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Articles 79581 à 79600 sur 91960
Par Joseph Eli Kasser. 2019
Systems Thinker's Toolbox: Tools for Managing Complexity provides more than 100 tools based on systems thinking and beyond. Each tool…
is described, and when necessary, examples are provided of how each of them can be used. Some of the simplest tools can be combined into more complex tools. The tools may be things such as lists, causal loops, and templates, as well as processes and methodologies. Key Features Provides an explanation of the two views of systems thinking; systemic and systematic thinking, and then shows how to perform each of them in a complimentary manner Presents a set of thinking tools that can be used to apply systems thinking to solving problems in project management, engineering, systems engineering, new product development, and business Describes the tools from simple such as lists, and goes on to more complex such as Categorized Requirements in Process (CRIP) charts, and then onto the processes Introduces new tools that have been tested with positive feedback Discusses a set of communication tools that can improve project reviews and communicating innovative ideasPar Lodewijk Berlage, Olav Stokke. 1992
Best Fit Lines and Curves, and Some Mathe-Magical Transformations (Volume III of the Working Guides to Estimating & Forecasting series)…
concentrates on techniques for finding the Best Fit Line or Curve to some historical data allowing us to interpolate or extrapolate the implied relationship that will underpin our prediction. A range of simple ‘Moving Measures’ are suggested to smooth the underlying trend and quantify the degree of noise or scatter around that trend. The advantages and disadvantages are discussed and a simple way to offset the latent disadvantage of most Moving Measure Techniques is provided. Simple Linear Regression Analysis, a more formal numerical technique that calculates the line of best fit subject to defined ‘goodness of fit’ criteria. Microsoft Excel is used to demonstrate how to decide whether the line of best fit is a good fit, or just a solution in search of some data. These principles are then extended to cover multiple cost drivers, and how we can use them to quantify 3-Point Estimates. With a deft sleight of hand, certain commonly occurring families of non-linear relationships can be transformed mathe-magically into linear formats, allowing us to exploit the powers of Regression Analysis to find the Best Fit Curves. The concludes with an exploration of the ups and downs of seasonal data (Time Series Analysis). Supported by a wealth of figures and tables, this is a valuable resource for estimators, engineers, accountants, project risk specialists as well as students of cost engineering.Par Darren Dalcher. 2019
Project management is at a crossroads: There is a pressing need to rethink the approaches used in initiating, managing and…
governing projects, programmes and change initiatives. The aim of this book is to progress the dialogue around project practice by shifting the focus from instrumental methods and prescriptive techniques towards a context-sensitive consideration of people, strategy and change. Projects are initiated to deliver agreed outputs that can be translated into meaningful outcomes capable of satisfying the wishes and expectations for improvement and development. Yet, people, strategy and change, which are largely ignored by the conventional bodies of knowledge, are clearly central to the sustainable and enduring success of projects, efforts and initiatives. The volume brings together some of the best writing by leading authorities on key topics including trust, ethics, people, psychology, requirements, project performance, audits, uncertainty, anti-fragility, strategic initiatives, governance, change management and commercial management. The collection offers an invaluable new resource for informed managers looking to engage with the latest thinking and research.Par A. Heri Iswanto. 2018
The biggest issue of economics in a hospital are the resource issues. A resource issue in hospitals creates many problems…
such as the excessive number of patients, poor service quality, lack of diagnostic tools and equipment, dirty and worn out facilities, long queues at the outpatient clinic, lack of drugs and other medical supplies, low employee morale, and so on. Hospital economics mention three main resource issues in as problems including; (1) Resource allocation issue, (2) Resource management issue, and (3) Generation resources issue. The main economic problem of resource allocation in hospitals are production and cost function. These two functions related to issues of equality and effectiveness of the hospital. This book specifically discusses on the aspect of hospital resource allocation by highlighting the productivity, competitiveness, cost components, economic burden of disease, and economic aspects of infectious diseases originating from the hospital. The resource management issue is related to the use of existing resources in terms of input and output. The main important economic concept is efficiency, both technical efficiency, economical, and scale, as well as the relationship between these concepts. The resource management issue highlight the economic scale, human resource development, quality development, and lean implementation. The issue of generation resources, includes how the hospital is able to get the resources to run operations without having to cover the access of stratum of community thus violating the principle of equality. This book will highlight the issue of generation resources by including a discussion of the revenue components of the hospital and the impact of DRGs.Par Friedo Zölzer, Gaston Meskens. 2018
Environmental health involves the assessment and control of environmental factors that can potentially affect human health, such as radiation, toxic…
chemicals and other hazardous agents. It is less commonly understood that environmental health also requires addressing questions of an ethical nature. Bringing together work from experts across a range of sub-disciplines of environmental health, this collection of essays discusses the ethical implications of environmental health research and its application, presented at the 3rd International Symposium on Ethics of Environmental Health held in August 2016 in the Czech Republic. In doing so, it builds upon the insights and ideas put forward in the first volume of Ethics of Environmental Health, published by Routledge in early 2017. This volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental health, applied ethics, environmental ethics, medical ethics and bioethics, as well as those concerned with public health, environmental studies, toxicology and radiation.Par Jonathan Chenoweth, Juliet Bird. 2005
A renewed commitment to improved provision of water and sanitation emerged in the 2002 Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development. Although…
many of the statements in the Declaration were vaguely worded, making it hard to measure progress or success, the Plan of Implementation of the Summit, agreed by the delegates to the conference, clearly stated that: "we agree to halve, by the year 2015, the proportion of people who are unable to reach or to afford safe drinking water and the proportion of people who do not have access to basic sanitation". Given the United Nations' predicted growth in global population from 6.1 billion in 2000 to 7.2 billion by 2015, this commitment will pose formidable challenges. To meet it, by the end of just a decade and half, approximately 6.6 billion people will need to have access to safe drinking water supplies. This is more than the current population of the world, and involves not only maintaining existing levels of supply but also providing new or upgraded services to 1.7 billion people. The challenge for sanitation is equally daunting: 5.8 billion people will need to be serviced, including new access provision for 2.1 billion. Even if these ambitious targets are met, representing a major achievement for the global community, there will still be approximately 650 million people in the world without access to safe drinking water and 1.4 billion without sanitation. What is clear is the magnitude of the problem facing the international community in terms of water supply and sanitation. Continuation of the status quo and the type of progress made during the 1990s will not permit the Johannesburg targets to be met. Instead it will be necessary to promote a combination of many different, new and innovative approaches, each of which will contribute towards the overall targets. These approaches must include technological advances that identify new sources and improve the quality of those already in use; managerial techniques that increase the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery at both micro and macro scale; and fiscal approaches that tap into additional financial resources to make improvements affordable. In the past each of these aspects was seen as primarily the responsibility of government, which supported research into technology, managed supply and disposal systems and provided the funds to pay for them. This view has changed – beginning in the 1980s and increasing in the 1990s with growing moves towards privatisation of many aspects of the water sector. Underpinning this has been a shift away from seeing water as a public good that is essential for life, with subsidised supply provided as part of an overall welfare system, to a more market-oriented approach where the state, although still responsible for maintaining universal access to water services, uses market forces to meet this aim. The Business of Water and Sustainable Development aims to illustrate the range of approaches that will be necessary if the percentage of the global population having access to adequate and safe water and sanitation is to be increased in line with the brave assertions from Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development. Some of approaches will be large-scale "Western-style" improvements involving the creation of new business models, their effectiveness assessed by traditional approaches of fiscal and social analysis. Such schemes may be instigated and partly funded by governments, but are increasingly turning to the private sector for money and expertise. In contrast, many smaller communities would be better served by following another path to improved water supply and sanitation. Because of their size, location or traditions they may achieve better results through the adoption of local small-scale solutions. Non-governmental organisations have been very active in this area, but to extend their operations many are seeking to adopt a more business-like model. All water supplyPar Roger Staiger. 2018
Foundations of Real Estate Financial Modelling, Second Edition is specifically designed to provide the scalable basis of pro forma modelling…
for real estate projects. The book introduces students and professionals to the basics of real estate finance theory prior to providing a step-by-step guide for financial real estate model construction using Excel. The book introduces an innovative new financial metric, P(Gain), which quantifies the probability of a Return of Capital and answers the most basic question for investing, "What is the probability I get my money back?".? This new second edition has been fully revised and expanded. The book is separated into three functional units: (1) Real Estate Valuation Basics, Theory and Skills, (2) Real Estate Pro Forma Modelling, (3) Real Estate Pro Forma (Enhancements). New and enhanced Chapters cover:? Interest rates Amortization Single- and multi-family unit Development module Rent roll module Waterfall (equity bifurcation) Hotel, retail/office and townhouse. ? In addition, this new edition includes problem sets and solutions at the end of each chapter as well as case studies underpinning the chapter topics. Further chapters are dedicated to risk quantification and include scenario, stochastic and Monte Carlo simulations, equity waterfalls, and adding U.S. GAAP financial statements to existing real estate pro forma models. This book is the ideal textbook for a Real Estate Finance class, providing the theoretical basis of real estate finance as well as valuable modelling skills for the workplace. This book provides individuals with a step-by-step instruction on how to construct a real estate financial model starting with a new spreadsheet. The resultant model is portable, scalable, and modular. A companion website provides the pro forma models to readers as a reference for their own constructed models.Par Dolores Albarracin, Blair T. Johnson. 2019
Attitudes are evaluations of people, places, things, and ideas. They help us to navigate through a complex world. They provide…
guidance for decisions about which products to buy, how to travel to work, or where to go on vacation. They color our perceptions of others. Carefully crafted interventions can change attitudes and behavior. Yet attitudes, beliefs, and behavior are often formed and changed in casual social exchanges. The mere perception that other people—say, rich people— favor something may be sufficient to make another person favor it. People’s own actions also influence their attitudes, such that they adjust to be more supportive of the actions. People’s belief systems even change to align with and support their preferences, which at its extreme is a form of denial for which people lack awareness. These two volumes of The Handbook of Attitudes provide authoritative, critical surveys of theory and research about attitudes, beliefs, persuasion, and behavior from key authors in these areas. This second volume covers applications to measurement, behavior prediction, and interventions in the areas of cancer, HIV, substance use, diet, and exercise, as well as in politics, intergroup relations, aggression, migrations, advertising, accounting, education, and the environment.Containing many results that are new, or which exist only in recent research articles, Interest Rate Modeling: Theory and Practice,…
2nd Edition portrays the theory of interest rate modeling as a three-dimensional object of finance, mathematics, and computation. It introduces all models with financial-economical justifications, develops options along the martingale approach, and handles option evaluations with precise numerical methods. Features Presents a complete cycle of model construction and applications, showing readers how to build and use models Provides a systematic treatment of intriguing industrial issues, such as volatility and correlation adjustments Contains exercise sets and a number of examples, with many based on real market data Includes comments on cutting-edge research, such as volatility-smile, positive interest-rate models, and convexity adjustment New to the 2nd edition: volatility smile modeling; a new paradigm for inflation derivatives modeling; an extended market model for credit derivatives; a dual-curved model for the post-crisis interest-rate derivatives markets; and an elegant framework for the xVA.Par Frederic S. Lee. 2018
Microeconomic Theory: A Heterodox Approach develops a heterodox economic theory that explains the economy as the social provisioning process at…
the micro level. Heterodox microeconomics explores the economy with a focus on its constituent parts and their reproduction and recurrence, their integration qua interdependency by non-market and market arrangements and institutions, and how the system works as a whole. This book deals with three theoretical concerns. Due to the significance of the price mechanism to mainstream economics, a theoretical concern of the book is the business enterprise, markets, demand, and pricing. Also, since heterodox economists see private investment, consumption and government expenditures as the principal directors and drivers of economic activity, a second theoretical concern is business decision-making processes regarding investment and production, government expenditure decisions, the financing of investment, the profit mark-up and the wage rate, and taxes. Finally, the third theoretical concern of the book is the delineation of a non-equilibrium disaggregated price-output model of the social provisioning process. This book explores the integration of these various theories with a theoretical model of the economy and how this forms a theory that can be identified as heterodox microeconomics. It will be of interest to both postgraduates and researchers.Par Shunsuke Managi, Pushpam Kumar. 2018
The Inclusive Wealth Index provides important insights into long-term economic growth and human well-being. The Index measures the wealth of…
nations through a comprehensive analysis of a country's productive base and the country’s wealth in terms of progress, well-being and long-term sustainability. It measures all assets which human well-being is based upon, in particular, produced, human and natural capital to create and maintain human well-being over time.Par Steven Langdon, Archibald R.M. Ritter, Yiagadeesen Samy. 2018
Sub-Saharan Africa is at a turning point. The barriers to economic growth seen in the 1980-2000 era are disappearing and…
new optimism is spreading. However, difficult goals of eliminating poverty, achieving equity and overcoming environmental threats continue. This much-needed and insightful textbook has been written to help us understand this combination of emerging improvements and significant challenges. Opening with an analysis of the main theories relating to development in Sub-Saharan Africa, the book explores all the key issues, including: Human development; Rapid urbanization; Structural and gender dimensions; Sustainable development and environmental issues; and Africa’s role in the world economy. The authors use economic tools and concepts throughout, in a way that makes them accessible to students without an economics background. Readers are also aided by a wide range of case studies, on-the-ground examples and statistical information, which provide a detailed analysis of each topic. This text is also accompanied by a companion website, featuring additional sources for students and instructors. African Economic Development is a clear and comprehensive textbook suitable for courses on African economic development, development economics, African studies and development studies.Par Ronald J. Herring, Rina Agarwala. 2008
Class explains much in the differentiation of life chances and political dynamics in South Asia; scholarship from the region contributed…
much to class analysis. Yet class has lost its previous centrality as a way of understanding the world and how it changes. This outcome is puzzling; new configurations of global economic forces and policy have widened gaps between classes and across sectors and regions, altered people’s relations to production, and produced new state-citizen relations. Does market triumphalism or increased salience of identity politics render class irrelevant? Has rapid growth in aggregate wealth obviated long-standing questions of inequality and poverty? Explanations for what happened to class vary, from intellectual fads to global transformations of interests. The authors ask what is lost in the move away from class, and what South Asian experiences tell us about the limits of class analysis. Empirical chapters examine formal and informal-sector labor, social movements against genetic engineering, and politics of the "new middle class." A unifying analytical concern is specifying conditions under which interests of those disadvantaged by class systems are immobilized, diffused, coopted -- or autonomously recognized and acted upon politically: the problematic transition of classes in themselves to classes for themselves.Par Michael Fortunato, Morgan Clevenger. 2017
Toward Entrepreneurial Community Development is about developing entrepreneurial communities, and goes beyond theories of the firm to demonstrate how local…
and regional society contributes in important ways to the vitality of entrepreneurs. The literature is rich with insights about leadership and culture within SMEs, and the behaviours and attitudes of their founders, founding teams, and managers. Since most of the attention in the entrepreneurship literature is focused on firms, we wish to explore everyone else: The social environment surrounding the entrepreneur, and how leadership and culture outside the firm can have pervasive effects on the business. This book reaches across disciplinary boundaries, integrating and advancing knowledge on entrepreneurial community development. The book identifies actionable leadership strategies that can be used by literally anyone to help make a community or region a more culturally-supportive, interactive home for entrepreneurial minds. We draw from original research to compare high and low entrepreneurship communities, and present an emergent picture of how community-level actors can (or fail to) work together to support entrepreneurship in places that are culturally distant from the Silicon Valley (i.e., most places). Toward Entrepreneurial Community Development then offers techniques for entrepreneurial community leadership, including how to build lasting alliances, create an image, and harness the local culture for entrepreneurial advantage. The result is a book that provides the reader with the latest advancements and techniques in entrepreneurship development in a straight-forward, readable format. No matter the reader, Toward Entrepreneurial Community Development demonstrates how anyone, in any position, can lead a local entrepreneurship movement starting anywhere, anytime.Par B. Delworth Gardner, Randy T. Simmons. 2012
Water is becoming increasingly scarce. If recent usage trends continue, shortages are inevitable. Aquanomics discusses some of the instruments and…
policies that may be implemented to postpone, or even avoid, the onset of water crises. These policies include establishing secure and transferable private water rights and extending these rights to uses that traditionally have not been allowed, including altering in-stream flows and ecosystem functions. The editors argue that such policies will help maximize water quantity and quality as water becomes scarcer and more valuable. Aquanomics contains many examples of how this is being accomplished, particularly in the formation of water markets and market-like exchanges of water rights.Many observers see calamity ahead unless water supplies are harnessed and effectively conserved, and unless water quality can be improved. It is also clear that declining water quality is a serious problem in much of the world, as increasing human activities induce high levels of water degradation. Those who voice these concerns, argue the contributors to this volume, fail to consider the forces for improvement inherent in market political-economic systems that can address water issues. The contributors see water quality in economically advanced countries as improving, and they believe this establishes the validity of market-based approaches.Par Maurie J Cohen, Halina Szejnwald Brown, Philip J Vergragt. 2017
Consumer society is an unquestionably complex social construct. However, after decades of unremitting dominance there are signs emerging that it…
is starting to falter, both as a coherent and durable system of social organization and as a strategy for societal advancement. Debates concerning how we can transition beyond present energy- and materials-intensive consumer society are beginning to gain greater salience. Social Change and the Coming of Post-Consumer Society aims to develop more complete appreciation of the relevant processes of social change and to identify effective interventions that could enable a transition to supersede consumer society. Bringing together leading interdisciplinary experts on social change, the book identifies and analyzes several ongoing small- and modest-scale social experiments. Possibilities for macro-scale change from the interlinked perspectives of culture, economics, finance, and governance are then explored. These contributions expose the systemic problems that are emblematic of the current condition of consumer society, specifically the unsustainability of prevailing consumption practices and lifestyles and the persistence of inequalities. These observations are summarized and extended in the final chapter of the book. This volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of sustainable consumption, sustainability transitions, environmental sociology, and sustainable development.Par Kari Liuhto. 2007
Evaluate the impact of Russia&’s global business expansion Since the collapse of the former Soviet Union, tremendous changes have taken…
place in the Russian Federation&’s trade relationship with other countriesespecially with former allies. Expansion or Exodus examines how and why Russian corporations invest outside the country and why most of that money remains abroad as the growth and performance of these companies increases at an accelerated rate. As the Federation moves closer to joining the World Trade Organization, this timely book provides a global view of Russia&’s outward expansion, exploring the operations of Russian firms in old, new, and forthcoming European Union member states. Russian corporations have invested 50-70 billion USD abroad in the last five years, with global energy giant Gazprom leading the way. Although some of the Russian money has returned home, most of it remains abroad, largely in the EU and the United States. Many ex-socialist countries fear the Russian government is using its energy companies as foreign policy tools and in some cases, those fears have been grounded. But the outward expansion of Russian firms has become less motivated by politics as non-energy-related companies have begun their internationalization. Expansion or Exodus examines the vital issues surrounding Russia&’s outward foreign direct investments, including: how a lower-middle income country has become a net capital exporter how larger export-oriented Russian companies have used Germany as entry to Europe how Russian direct investments in Poland led to corruption and political involvement why foreign direct investments in the Baltic States have been met with suspicion why natural resource-based companies have been main drivers of international growth of Russian economy and how manufacturing and telecommunication industries are catching up the development of a Lithuanian oil refinery from state-ownership to privatization by an American corporation to acquisition with Russian capital the international activities of the leading Russian companies in several industrial sectors the majors factors that form contemporary Russian business culture the negative features of receiving Russian investments the outward internationalization of Russia&’s telecommunication company Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) and much moreExpansion or Exodus is an invaluable resource for the international business community, policymakers, and academics.