This may all be true. However, it is imperative for those in the business world to understand the legal environment in which they are operating. While you may have the best intentions and be truly diligent in your efforts to do business fairly, inevitably conflicts will arise in everyday business dealings. For example, what does it mean to do business “fairly”? Fair to whom? Fair to your …
Technology end-user purchasing behavior has changed from “one-stop shopping” to selecting different outlets for products and implementation services. The indirect channel has responded by fragmenting into an array of firms that cover the full spectrum of business models from fulfillment to implementation. Unfortunately, few manufacturers have adapted to–or are even aware of–the new c…
Despite all the technology available, your ability to reach, engage, and influence decision makers is still limited. While buyer personas, surveys, and search marketing data can get you in the ballpark, we believe social media insights are now a “must-have” for understanding key business professionals in a way that becomes truly actionable
The decision to upgrade or replace an outdated e-commerce platform to gain multichannel capabilities creates the context for a number of other critical decisions. One of the most significant is the basic deployment model for the commerce platform. The three broad deployment model categories available today are: on-demand; hosted; and on-premises. The key advantages of each model are identif…
As a small business owner, you probably wear many different hats and are pulled in multiple directions. And most likely you work many nights and weekends trying to keep up. While technology can sometimes be frustrating when it doesn’t work right, it can also help save valuable time that you can dedicate to other areas of your business. Or even better yet, give you more time off the clock.
A recent SHRM survey asked executives this question: “What do you think will be the biggest investment challenge facing organizations over the next ten years?” For 47 percent of respondents, the answer was, “Obtaining human capital and optimizing human capital investments.” Small businesses cannot afford to make many mistakes when it comes to hiring, firing and generally managing t…
With the effects of the current economic downturn spurring companies to cut expenses on a broad scale, the notion of moving sales efforts to an outsourced model may not be the first instinctual solution. However, especially during times of economic tightening, outsourcing simultaneously addresses both primary fiscal concerns: cutting costs and generating new revenue. Externalizing sales and…
Through Career and Technology Studies (CTS), secondary education in Alberta is responding to the many challenges of modern society, helping young people develop daily living skills, and nurturing a flexible, well-qualified work force. In Canada's information society, characterized by rapid change in the social and economic environment, students must be confident in their ability to respond to …
In this paper, we review the economic effects of intellectual property rights and specifically address the economics of the patent system. The production and dissemination of new knowledge is fraught with market failures because knowledge is a public good. Patents provide a second-best solution to the resulting appropriability problem. We review the main benefits and costs of the patent sys…
This chapter introduces you to probability and statistics. First come examples of the kinds of practical problems that this knowledge can solve for us. Next this Introduction discusses the relationship of probabilities to decisions. Then comes a discussion of the two general types of statistics, descriptive and inferential. Following this is a discussion of the limitations of probability …
For more than two decades “quality” and “quality management systems” have been leading buzzwords in the business world. Numerous consultants have built their careers around these topics, and quality issues in business have been responsible for the development of new organizations and even industries, for instance, the American Society for Quality and Six Sigma consulting. The not…
Overall aim of the project was to transfer innovative methods of business performance management and business animation in economic networks as well as contribute to social and economic cohesion. Specific aim was to increase managerial skills of managers and facilitators in clusters and clusters initiatives in Poland and Lithuania through delivering them special training and equipping them…
Strategic management, popularized during the 1980s, is a term that covers enterprise – wide strategy formulation, implementation, and evaluation. The subject of strategic management has become integral to the success or failure of organizations, especially now when the business environment demands rapid monitoring, analysis and accurate interpretation
Do you like to know things? Do you ever wonder what other people know or how they know what they do? Have you ever made a decision, and do you plan to make decisions in the future? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you will probably find the information in this book—particularly the information on research methods—very useful. If you answered no to all of them, I suspect t…
When I first started teaching social psychology, I had trouble figuring out how the various topics in this expansive field fit together. I felt like I was presenting a laundry list of ideas, research studies, and phenomena, rather than an integrated set of principles and knowledge. Of course, what was difficult for me was harder still for my students. How could they be expected to underst…