Managing International Treasury Transactions: Accounting, Taxation, and Risk Control

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Rigorous, Practical, and Eloquent

A Good Supplement!

Harvard Business Review on Culture and Change
Bill Munck , Rpbert Kegan , Lisa Laskow Lahe , Debra E. Meyerson , Donald Sull , Katherine M. Hudson , and Paul F. Levy
Manufacturer: Harvard Business School Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Human Resources & Personnel Management | Industries & Professions | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
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Organizational Change | Organizational Behavior | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
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Corporate Culture and Performance

The Soul of an Organization: Understanding the Values That Drive Successful Corporate Cultures

Organizational Culture and Leadership (The Jossey-Bass Business & Management Series)

Corporate Cultures

Harvard Business Review on Change (Harvard Business Review Paperback Series)

ASIN: 1578518369

Book Description

This unique collection looks at the often messy and difficult process of changing workplace culture. The articles examine why there is resistance to change on the corporate and individual level and explains the effect of passive aversion to cultural problems on company performance.

Customer Reviews:

Rigorous, Practical, and Eloquent.......2006-08-28

In this volume, one of a series of anthologies of articles previously published in the Harvard Business Review, the reader is provided with eight brilliant analyses of how to establish and then nourish innovative thinking enterprise-wide. No brief commentary such as this can do full justice to the rigor and substance of these articles. It remains for each reader to examine the list to identify those subjects which are of greatest interest to her or him. My own opinion is that all of the articles are first-rate. One of this volume's greatest benefits is derived from sharing a variety of perspectives provided by a number of different authorities on the same general subject. In this instance, "culture and change."

Readers will especially appreciate the provision of an executive summary which precedes each article. They facilitate, indeed expedite frequent review of key points which - presumably - careful readers either underline or highlight. Also of interest is the "About the Contributors" section which includes suggestions of other sources to consult. All but one of the4 eight articles appeared in HBR in 2001. Here are questions which suggest key issues to which their autghors respond:

When and why do good teams go wrong? (Paul F. Levy)
How to change a "culture of face time"? (Bill Munck)
What is the "radical reason" people won't change? (Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey)
How can radical change be achieved "the quiet way"? (Debra E. Meyerson)
Why do good companies go bad? (Donald L. Sull, 1999)
How to transform a conservative company "one laugh at a time"? (Katherine M. Hudson,)
When does a culture need a makeover? (Carol Lavin Bernick)
How to conquer a culture of indecision? (Ram Charan)

I was especially interested in reading Charan's article, written prior to his co-authorship with Larry Bossidy of Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done (2002) And Profitable Growth Is Everyone's Business: 10 Tools You Can Use Monday Morning (2004). In this article and in his later work, Charan asserts that the single greatest cause of organizational underperformance is the failure to execute. Of course, reasons for that failure vary from one organization to another. However, Charan's rigorous research (especially his rigorous examination of GE's culture under Jack Welch's leadership) revealed which specific actions which leaders can take to conquer a culture off indecision. To those with a special interest in this common problem, I highly recommend two books by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton: The Knowing-Doing: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action (2000) and Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management (2006).

Those who share my high regard for this volume are urged to check out other "Harvard Business Review on..." volumes such as those on Change, Effective Communication, Innovation, Knowledge Management, and Organizational Learning. Also Robert Kaplan and David Norton's The Strategy-Focused Organization and James O'Toole's Leading Change as well as The New American Workplace which O'Toole co-authored with Edward E. Lawler III, David Maister's Practice What You Preach, Dick Grote's Forced Ranking, Brian Becker, Mark Huselid, and David Ulrich's The HR Scorecard, and The Work Force Scorecard which Becker and Huselid co-authored with Richard Beatty.

A Good Supplement!.......2003-05-14

I recommend this book in addition to my own, "Strategic Organizational Change." The combination of the two books works well for my students (and clients).

Book Description

Contains three 140-question tests written to mimic the format and content of one day (six hours) of the USMLE Step 3 examination. Answer grids are incorporated into the book so that residents can cut out the pages and administer the exam themselves. A brief summary accompanies each correct answer, and all answers are cross-referenced to the latest editions of the major texts as well as current appropriate journal articles.

Book Description

Introduces a new method and language, based on finite topological spaces, for investigating molecular structure. Eschews the ``theorem-proof-remarks'' format of mathematics in favor of a more readable style commonly used in physical science. Part I develops the mathematical machinery which can serve as an analytical tool to investigate nonmetric aspects of chemical structure. Specific topics covered include set theory, lattices, graph theory, connectivity, classification of spaces, combinatorics, and functions and continuity. Part II explains the application of the above concepts to molecular structure. Chapters cover the bond topology, the graph topology, duplex spaces, and the topology of chemical reactions. Eight appendixes cover ancillary topics.

Book Description

This volume is intended for advanced undergraduate or first-year graduate students as an introduction to applied nonlinear dynamics and chaos. The author has placed emphasis on teaching the techniques and ideas that will enable students to take specific dynamical systems and obtain some quantitative information about the behavior of these systems. He has included the basic core material that is necessary for higher levels of study and research. Thus, people who do not necessarily have an extensive mathematical background, such as students in engineering, physics, chemistry, and biology, will find this text as useful as students of mathematics.

This new edition contains extensive new material on invariant manifold theory and normal forms (in particular, Hamiltonian normal forms and the role of symmetry). Lagrangian, Hamiltonian, gradient, and reversible dynamical systems are also discussed. Elementary Hamiltonian bifurcations are covered, as well as the basic properties of circle maps. The book contains an extensive bibliography as well as a detailed glossary of terms, making it a comprehensive book on applied nonlinear dynamical systems from a geometrical and analytical point of view.

Customer Reviews:

Great reference or grad school level course text on general nonlinear dynamics.......2007-04-15

This book served as the "hidden basis" for a course in nonlinear dynamics by the late John David Crawford back at the University of Pittsburgh (the overt basis was Glendinning's book, which has proved less appealing as a reference). It's subsequently been useful to me in its treatment of Melnikov's method, and to review ideas in bifurcation theory.

As the other reviewer pointed out, it is weak in the section on symbolic dynamics. In its defense, I only know of one book which treats symbolic dynamics in a way that isn't utterly confusing, so perhaps leaving a lot of it out helps keep the student on track towards what the author is trying to present. Certainly, if he stuck to his theorem heavy style, one could get very lost in symbolic dynamics land. I'll also complain he never mention's Painleve's property. There are probably deep "theorist" reasons I'll never understand for his not mentioning this weird little thing. I hear the full treatment of Painleve's property is pretty complex, but I have always found it very helpful in understanding what integrability really is, in my "seat of the pants" way. I also would have liked more detail on Peixoto's theorem. Sure it's only useful in R2; if you're on the 'applied' side of things (or a student, learning by examining practical examples) -how often will you leave R2-land?

These complaints are minor, and they're probably effectively complaints that the book's author has a different purpose in mind than I would for writing such an introductory text, were I actually qualified to do such a thing. Wiggins writes very clearly, and he writes for physicists rather than mathematicians, and brings an amateur in the subject to a fairly high level of sophistication by the end of the text. The problem sets are also excellent.

Effective overview of a useful subject.......2001-06-10

The subject of dynamical systems has been around for over a century now, having been defined by Henri Poincare in the early 1900s, but having its roots in Hamiltonian and Lagrangian mechanics in the 19th century. In this book ths author has done a fine job of overviewing the subject of dynamical systems, particularly with regards to systems that exhibit chaotic behavior. There are 292 illustrations given in the book, and they effectively assist in the understanding of a sometimes abstract subject.

After a brief introduction to the terminology of dynamical systems in Section 1.1, the author moves on to as study of the Poincare map in the next section. Recognizing that the construction of the Poincare map is really an art rather than a science, the author gives several examples of the Poincare map and discusses in detail the properties of each. Structural stability, genericity, transversality are defined, and, as preparation for the material later on, the Poincare map of the damped, forced Duffing oscillator is constructed. The later system serves as the standard example for dynamical systems exhibiting chaotic behavior.

The simplification of dynamical systems by means of normal forms is the subject of the next part, which gives a thorough discussion of center manifolds. Unfortunately, the center manifold theorem is not proved, but references to the proof are given.

Local bifurcation theory is studied in the next part, with bifurcations of fixed points of vector fields and maps given equal emphasis. The author defines rigorously what it means to bifurcate from a fixed point, and gives a classification scheme in terms of eigenvalues of the linearized map about the fixed point. Most importantly, the author cautions the reader in that dynamical systems having time-dependent parameters and passing through bifurcation values can exhibit behavior that is dramatically different from systems with constant parameters. He does give an interesting example that illustrates this, but does not go into the singular perturbation theory needed for an effective analysis of such systems.

An introduction to global bifurcations and chaos is given in the next part, which starts off with a detailed construction of the Smale horseshoe map. Symbolic dynamics, so important in the construction of the actual proof of chaotic behavior is only outlined though, with proofs of the important results delegated to the references. The Conley-Moser conditions are discussed also, with the treatment of sector bundles being the best one I have seen in the literature. The theory is illustrated nicely for the case of two-dimensional maps with homoclinic points. The all-important Melnikov method for proving the existence of transverse homoclinic orbits to hyperbolic periodic orbits is discussed and is by far one of the most detailed I have seen in the literature. The author employs many useful diagrams to give the reader a better intuition behind what is going on. He employs also the pips and lobes terminology of Easton to study the geometry of the homoclinic tangles. Homoclinic bifurcation theory is also treated in great detail. This is followed by an overview of the properties of orbits homoclinic to hyperbolic fixed points. A brief introduction to Lyapunov exponents and strange attractors is also given.

This book has served well as a reference book and should be useful to students and other individuals who are interested in going into this area. It is a subject that has found innumerable applications, and it will continue to grow as more tools and better computational facilities are developed to study the properties of dynamical systems.

Customer Reviews:

Wins its laurels right!.......1999-08-17

Many thanks to Bill Mulligan, Jr. for this collection of his father's speeches.

Bill Mulligan, Sr. was a great man, famous in a certain circle, and now he may be known to others through his own words, in saecula, saeculorum. The medium is humor, the message extols family, faith, and friendship, with amusing and enlightening digressions on history, the Law, the Irish, and more.

Mulligan, Jr.'s moving introduction and eulogy complete the portrait. Perhaps eloquence is hereditary.

"Mulligan's Law" is a treat for students of rhetoric and law, and and must for historians researching the history and values of Catholics and the Irish in America.

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Mulligan's Law : The Wit & Wisdom of William Hughes Mulligan

Manufacturer: Fordham University Press, New York
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000I8W8S6

Book Description

Lenin, from the October Revolution to the U.S.S.R.

Lenin's life and thoughts and the importance of ideology in both.
The cultural revolution is examined.
Explores Lenin's cult and the re-evaluation of his legacy.

Beryl William's Lenin is a clear and interesting introduction to the life, ideology and impact of Lenin, one of the formative figures of he twentieth-century. Lenin provides an excellent introduction to Lenin and his role in the Russian Revolution and provides an objective account of his years in power between 1917 and 1924. The author has written in light of new documents made available since the Gorbachev era and the end of the Soviet Union. Lenin provides as up-to-date evaluation of Lenin's life and thoughts and the importance of ideology in both, the cultural revolution, Lenin's foreign policy and expansionism and Lenin's cult and the re-evaluation of his legacy that has taken place during the last decade. Lenin is a study of his life and work in the context of the period and like other titles in the Profiles in Power series, it is not a biography, though inevitably it contains much biographical material, it instead analyzes the major features, achievements and failures of Lenin's career.

Customer Reviews:

Inaccurate and biased.......2005-06-08

The author makes more of an argument for hating Lenin than explaining his life, which makes the book into a long essay instead of a short biography.

The first few chapters are a fairly good explanation of Lenin as a youngster and how certain events may have influenced his ideological choices. The problem is, when arguing her point, Williams chooses to use a lot of speculation instead of fact.

The second half of the book blames the downfalls of the Revolution, the civil war, famine, disease, and every other obstacle in Russia on Lenin. It is argued that the main betrayal of the revolution lies in the fact that Lenin is a power-hungry man who will not compromise with anybody despite their position or knowledge. He also is sponsering terrorism and randomly shooting his own citizens for various reasons (strikes, being middle/upper class), and sometimes just for intimidation. Even if all the atrocities are true, and every decision did come directly from Lenin, she still does not explain his reasoning for doing so. More importantly, she did not answer the question, "Why did Lenin commit these horrible atrocities if he fought his whole life to make a better society?" Why would he randomly kill peasants while trying to elevate their position in society? Everything definately does not fit together by the end of this book. One is left feeling hatred for Lenin and his ideals. She does make him out to be a complete psychopath who is jaded by his brother's execution at the hands of the czar, and desperately wants revenge on everyone in Russia.

I could go on about how bad this book is, but I think you get the picture. If you are looking to argue with friends and colleagues about why Lenin is the first terrorist and the worst leader ever, still don't get this book. This book provides a very weak argument. On the back cover this book sounds as if you can make your own choice at the end, but Beryl Williams tries to make up your mind for you the whole book with some of the most idiotic arguments ever!

Account of Lenin using his own words.......2003-11-18

After a brief intro about Lenin's early years, Williams covers Lenin from the time he joined the ranks of other Russian political revolutionaries to his death. The emphasis is on his actions in acquiring and maintaining power in the swirl of competing political leftist parties before and during the revolution, and his later actions with regard to keeping the reins of national political control following the revolution. In the context of this narrative, he discusses Lenin's views on politics, ideology, and policy during the different time periods covered in the book. The quotes from Lenin reveal a man concerned with power. Williams shows how Lenin's orders and actions left a legacy of justifications for killing people and destroying entire families and villages in the name of the "party" or the "revolution." He demonstrates in Lenin's own words the link from Lenin to Stalin.

Book Description

Discover 13 extraordinary women from Colorado's past, including Martha Maxwell, one of the first female naturalists and taxidermists; Chipeta, a charismatic Ute Indian leader; and Sister Blandina Segale, a nun who befriended Billy the Kid.

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