Book Description
A complete guide to leveraging the power of Sarbanes-Oxley--specifically for nonprofits
The first book to discuss the implications of Sarbanes-Oxley legislation as it relates to nonprofit organizations, Sarbanes-Oxley for Nonprofits is an essential guide for all nonprofit executives and boards who want to know how the new legislation can enhance their organization's mission.
By establishing a "platinum standard" of operations and governance within nonprofit organizations, executives and board members will be better equipped to attract high-quality staff and board members, as well as the attention of donors and other potential funding sources. Sarbanes-Oxley for Nonprofits presents the best practices that have emerged from the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act (Sarbanes-Oxley) in a manner that explains their source and value to the nonprofit organization.
Written for both small and large nonprofits, Sarbanes-Oxley for Nonprofits includes:
* Practices intended to establish a "platinum standard" of operations and governance within the nonprofit
* Coverage of audits, financial statements, board activities and decision making, how to teach board members to read and interpret financial statements, conflicts of interest, whistle-blower protection, and how to leverage these standards to gain a competitive advantage
* Sarbanes-Oxley best practices and the organizational culture
* Sample documents, forms, and checklists to introduce these best practices into any nonprofit organization
* And much more!
Download Description
Implications of Sarbanes-Oxley for Nonprofits explores the relevant themes and requirements in Sarbanes-Oxley that relate to nonprofits. It addresses each area in depth with recommendations for steps to come into compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley standards. Major topic areas include audits, financial statements, board activities and decision-making, teaching board members how to read and interpret financial statements, conflict of interest, whistle-blower protection, and how to leverage these standards to create a platinum standard organizational culture.
Book Description
Do you know how to get the competitive advantage? STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT: BUILDING AND SUSTAINING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE shows you in detail how the world's top companies build, extend, and sustain a competitive advantage. How do they do it? Through distinctive competence, quality, globalization, change, and ethics. And because this business textbook is rich with study tools, STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT: BUILDING AND SUSTAINING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE gives you the competitive advantage on the test as well!
Customer Reviews:
One of the worst textbooks that I have ever used.......2002-10-31
This textbook is the required text for a graduate level business course in which I am currently enrolled. My opinion, as well as nearly all of my classmates, is that this book offers very little for those in business wanting to learn about strategic management.
An example of what I mean is the following sentence taken from the book: "Firms that have built substantial sources of competitive advantage often enjoy high levels of profitability." Really? The text continues to state obvious points such as this.
This book contains about 10 % of material and 90 % filler. It could probably have been condensed to about 20 pages of bullet points without losing any of the content. Many textbooks have a problem with lack of brevity, however this book is the worst that I can remember since my days in high school.
As a business professional who values his time, I do not have time to waste reading filler. This book is so poor that if it wasn't being used to teach the final course in my program I would have dropped the course.
Strategic Management (2nd Edition) by Pitts & Lei.......2001-04-06
Pitts & Lei's (revised) 2nd edition is a solid, well-written strategic management textbook. Topical coverage is both traditional and well informed. The only exception to the foregoing is Chapter 11 that seems to be slightly "muddy" and confusing. From my perspective, as an instructor who has taught strategic management for the last fifteen years and actually practiced strategic management for fifteen years in industry, the only "missing element" is a chapter on "network" or virtual organizations. Chapter 12 (Managing Strategic Change) and Chapter 13 (Redefining Advantage) are excellent, both in terms of content and exposition.
The book includes cases (suitable for classroom discussion) and review questions in each chapter. Each chapter also has an excellent set of references. The ancillaries are complete with the exception that no test bank is provided for an instructor's use. I recommend this text to anyone teaching undergraduate strategic management and also to any reader interested in learning what strategic management is all about.
This book compares quite favorably to several of the much more expensive strategy texts like David, Thompson and Strickland and Pearce and Robinson. The book is good value for the money.
Amazon.com
A top-down commitment to top-notch customer service is a critical element in the battle for corporate survival. In their
Customer-Centered Growth: Five Bold Strategies for Building Competitive Advantage, Richard Whiteley and Diane Hessan of The Forum Corporation, a training and consulting firm that emphasizes just such customer focus, show readers how other companies have successfully placed customers at the center of their operations. They also provide 15 tools for self-assessment and strategy planning.
Book Description
In Customer-Centered Growth, Richard Whiteley and Diane Hessan reveal the compelling secrets of how today's successful companies are achieving explosive growth. Drawing on dozens of case studies of every kind of enterprise, Whiteley and Hessan define five proven strategies that you can use to grow-even under the most adverse business conditions.
Customer Reviews:
This Audio Tape Is an Outstanding How-To Guide for Growth!.......2000-09-08
It has been almost two years since I read this book. On a recent trip to New York, I realized that I had the audio cassettes, but had never listened to them. So I did. What a wonderful surprise this was.
There are four cassettes and each is read by the authors who alternate. Both have good speaking voices, and use a good pace. It is easy to listen to them and follow their voices.
Unlike many cassette series which are overly edited, this one is just the right length. You get a good overview of all of the points on the first side and a half, then go into each one in more detail in the remaining three tapes.
As much as I liked the book, I liked the cassettes better. The authors are obviously used to speaking and teaching, and I felt like I was having them speak directly to me in a one-on-one session. I turned the tapes off whenever I had an assignment from them, and did the assignment. Clearly, this advanced my thinking much more than reading the book did. I was not as deeply into the concepts from reading as I was from listening, and did the assignments from a much more fundamental perspective.
Their first principle is to focus. The idea is to find what your most profitable customers find most valuable to them that you do best. This caused me to see our firm's relationship to our clients in a totally new perspective that is very valuable to me.
The second principle is to hard-wire listening to the customer. Although I remembered this advice from before, I was struck by realizing how few of the companies I know well take this advice. Customer listening is usually continuous, but is usually not well integrated into focusing the firm's attention. This is usually because most people don't see the information, or don't know how to interpret it.
The advice on how to create cooperation routinely throughout the organization is very good. I especially liked the variation on the internal customer concept espoused here whereby you are encouraged to both stay focused also on what the external customer needs.
Not only should you buy this resource, but you should then take a driving trip so you'll have a chance to listen to it. I suggest that you do as I did, and switch the tapes on and off so you can do the exercises in your mind (and later write down what you learned).
When you are done with this, I suggest that you also consider how this kind of approach could help your personal life. What should you be focusing on? How can you hard-wire listening to those around you? How can you all become more cooperative?
Average customer rating:
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Marketing to Win: Strategies for Building Competitive Advantage in Service Industries
Frank K. Sonnenberg
Manufacturer: Ballinger Pub Co
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ASIN: 0887304206 |
Book Description
Studies consistently show that quality leadership development programs pay off for companies -- in the form of shareholder returns, market share growth, and sales. However, many companies have inadequate leadership development programs. This book challenges traditional views of leadership development with a perspective that focuses on recognizing leadership as a source of competitive advantage. If you're a manager or an HR leader,
The Leadership Gap offers the practical, effective strategies you need to close the leadership gap in your organizations, unleashing leadership potential for better business results and a sustainable competitive advantage.
Customer Reviews:
Being different and "strange" is often a requirement for success, read about it here.......2007-08-18
In this book, Cable puts forward a very interesting idea that more managers should have the courage to take seriously and perhaps even execute. The point is that managers should make a concerted effort to hire people that are "strange" rather than those that are similar to all other potential hires. His point is that conventional thinking and execution is inherently limited in the level of success that it can achieve. By strange, he does not mean "weird" or disturbed, the term is used in the sense of being capable of doing constructive and successful thinking outside the box.
Several examples of companies that have adopted such methods and are very successful are presented. One of the best is an explanation of the career of major league baseball general manager Billy Beane. Beane's position is that the standard criteria used to evaluate baseball talent are simplistic and incorrect. Since he rose to the position of general manager of the Oakland Athletics, Beane has fielded a team that ranks at the bottom in terms of salary and near the top in terms of wins. Much of his emphasis is on the "quality at-bat" where a player forces the pitcher to make extra pitches and is willing to accept a base-on-balls, even when there are runners on base.
Since this is a skill undervalued by all other teams, this has allowed Beane to acquire players for much less than other teams are willing to pay them. By molding the team in that image, he has developed a very successful team, although the Athletics have had a difficult time winning games in the playoffs. Given the current financial inequities that exist in major league baseball, this is truly a major success story that others should pay attention to.
Another example is the policy of Home Depot to hire contractors to work in the appropriate sections of the store. Therefore, when the do-it-yourself customer comes in, the person helping them is very knowledgeable and can provide the highest level of customer service. This service translates into an enormous competitive advantage over other stores and can increase sales several orders of magnitude over the extra salary expenses.
To his additional credit, Cable also is clear in stating that hiring "strange" employees is not for everyone. It requires courage to be willing to adopt a novel business or a non-traditional approach to an old one. In nearly all cases, the initial expenses are higher than in other areas and exterior observers are generally very skeptical of the new and novel ways of doing business.
I once participated in a faculty development seminar entitled, "A Whack on the Side of the Head." The purpose was to try to get us to think of new and novel ways to present our material. This book reminded me of that seminar, demonstrating that while going down a different path can be extremely challenging, it can also be very rewarding. From personal experience, those rewards are more than monetary; there is a form of satisfaction in being successfully different that is like no other. Perhaps the key to your success can be found in this book.
Good read.......2007-07-24
This book clearly articulates a strategically important concept. As the Chief Strategy Officer of a company in an industry that seldom dares to be strange, I hope that no one else in my industry reads this book. Implementing the ideas in this book will become my competitive advantage.
Yes, you really *do* want your workforce to be strange..........2007-07-14
The correct platitude often offered up by a company is that their people are their most important asset and competitive advantage. But in reality, most staff is like electricity... you can't run your company without them, and it's the entry level cost of doing business. In Change To Strange: Create a Great Organization by Building a Strange Workforce, Daniel M. Cable examines how to create a "strange" workforce that actually *is* a competitive advantage over your rivals. It all comes down to your definition of "strange"...
Contents:
Preface; Be Strange. Be Very Strange.; Shine a Flashlight into the Black Box That Exists Between Your Workforce and Beating Your Competition; Organizational Outcomes - How Do I Know I Am Winning in the Way I Want to Win?; Performance Drivers - What Must Customers Notice About Us So That We Win?; Strange Workforce Deliverables - What Our Workforce Does to Make Customers Notice and Love Us; Job Specific Strangeness - Different Deliverables from Different Jobs; Strange Workforce Architecture - What Systems Will Produce the Deliverables I Need From My Workforce?; Strange Workforce Architecture - Breaking Out From the Pack; Strange Workforce Architecture - Taking the Next Step; The Magic of Metrics - Creating and Implementing Measurement Systems;Conclusion; Index
The "strange" that Cable talks about here is a workforce that obsesses about one or two key items that make a difference to the customer. For example, Whole Foods has a workforce that is obsessive about their product and presentation. These people can tell you just about anything you want to know about what they sell, because they believe in it completely. Their hiring systems are geared around making sure that new people coming into the system share that same obsessiveness, and the group is rewarded based on how well each person does. If you're not pulling your weight or if you're not obsessed like everyone else, you'll wash out. It doesn't mean you're not a hard worker or aren't cut out for working in food retail. It just means that you're not "strange" in the way you need to be to work at Whole Foods. This differentiator often is considered crazy or uncopyable by the competition. But since the customer loves it, Whole Foods has a niche all to themselves. And their people truly *are* a competitive advantage for them.
The other issue that makes this difficult is the measuring and metrics. Getting information from your customers about the few things you want to be strange about is hard work. The numbers often aren't easily obtainable without putting some effort into it. Which is another reason competitors don't want to follow that direction, and why changing your workforce to a strange workforce isn't easy. But if you want your company to stand out and be different/strange, it's a requirement to be able to track those factors and measure your people against them. Otherwise you may end up with good solid people, but just not ones that are strange in the areas in which you want to be viewed as unique.
This book also struck me as something you can do for yourself and your skills. Perhaps you want to be known as someone with an obsessive attention to deadlines, design, or quality. You could use this same technique to find your own strange quality/qualities, figure out how to measure it, and them shape yourself into a competitive advantage over others...
While I don't expect an overwhelming majority of companies to run right out and change their HR departments to match this model, reading Change To Strange will at least open up that small window of doubt about whether you really are hiring people who are a competitive advantage for you and your company.
If you treat your employees the same as everyone else treats theirs how can your company be unique?.......2007-06-23
Companies often give a lot of lip service to the value of their employees but then go about treating and using everyone just about like every company treats and uses its employees. That is, with indifference and standardized "best" practices. Unsurprisingly, when an organization treats its people just about the same as every other company treats its employees (as inputs to be standardized and minimized), its dreams of having the company be something special, valuable, and unique are seldom to never realized.
Daniel M. Cable tells us that only a strange workforce, that is one that doesn't do things like everyone else, one that knows and has confidence in its uniqueness and specialness and in its goals and methods, can create something that is special, unique, valuable, and with a sustainable (ongoing - but adapting) advantage in the marketplace. Cable explains how and why your workforce can become something valuable and a driving force behind your success.
He starts off the book showing us how we too often treat our employees and the whole HR process as a kind of black box that just happens. We assume that if we are following the laws and standardized HR processes and avoiding being sued we are doing a good job. When we turn things around and start to view this whole concept the way the author frames it we can see that this kind of idea is indeed absurd. It is like building a process to build standardized widgets that claim no special qualities in the marketplace and then later wondering why, despite our fine leadership, those widgets fail to gain special attention in the market place or market dominance.
What I like about this book is the way Cable plays with our perceptions along the way. This is not your standard business book. He asks us questions that seem odd at first, and then we realize that is the point. Have you ever looked at the back of your hand and for some reason your perception changes and it looks a different size to you and in some ways quite different than it ever had before? That is what this book will help you achieve with your workforce. The author admits that building a "strange" workforce takes a great deal of effort and probably will take some time to achieve, but if you want to be regarded as special by your customers you have to be special. And to be strange (not normal - not typical - not ordinary) you have to have strange people working for you who have a strange sense of mission. This requires you to hire strangely, train strangely, measure performance strangely, and provide strange products and services (that is, surprisingly good and surprisingly desired products and services).
Cable provides a simple framework for this complex process and shows us how achieving this strangeness will get us noticed in the marketplace, allow us to satisfy our customers, and avoid the stagnation that often comes with initial success. The old tragic story of sticking with what works until it kills you has to go.
One of the great complaints among employees today is that they don't matter to management. Employees see through the rhetoric and that is why most companies are not only boring to work for, they are boring in the marketplace. Here is a way to turn that around and energize your company by unleashing the real power in your workforce. Of course, once you head down this path, not all your employees will go with you and there will be some significant turnover. Even good "ordinary" employees have to go. Because they provide inertia against becoming successfully strange.
So, get strange.
People are Strange...Take Advantage to One-Up the Competition.......2007-06-19
"Drinking the Kool-Aid" is probably one of the business world's most overused malapropos, in particular, within the context of a team perceived as blindly following a leader who may appear woefully misguided. The use of this phrase is understandably avoided in this book, but Daniel M. Cable, Professor of Management at the University of North Carolina, shows that such outsider perceptions may be warranted when it comes to a truly effective workforce. The concept of a "strange" workforce is one that Cable expounds upon with alacrity in his new book, as he evangelizes that this is the optimal way for a company to build and maintain a competitive advantage.
As I was reading the book in depth, I couldn't help but think that Cable was applying his principles to his own writing. He first discusses how consensus within a workforce simply reinforces mediocrity when it comes to translating a company's unique value proposition. The author provides a valid argument that workers, when left to their own devices, will perform what is expected of them, especially when management treats them the same way and uses the same benchmarks to measure performance. A ground-up approach is what he prescribes to address this fundamental lapse, and imagining the ideal world is the first of four steps. The rest of the game plan consists of identifying the gaps from the current situation, prioritizing which ones need the most attention and acting upon them.
Three key chapters are devoted to the development of a strange workforce architecture. This belies a stepwise pattern since it means a more dynamic change is needed to have workers become obsessed with delivering a company's messages and translating them to customers willing to spend money and avoid using the products and services of the competitors. Fortunately, Cable does not forego success metrics in such a drastic mindset change and spends the last chapter focused on how to measure and manage success by creating metrics based on what makes a company unique. He then explains how to use those metrics to drive clarity throughout the entire workforce. It helps considerably when he brings a real-world context to his theories with examples taken from Home Depot, Whole Foods, 3M, Lincoln Electric, Southwest Airlines and the Oakland A's among others. This is an intriguing read if more for the ideas it reveals than the action plan it presents.
Average customer rating:
- An excellent book!
- Great reading on data mining for higher education
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Knowledge Management: Building a Competitive Advantage in Higher Education: New Directions for Institutional Research (J-B IR Single Issue Institutional Research)
Manufacturer: Jossey-Bass
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Working Knowledge
ASIN: 0787962910 |
Book Description
This volume provides a comprehensive discussion of knowledge management, covering its theoretical, practical, and technological aspects with an emphasis on their relevance for applications in institutional research. Over time, institutional research has had to reinvent itself repeatedly in response to changes within the internal and external environments that have impact on its operations and roles. Knowledge management provides exciting opportunities while challenging the organizational and structural status quo. Chapters examine the theoretical basis and impact of data mining; discuss the role of institutional research in customer relationship management; and provide a framework for the integration of institutional research within the larger context of organization learning. With a synopsis of technologies that support knowledge management and an exploration of future developments in this field, this volume assists institutional researchers and analysts in taking advantage of the opportunities of knowledge management and addressing its challenges.
This is the 113th issue of the quarterly journal New Directions for Institutional Research.
Customer Reviews:
An excellent book!.......2002-12-28
Very well written. As an educator, I value this book and I think
it's one of the best literature for data studies and data analysing, valuable in terms of both its academic value and a source of reference. I now consider this book as my guideline for most part of my daily job. It is also indicative of the trend the further development of data mining and knowledge management.
Great reading on data mining for higher education.......2002-12-17
With university campuses moving closer towards data-based decision-making, data mining has tremendous potential in assisting institutional researchers in marketing research, student recruitment, fund raising, persistence and survival analysis. Jing Luan's edited book includes a collection of articles that provide introductions to the concepts and applications of data mining and knowledge management that are so easy to read that even non-technical rearders will have no problem grasping the contents. This book should be highly recommended for university administrators and institutional researchers who want to gain a quick overview of the research on data mining and knowledge management in higher education setting.
Customer Reviews:
Great book for business students.......2000-10-17
If you are a business student willing to understand the magic behind the mysterious words like Data Mining, Data Warehousing and Neural Networks, this book is for you. It is practical, and it explains how business can benefit from knowledge it extracts from data. Data sets for the book examples are available on the CD, so a reader can tangibly apply the methods described and get a valuable hands-on experience of data analysis.
For the beginner.......2000-09-29
Pretty basic stuff. If you do not know anything about databases and have never conducted any analysis buy this book. Otherwise do not bother. I was a little disappointed that it did not provide more detail on many of the algorithms - rather it just pointed out different things that data mining can do (though very well explained). While it providing a nice overview, it did not really strike me as anything groundshaking. It does, however, have has a nice listing of vendors. I would refer to the Berry and Linoff book "Mastering Data Mining" for a slightly more thorough treatment.
Beyond sales pitch.......2000-04-22
This book doesn't have the depth of Ian Witten's "Data Mining", yet it is an excellent book on its own. Concrete examples, hands-on training with included software, a primer on Data Warehousing and clear explanations makes it unique among so many other data mining books.
great introduction to data mining.......1999-12-14
I browsed several books on data mining before deciding on this one. If you are looking for an introduction to data mining, this book does an excellent job.
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