From Modernization to Globalization: Perspectives on Development and Social Change (Blackwell Readers in Sociology)

Book Description

Why are some countries poor? What can they do to turn their situations around? What happens to countries and individuals when they move towards being "modern"? What does it mean to "develop" and be "modern" anyway? What are the social effects of the processes of worldwide economic, cultural, and political integration called globalization? From Modernization to Globalization is a reference for scholars, students and development practitioners on the issues of processes of social change and development in the 'Third World'. It provides carefully excerpted samples from both classic and up-to-date writings in the development literature, as well as, a general introduction. Part One reviews formative ideas on the transition to modern society with brief readings from classical theorists. The second part addresses the modernizationists' discussion of how development changes people. The response from dependency and world-system theorists is reviewed in Part Three. The final section includes eight of the most influential writings on the social effects of globalization. Together, this represents an unprecedented compilation important of writings on international development.

Customer Reviews:

S and S or Scholars and Students.......2000-03-29

Wonderful resource for a birdseye view of significant observations of the world changes for 2000plus. Stimulates individual thought and also excellent for a group discussion launching pad. Scholars and students will find it engaging and meaningful.

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Partnering for Performance: Unleashing the Power of Finance in the 21st Century Organization
Martin G. Mand , and William Whipple III
Manufacturer: Amacom
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OS1MI2

Product Description

When it comes to setting a company's competitive strategy, few departments can have a greater impact than the finance department. And yet financial divisions in most companies operate as separate entities, uninvolved in helping to achieve long-term business goals. This forward-thinking book, based on the more than 50 years' combined experience of two financial practitioners, helps CEOs, CFOs, bankers, accountants, and other financial professionals completely redefine their roles, turning the finance department into an integral part of the organization's growth strategy and a partner in its business plan. This book moves beyond traditional tools and skills to uncover a wholly new way of thinking about finance, where the real impact of producers and services is accurately measured and business plans are analyzed for their ability to increase value for shareholders. And the book presents its ideas in a way that is compelling, easy to read, and instantly applicable to your own organization.

Partnering for Performance: Unleashing the Power of Finance in the 21St-Century Organization

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Powerful Concept
Essential for Business
Clear and Concise
Partnering For Performance

Partnering for Performance: Unleashing the Power of Finance in the 21St-Century Organization
Martin G. Mand , and William Whipple III
Manufacturer: AMACOM
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Organizational Change | Organizational Behavior | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

General | Small Business & Entrepreneurship | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Book Description

When it comes to setting a company's strategic course and long-term goals, few areas of the company can have a greater impact than Finance. Paradoxically, however, Finance is often not involved in making such business decisions, but rather is limited to implementing them.

It's time to take off the "green eyeshades" and get ready for radical change. This forward-thinking book -- based on the more than 50 years combined experience of two financial practitioners -- should help any organization turn Finance into an integral contributor to its growth strategy and a partner in its business plan.

Changes in perceptions and behavior by everyone throughout the organization will be needed -- starting at the top -- so a dialogue between the CEO and the CFO of a hypothetical company has been used as a framework for the book. This device also enables readers to skim the material and quickly grasp the book's key ideas.

It's one thing to propose a culture change and another to explain how to get there. "Partnering for Performance" does both. In addition to a compelling proposal, you will find:

• a no nonsense discussion of how to upgrade the scorecard, enhance the budgeting process, and evaluate business alternatives (using techniques such as activity based costing, decision & risk analysis, and options theory);

• an implementation plan, including new roles and resposibilities for both Finance people and everyone else in the organization, training, incentives, and diagnostic tools (such as an organizational troubleshooting guide); and

• more than 60 real-world examples of the concepts presented to show that they hold true in practice.

In today's complex financial world, keeping score is far from enough. "Partnering for Performance" demonstrates how Finance can become a strong ally and powerful asset for achieving true competitive advantage.

Customer Reviews:

Powerful Concept.......2000-10-12

Mand and Whipple do an excellent job describing how finance, business centers and top management can work together more effectively for optimum performance. The concept is powerful, and the examples from actual events are very stimulating. Best of all, they use a dialog method to make the message really come alive. "Listening" to the CEO and CFO discuss partnering makes the reader realize that the concept is not just another management theory, but can be readily applied to his or her situation as well.

Essential for Business.......2000-08-06

A very concise and well-written book which appeals to the financial executive and the MBA student. The CFO's role is clearly delineated with the support of actual cases and experiences as noted by the authors. I found this book to be interesting and a "quick-read" and was an excellent summation of the role of the CFO in the 21st corporations.

Clear and Concise.......2000-07-27

A very thorough and easy to read book. The experience of the authors is clearly evident. Highly recommend to anyone working in finance or corporations!

Partnering For Performance.......2000-07-22

PARTNERING FOR PERFORMANCE: Unleashing the Power of Finance in the 21st Century Organization, Martin G. Mand and William Whipple III, AMACOM, 2000.

As an attorney practicing corporate law in Delaware, I have been involved in many acquisitions, mergers, divestitures, etc., and have an understanding of the imperative for all companies and businesses to increase shareholder value. "Partnering for Performance" is the first book that I can recall reading which provides a lucid explanation of how a company can do so. The discussion is enlivened by numerous real world examples, as well as by an engaging dialog between the CEO and CFO of a hypothetical company.

The book goes on to sketch the wide range of activities that are conducted under the Finance umbrella, and offer suggestions as to how the value of these activities can be enhanced. There are two key thrusts the author recommends, which in many companies will require a significant culture change:

* Finance people must rethink their roles, and make the transition from functioning as analysts and controllers to "Shareholder Value Enabling."

* The business people and finance people in a company must work together as equal partners, otherwise known as "Partnering for Performance."

Drawing on their considerable experience as financial practitioners, the authors do not merely advocate such changes in principle. They also explain the obstacles to implementation, and offer solid suggestions for achieving the desired changes. The suggested game plan includes new roles and responsibilities for business people and finance people alike, demonstration projects such as overhauling the budget process, the integration of talented finance people into business teams, incentives for change, communications and training, and sample diagnostic tools (such as a corporate troubleshooting guide).

In sum, "Partnering for Performance" offers valuable insights about a low cost, low risk approach to increasing shareholder value. The book should be of considerable interest and value to a broad audience.

Book Description

One of the major challenges facing humankind is to provide an equitable standard of living for this and future generations: adequate food, water and energy, safe shelter and a healthy environment. Human-induced climate change, and increasing climate variability, as well as other global environmental issues such as land degradation and loss of biological diversity, threaten our ability to meet these basic human needs. It is undisputed that the last two decades have been the warmest this century, and likely to be the warmest for the last 1000 years, sea level is rising, rain and snowfall patterns are changing. Arctic sea ice is thinning and the frequency and intensity of El-Niño events appear to be increasing. In addition, the frequency of extreme events is rising and many parts of the world have recently suffered major heat-waves, floods and droughts leading to significant loss of life and economic costs. This requires the global community to give urgent attention to addressing key issues. The range of adaptation options for agriculture and forestry is generally increasing because of technological advances, thus reducing the vulnerability of these systems to climate change. However, some regions of the world, particularly developing countries, have limited access to these technologies. Agriculture and forestry are currently not optimally managed with respect to today’s natural climate variability. Decreasing the vulnerability of agriculture and forestry to increasing climatic variability will go a long way towards reducing the long-term vulnerability to climate change. This book represents a major step in assessing the science of climate variability and change, and their likely impacts on agriculture and forestry, with clear adaptation strategies required to reduce their vulnerability.

Book Description

In times of crisis and upheaval, our responses to stress become especially important. We have long heard about the fight or flight response, but renowned psychologist Shelley E. Taylor points out that fight or flight may be distinctly male, and that femalesboth humans and those of other speciesare hardwired to respond to stress differently. Their tend and befriend response is not only demonstrable but, as Taylor deftly explains in this eye-opening work, a key ingredient in human social life.Accessibly and engagingly, Taylor draws on biology, evolutionary psychology, physiology, and neuroscience to show how this tending process begins virtually at the moment of conception and literally crafts the biology of offspring through genes that rely on caregiving. Taylor also examines what drives women to seek each others company, and to tend to the young and the infirmacts that greatly benefit the group but often at great cost to the individual. In the tradition of works such as Daniel Golemans Emotional Intelligence and Steven Pinkers The Language Instinct, Taylors book will forever change the way we view ourselves, and will revolutionize our understanding of the role of women and nurturing in maintaining a stable society.

Customer Reviews:

Solid, scientific and eminently readable.......2003-10-28

Shelley Taylor has pulled off a coup, integrating scientific research with anecdotes from her own life and translating academic jargon into readable prose.

Men and women differ in the way they respond to stress. After a hard day's work, men want to be alone; women spend more time with the children. And it is this tending instinct that keeps a society together and makes individuals healthier.

Men and women differ in other ways that influence social interaction, says Taylor. Men's groups are more hierarchical, women's more informational. Married men live longer than single men, and women fare better during times of major crisis, such as the dissolution of the Communist bloc.

Another key theme: Nurturing is essential to well-being. A nurturant parent can override genes that would predispose a child toward aggression, depression or other disorders.

Much of what Taylor writes will not seem radically new, but cumulatively, chapter to chapter, she builds a case for recognizing the importance of nurturing and the style of interaction known as traditionally female.

Because Taylor is a psychologist, rather than sociologist, it's not surprising that she omits suggestions and implications. Many well-educated citizens, for instance, resent payments to welfare mothers, yet Taylor's findings emphasize that paying women to nurture their children can save millions of dollars by keeping those children out of the criminal justice system.

A sociologist could point out that in fact tending seems to be punished by society. "Nurturant" occupations, such as teaching and social work, typically pay less than more aggressive occupations, such as policing. In medicine, surgeons make the most while pediatricians and psychiatrists earn the least, on average.

Taylor also ignores outliers -- the non-nurturing female and the nurturing male. -- who occupy ambivalent roles in many societies. And while she says that friends will become the most important social relationship, as we move farther from families, I find that friendship bonds often are formed based on family status. A married but childless woman says, "People my age are having babies!" and I say, "Women my age are getting visits from the grandchildren!"

As an academic, Taylor herself anticipates comments on what's working and what's missing, and she has made an exceptionally strong contribution here. I am recommending this book to readers who want to learn more about stress as well as those who are fascinated by the eternal "how men differ from women" puzzle.

Mrs. Mankind.......2003-04-09

If you have ever wondered about how the other half of the sky copes with stress! If you have ever given any thought to the science of anthropology & how it has neglected the study of how women look at life. If you have had this needling question that "What if society is a lie?" & couldn't find any answers...then this book's for you, because Shelley E. Taylor asked a seemingly innocuous question which unearthed a fascinating idea!

THE TENDING INSTINCT is a powerful, transformative read. It deals with both old & new ideas about community, society, morality & how women & men think about their lives, how we interact & cope with stress.

Very good stuff! Well written, well-researched, informative & everso interesting. You will find yourself nodding & saying "Of course! I knew that!"

Redressing the balance.......2003-02-24

When Darwin wrote that man attains "a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than can woman - whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands," he was echoing what had been known to be true since the time of Aristotle. Taylor explains clearly and with compelling authority why this traditional viewpoint is so wide of the mark.

In marketing, the discipline in which I work it is quite evident that the world of consumer commerce revolves around the tending and befriending instincts of woman. Taylor grasps the fundamental principles of marketing better than all the commonly used textbooks. The reason is they all start out from the Darwinian perspective that humans are at core selfish. If the human brain was a computer that was programmed by evolution then the dog-eat-dog perspective might be tenable. However mammals tend their young - they have to, so the urge to nurture is a necessary part of human nature. Taylor makes it abundantly clear that it is a feminine trait - not masculine.

This book is excellent at explaining the connection between befriending and stress. It makes an excellent companion book to Hrdy's book "Mother Nature," an anthropologist, also from UCLA, that explains more details about lactation and mothering.

For woman readers this book should be inspiring and validating. For men... well it is sobering and in spots embarassing.

Thank you Shelley!

well-written discussion of hard-to-quantify material.......2002-08-12

The Tending Instinct is a seminal work, tying together ideas and data from difficult-to-quantify areas such as the psychology of stress, the emotional and physical aspects of the act of nuturing, and its [especially long-term] effects, and the biochemistry of stress response in humans and other primates, in both the long and short term. She also discusses tending in society as a whole -- that is, the nurturing infrastructure of a society, those elements of day-to-day life that make it easy to tend or be tended. Ease of access to trusted caregivers for working parents, or medical care, educational or mentorship opportunities, for example.

Taylor is synthesizing, spanning disciplines to draw together different strands of research in biochemistry, psychology, and other arenas, to propose they demonstrate human beings are overridingly a tending species, a nurturing species. Success, for h. sapiens, is existing in a strong network of support, giving and taking as one's needs require. Our most successful humans are those who inspire, those who persuade, those who build coalitions to achieve a good for the entire group.

Fascinating stuff.

Greatly informative & highly recommended!.......2002-06-04

Human beings are very complex individuals -- we are all driven to make a place in the world, yet we have different means to achieve this place...different behaviors that allow us to "survive."

In the book, "The Tending Instinct," the author shows how men and women differ in their responses in times of need. According to the author, women are born with a "nurturing" quality and tend to seek support from others during times of stress. During these times, women will also reach out to help others. This natural "tending instinct" that women have, is vital in a society and also beneficial to children who are exposed to this instinctive behavior at an early age.

MyParenTime.com highly recommends the book, "The Tending Instinct" -- this book is wonderful! It is clearly written and very interesting. Readers will find it greatly informative!

Book Description

Until recently, little account has been taken of sex differences in many research studies in psychiatry, medicine and physiology. Subjects of these research studies were mainly men, with most researchers using twice as many males as females in their studies. The need to take a sexually differentiated approach has led to the work described in this book, concerning detailed investigations into the correlations between functional asymmetry of the brain and sex. Sex Differences in Lateralization in the Animal Brain is the first monograph summarizing the sexual specificity of functional lateralization of the brain in animals and humans. It is based on original experimental data from animals and will be of interest to biologists, psychologists and neurobiologists.

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Essential for climbers

Accidents in North American Mountaineering 2004: Issue 57 (Accidents in North American Mountaineering)
American Alpine Club , and Alpine Club of Canada
Manufacturer: American Alpine Club
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Accidents in North American Mountaineering

Accidents in North American Mountaineering 2003 (Accidents in North American Mountaineering)

Accidents in North American Mountaineering 2006: Issue 59 (Accidents in North American Mountaineering)

Accidents in North American Mountaineering 2002: Number 2, Issue 55 (Accidents in North American Mountaineering)

Accidents in North American Mountaineering 2001: Issue 54 (Accidents in North American Mountaineering)

ASIN: 0930410963

Book Description

·Covers mountaineering accidents from Denali to Yosemite
·Tale-telling book relied on by climbers of all levels

This annual investigative handbook offers detailed reports on climbing accidents that occurred in the United and Canada in 2003. Produced jointly by the Safety Committees of the American Alpine Club and the Alpine Club of Canada, Accidents in North American Mountaineering details what happened and analyzes what went wrong in each situation to give mountaineers the opportunity to learn from others' mistakes.

Customer Reviews:

Essential for climbers.......2005-08-20

Every climber alive should read "Accidents" every year, because it's the best way to learn what you should not do. (For all other climbers, it's too late.) It also makes you aware how easy it is for one tiny slip to become dangerous or fatal, and when those slips are most likely to happen. Besides, it satisfies the morbid curiosity most of us have about other people's accidents at the same time that it serves an educational purpose. Whats not to love about a book like that?

Book Description

Fans of Amo, Amas, Amat, and More, Eugene Ehrlich's first collection of Latin words and phrases which still serve gracefully today, will delight in this second offering.

Here's a sampling:

audacter calumnaire semper aliquid haeret
ow-DAH-ktehr kah-luum-nih-AH-reh SEM-pehr AH-lih-kwid HI-ret talk about negative campaigning!

This advice, "slander boldly, something always sticks," goes way back in time. And, for the slanderer, has more often than not been proved effective. So, while our century has had its share of shameless lying, we certainly didn't invent the technique.

contra felicem vix deus vires habet
KAWN-trah feh-LEE-kem wiks DAY-uus WIHR-ehs HAH-bet don't bet against a crapshooter on a roll

Publilius Syrus telling us that "against a lucky man a god scarcely has power." Why buck the odds?

dea certe
DEH-ah KEHR-tay assuredly a goddess

A fine compliment to pay any woman of outstanding achievement in her lifetime.

Customer Reviews:

Before Buying "VENI, VIDI, VICI," Buy "AMO AMAS AMAT & MORE.".......2005-12-01

This is simply follow-up of "AMO AMAS AMAT & MORE." If you are not familar with Latin phrases, you would be disappointed with this book, since there are many phrases which are not covered in this book, and are covered in "AMO AMAS AMAT & MORE."

I like the Hardcover edition of "AMO AMAS AMAT & MORE" instead of paperback, as the paperback covers are simply easy to be damaged. You can find the hadcover edition of "AMO AMAS AMAT & MORE" @ Amazon Market Place ..... less than $1!!! for Good Used copies w/ Dustjacket. I paid only 69 cents + shipping for a very good used copy (hardcover w/dustjacket), while I paid $3.94 + shipping for a used paperback copy of "VENI, VIDI, VICI."

Excellent for students of Latin, or even just casual readers.......2003-03-20

I'm what you might call a collector of languages. I like to study languages of various sorts, not necessarily to become fluent in them, but simply to learn about them and think about them. Latin is certainly one of the more interesting languages to study, if not because one finds it fascinating in itself (which I do), then because it has influenced modern languages so much.

Veni, Vidi, Vici is a great book to open to a random page and read for a few minutes. And it's rather amusing to throw around Latin phrases such as "Mars gravior sub pace lacet" ("a more serious war lies hidden in peace") to see how people react.

Whether or not you are interested in actually learning Latin, this is a very interesting and fun book to read. If nothing else, it can get your mind thinking about just how pervasive Latin roots are in the language we speak today. If you are a fellow helluo librorum ("devourer of books"), you will definitely like Veni, Vidi, Vici.

Ad hoc.......2002-06-15

Barbarus hic ego sum, quia non intelligor ullis et rident stolidi verba Latina.

Latin Sayings; Great for Impressions.......2001-01-05

When I got this book, it was when I needed to say something in Latin to impress a few friends and teachers. This is a very good book, tells you almost every Latin saying you'll ever need as well as being ordered very nicely. The index is also very good and I think this book gives good detail without going too far. Great book and also a nice way to annoy some people when you don't like them.

A follow-up to "Amo, Amas, Amat...".......2000-12-11

This is a companion volume / continuation of his popular "Amo, Amas, Amat" book. As in the first book, the author includes hundreds of Latin mottoes, sayings, bon mots, and proverbs. They are ordered alphabetically, each followed by its pronunciation (in an informal but generally useful transcription), and general sense. Most of the entries have an explanatory sentence or two, giving the background, source, and literal translation. A fun book; helpful to the student of Latin, and entertaining and educational to the general reader. Well worth the money!

VENI, VIDI, VICI : CONQUER YOUR ENEMIES, IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS WITH EVERYDAY LATIN

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VENI, VIDI, VICI : CONQUER YOUR ENEMIES, IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS WITH EVERYDAY LATIN
Eugene H. Ehrlich
Manufacturer: HarperPerennial
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000LZAU7C

Book Description

Bold, stylized renderings (mostly silhouettes) of a nurse, microscope, ambulance, stethoscope, first aid kit, eye chart and more.

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