historical account of the contribution of brands in consumer goods to economic growth; examine the development of trademark law, its influence on brand strategy, and reciprocally the influence of strategy on the law; and look at the building and repositioning of individual brands as example of the interplay of law and strategy.

Brands and trademarks are usually discussed from the perspective of marketing. This book draws together scholars and practitioners not only from marketing, but also from business history, law, economics, and economic history to provide a richer understanding of trade marks and competitiveness than has hitherto been available.

ISBN: 9780415776936

Published March 05 2010 by Routledge.

Failure Mode Effects and Analysis

By Holly Alison Duckworth, Rosemond Ann Moore

There’s been a lot of buzz recently about social responsibility among organizational leaders in the public and private sector. Although many books cover market response and interest to this global concern, this is the first book to focus on methods for assessing an organizations process towards its social responsibility performance through failure mode and risk assessment. The text defines social responsibility, explains how the new ISO 26000 standard will affect the market place, and provides practical problem solving methods that can be put to use immediately in any organization to improve overall social responsibility.

ISBN: 9781439803721

Published March 05 2010 by CRC Press.

Evidence from Europe

Edited by Franco Malerba

This book examines entrepreneurship from three interrelated perspectives. Firstly, it links entrepreneurship to innovation and to the generation, transformation and use of knowledge. Secondly, it inserts entrepreneurship in innovation systems of various types- national, sectoral and local. Thirdly, it views entrepreneurship not as a single event but as a process that evolves in time, from the pre-entry experience, to the entrepreneurial act, to the evolution of the entrepreneur and the new company.

With chapters from a range of international contributors, the book answers questions such as; what are the main dimensions of knowledge intensive entrepreneurship? What are the factors affecting its emergence, evolution and performance? How important is knowledge intensive entrepreneurship for European growth and competitiveness? Is the situation of Central and Eastern Europe, engaged in a process of major economic and institutional transformation, similar or different from the one of Western Europe?

ISBN: 9780415557917

Published March 05 2010 by Routledge.

Critical Reflections on Discourse and Dominance

By Gerlinde Mautner

Language plays a central role in creating and sustaining the market society—a society, that is, in which market exchange is no longer simply a process, but an all-encompassing social principle. The social domains affected include education, politics and religion. Around the world, government departments have re-defined themselves as service providers; universities produce graduates; job seekers are asked to package themselves more effectively, and there are consultants specializing in church marketing. And as individuals, too, we are supposed to brand ourselves, sell ourselves and strategically manage our personal relationships. Through an intricate dialectic, such patterns of linguistic choices reinforce the social structures that shape them, further consolidating the marketization process. Marketization thus emerges as a globally unfolding process in which language holds a key position as both cause and effect, and as both subject and object. The book examines these phenomena from a linguistic and critical perspective, drawing on critical discourse analysis, sociological treatises of market society, and critical management studies.

ISBN: 9780415998147

Published March 03 2010 by Routledge.