Don’t Blame the Tools

Those managing organisations are often criticised for being ‘faddish’ in their use of new management ideas or innovations, too easily falling into the trap of adopting the latest new idea or concept because it is ‘flavour of the month’. This research-based report presents an in-depth account and analysis of the adoption and implementation of two popular large-scale managerial innovations in four different organisations. It provides case studies of actual adoption and implementation of the balanced scorecard and programme/project management offices. The study explores the reasons for the adoption of the innovations and how these reasons shape implementation success. The report also provides examples of good practice that practising managers use to improve the implementation of new management practices in their own organisations. • Presents an original research-based study that explores the reasons why organisations adopt new management practices (e.g. balanced scorecard and programme/project management offices) • Links the reasons for adoption with the success of implementation • Provides examples of good practice that can improve the implementation of new management practices in organisations

The Nietzsche Disappointment confronts Nietzsche's recurrent, symptomatic struggles with causal accounts. His explanations of past and future raise high hopes; when they fail they are responsible for profound disappointment.

Turn your musical passion into a profitable career with this essential guide to the business and technical skills you need to succeed in the multi-billion dollar games industry. Step-by-step instructions lead you through the entire music and sound effects process - from developing the essential skills and purchasing the right equipment to keeping your clients happy. Learn everything you need to: Find the jobs. Identify your niche, implement a business and marketing plan that includes a great demo reel, and plug into the established network to find clients. Make the deals. Make the bidding and contract process work for you by knowing the standard industry terminology, understanding how to set fees, and employing non-confrontational negotiating tactics to reach sound agreements that establish acceptable boundaries for change orders, reworks, payment options, and other essentials. Create music and sound effects for games. Master the exacting specifications for composing music and creating sound effects on the various gaming platforms and systems. The companion DVD features audio and cinematic examples, demos of useful sound editing and sequencing programs, and sample business contracts.

Packed with tips from bestselling and prize-winning authors, Novel Writing: A Writers' and Artists' Companion will give you all the practical advice you need to write and publish your novel. PART 1 provides an introduction to the forms and history of the novel and helps you plan and research your masterpiece, develop characters and compelling narratives and your own authorial voice. PART 2 contains guest contributions from Philip Pullman, Louise Doughty, Glenn Patterson, Jeanette Winterson, Jonathan Franzen, Stevie Davies, Doris Lessing, Tash Aw, Elif Shafak, Anne Enright, Tim Pears, Anita Desai, Tim Lott, Amit Chaudhuri, Andrea Levy, Alan Hollinghurst, Bernardo Atxaga, Hanan Al-Shaykh, Michèle Roberts, Joan Brady, Lynn Freed, Evelyn Toynton as well as a number of the 2013 list of the Best of Young British Novelists including Kamila Shamsie, Tamima Anam, Naomi Alderman, Ned Beauman, Jenni Fagan and Joanna Kavenna. PART 3 offers practical advice on collaborative writing, overcoming writer's block, editing and rewriting and finding an agent and a publisher for your work. Written by two multi-award winning authors, this is a comprehensive manual for established and aspiring novelists alike.

In the past twenty years Quebec women writers, including Aline Chamberland, Claire Dé, Suzanne Jacob, and Hélène Rioux, have created female characters who are fascinated with bold sexual actions and language, cruelty, and violence, at times culminating in infanticide and serial killing. Paula Ruth Gilbert argues that these Quebec feminist writers are "re-framing" gender. Violence and the Female Imagination explores whether these imagined women are striking out at an external other or harming themselves through acts of self-destruction and depression. Gilbert examines the degree to which women are imitating men in the outward direction of their anger and hostility and suggests that such "tough" women may be mocking men in their "macho" exploits of sexuality and violence. She illustrates the ways in which Quebec female authors are "feminizing" violence or re-envisioning gender in North American culture. Gilbert bridges methodological gaps and integrates history, sociology, literary theory, feminist theory, and other disciplinary approaches to provide a framework for the discussion of important ethical and aesthetic questions.

Become a team leader - no matter what role you play in your team! This self-study training guide puts the power of participative leadership into the hands of every manager, trainer, consultant, and team member struggling to help teams succeed. Packed with more than eighty new and field-tested tools, Tools for Team Leadership solves the mystery of why some teams - regardless of talent - succeed while others fail and delivers everything you need to master the "X-factor" skills of team leadership.

Since leaving Toyota I have discovered that many other companies are missing what I believe to be the most crucial ingredient to ensure a successful and a sustainable Lean transformation creating the right culture. Beyond The TPS Tools describes from firsthand experience why Toyotas culture provides the good soil required to deploy Lean strategies. From the green field startup of Toyotas Indiana Assembly plant to the struggles of managing at Toyotas most seasoned plant in Kentucky, discover how my leadership style has evolved into a practical approach for leading Lean with a North American workforce.

A brand new collection of state-of-the-art operations management tools and tactics… 3 authoritative books, now in a convenient e-format, at a great price! 3 authoritative eBooks bring together today’s most valuable new operations management techniques and solutions! Apply today’s most innovative operations management techniques to improve performance and value in any organization -- even the most complex or constrained! In High Performance Operations, Hillel Glazer shows how to optimize business performance and profitability while maintaining strong governance and compliance. Glazer demonstrates how to integrate lean and systems thinking, and systematically incorporating compliance into planning for overall performance, value, and profitability, rather than viewing it as an end in itself. Learn how to clarify competing interests and implement pre-conditions for success; use systems thinking to promote operational excellence; eliminate single points of failure; establish proof-of-performance; scale your successes, and get more of "what went right"! The Encyclopedia of Operations Management is the perfect single-volume "field manual" for every OM or supply chain professional. Nearly 1,500 well-organized, up-to-date definitions cover every facet of supply chain design, planning, management, and optimization. For the first time, this remarkable reference brings together up-to-the-minute information about topics ranging from accounting and customer service to transportation and warehousing. Next, in The Operations Manager's Toolbox , Randal Wilson helps you use proven project management (PM) tools and techniques to supercharge efficiency, free up resources, eliminate unnecessary meetings, and get more done faster. Wilson shows how to apply PM to complete crucial "smaller" tasks that can deliver rapid and sizable improvements. You’ll learn how to plan, implement, and measure the success of high-impact changes, and organize key tasks so they actually get done. Discover specific techniques for eliminating waste in engineering, manufacturing, distribution, and inventory. Next, learn how to use PM to manage teams, schedules, budgets, and resources more effectively, and systematically predict and mitigate operational risks. Whatever your role in operations management, this unique eBook collection will help you perform far more effectively – in your organization, and in your career! From world-renowned operations management experts Hillel Glazer, Arthur V. Hill, and Randal Wilson

Management consultant, author, and Web master Garrett Wasny provides an annotated listing of over 8,000 international trade resources for businesspeople searching for global customers, partners, and suppliers on the World Wide Web. Organized into ten chapters covering geographic markets and global business functions and covering some 230 countries and territories, the volume provides relevant tips on Internet use and appendices offering a variety of resources on identifying useful associates, drafting initial correspondence, tracking information, and troubleshooting.

Powerful research-based strategies to turn around struggling adolescent students The achievement gap is widening and more teens than ever are struggling in school. The latest research shows not only that brains can change, but that teachers and other providers have the power to boost students' effort, focus, attitude, and even IQs. In this book bestselling author Eric Jensen and co-author Carole Snider offer teacher-friendly strategies to ensure that all students graduate, become lifelong learners, and ultimately be successful in school and life. Drawing on cutting-edge science, this breakthrough book reveals core tools to increase student effort, build attitudes, and improve behaviors. Practical, teacher-tested, and research-supported strategies that will empower educators to make lasting and rapid changes Powerful academic evidence showing that every teacher can make a significant—and lasting—difference in student effort, behavior, attitude, and achievement Specific tools for making and managing the student's goal-seeking process and helping to develop a winner's mindset From the very first chapter, educators will learn how to help their struggling students become excited, lifelong learners. Eric Jensen is a noted authority on brain-based learning and student engagement. Carole Snider is an expert in both adolescent success and adult learning.

Modeled after The Portable Curmudgeon, this collection of Macintosh definitions and rules of thumb, humorous one-liners by Ambrose Bierce, and reprints of the author's MacUser columns will satisfy even the most difficult Mac user. Original.

The Teacher's Resource Guides provide over 100 activities and reproducible worksheets to support the books and extend student's reading skills. Each is 8-1/2" x 11" and 16-pages. A key at the end of each guide provides answers and sample responses. The activities give lower-level readers the tools to construct, extend, and examine the meaning of the text. They are built around the essential elements in reading literacy as identified by the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Meet the students of Carter High- they are a diverse group of teens from a variety of backgrounds. Each eBook features a character embroiled in a typical high school dilemma. Topics are involving and pertinent to young adult readers: romance, sports, friendship, exams, work, family. The 16-page Teacher's Resource Guides provide 10 reproducible activities per title to extend students reading skills. Simply select and print the activities that you need.

"First Published in 1999, Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company."

Tools For Your Emotional Health Toolbox is a practical resource for school counselors and therapists, filled with great activities, lesson plans, and information handouts to help empower teens and adults.

Explains how to battle the "dragons" that often interfere with a happy marriage.

Enterprise Java developers must achieve broader, deeper test coverage, going beyond unit testing to implement functional and integration testing with systematic acceptance. Next Generation Java™ Testing introduces breakthrough Java testing techniques and TestNG, a powerful open source Java testing platform. Cédric Beust, TestNG's creator, and leading Java developer Hani Suleiman, present powerful, flexible testing patterns that will work with virtually any testing tool, framework, or language. They show how to leverage key Java platform improvements designed to facilitate effective testing, such as dependency injection and mock objects. They also thoroughly introduce TestNG, demonstrating how it overcomes the limitations of older frameworks and enables new techniques, making it far easier to test today's complex software systems. Pragmatic and results-focused, Next Generation Java™ Testing will help Java developers build more robust code for today's mission-critical environments. This book Illuminates the tradeoffs associated with testing, so you can make better decisions about what and how to test Introduces TestNG, explains its goals and features, and shows how to apply them in real-world environments Shows how to integrate TestNG with your existing code, development frameworks, and software libraries Demonstrates how to test crucial code features, such as encapsulation, state sharing, scopes, and thread safety Shows how to test application elements, including JavaEE APIs, databases, Web pages, and XML files Presents advanced techniques: testing partial failures, factories, dependent testing, remote invocation, cluster-based test farms, and more Walks through installing and using TestNG plug-ins for Eclipse, and IDEA Contains extensive code examples Whether you use TestNG, JUnit, or another testing framework, the testing design patterns presented in this book will show you how to improve your tests by giving you concrete advice on how to make your code and your design more testable.