F.W. Taylor: Critical Evaluations in Business and Management Four Volume Set

Book Description

This collection focuses on Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915), the initiator of "scientific management." His methods have been associated with both massive increases in productivity and an intensive focus on control.
Bringing together key scholarship on Taylor published in journals from 1912 through 2000, the papers are grouped thematically. Contents include: * Taylor, a Potted History * Taylor's Influence * Scientific Management and Management * Scientific Management and Industry * Scientific Management and Business Operations * Scientific Management and Education; and more.

Customer Reviews:

Hands on How To.......2001-02-08

If you eat and breath trademark applications on a daily basis, chances are you don't need this book, but if you are starting out with them, or use to work with them but now do so only occasionally, this is a fantastic resource. Bazerman and Drangel have done quite a job providing more than enough hand holding examples and formats to cover nearly all the bases from simple "Hello" letters to the clients, to detailed responses to the TM Examiners (Complete with relevant case law citations!). Simple form letter guide this is not, there is ample text and narration for how and why TM law exists and operates the way it does. Truly covering all aspects of involvement with TM's, this book is a handy reference. There are really only two drawbacks, and neither is truly critical. 1) there is very little about Domain Names, but then again this is a new frontier for TM/SM law. 2) The provided compute forms exampled in the book are overly simplistic in their formatting. By the time you whip them into shape you might just as well type them from scratch.

Book Description

The 25 training activities compiled in this book cater to the specific needs of sales teams, helping them to improve skills, develop motivation, and build teamwork. The activities are grouped into three major areas: session starters and linkers, microskills of effective sales and negotiation, and session closings. Designed to help trainers, facilitators, and course presenters deliver meaningful, fast-moving, and accurate sales training sessions, this book has a special emphasis on helping people to learn and apply new skills in their work and nonwork lives.

Customer Reviews:

Outstanding guidance - Only wish is could be updated.............1999-01-18

Book is arranged very well, easy to understand (most) and valuable information.

Book Description

Celebrating 50 years of growth and innovation, Federated Investors, Inc., among the nation's largest investment management institutions, commemorated its golden anniversary in 2005.

Since its modest start in Pittsburgh in the mid-1950s, millions of investors in the United States and around the globe have relied on Federated for world-class investment management. Founded in 1955, the company was born when Jack Donahue, a former air force pilot, convinced his high school classmate, Dick Fisher, to leave his job as a used car salesman to sell little-known mutual funds. With the help of Jack's long-time friend, Tom Donnelly, the three men founded Federated Investors, Inc.

The company initially focused its business on mutual funds for individual investors, but it soon expanded its vision to serve bank trust departments as well. Today its products cater to a variety of financial professionals and institutional investors.

Over the past half-century, Federated's veteran leadership team and dedicated employees have contributed to its exceptional growth. Through solid investment management performance, careful client focus, and continuous product innovation, Federated boasts assets exceeding $205 billion.

New Horizons: The Story of Federated Investors chronicles Federated's fascinating legacy from its challenging early days to its current status as a global financial giant.

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The New Mutual Fund Investment Advisor
Richard C. Dorf
Manufacturer: Probus Pub Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Public Finance | Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Mutual Funds | Investing | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0917253132

Average customer rating:
New Mutual Fund Investment Advisor: A Guide for the Serious Investor
Richard C. Dorf
Manufacturer: Probus Publishing Co.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0917253191

Average customer rating:
The New Mutual Fund Investment Advisor: Everything You Need to Know About Investing in No-Loads
Richard C. Dorf
Manufacturer: Probus Professional Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Mutual Funds | Investing | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1557381577

Average customer rating:
The New Mutual Fund Investment Advisor
Richard C. Dorf
Manufacturer: Chicago: Probus Publishing Company, 1986
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000LVF7O2

Book Description

International turn-around gurus describe how to rescue a company from the brink of disaster
Why, even in the best of economic times, do so many apparently healthy companies fail? The surprising answer offered by the authors of this breakthrough book is "denial," or more specifically, the inability of top management to acknowledge that they've been backing a losing strategy and to take the necessary, often traumatizing, steps required to set their companies on the right course. Using cogent case studies and lessons learned from working with Fortune 500 executives who have survived tough turnarounds, Pate and Platt vividly describe what happens when good strategies go bad. Drawing upon their experiences at top firms, they develop proven real-world turnaround strategies, tools, and techniques and show readers how to put them to work in their companies.

Customer Reviews:

New Growth & Revival Possible For Ailing Companies.......2006-11-07

This a welcome strategic and philosophical outline for reviving a business - from minor problems to the catastrophic. Human nature brings us to grab at straws in an emergency - this book brings sanity to the equation.

There are nine steps to this revival. The first two are inward looking:

1. Diagnose the problem(s) and area(s) of pain
2. Determine the scope of your business - should it be re-adjusted by expanding, contracting or by being maintained?

The next step is outward looking:

3. Determine your orientation - what level of value do you provide? what level of utility?

For growing companies:

4. Manage scale - Economies of scale should be realizing increased savings and higher profit margins.

For shrinking companies, stress:

5. Handle debt by re-structuring, re-negotiating or merging

Monitor the ebb and flow and get the most from:

6. Assetts - regularly review summary against benchmarks, maintain a good assett/liabilty ratio, and install procedures to limit knee-jerk spending.
7. Employees - Human capital - Evaluate labor force net worth, yeild vs. cost, and incentive analysis
8. Products and Services - focus on appearance, brand status and pricing. Modify cosmetically. Form new models based on the original or delete totally or by specific markets or by slenderizing
9. Manufacturing - improve efficiency, share platforms with other companies, or outsource

The book wraps up with by discussing OPIs (original process improvements). OPIs should be focused on reducing time waste, lowering cost and enhancing quality. The more employees involved and the more input during an OPI, the better.

Good Basic and General Book - 5 stars

Rising from the Ashes...your business, that is........2003-02-23

As one who practices in the business turnaround arena, I have a keen understanding of the Pate/Platt analogy of the Phoenix. In many cases, with the right timing, latitude, people and luck, a business heading south can be captured and "redefined" into one going the right direction.

For those unaware of the symmetry, the Phoenix takes is roots from classical mythology. The Phoenix, a young and strong firebird, would build a nest of frankincense and cassia twigs, ignite it, and self immolate once it became "old." A new Phoenix would rise from these fragrant flames, gather the ashes of it's predecessor, encapsulate them in a precious egg of Myrrh, and fly them to the altar of the Egyptian God of the Sun in the city of Heliopolis Egypt where they were carefully deposited. According to many scholars, this flight represented "the capacity to leave the world and its problems behind, flying towards the sun in clear pure skies." The ostensible lesson of the Phoenix is in the midst of prosperity and strength, we need a renewal phase or a recycling designed to interrupt the daily norms, allowing a rebirth and regeneration.

If there are two individuals with a strong sense of this "rebirth," it's Carter Pate and Harlan Platt. Pate is a Big Four turnaround specialist and Platt created and administers the certification exam for the Turnaround Management Association.

In THE PHOENIX EFFECT, the authors reveal the warning signs and critical pointers leading to a "real" review of one's business without the emotional denial typically present. The ability to identify trouble spots before they create trouble is the key, the authors tell us. The nine strategies described by the authors are:

1) "Determine the Scope" - where does your business sit in the industry you compete? Should you create new business lines, drop old ones, merge, etc?

2) "Orient the Business" - Are your products aimed at the right markets at the right time? Does your sales/growth strategy require some level of reorientation to generate greater effectiveness?

3) "Manage Scale Accurately" - can you grow your business from within with existing resources or should you consider a merger?

4) "Handle Debt" - restructure or renogotiate debt whenever possible. Create a credit facility meeting your business's need. {A word of caution: restructure credit facilities judiciously. Going back to the well too many times will create negativity, concern, doubt and potential retraction of your banking relationship.}

5) "Get the Most from Assets" - carefully scrutinize your asset bases, both tangible and intangible, to determine if they are working for your business. Any superfluous and underused assets should be considered dead weight.

6) "Get the Most from Employees" - identify and use creative strategies to increase the quality and productivity of your employee base.

7) "Get the Most from Products" - routinely review your product base to ascertain current pricing strategies, customer base and the quality a customer brings to your business. {I regularly review my client base to determine if I've outgrown a client. This type of renewal, while often awkward and painful, is absolutely healthy for both myself and the client.}

8) "Produce the Product" - are there alternative methods your products can be created, manufactured or offered proving more efficient and cost-effective? Is outsourcing a possibility?

9) "Change the Process" - model your own processes after those who have created a successful model. No change for the better is too small.

Pate and Platt provide an incredible number of real-life examples (certain aspects of which surprised me greatly...from a confidentiality point-of-view) of fatal mistakes and storied comebacks. This is a very solid read for any business owner, high-level manager, or consultant. It provides a blueprint for clarity in an otherwise complex web of uncertainty. Let's face it, any time a business is in trouble, you'll find more chaos, worry and "Chicken Littleisms" than you'll ever want to see. Creating a cohesive plan of attack designed to bring the pieces back together is the turnaround specialists mantra.

The only reason I didn't give this offering five stars was the authors' penchant for concentrating on the product section. While certainly not unimportant, the concept of crafting a turnaround strategy is much more than product direction and quality. Regardless, this book is quite good and extremely poignant.

Great book - I use it in for my MBA students.......2002-07-18

In Egyptian mythology, the fabled phoenix was a beautiful gold-and-purple male bird that became a Greek symbol of immortality. This book, The Phoenix Effect, is about corporate renewal or continued existence. The authors, Carter Pate & Harlan Platt, share their experiences as Certified Turnaround Professionals (CTP) to illustrate strategies that can be used in restructuring organizations that are in need of a tune up or to salvage a corporation in crisis. These turnaround professionals suggest 9 strategies that can assist in deciphering corporate health. These strategies can be used by CEOs or leaders to renew corporate profitability to ensure continued existence ----just like the fabled phoenix.
This is an excellent book and the authors provide the reader with numerous insights, examples and suggestions that have worked for other organizations to improve corporate prosperity.
I use this book with graduate students to explore organizational behavior/leadership strategies.

Bubble Gum.......2002-06-25

The experienced businessman/woman should pass on this one. The book is reminiscent of a required "bubble gum" text in a freshman level business course at a community college. I only wish the book had more pages so that it would make an even better paperweight.

A PATH TO TURNING YOUR COMPANY AROUND!.......2002-06-11

The authors, specialists in restructuring under-performing companies, present a nine-step program, to guide companies in need of renewal, ranging from minor changes to a total overhaul. The steps are: identify the most serious issues; determine if the company should stay the same, withdraw or expand in scope; clarify the orientation of the business and if the company lives up to its mission; decide if the company should grow or contract; determine the best way to handle debt; discern how to optimize resources; get the most from the workforce; maximize profit from products and customers; and pinpoint the best alternatives to producing products. A final step is to optimize process efficiency. Using numerous cases, the authors present clear, to-the-point guidelines for turning around a company. Highly recommended.

The Phoenix Effect: 9 Revitalizing Strategies No Business Can Do Without

Average customer rating:

The Phoenix Effect: 9 Revitalizing Strategies No Business Can Do Without
Harlan Platt Carter Pate
Manufacturer: NY
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000MUBFOS

Book Description

Innocent Spouse Relief analyzes the important new rules for innocent spouse relief that were significantly revised and expanded by the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998. It discusses the important new rules in light of recent case law and regulatory developments, providing practitioners with an authoritative and comprehensive resource for dealing with innocent spouse relief issues.

In addition to expert analysis and discussion of the new rules, the book reproduces source documents relevant to innocent spouse relief, including Internal Revenue Code sections, committee reports, IRS Publications, directives and forms, and the Internal Revenue Manual 104.5. A topical index and case table are also provided.

Book Description

In an increasingly complex world, decision analysis can play a major role in helping decision makers to gain a greater understanding of the problems they face; particularly as research has shown that the decision-making process can often go wrong. This book aims to make decision analysis accessible to managers and administrators in business and public sector organizations.

Written in a user-friendly style and using practical examples, it shows how difficult decisions can be tackled in a structured way so that new insights emerge and a documented and defensible rationale for the decision is established. Extended and updated to include the latest ideas and techniques, new features of this edition include chapters on the analytic hierarchy process, decision framing, scenario planning and how unaided decision makers make decisions, while more exercises and discussion questions have been included at the end of most chapters.

Decision Analysis for Management Judgment is an essentially practical book which draws together ideas from a variety of disciplines — including psychology, management science and statistics. Assuming little or no prior knowledge of these disciplines, it will help both practicing managers faced with the responsibility of making crucial decisions as well as students on management, business administration and decision analysis courses.

"I found the book well organized, informative, and especially easy to read … I give the book my highest recommendation." Journal of the Operational Research Society

"This is an excellent introductory text on decision analysis and the best I have seen … Goodwin and Wright have written a remarkably complete text. It is hard to find fault with this book." Interfaces

"[This book] offers plenty of thought-provoking questions and inspiration for new ways of tackling decision problems. [It] makes for easy and interesting reading." Scandinavian Journal of Management

"All in all, this book is well written,user friendly, and very informative. A very worthwhile book." Personnel Psychology

Customer Reviews:

best bookonthe topic.......2000-04-13

Great book and the best I have read. Clear and thoughtful but just right for MBAs.I use it.

George Wright

Book Description

Fanciful dreams of childhood slowly erode as reality emerges. Lively essays tell stories of a turbulent and energetic upbringing. A deeply felt and provocative search for the illusive love factor, Venera writes with humor and pathos.

Customer Reviews:

More than kidneys.......2002-10-30

The title "Marriage, Kidneys and Other Dark Organs" by Venera DiBella Barles, would seem likely to be the perfect reading companion for a long wait in the radiology clinic, but is devoid of literal references to kidneys. It is actually a visceral trail of the author's real life experience growing up in an immigrant family household where a colorful but dominating father leaves the family raw and vulnerable. Between tears, I laughed my kishkas out. There are powerful emotional strains in these memoirs that anyone, regardless of background, can relate to, whether the understanding stems from the "school of hard knocks" or from the comfortable voyeuristic vantage point of the den recliner.

What an experience!.......2002-10-30

Wow, what a great piece of work. It was a rollercoaster, I laughed and cried, I could not put this book down. I thoroughly enjoyed the journey with the author. Di Bella Barles is so generous, she shares so much with her reader.

Wonderful pleasure.......2002-10-29

An intense and yet, humorous look into a girls growing years.
A book well worth the read.
E.J.Willmann

Marriage, Kidneys and Other Dark Organs.......2002-08-10

The book is about a real life. I had a rollercoaster ride of emotions while reading this book. Venera De Bella Barles tells her story with great humor and insight. As her life progresses you will cry not from the sad stories but from laughing so hard. For a first book she has done a surpurb job. I hope to read more of her work in the future.

Book Description

This book focuses on the lives, struggles, and contrasting perspectives of the 60,000 workers, military administrators, and technical staff employed in the largest, most strategic industry of the Nationalist government, the armaments industry based in the wartime capital, Chongqing. The author argues that China's arsenal workers participated in three interlocked conflicts between 1937 and 1953: a war of national liberation, a civil war, and a class war.

The work adds to the scholarship on the Chinese revolution, which has previously focused primarily on rural China, showing how workers’ alienation from the military officers directing the arsenals eroded the legitimacy of the Nationalist regime and how the Communists mobilized working-class support in Chongqing. Moreover, in emphasizing the urban, working-class, and nationalist components of the 1949 revolution, the author demonstrates the multiple sources of workers’ identities and thus challenges previous studies that have exclusively stressed workers’ particularistic or regional identities.

Workers at War: Labor in China's Arsenals, 1937-1953.(Book review): An article from: Journal of Social History

Average customer rating:

Workers at War: Labor in China's Arsenals, 1937-1953.(Book review): An article from: Journal of Social History
James Z. Gao
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Journal of Social History, published by Thomson Gale on March 22, 2007. The length of the article is 841 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Workers at War: Labor in China's Arsenals, 1937-1953.(Book review)
Author: James Z. Gao
Publication: Journal of Social History (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 22, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 40 Issue: 3 Page: 794(2)

Article Type: Book review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Book Description

No one questions that men are profoundly influenced by their fathers, but the shape and substance of that influence varies with each family. In this, the first anthology of nonfiction prose to explore this issue in depth, editor Steven Shepherd has collected a diverse and invariably compelling group of narratives about sons and their fathers. "Fourteen excellent essays by some of our best writers," says Anne Morris of the Austin American-Statesman. Among the contributors: James Baldwin, who reflects in his classic "Notes of a Native Son," on the father he barely knew, "partly because we shared, in our different fashions, the vice of stubborn pride." The brothers Geoffrey and Tobias Wolff, who write of their father from dramatically different perspectives. A second-generation undertaker, Thomas Lynch, who writes lovingly of burying his father. And the acclaimed scholar of African-American culture, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who grew up with a father who "was not a race man," yet their arguments were vital to the son's education.

Book Description

New York Times best-selling celebrity Mark Bego herin delves into another self-made and strong-willed femail star: internationally renowned soul/pop vocalist Tina Turner.

Customer Reviews:

great data on Tina's recording career.......2004-04-08

If you want to know more about the private life of Tina Turner, buy "I, Tina" written by Tina Turner and Rolling Stone journalist Kurt Loder.
What makes this book great is the fact that it gives you a very detailed view of Tina's recording career and the chart positions her records achieved in the US and the UK charts.
Also a really great discography in the back of the book.
For someone more interested in her achievements instead of her private life, I think this is a great item to add to your Tina Turner collection.

NOT "SIMPLY THE BEST".......2003-11-15

As a huge Tina fan, I became very excited when I heard about this book. Unfortunately, this book didn't live up to my expectations.

I think the main flaw lies with the author's research. It doesn't appear as if he interviewed Tina or anyone connected with her. If he had, it might have made a world of difference. The book seems to be a compilation gleaned from every other Tina bio that has been written. There is very little info that hasn't been printed before. Even worse, there are numerous incorrect facts. Most of which could have been fixed had the author done better research.

Case in point: the author states that after leaving Ike and starting her solo career, Tina never again performed the songs A FOOL IN LOVE and ITS GONNA WORK OUT FINE until they had to be re-recorded for her 1993 film biography. Not true. In a commercially-released concert home video from the late 70s, Tina indeed performs both of those songs, along with I'VE BEEN LOVING YOU TOO LONG (another song that the author claims Tina dropped after leaving Ike.)

For those who have not read any other bios on Tina, this is a good introduction and a quick read. But those who have closely followed Tina's life and career will be hard pressed to find anything new here.

Average customer rating:
Tina Turner: Break Every Rule - World Tour 1987-88
Mark Bego
Manufacturer: Teamwork Productions
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000LYCW3S

Average customer rating:
Tina Turner: Break Every Rule World Tour: 1987-1988: Concert Program
Unknown
Manufacturer: c.1988
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Pamphlet
ASIN: B000N29ETS

Book Description

A humorous look at a boy's growing up experiences in small town and rural America during the 1930's and 40's. His problems are cast against the profound changes in American society brought by the Great Depression and World War II.

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