Porter's Competitive Advantage explores the underpinnings of competitive advantage in the individual firm.Competitive Advantage introduces a whole new way of understanding what a firm does. Porter's groundbreaking concept of the value chain disaggregates a company into "activities," or the discrete functions or processes that represent the elemental building blocks of competitive advantage. Now an essential part of international business thinking, Competitive Advantage takes strategy from broad vision to an internally consistent configuration of activities. Its powerful framework provides the tools to understand the drivers of cost and a company's relative cost position. Porter's value chain enables managers to isolate the underlying sources of buyer value that will command a premium price, and the reasons why one product or service substitutes for another. He shows how competitive advantage lies not only in activities themselves but in the way activities relate to each other, to supplier activities, and to customer activities. Competitive Advantage also provides for the first time the tools to strategically segment an industry and rigorously assess the competitive logic of diversification. That the phrases "competitive advantage" and "sustainable competitive advantage" have become commonplace is testimony to the power of Porter's ideas. Competitive Advantage has guided countless companies, business school students, and scholars in understanding the roots of competition. Porter's work captures the extraordinary complexity of competition in a way that makes strategy both concrete and actionable.

    The second edition has been revised and updated throughout with increased coverage of globalization and of the emerging 21st-century world order.

    This comprehensive, market-leading text emphasizes the three major driving forces behind e-commerce: technology change, business development, and social controversies. Each of these driving forces is represented in every chapter, and together they provide a coherent conceptual framework for understanding e-commerce, typical of Laudon books. The book offers in-depth and comprehensive coverage of concepts in marketing, economics, IS/IT, privacy and intellectual property. The book contains numerous case studies and an additional case book is available.

    Each chapter utilizes case studies and numerous examples. Mathematical and technical sections can be skipped without loss of continuity. Most textbooks do not include models and decision support systems robust enough for industry, but that is not true of this new edition.The accompanying CD-ROM also features the return of two simulations, the Computerized Beer Game and the Risk Pool Game and a computerized tool. These simulations help users develop and execute supply chain contracts while also illustrating many of the concepts discussed in the text.

    Her writing style and consistent use of examples and case studies results in a text that undergraduates students will find easy to understand.

    For the introductory Finance course, given during the junior year and required at all undergraduate business schools.Keown enables students to see the big picture by letting them understand the logic that drives finance rather than having them memorize formulas.

    Offers students with the tools necessary to do ethical research in psychology and to understand the research they learn about in psychology courses and in the media.

    . . an excellent text for graduate courses on psychological assessment. It . . . familiarizes the student with the entire enterprise of clinical assessment and provides enough of a how-to guide for the student to carry out an assessment practicum." --Contemporary Psychology "For both practitioners and students of psychological assessment, the expanded and updated Handbook provides guidance to the selection, administration, evaluation, and interpretation of the most commonly used psychological tests." --Reference and Research Book News The updated and expanded fourth edition of the highly acclaimed classic text on psychological assessment The Handbook of Psychological Assessment, Fourth Edition presents a step-by-step guide on how to conduct a comprehensive psychological evaluation. It provides a complete review of the most commonly used assessment instruments and the most efficient methods for selecting and administering tests, evaluating data, and integrating results into a coherent, problem-solving report. Updated reviews and interpretive guidelines are included for the most frequently used assessment techniques, including structured and unstructured interviews, Wechlser intelligence scales (WAIS-III/WISC-III), Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2/MMPI-A), Millon Multiaxial Clinical Inventory-III, California Psychological Inventory, Rorschach, Thematic Apperception Test, and frequently used instruments for neuropsychological screening (e.g., Bender Gestalt and Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test). Each test is reviewed according to its history and development, psychometrics, administration, and interpretation of results. In addition, this revised and expanded Fourth Edition includes: * Completely updated research on all assessment techniques * A chapter on the Wechsler Memory Scales (WMS-III) * A new chapter on brief instruments for treatment planning, patient monitoring, and outcome assessment (Beck Depression Inventory-II, State Trait Anxiety Inventory, and Symptom Checklist-90-R) Organized according to the sequence psychologists follow when conducting an assessment, the Handbook of Psychological Assessment, Fourth Edition is a practical, valuable reference for clinical psychologists, therapists, school psychologists, and counselors.

    Wheelen and Hunger takes a unique approach to helping students synthesize all of the factors of the strategic process through a student friendly Strategic Management Model.

    

     The role of the devil's advocate is nearly universal in business today. It allows individuals to step outside themselves and raise questions and concerns that effectively kill new projects and ideas, while claiming no personal responsibility. Nothing is more potent in stifling innovation. Drawing on nearly 20 years of experience managing IDEO, Kelley identifies ten roles people can play in an organization to foster innovation and new ideas while offering an effective counter to naysayers. Among these approaches are the Anthropologist—the person who goes into the field to see how customers use and respond to products, to come up with new innovations; the Cross-pollinator who mixes and matches ideas, people, and technology to create new ideas that can drive growth; and the Hurdler, who instantly looks for ways to overcome the limits and challenges to any situation. Filled with engaging stories of how companies like Kraft, Procter and Gamble, Cargill and Samsung have incorporated IDEO's thinking to transform the customer experience, THE TEN FACES OF INNOVATION is an extraordinary guide to nurturing and sustaining a culture of continuous innovation and renewal.

    John Arnold's addition to Oxford's popular Very Short Introductions series is a stimulating essay about how people studyand understand history. The book begins by inviting us to think about various questions provoked by our investigation of history, and then explores the ways in which these questions have been answered in the past. Such key concepts as causation, interpretation, and periodization are introduced byway of concrete examples of how historians work, thus giving the reader a sense of the excitement implicit in discovering the past--and ourselves.The aim throughout History: A Very Short Introduction is to discuss theories of history in a general, pithy, and accessible manner, rather than delve into specific periods. This is a book that will appeal to all students and general readers with an interest in history or historiography.About the Series: Oxford's Very Short Introductions series offers concise and original introductions to a wide range of subjects--from Islam to Sociology, Politics to Classics, Literary Theory to History, and Archaeology to the Bible. Not simply a textbook of definitions, each volume in this series provides trenchantand provocative--yet always balanced and complete--discussions of the central issues in a given discipline or field. Every Very Short Introduction gives a readable evolution of the subject in question, demonstrating how the subject has developed and how it has influenced society. Eventually, theseries will encompass every major academic discipline, offering all students an accessible and abundant reference library. Whatever the area of study that one deems important or appealing, whatever the topic that fascinates the general reader, the Very Short Introductions series has a handy andaffordable guide that will likely prove indispensable.

    The text is intended for students in colleges or universities who have little or no previous background in grammar, and presupposes no linguistics. It contains exercises, and will provide a basis for introductions to grammar and courses on the structure of English, not only in linguistics departments but also in English language and literature departments and schools of education.