The worldwide rise in natural and man-made disasters in the last two decades has questioned the very preparedness to cope with them. Although less frequent, such disasters occur with high impact and completely disrupt the daily lives of people resulting in huge loss of lives and capitals to the extent of wiping out the entire city. Countries the world over have been developing mechanisms to dea…
In a football game, the objective of the players is to get the ball into the opposing team’s net. They make move after move, adopt one strategy after another, all to bring the ball forward and into the goal. Now could you imagine playing football with no objective? All your favorite players will simply run around this huge green field with a ball, not going anywhere, not achieving anything, b…
Risk assessment and management are core issues in social work across a range of settings and contexts. Responding to the risks posed by others, reducing risks to vulnerable persons and managing risks to themselves are all in a day’s work for busy practitioners. Managers and practitioners are routinely confronted with risk decisions, and such decisions are often central to the allocation of re…
Projects have been around since ancient times. Noah building the ark, Leonardo da Vinci painting the Mona Lisa, Edward Gibbon writing The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Jonas Salk developing the polio vaccine — all projects. And, as you know, these were all masterful successes. (Well, the products were a spectacular success, even if schedules and resource budgets were drastically overr…
As most of you would agree, the definition of a project varies greatly—it can be building the next space shuttle, upgrading the production line of your manufacturing facility, or just creating a new website for a customer. One common factor that holds true across these varying project types is that all of them involve multiple people interacting with a wide array of project information. This …
Globalization has played a crucial role in the expansion of supply chains across countries and continents into ever-changing worldwide networks. Manufacturers, driven by the desire to produce cost-effective, high-quality products are continuing to extend their supply-demand chains, introducing new challenges to these networks. This seismic shift has lead to the phasing out of internal logistic…
Workforce development is an overarching term used to describe a wide range of education, training and professional development activities carried out in the workplace. In this series of two books, we have endeavoured to follow the emergence of workforce development from initial concept to final application. In our first book, Workforce development: Perspective and issues, we brought together a …
The Netherlands-based bank, ABN AMRO, was formed in 1990 when Algemene Bank Nederland merged with Amsterdam-Rotterdam Bank. Following the merger, ABN AMRO has established itself as a global bank with operations in 76 countries and territories including the United States, where the bank has a 16% share of the Midwest market. ABN AMRO’s global expansion was driven initially by mergers but more …
Information is the lifeblood of any organization. Without good information, poor decisions are made, risks are not recognized and communicated, and valuable information is lost or stolen. Cyber risks are increasing, and these risks are seriously impacting organizations. Without good information risk management, customer trust and loyalties as well as the organization’s reputation and brand ar…
Today, many global supply chains in process industries are neither equipped nor orchestrated to cope effectively with the new VUCA world we are facing. VUCA—volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity—is an acronym that originated in the military back in the late 1990s and was quickly adapted to the business environment. It describes precisely the conditions of increasing variability…
Many projects fail because of the simplest of causes. You don’t have to be a genius to deliver a project on time, nor do you have to be steeped a mystical project management methodology to be a project manager. If an averagely competent person can’t deliver a project successfully after reading this then I will run buck naked through Times Square on my 75th birthday. See if I don’t!
What does a well-run company look like? You might say that it is popular or that its sales are high, but these can be fleeting things. You could say that it has a famous brand or a prominent leader, but familiar brands and well-publicized leaders can fall from grace. You can say that a well-managed company makes a big profit, but most busi- ness experts agree that a better measure of success is…
Our ways met in early 2010 when the World Bank Group through the IFC Corporate Governance Unit decided to embark on a training program on risk governance for board members and senior managers with the aim of promoting good risk management practices linking corporate risk-taking with strategic decision-making. In preparing this work, we combined complementary insights from the corporate governan…
Difference, diversity, and disagreement are inevitable features of our ethical, social, and political landscape. Although difference of opinion is not a modern phenomenon, the modern world is particularly concerned with the ethical navigation of difference. What is the range of appropriate responses to deep disagreement? How should we interact with those with whom we do not see eye to eye? When…
This course was developed out of a training outline and the course Col. Arlow and I taught together in Manama, Bahrain. Pieter’s background is South African Defense Force, and he was responsible for the security of the World Cup in 2011. Dave’s background is civilian, industrial chemical, and environmental consulting. Together, we believe that this book will provide a different and practica…
The first edition of this book, Energy Law and the Environment, was published in 2002 and was the first one in the field that considered the legal environmental imperatives for the energy sector. The first edition was written to be accessible to both lawyers and non-lawyers alike and the same theme continues in this, the second edition. However, the interest and concerns of policymakers, multin…