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Practicing Leadership is intended to serve as a guide to basic principles of leadership and begins with an overview of definitions and conceptions of leadership and then continues with discussions of the roles and activities expected from an effective leader; personality traits and attributes which can be learned and perfected by persons that aspire to leadership positions; styles of leadership, which encompass the strategies used by leaders to engage with their followers and leadership in developing countries. Leadership is a universal phenomenon that has preoccupied scholars, politicians and others for centuries. In the management context leadership has been consistently identified as playing a critical role in the success or failure of organizations and some surveys have pegged almost half of an organization's performance on the quality and effectiveness of its leadership team. Apart from organizational performance, researchers have consistently found a strong correlation between leadership styles and behaviors and the job satisfaction and performance of subordinates. When formal interest in the study of leadership first began in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the so-called "e;great man"e; theory, which assumed that certain individual characteristics or traits could be found in leaders but not in non-leaders and that those characteristics could not be developed but must be inherited, was quite popular and many assumed that leaders were simply "e;born and not made"e;. As time passed, however, the consensus within the community of leadership scholars and consultants shifted significantly to the current working proposition that while some people do indeed appear to be natural leaders from birth it is nonetheless possible for many others with sufficient desire and willpower to develop into a "e;leader"e; by following a continuous process of work, self-study, education, training and experience.

Urbanization is a global phenomenon that hugely constrains existing transportation infrastructure in cities. Urban transportation (UT) challenges are more significant in developing countries with rapid development as the land occupation is dense.Limited urban space and infrastructure fail to meet the increasing traffic demands and to provide reasonable service quality. Therefore betterment of UT systems is more required than ever. Infrastructural development and transportation operations are mainly directed at citizen welfare and it requires huge capital investments. States initiate urban development by inviting private participation so that operational and commercial risks are minimized and quality of execution is better. Several aspects in planning and management of global UT projects are common. But the approach and solutions are typically developed for a local context and relevance. Specific UT challenges are land use planning, socioeconomic distribution, project designing, implementation, financial analysis and governmental policies. A comprehensive background of UT systems, challenges involved and various approaches adopted by different countries are presented along with five real-life Asian cases. The book is aimed as a one-point reference on modern day developments on urban transportation for a readership of consultants, practitioners, developers, policy makers, and academicians.

This book explores the basic tenets of service excellence, opening to distinguish customer service from service excellence, and explore the driving aspects of strategy and philosophy.The brand promise to customers creates expectations; hooks targeted and segmented customers into a relationship. Service operations deliver expectations, delight, or on occasion, disappointment, and marketing responds to create loyalty, further delight, or recover the relationship.Freshness of product or service offering, the injection of a characterful sense of fun, and sensitive personalization of service combine to deliver an authentic, pleasurable and memorable service experience prompting much sought loyalty and advocacy. In turn, staff are happy, profits rise and the organization has long-term sustainability.The first volume offers some theoretical background, while the second suggests mechanisms, tools, and techniques to help embed to excellence as the foundation of value that the organization delivers. Both contain practical examples and a self-assessment diagnostic tool to identify organizational areas of strength, and aspects to improve.

The year 2120 may appear a long way into the future but will come quickly. The global population reached one billion in 1804, four billion in 1974, six billion in 1999, seven billion in 2012, and nine billion predicted for 2020. Given the speed of current development under the threat of changing climate, this book attempts to project ahead but with a particular focus. Housing and feeding so many people is about saving the planet while laying the foundations for a quality of life that is within what people in 2120 will want in their living conditions. One factor has not been considered, namely, how each new generation comes in at a different reference point. Previously, the ideal home might have had a house, a garden, perhaps a swimming pool or tennis court. Teenagers today don't care about these amenities as long as they have access to their electronic devices. Grandparents might resent living in one-room apartments, while young people could find this acceptable. The planning conundrum is to anticipate the expectations of future generations. This text looks at best theories of urban development, attempting to integrate future expectations in the hope of guiding governments to think outside the box.

Many assumed characteristics of generational groupings are actually "e;myths,"e; meaning that generational stereotypes are not accurate across all members of a generation. This book explores the Generation Myth by highlighting the complexity of the "e;generation"e; concept beyond simple age-based groupings and suggests that the over reliance of generational stereotypes in workplaces and society can lead to less than optimal interactions and even conflict. Several successful strategies are presented throughout to help improve intergenerational relationships.

Managerial Communication for Professional Development offers a unique functions approach to managerial skills. It explores what the communication managers actually do in business across the planning, organizing, leading, and controlling functions when professional skills are needed the most. The windows into practical reality adds contemporary information pertinent to key concepts in the chapters. Focusing on topics such as public image, impression management, reprimanding employees' unproductive behaviors at work, effective presentations skills, employment communication best practices, and claims and argument missteps managers make during crisis. The contents of this book will help managers and future managers understand the professional development skills essential to management communication functions.

Conversations in Cyberspace is a collection of insights on the current state of security and privacy in the Internet world. The book contains a brief introduction to some of the most used open-source intelligence (OSINT) tools and a selection of interviews with some of the key figures in industrial control systems (ICS), advanced persistent threat (APT) and online/deep web members organizations. It aims to be an introduction to the relationships between security, OSINT and the vast and complex world hiding in the deep web. The information provided will be beneficial to security professionals and system administrators interested in exploring today's concerns in database design, privacy and security-by-design, and deep web members organizations, including Cicada 3301, the Unknowns, Anonymous, and more.

Forensic accounting is gaining considerable attention as a rewarding and exciting field of accounting. Forensic accountants perform both fraud and non-fraud services. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) released its proposed new standards for its members who perform investigation and litigation forensic accounting services in December 2018. This second volume addresses fraud and non-fraud forensic accounting practice and performance. The author discusses forensic accounting roles and processes; forensic accounting techniques roles and responsibilities of corporate gatekeepers, including forensic accountants in creating a corporate culture of integrity and competency in preventing and discovering financial statement fraud. Also presented are challenges and opportunities in forensic accounting, and emerging issues in fraud investigation.

This book provides an extensive introduction to research on growth-oriented entrepreneurship,,/b> A number of different methods have been used to describe growth-oriented entrepreneurship; however, there is a consensus that there is a particularly desirable form of entrepreneurship that seeks to create and scale up businesses that will drive productivity growth, create new employment, increase innovation, promote business internationalization and achieve sustainable economic growth. Innovation is a condition of growth-oriented entrepreneurship that includes both the development and commercialization of new products and services and the development and implementation of new or improved processes that enhance productivity or reduce costs associated with manufacturing or distributing existing products. Innovation involves firms pursuing distinctive business strategies and doing new things in new ways to increase productivity, product development, sales and profitability, including finding and developing new ways of identifying the needs of new and existing customers and making and marketing products that satisfy those needs.The goal of the launch phase for growth-oriented entrepreneurial ventures is to reach the point of scale up and common goals and activities associated with the launch phase include market disruption and penetration; gaining access to capital and markets and mentorship opportunities; organizational growth through management capacity, systems, resources (i.e., people, product and assets) management; embedding organizational culture; development of stakeholder relationships; monitoring and evaluation; and governance and reporting. This book provides an extensive introduction to research on growth-oriented entrepreneurship and continues with an assessment of attempts to create the appropriate framework conditions for growth-oriented entrepreneurship to flourish and sustain including financial support; government policies; government programs; education and training; research and development transfer; commercial and professional infrastructure; internal market openness; access to physical infrastructure; cultural and social norms; and protection of intellectual property rights. The final chapter looks at growth-oriented entrepreneurs in practice as they work to launch and growth emerging companies. This book is a unique compendium of research and analysis on a dynamic and important segment of entrepreneurship and will be useful to entrepreneurs, academics and policymakers.

This book is for everybody that wants to learn a little bit more about how cybersecurity is becoming more relevant in the connected world, both present and future.As much as companies have increased their awareness about cybersecurity, not all of them are taking effective measures to protect themselves and their customers. Many "e;smart"e; things or "e;IoT"e; devices get connected every year, allowing the creation of more efficient and even new products and services. However, this also brings new risks, considering also that these type of systems present additional challenges for applying cybersecurity measures. This often leaves many doors open to malicious hackers!This book explains different ways how these systems get exposed to cyber-attacks in a friendly language using real cases as examples. Business professionals and nontechnical readers can bene t from this book by learning that cybersecurity is not an IT problem but an organizational problem. As a leader and decision maker, having an understanding of IoT cyberrisks can help you to improve the preparedness of your organization to prevent and deal with cyberattacks. Overall this book is for everybody that wants to learn a little bit more about how cybersecurity is becoming more relevant in the connected world, both present and future.

This book traces the foundations for sustainable entrepreneurship, beginning with sustainability, ecopreneurship, and social entrepreneurship. Sustainability has become a multidimensional concept that extends beyond environmental protection to economic development and social equity-in other words, entrepreneurship guided and measured by the three pillars of the triple bottom line. Sustainable entrepreneurship is the continuing commitment by businesses to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce, their families, the local and global community, as well as future generations. The text continues with a review of the basic principles of sustainable entrepreneurship and how entrepreneurs can integrate sustainability into their business models. This book will be an invaluable resource for entrepreneurs looking to build a new venture based on the principles of sustainability from the outset. In addition, it can be used by academics teaching sustainable entrepreneurship, a topic of surging interest to students, and by professionals working with sustainable businesses.

The Chinese e-Merging Market is designed to work as a step-by-step guide to the online marketplace and social media landscape in China. Over the past decades China gained the reputation of being the world's factory, focusing solely on manufacturing exports. This is about to change. The role of e-commerce is tremendously important in the context of the Chinese government's stated goal of relying less on exports to the recession-stricken West and focusing more on domestic consumption as a driver for further economic growth. The Chinese e-Merging Market is designed to work as a step-by-step guide to the online marketplace and social media landscape in China. E-Commerce is an easier, faster, and far more cost-effective way of entering the Chinese market compared to more traditional entry methods. Chinese e-commerce offers great opportunities to Western companies seeking to do business in China without the hurdle of heavy upfront investment. This book aims to assist Western SMEs, business owners, entrepreneurs, investors, and business students to understand and ideally enter the Chinese e-merging market. It provides practical advice, updated data, and relevant links for further reference that Western companies and entrepreneurs can use to establish their online business presence in China and to remain competitive in this tremendously challenging and profitable market.

This book provides an introduction to a number of important topics relevant to the study and understanding of entrepreneurship and the process of creating, or giving birth to, a new business. Entrepreneurship has become a popular career path in developed and developing countries, a phenomenon that has contributed to the intense interest in the subject shown by researchers and policymakers around the world. Several factors have come into play, including advances in technology that allowed smaller firms to take advantage of economies of scale that previously were only available to larger firms; the ability of smaller firms, because of their size, to be more flexible and responsive to market changes; implementation of government policies calculated to encourage entrepreneurial activities and behavior; support from governments and other economic units that established procurement programs to assist small businesses; high unemployment rates in recent decades due to corporate restructuring and downsizing, which have caused some workers to choose an entrepreneurial path rather than retrain for placement in an unsteady job market as a means for dealing with their midlife crisis; and changes in typical career patterns away from expectations of long-term employment with large firms in a single occupation toward a flexible labor force, a phenomenon that has led to increased interest in entrepreneurship among those with post-secondary education and an established career record build over several decades in the workplace.The chapters cover definitions and types of entrepreneurship; the relationships among entrepreneurship, innovation and development; research on entrepreneurship, comparative research into entrepreneurship in multiple countries and research into cross- border entrepreneurship (i.e., international activity of small- and medium-sized enterprises and new ventures); factors influencing entrepreneurial activities; motivational traits of prospective entrepreneurs; the influence of societal culture on entrepreneurial activities and attitudes regarding entrepreneurship as a career path; the influence that the institutional environment has on entrepreneurship; and the role of entrepreneurs in launching new businesses. This book is an excellent introductory source of information on entrepreneurship research for use by academics and other professionals in their courses and for entrepreneurs looking to fit their dreams and aspirations in the broader context of entrepreneurship.

This book is a must-have guide for anyone thinking about launching a new business and also is an excellent resource for attorneys and other professionals providing advice to their clients and academics teaching entrepreneurship classes.The terms founder and promoter are used frequently when discussing new businesses. Neither of these terms has a particular technical legal meaning and they are used somewhat interchangeably in practice. However, it is useful and accurate to think of a founder as a person who assists in the formation of a new business and then continues to devote a significant amount of time and resources to the operation of business once it has been formed. The founders often become the officers, directors, general partners or managing members, and the term "e;founding shareholder"e; or "e;founding president,"e; for example, is often used to refer to one of the first shareholders of a corporation or a corporation's first president. A promoter, on the other hand, is a person, including possibly a legal entity, who assists in the formation of a business entity or obtaining subscriptions for its ownership interests, but who does not necessarily have any continuing relationship to the business once it is formed and funded. It is not surprising to find that founders play a pivotal role in the success of any new business even in situations where the founder is active in the business for only a short period of time and responsibility for oversight of the business is turned over to professional managers who were not affiliated with the business at inception. Founders not only bring the original business idea to the table, they also have a substantial influence on the organizational culture and values and goals of the initial managers and employees that lives on for a significant period of time.This book covers a variety of topics relating to founders, beginning with an overview of the motivational traits of prospective entrepreneurs and the role that entrepreneurs play in launching new businesses and then moving on the personality traits and skill sets of those persons who seek to form new business followed by a discussion of some of the practical issues relating to founders with respect to their pre-formation duties and liabilities, particularly their relationships with prior employers, and their relationships and agreements with other members of the founding group. The book also examines the role that founders have on the organizational culture of their firms and the positions that founder occupy if and when their firms reach the point where they are ready to take on the rigors of public company status and complete an initial public offering of their securities.

Supply Chain Optimization Field Guide is an essential book to help readers understand the dynamics of how a global business operates. In a recent article about the death of supply chain management, it was stated that in this world, forecasts are perfect, machines have no operators, and block chain drives it all. Practitioners in the world of supply chain know that it is central to the management of cash and that systems are never the silver bullet as they do not foresee events; they only provide calculations from the data they are fed. Chapter by chapter, this book provides a comprehensive understanding of the core concepts of people, process, and tools; and how a supply chain should operate in today's complex world. Readers will learn about how an ideal business maintains no unnecessary inventory, responds to changes, and delivers products on time or defect free-and how this ability is a competitive advantage for any business that can solve the equation. Key functional processes are explained in detail for practitioners to learn how to operate effectively in today's arena.

Department of Startup: Why Every Fortune 500 Should Have One aims to help CEOs, presidents, and human resource practitioners on how they can transform their large corporation to thrive in a fast, social media conscious, and unforgiving market a la startup.The ascent of startups on the Fortune 500 ranking, displacing some of the more notable companies, raised not only attention but also questions. Fundamentally, startups are built on a very different organizational culture as compared to a traditional Fortune 500. Could these cultural differences be the reason startups are in the forefront of technology innovation, disrupting industries dominated by more established competitors and thriving in today's volatile business environment?Department of Startup: Why Every Fortune 500 Should Have One aims to help CEOs, presidents, and human resource practitioners on how they can transform their large corporation to thrive in a fast, social media conscious, and unforgiving market a la startup.

Survey research is a powerful tool used in business, health care, government, and other fields that seek to understand how and why individuals behave the way they do. Properly conducted, surveys can provide accurate insights into areas such as attitudes, opinions, motivations, and values that serve as the drivers of individual behavior. This two-volume set is intended to introduce fundamentals of good survey research to students and practitioners of the survey process as well as end users of survey information. It describes key survey components needed to design, understand, and use surveys effectively and avoid the pitfalls stemming from bad survey construction and inappropriate methods. In this first volume, the authors concentrate on the fundamentals of survey development and design as well as provide a review of key components in survey.

This text provides a succinct overview of concepts related to organizational success and offers a clear-eyed assessment of what is useful and what not. Every organization is unique. In order to make yours the best it can be, you need to understand the concepts presented in this book and know what questions to ask as you explore the potential in front of you. There are oceans of information available about how to build a great organization. Trends in how to create culture, attract talent, and boost productivity seem to shift as quickly as seasons of the year. This text provides a succinct overview of concepts related to organizational success and offers a clear-eyed assessment of what is useful and what not. It guides you in questions to ask yourself, your leadership team, and employees of your organization so that you can make wise and informed decisions about how to proceed on the path to a uniquely great organization.

The book defines and helps provide key solutions for some of the greatest leadership challenges facing global managers today.Leadership Through the Screen is a business leadership guidebook that tells a story. Written in an easy-to-read manner, each chapter highlights a single issue through the eyes of a fictional VP of marketing. The authors have done the research and included it in these pages so that business leaders do not have to. This book is meant to serve as a map to help modern managers weave their way through many of the fundamental challenges of leading people in a global and virtual realm. It provides the tools, knowledge, and potential solutions these leaders can use to forge successful and productive virtual teams.

This book offers managers a complete analysis of the various facets of commercial credit and presents an analysis of the various types of markets, instruments, and risks associated with trade credit in supply chains across the globe. Trade credit is extensively used in both domestic and international commercial transactions. Although it clearly supports growth, its significance is even greater for developed countries, where the market has recovered remarkably since the global financial crisis. The number and heterogeneity of motivations to trade credit justify the variability observed in the data on global trading, and the role of trade credit has become crucial in supply chain coordination. A range of diverse trade credit finance solutions are available and include products and services offered by financial intermediaries and market products, highlighting a very interesting set of intermediate solutions that have emerged as a result of new technologies utilized in financial services. For financiers trade credit is an attractive option, but an in-depth evaluation of the possibility of losses forms the basis of a deep understating of numerous sources that can create credit risk (default and dilution risk). This book offers managers a complete analysis of the various facets of commercial credit and presents an analysis of the various types of markets, instruments, and risks associated with trade credit in supply chains across the globe.

The Economics of Online Gaming covers basic economic concepts, unique economic issues, and general economic themes. This book is made from the connections that the author saw when he compared his experience inside a video game with what he learned through a formal study of economic theory. Set in the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) of Eternal Lands, it follows the true story of Mr. Mind, a gamer who builds a business inside the game world that he calls RICH. This business grows from a small start-up to an unregulated natural monopoly that abuses its market power by intentionally losing money to drive competitors out of business.RICH becomes so influential that it breaks the market process with a unique case of regulatory capture. Through this story, the book demonstrates how economic thinking is absorbed by experimenting inside an online video game.The Economics of Online Gaming covers basic economic concepts, unique economic issues, and general economic themes. Each of these topics begins with the context of a story and continues with an explanation of the economic theory behind it, finishing with a relevant real-world connection. It supports economic theory in an emotional way that cannot be shared through math or charts or graphs.Appendix B provides a comprehensive outline of ideas for teaching and discussion in each chapter.

There have been many books written about negotiation techniques, but all of these have been turned on their head by the ability of Donald Trump to make it to the White House. Ignoring all precedents and defying even his own party, he has opened an era where neither tradition nor precedent remains the order of the day. Fake news has become the entertainment watchword in an era where a president can send out his own daily tweets to millions of followers and the world press, and no one is able to pre-empt his message or know how to respond. In what would be described negotiation madness, Trump incites confrontation into intransient situations: opening an American embassy in Jerusalem and provoking a North Korean leader by a silly name, which nevertheless still initiates first-time discussions between north and south. If he doesn't get his wish through Congress, he pretends to give up, plays the man not the issue, going against what all the negotiation books tell you, then comes in again to get what he wants. At every turn the standards of negotiation need to be rewritten in what has become as much politics as entertainment, ego rather than substance, and this is what is targeted in Peter Nelson's Negotiation Madness.

The author contextualized the phenomenon of accounting fraud using a framework he developed called "e;Corporate Governance Cosmos."e; The book contains an extensive literature review including an evaluation of the seminal theory in this area, namely, the Fraud Triangle. There is a comprehensive exploration of the motivations for accounting fraud and a growing realization that Dark Triad (psychopathy, narcissism, and machiavellianism) tendencies may explain why executives engage in accounting fraud. The author expands an established framework entitled Cooks Recipes Incentives Monitoring End results (C R I M E) by Rezaee (2005), to ''C R I M E L'', where L is the "e;Learning"e; from 33 international case studies of accounting fraud.Accountants, auditors, antifraud practitioners, and graduate students will find the case studies of accounting fraud particularly useful as it makes the phenomenon tangible and more understandable. The penultimate chapter is a study of the likely impact of financial technology on accounting fraud.The author concludes by marshalling various insights including a brief discussion of ethics, forwarding his International Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants (IFAC) ''Ethical Triangle'', his vision for the future accountant, which he refers to as ''accounting engineers'', and an ancient prescription for the curse of accounting fraud.

Board-Seeker: Your Guidebook and Career Map into the Corporate Boardroom is the first practical guide written specifically to help board-ready leaders and executives gain the knowledge, resources, and confidence to shape their personal "e;onboarding"e; program. Assess your experience that makes you valuable to a board-there's more than you think. Shape this into a powerful outreach portfolio, such as board resume, online image, and personal pitch. Gain the targeted network and mentors you'll need, especially your boss! Learn step by step how board searches really happen and how to master each stage. Prepare for the board interview and vetting process, and get ready for your first board meeting. With leads, links, checklists, and first-hand success stories, Board-Seeker spells out each step you'll take into the boardroom-and beyond.

This is a work of system-think on why breakthroughs mostly don't sustain. In answer, it recalls mutual learning, by which the exceptional have defied the norms of decline since before humans could write about it. Part 1 shows the mechanics how complex adaptive systems extend order-Hayek's catallaxy. How lean exploits this is unpacked. Part 2 isolates popular fallacies of control that incentivize undoing. Part 3 offers countermeasures-leveled exploration and exploitation in strategy deployment, standard work, and development of employees, products, services, and methods.Lean turns paradigms and routines from holding on, to sustainably moving on. Lean is not just a factory thing. Lessons abound in nature's fractals and adaptations, admin, and history too; from the present back through World War II, the Industrial Revolution, the Reformation, to its roots in the civilizing of Antiquity. Learners mine hard lessons while knowers sadly repeat them. Great sources on catallaxy-Juran, Hayek, Popper, Kuhn, Sproul, Rother, March-have left us rich deposits of distilled experience. Sustain is a trail guide, locating pivotal insights to defy the entropy of abandon-and-revert, in any enterprise that coordinates resources, time, and treasure in the face of varying, alternative uses.

This book offers a refreshing approach that provides unique insights, examples, tools, techniques, checklists, and templates for successful collaborations.Now, more than ever before, organizations are encouraging work collaboration both in-person and remotely to increase productivity, enhance innovation, and attain the best results. However, leaders and teams often lack the essential knowledge, tools, and techniques required to avoid failure and achieve optimal outcomes.This book offers a refreshing approach that provides unique insights, examples, tools, techniques, checklists, and templates for successful collaborations. It opens with a review of the collaboration decagon of competencies-a self-test to reveal strengths, gaps, and practical tips to apply. Then, collaboration mindfulness is explained and guidelines based on the COIN model explain how to put this crucial mindset into action. Next, practical advice is offered for how to both encourage and manage discussion and disagreement throughout all four phases of the collaboration process.Having a clear focus for the collaboration topic as a problem or an opportunity is reviewed in detail, with tips on how to decide and discuss most efficiently. Guidelines for how to manage conflict and deal with challenging people are offered, based on strategies for each of the four conflict stages. Additionally, whole-brain techniques are explained to help collaboration teams invent the most unique options and solutions for innovation and change. The book concludes with proven strategies for how to overcome eight common obstacles to collaborations with confidence.

Only 39 percent of projects today are successful. Nearly half of the projects that fail, fail because of "e;poor requirements management"e; (PMI 2014). Leveraging Business Analysis for Project Success explores the role of the business analyst in setting a project up for success. It informs and educates project managers, sponsors, and organization leaders on what is necessary for project success. This book goes beyond requirements management in exploring the how the business analyst can contribute to increased proi tability through project selection, scope dei nition, and post-implementation evaluation. The reader will learn about the history of business analysis, professional organizations and resources to support the profession, and what to expect from the business analyst at each phase of the project lifecycle as presented in a case study throughout the text. Project leaders will better be able to support the business analysis needs of the project by understanding the skills, expertise, tasks, resources, and time needed to do business analysis right and maximize the return on investment for each project.

Utilizing a 'coach approach' with oneself and others enables quicker and more effective progress towards goals. This book identifies the crucial coaching qualities and actions to increase motivation, engagement, and performance. Through exercises and examples, the author demonstrates how to ask compelling questions, how to create effective action by constructing SMART goals, and how to hold yourself and others accountable. Additionally, she illustrates how presence and attitude, active listening, compelling questions, setting goals and accountabilities, and encouragement and feedback function in a coaching relationship. Drawing from neuroscience, case studies and personal experience, she shows how to use these specific techniques to create more fulfilling relationships and results. The Concise Coaching Handbook ends with three brief case studies of for-profit and non-profit organizations who have committed to creating a 'coaching culture' and the benefits they've received.

This book deeply explores production-capable social media channels, based on thousands of hours of observation and extensive collection of statistical data, extracting hypotheses that may generalize to the real-world distributed manufacturing of the near future. Distributed manufacturing offers the promise of bringing jobs back to local communities, producing goods that are personalized or harmonize with distinctive cultures, and thereby reversing significant aspects of the globalization that has dominated in recent years. Large corporations may still have important roles to play, but in collaboration with local workshops, providing machinery, software, databases of designs, and communication media suitable for a diverse and dynamic workforce. For years, a set of computer simulation laboratories has flourished, in which millions of people have used virtual machines to produce a great variety of products: massively multiplayer online role-playing games. Their systems are highly diverse, complex, and provide information capable of serious social science analysis. This book deeply explores 30 of these production-capable social media, based on thousands of hours of observation and extensive collection of statistical data, extracting hypotheses that may generalize to the real-world distributed manufacturing of the near future. This book begins with an overview of this universe of online virtual worlds then demonstrates the principles of virtual manufacturing, modes of work-related communication, socio-economic structures and dynamics, and the function of artificial intelligence in these human-technology systems. It concludes with consideration of the large-scale technical and cultural variation illustrated both by individual examples and by the rather large industry in which they have long been successful.

Tax considerations are seldom the determining factor in deciding whether to purchase a business. However, taxes often affect the price and form (e.g., purchase of stock or purchase of assets) the acquisition takes. This is true because the rationally determined price will be based on the expected present value of after-tax future cash flows. The tax component of the equation will depend on the form the acquisition takes. From the seller's perspective, tax considerations are extremely important. The tax implications of the purchase and sale of a business depend largely upon who is the buyer and who is the seller and what is being bought and sold. The business being purchased may be an unincorporated proprietorship, a single owner limited liability company (LLC), a partnership (or an LLC with more than one member), a C corporation, or an S corporation. The form of the sale (asset or stock) affects the character of the seller's gain (ordinary or capital) and the buyer's basis of the assets. Basis becomes the buyer's future tax deductions. Just as the price the buyer is willing to pay is based on projected present value of the after-tax proceeds, the price that is acceptable to the seller will depend upon his or her expected after-tax proceeds. Both parties must be aware of the other party's tax consequences to achieve a rational agreement.