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The toy industry is one of the most consistently misunderstood sectors of American business, comprising a wide range of businesses under one banner-entertainment, commodities, fashion and licensing-that each behave differently. Broad-based change is constant, with more than 40 percent of toy products new each year. The U.S. market comprises about 600 publicly and privately held companies, valued at about $22 billion per year at wholesale for traditional toys, which has remained relatively constant since the 1990s. It is also the only industry where success depends on the whims of a child. This book is a concise and in-depth introduction to the structure, practices, and market forces that impact the toy industry, including a short history, a description of the current market landscape, product trends, emerging opportunities and threats and expectations for the future, as well as aspects of retailing, consumer behavior, and financial markets. While the book's primary focus is the U.S. toy industry, one cannot ignore the global scope of the business, particularly related to manufacturing, growth potential and emerging markets. It is intended to provide a foundation for understanding the diverse and dynamic nature of the toy industry and many things that make it unique and to provide an introduction to this fast-paced, always changing and fiercely competitive business where success is often more an art than a science.

Everybody has to make decisions-they are unavoidable. However, we receive little or no education or training on how to make decisions. Business decisions are difficult: which people to hire, which product lines or facilities to expand, which proposal to accept, how much R&D to invest in, which environmental projects are high priority, etc. Personal decisions (college, getting married, changing jobs, buying a house, retiring, dealing with a health problem) can be even more difficult. This book gives you the tools you need toEClarify and reach alignment on goals and objectives; Understand trade-offs associated with reaching those objectives; Develop and examine alternatives; Systematically analyze the effects of risk and uncertainty, and; Maximize the chances of achieving your goals. Success (getting what you want) depends on luck and good decision-making. You can't control your luck, but you can maximize your odds by making the best possible decisions, and this book gets you there. The author organizes and presents otherwise formal decision-making tools in an intuitively understandable fashion. The presentation is informal, but the concepts and tools are research-based and formally accepted. Whether you are a business owner, a manager or team leader, or a senior professional, these tools will help both your personal and your business life.

Marketing a small, independently owned lodging business can be difficult. Marketing Essentials for Independent Lodgings outlines how to get a business's name out there, attract consumers, and navigate the dicey world of social media and an online presence. Descriptions of traveler demographics, how to get the word out about a property, and how to make a property unique are all talked about at length. The goal of this book is to help small lodgings flourish, and it does so by including lists of actions that can be taken this week, this month, or this year to help positively impact the bottom line. Also included is a specific marketing outline that can be adapted to an individual business, giving business owners a timeline and plan they can follow.

The purpose of this book is to introduce the reader to mechanisms useful for detection and avoidance of money-laundering activities (MLAs) and terrorist financing as well as suggest improvements to existing anti-MLA methods and procedures where appropriate. Money laundering occurs in every country. The significant factor is to diagnose illegal MLAs and apply regulations to mitigate them. To meet this objective, managers of financial instituAtions need to train their employees about anti-money-laundering proAcesses and how to diagnose and prevent them. Anti-money-laundering activities can also affect financial systems of a country. MLAs can create a big gap between income classes. Money laundering can also decrease bank's and financial instituAtion's credibility. This book will be of special interest to financial managers in the priAvate and public sector and will also be a useful guide for those involved in international financial transactions.

This book is for the 97 million Americans who want to quit their job and make money with their ideas. Licensing is one of the fastest and most profitable ways to make money with ideas. It is fast because it facilitates existing production, distribution, and marketing, and it is more profitable because it eliminates your costs and a percentage of the revenue goes in your pocket. "e;Most Ideas Don't Work"e; because of bad decisions, which come from bad information. Myths are everywhere, hard to recognize, and impossible to avoid. Failure precedes success, and knowing how to fail small, fail fast, and fail forward allows you to focus on what works. "e;And What To Do About It"e; explains how to master what works. It reveals valuable tips and secrets that will give you a distinct advantage. Learn new information like the Royalty Rule, Active Licensing, and the Acceptable Profit Threshold. Understand when to manufacture and when to license with the5X Rule. The right license with the right company is everyone's dream and may be the highlight of your career and your life. If you want to make money with your ideas, this book is for you.

This book, probably the first written from the perspective of software professionals, attempts to introduce them to the mysteries of strategic managerial accounting (SMA). The common view in the industry is that "e;accounting is for the accountants"e;, despite the fact that IT professionals are regularly confronted by financial situations such as project pricing, performance measurement, risk estimation, costs allocation etc. While it is desirable and even necessary that every proposal be vetted by respective specialists, the speed and reliability of the process could improve if the people who originate the proposal had knowledge of the fundamentals that go into the decision making. Unfortunately most books on management accounting, whether strategic or otherwise, are written from the perspective of the manufacturing industry. The IT and services industry on the other hand has a unique cost structure, quite distinct from manufacturing, which needs to be dealt with from a different perspective. This book focuses on SMA in context of the IT software industry, and seeks to equip the IT professional with some basics of SMA to assist them in making more informed decisions.

This book is a sequel to Business Engineering and Service Design, published by this editorial, which provides the foundations of Business Engineering; it is dedicated to health care, presenting our view of the foundations for the design of institutions that provide such service, general architectures for making designs operative, and many real cases that show how to do formal design and the benefits to be obtained.

This book provides the foundations of BE, reviews the disciplines integrated within its methodology, and presents plentiful evidence of its power by giving detailed application cases, including impressive results in private and public situations.

Contemporary management studies usually focus on positive and desirable solutions that increase the organizational effectiveness and performance. As a result, graduates of higher business schools are totally unaware of the risk associated with management misconduct that often results in corrupt scandals, erosion of public trust to their organizations, or even the collapse of profitable corporations. The last decade, in fact, has been abundant in numerous examples of corruption scandals in modern organizations and instances of management misconduct that have eroded public faith (such as Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Adelphia, Arthur Andersen, and Parmalat). Due to repeated misconducts and a highly active dark side, scholars started paying more attention to the so-called Odark sideO of organizations, as something no longer exceptional to organizational life. This book attempts to shed light on the reality of challenges for business practices and higher education management that stem from misconduct occurring in various aspects of business and educational environment.

Caribbean economies have been faced with mounting challenges arising from the increasing pace of economic globalization. The financial crisis of 2007 further exacerbated economic instability due to high foreign debt, lack of competitiveness, declining productivity, and high unemployment and underemployment. This in turn has precipitated increasing social and environmental problems, including poverty, inequality, crime and violence, and environmental degradation, all of which require new perspectives and policy approaches for transformative change and sustainable development. In this two volume multidisciplinary edited book The Modern Caribbean Economy, Volume I provides scholars and practitioners with alternative theoretical perspectives and concrete policy recommendations, while Volume II discusses economic, industrial, and social problems facing the Caribbean along with pragmatic proposals to successfully deal with these, while building local resilience and enhancing institutional strength in the region.

This book mainly focuses on why data analytics fails in business. It provides an objective analysis and root causes of the phenomenon, instead of abstract criticism of utility of data analytics. The author, then, explains in detail on how companies can survive and win the global big data competition, based on actual cases of companies. Having established the execution and performance-oriented big data methodology based on over 10 years of experience in the field as an authority in big data strategy, the author identifies core principles of data analytics using case analysis of failures and successes of actual companies. Moreover, he endeavors to share with readers the principles regarding how innovative global companies became successful through utilization of big data. This book is a quintessential big data analytics, in which the author's knowhow from direct and indirect experiences is condensed. How do we survive at this big data war in which Facebook in SNS, Amazon in e-commerce, Google in search, expand their platforms to other areas based on their respective distinct markets? The answer can be found in this book.

Of those in management education who debates whether business ethics should be taught as a stand-alone course or in an embedded manner, most recommend combining both approaches for optimal results. This book provides unique insights into the experience of seasoned academics who embed business ethics in teaching management theory and practice. Its multidisciplinary approach enriches its content, since the insights of our colleagues from within their fields are invaluable. It therefore complements other business textbooks. After general themes (curriculum integration, adult learning, learner commitment, and generation Y classrooms), this volume covers ethics and responsibility in people management, team building, change management; operations management, business law, and digital marketing communications.The book provides a platform to share experiences of teaching ethical profitability. It contributes to resolving concerns experienced when faculty wish to incorporate ethics into their teaching but feel they lack preparation or ideas on how to do it. The chapters describe each discipline briefly, raise the typical ethical issues therein, and suggest teaching strategies and exercises or projects. The 'developing versus developed country perspectives' sections may interest schools with high student diversity. The book also meets in-company training needs for attaining and sustaining an ethical culture.

Nonparametric statistics provide a scientific methodology for cases where customary statistics are not applicable. Nonparametric statistics are used when the requirements for parametric analysis fail, such as when data are not normally distributed or the sample size is too small. The method provides an alternative for such cases and is often nearly as powerful as parametric statistics. Another advantage of nonparametric statistics is that it offers analytical methods that are not available otherwise. Nonparametric methods are intuitive and simple to comprehend, which helps researchers in the social sciences understand the methods in spite of lacking mathematical rigor needed in analytical methods customarily used in science. This book is a methodology book and bypasses theoretical proofs while providing comprehensive explanations of the logic behind the methods and ample examples, which are all solved using direct computations as well as by using Stata. It is arranged into two integrated volumes. Although each volume, and for that matter each chapter, can be used separately, it is advisable to read as much of both volumes as possible; because familiarity with what is applicable for different problems will enhance capabilities.

MetricsMan presents opinions, insights, and best practices of public relations and social media research and measurement. It discusses the evolution of measurement, return on investment, the Barcelona Principles, social media measurement models, marketing mix modeling, the battle against advertising value equivalents, and establishing accountability of the public relations profession. Through this book, public relations professionals will be able to set clear measurement goals and objectives, identify right from wrong in the metrics they use, and understand how to apply valid measurement models and frameworks in their practices. This book also provides valuable information for public relations educators and students to learn about the best practices of research and measurement in the industry.

Accounting is an economic information system, and can be thought of as the language of business. Accounting principles are created, developed, or decreed and are supported or justified by intuition, authority, and acceptability. Managers have alternatives in their accounting choices; the decision are political, and trade-offs will be made. Accounting information provides individuals, both inside and outside a firm, with a starting point to understand and evaluate the key drivers of a firm, its financial position, and performance. If you are managing a firm, investing in a firm, lending to a firm, or even working for a firm, you should be able to read the firm's financial statements and ask questions based on those statements. This book examines some of the more advanced topics in accounting. As such, it assumes the reader already has some familiarity with basic accounting. (A related book covering the basics is Accounting for Fun and Profit: A Guide to Understanding Financial Statements.) The book explains how the user of financial statement should interpret advanced accounting techniques presented, and helps the user conduct in-depth analysis of annual reports. The author will show you that accounting, even the advanced topics, can be informative and fun.

This book raises the bar on what it means to be a high performance enterprise, providing methods and tools to engage the senior leadership team in building and sustaining rock-solid alignment. It demonstrates how to generate whole-hearted unanimity on precisely what creates value in the enterprise, who creates it, and how the value created shows up in the financial statements. Simple, step-by-step procedures given bring about whole-hearted unanimity in the senior leadership's understanding of how the enterprise makes money. Where to focus energy (and where not to) is revealed. Readers are guided to apply "e;non-directive leadership skills"e; to co-creating maps and reports of their enterprises' value creating activities into a Management Operating System (TM) (MOS). Based on more than 30 years and over 50 hands-on projects using the work of legendary IBM Executive School leader, finance and values innovator, Lou Mobley, and Chuck Kremer, CPA, this book builds on Lou's original breakthrough works building IBM's executive leadership culture.

Corporate Communication Crisis Leadership: Advocacy and Ethics addresses strategic moments of leadership during corporate communication crises. This work examines the interplay of issue, argument, conflict, and crisis in eventual organizational success or failure. This book explicates the performative consequences of inadequacy in crisis leadership. With investigation of the 2010 British Petroleum oil spill off the southern coast of the United States.

All the world's most advanced economies are dominated by service. The service sector also employs the largest number of people and it is the fastest growing sector, both in number of companies and employees. The questions posed in the book are: (1) How is it growing; (2) what are these new service innovations; (3) what are the drivers; and (4) how can organizations work with service innovations in a structured way? The book views service as the value-creating activity that customers perform in their own context. The role of a company is to provide the resources and knowledge to enable value creation. Based on this view, we develop a model of service innovation and develop guidelines for what is required from the organizational perspective; how should an organization view its customers in order to be successful, what does a service development process look like, and how to transform an organization that has a product focus to a service or solution provider.

Acquiring, retaining, and developing clients are the major steps for any successful business; failure to accomplish these steps is the major reason many professionals and firms fail to achieve their full potential.The financial services industry is currently facing its biggest challenge: increased competition; smarter buyers who want to deal with professionals instead of sales people; and the emergence of social media, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google. The Financial Sales Handbook: A Guide to Become a Top Producer is for experienced professionals as well as for those who want to make the transition from managing work to more effective selling. The book is also for professionals who want to sharpen their skills. It is intended as the nucleus for corporate training programs as well as for self-employed professionals who must market and sell to stay in business.

The focus of this book is on providing clear word descriptions and step-by-step Excel instructions, rather than including lots of x's and y's everywhere. This book was written for managers and students who may need a quick refresher on how to complete Excel analysis without having to read pages of technical explanations. The authors aimed at concisely defining the key concepts and providing simple descriptions and explanations on how to use them.

If stakeholders matter on projects, then they must make a difference to the way we plan, structure, and execute projects. This book provides a stakeholder-centric analysis of projects, and explains which engagement models are relevant to different types of projects-from simple office moves to IT enterprise changes, to transformational change of a business, and to complex social development. With case studies from around the world, the book illustrates what goes wrong when stakeholders are not engaged successfully, what amazing things happen when they are, and what lessons can be learned from both experiences. Cases drawn from a variety of contexts are used to demonstrate the application of stakeholder tools, leaving the reader with a very practical understanding of which techniques may be beneficially applied to their own projects. Key models introduced include the following: * The stakeholder-neutral to stakeholder-led project continuum * Role-based and agenda-based stakeholders * Purposeful communication-the 6-why model for communication * Power and influence in projects * The six principles of stakeholder engagement. This book is intended for project managers and those project staff involved in the engagement of stakeholders to deliver successful project outcomes.

This book explores project management (PM) from a musical perspective. Music is a significant example of a nontraditional arena where PM is vital, yet it is only beginning to be seen as a vital tool. Therefore, this book will give an in depth and preeminent look at the PM processes and knowledge areas that are of utmost importance in many fields that PM is not used for currently. Seeking to understand projects in musical ways, synergies between music and the wider project management profession are many and varied. Written and developed by international experts in the project management and music professions, this book represents a unique and insightful approach to the study of the subject. The authors take a fresh look at practical models of musical thinking capable of application at every scale of project management, and in every possible project management environment. If you want to make your projects more musical, or simply have an interest exploring project management in music, this is the book for you!

Regression analysis can be used to establish causal relationships between factors and the response variable. However, in order to be able to do so, economic theory must be used to provide the causal relationship and then regression analysis is applied to verify the validity of the theory. Regression analysis is the most commonly used analytical tool and can be understood without complex mathematics. This book simplifies and demystifies regression analysis. All the examples are from economics and in almost all the cases, real data is used to show the application of the method. By limiting the use of mathematical symbols, the author enables a logical reader to learn regression, without shortchanging the subject. The book is targeted to all business students and executives who need to understand the concept of regression for practical and professional purposes.

The book contends that, while several factors can be blamed for the financial crisis of 2007, a failure of regulation was the most important one. The changes to bank regulation that have happened since are not good enough to make the banking system a great deal safer than before We need to look at radical, out-of-the-box solutions if another major financial upheaval is to be prevented.

When we discuss accelerating top line growth and maximizing profitability, we often consider hiring more people, cutting expenses, or raising prices. What we should be doing is looking at different ways to effectively utilize what we already have. Rather than hiring new people, we need to improve the performance of our current employees. As an alternative to cutting costs, we need better invest the money we already spend. Instead of raising prices, identify ideal customers to market and sell to. This book will discuss strategies on how to do all of these things and more. The author provides 25 ways to accelerate revenue growth and increase profitability immediately, without making any new financial investments. That is the Unified Theory of Profitability. It means looking at the organization and finding ways to better leverage what already exists and focusing on the activities or changes that will provide optimal results. Readers will become experts on executing on these strategies. It can be done! Find the solutions that work, commit to implementing them and results will flourish.

Marketing is arguably amidst a paradigm shift. With the emerging value co-creation perspective, a single transaction can blossom to a process in which the customer and the marketer collaborate (rather than negotiate) for best total value through products, features, delivery terms, maintenance, and financing options for both B2B as well as B2C markets. Marketers increasingly need to develop and maintain long-term, win-win relationships that extend beyond customers, such as those with distributors, dealers, suppliers, competitors and other external influencers. Business executives, marketing students, and those who are interested in learning about the transformative power of relationship marketing and CRM analytics in the business enterprise would highly benefit from reading this book.

Producing Written and Oral Business Reports: Formatting, Illustrating, and Presenting emphasizes cost-effective methods for producing reports that will do what you want them to do. Numerous examples, helpful illustrations, concise writing style, and convenient checklists let you acquire vital information rapidly. Producing Written and Oral Business Reports is a how-to guide for report creation throughout your career!

The Patient Paradigm Shifts tells readers everything successful businesses need to know about the powerful new healthcare consumer. The dynamics of healthcare are shifting the patient paradigm in dramatic ways. The former patient is now both a consumer and a customer. The mantra of this new consumer is "e;convenient, fast, simple, and high value."e; Their expectations for healthcare are similar to what they experience in other industries such as transportation, banking, short-stay rental housing, retail shopping online, same-day deliveries, and more. Smart mobile devices enable the customer to conduct transactions at any place and at any time, and without waiting in line. Healthcare providers need to offer customer service experiences similar to Apple, Amazon, Nordstrom, and other benchmark companies in order to stay competitive. The mindset of the new patient-turned-consumer has fundamentally shifted and there is no looking back. Anyone connected to healthcare needs to learn the profiles of the new consumer, better understand their behaviors, and comprehend their expectations as customers who have a choice. The Patient Paradigm Shifts tells you everything a successful business needs to know about the powerful new healthcare consumer.

Financial statements serve as a report card for a business through which managers and entrepreneurs can know their exact financial positions. These financial statements are prepared only through financial accounting. The main purpose of financial accounting is to help entrepreneurs exercise control over their business activities by controlling total costs incurred so that they are able to earn higher profits. So, in order to understand where exactly the business stands financially, knowledge of financial accounting is imperative. What is financial accounting? Why do I need to understand it? How will it help me in my business? Why is it important to me? Or Is it important to me? These are some of the questions that surface in the minds of young and aspiring entrepreneurs when they start their business or are on the verge of starting one. This book aims to answer them in the most practical and comprehensible manner possible so that accounting is no longer a nightmare for them.