The healthcare industry abounds in print (and multimedia) resources on the topic of qual- ity. A Google search for “healthcare quality books” yielded 19.3 million results in 0.21 seconds—a mind-boggling figure. Some of the results don’t refer to books, and many are repetitive, but their plenitude can’t be ignored. Despite the large number of healthcare qual- ity books available, relat…
Over the past decade, a large (and continually increasing) number of efforts (both research and development) have sought to investigate and exploit the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) concepts and techniques in production management applications. In some cases, Al-based concepts have provided frameworks for making traditional Operations Research (OR) techniques more accessible and usable…
The American Academy of Actuaries’ Catastrophe Management Work Group was requested by the Coordinating with Federal Regulators Subgroup on Financial Issues of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners to develop a report to discuss how property and casualty insurers manage catastrophe risks. This monograph is in response to that request and makes the following observations: n C…
Preface The Project Risk Management Process, described herein, is intended to result in the effective management of project risks and opportunities during the entire project life cycle – from project inception to completion of construction. The project manager, project sponsor, and project team members jointly develop a risk register that enables them to identify, assess, quantify, prepar…
The development of information and communications technologies (ICTs) enables businesses and individuals to communicate and engage in transactions with other parties electronically, instantaneously and internationally. This gives rise to a variety of legal and regulatory issues for policymakers, from the validity of electronic methods of contracting and the security risks associated with them, …
The purpose of this text is threefold. First, it is designed to help those individuals who have never taken a formal course in management. Although executives reading this text will probably have practical experiences in the field of management, they may be lacking in the conceptual foundation that would give them a deeper understanding of the concepts that frame those experiences. Before one c…
Organizations are facing exciting and dynamic challenges in the 21st century. In the gloabalized business, companies require strategic thinking and only by evolving good corporate strategies can they become strategically competitive. A sustained or sustainable competitive advantage occurs when firm implements a value – creating strategy of which other companies are unable to duplicate the…
The purpose of antitrust law is to promote competition and protect consumers from anticompetitive business practices. Enforcing antitrust rules thus requires an understanding of what constitutes an anticompetitive business practice; an understanding influenced by both legal precedent and broader knowledge of markets, companies, and competition. This Essay traces the influence of two academ…
For better or worse, banking is back in the headlines. From the desperate efforts of crisis-struck Eurozone governments to the Occupy Wall Street movement currently spreading across the globe, the future of banking is hotly debated. This VoxEU.org eBook presents a collection of essays by leading European and American economists that discuss both immediate solutions to the on-going financial cri…
The purpose of this book is to supply, in a form suitable for lay- men, guidance in the adoption and execution of an investment pol- icy. Comparatively little will be said here about the technique of analyzing securities; attention will be paid chiefly to investment principles and investors’ attitudes. We shall, however, provide a number of condensed comparisons of specific securities—chief…
This book was motivated by the author’s experience in teaching accounting at postgraduate level (MBA and MSc) at Aston Business School and in-house training provided for non-financial managers in many organizations to introduce them to the use of financial tools and techniques. My own education as an accountant was aimed at achieving professional recognition and emphasized an uncritical acce…
The United States has the opportunity to transform its health care system to provide seamless, affordable, quality care that is accessible to all, patient centered, and evidence based and leads to improved health outcomes. Achieving this transformation will require remodeling many aspects of the health care system. This is especially true for the nurs- ing profession, the largest segment of the…
This third edition of Strategic Human Resource Management has been substantially revised to incorporate the latest research and thinking. A number of chapters such as those concerned with strategic HRM in general in Parts 1 and 2 have been almost completely rewritten, as has Chapter 12 on reward strategies. A new chapter on enhancing organizational effectiveness has been included and revis…
Credit is probably almost as old as civilization itself. Certainly it has greased the wheels of commerce for several thousand years. For example, Hammurabi’s code1 (circa 1790 bce) makes reference to terms of debt repayment. Although commerce has been transformed by successive waves of innovation and development in the past few centuries, it was not until the last decade of the twentieth cent…
The computer-based CPA exam is here to stay. Over 100,000 candi- dates have taken the exam since its inception in April, 20041. The computer-based CPA Exam can test a candidate’s work-related skills by using small cases called simulations. These simulations are minicases that require multiple tasks including communications and research. The simulations component has replaced the old problems…
To emerge from the early stages of building a new business, start-ups need to stay focused on two things: building and selling. The first is by far the most important. You can’t sell what you don’t ship, and if it’s not built specifically with the customer’s needs in mind, it’ll be next to impossible to sell even with a great sales system. But as start-ups begin putting a signifi…