For-Profit Enterprise in Health Care was stimulated by concerns among members of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and others that health services—already heavily dependent on monetary transactions through prepayment and insurance—will become excessively commercialized, with growing ownership by stockholders. The issues closely associated with these concerns are examined in depth in this repo…
There’s a lot of excitement about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Optimists claim that Bitcoin will fundamentally alter payments, economics, and even politics around the world. Pessimists claim Bitcoin is inherently broken and will suffer an inevitable and spectacular collapse. Underlying these differing views is significant confusion about what Bitcoin is and how it works. We wrote this book …
This text is aimed at students of economics and the closely related disciplines of accountancy and business, and provides examples and problems relevant to those subjects, using real data where possible. The book is at an elementary level and requires no prior knowledge of statistics, nor advanced mathematics. For those with a weak mathematical background and in need of some revision, some…
The work of the National Research Council’s Committee on Oversight and Assessment of U.S. Department of Energy Project Management can be traced back to 1998, when there was a one-person report by Lloyd Duscha, Assessing the Need for Independent Project Reviews in the Department of Energy. His report led to expansion of the agency’s external review process and changes to it. In the wake of …
This report is the second in a series of three annual assessments of project management at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The first annual report assessed progress through mid-2001 (NRC, 2001b), and this report continues the assessment through October 2002. The assessments are being made by the National Research Council’s (NRC’s) Committee for Oversight and Assessment of U.S. Departm…
This book is about the management of business processes. This is certainly not a new topic. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, it has been written about from every possible point of view - economic, sociological, psychological, accountancy, mechanical engineering and business administration. In this book, we examine the management of business processes from the perspective of…
In response to a directive from the Committee of the Conference on Energy and Water Development of the 105th Congress (U.S. Congress, 1999), DOE requested that the National Research Council (NRC) appoint a committee to review and assess the progress made by the department in improving its project management practices. The NRC appointed the Committee for Oversight and Assessment of U.S. Departm…
Most extant knowledge management systems are constrained by their overly rational, static and acontextual view of knowledge. Effectiveness of such systems is constrained by the rapid and discontinuous change that characterizes new organizational environments. The prevailing knowledge management paradigm limits itself by its emphasis on convergence and consensus-oriented processing of informatio…
Systematic, well-designed research provides the most effective approach to the solution of many problems facing highway administrators and engineers. Often, highway problems are of local interest and can best be studied by highway departments individually or in cooperation with their state universities and others. However, the accelerating growth of highway transportation develops increasingly …
Hydrology is a branch of scientific and engineering discipline that deals with the occurrence, distribution, movement, and properties of the waters of the earth. A knowledge of hydrology is fundamental to water and environmental professionals (engineers, scientists and decision makers) in such tasks as the design and operation of water resources, wastewater treatment, irrigation, flood defence,…
If any phrase characterizes the hospitality and tourism industry today it would probably be “constantly changing.” Worldwide recessionary conditions, globalization, industry-wide focus on sustainability and corporate responsibility are just some of the forces converging and resulting in widespread change. The result is an industry that requires future leaders in hospitality and tourism …
The focus of this book has been on routine health unit-based information systems. Routine health information systems, more than nonroutine methods such as surveys or rapid assessment methods, are the main data source in most countries. Yet they have the infamous reputation for producing a plethora of irrelevant or low-quality data. Therefore, most health managers, as a rule, do not use the…