Books published by Business Expert Press

This book explores project management (PM) from a musical perspective. Music is a significant example of a nontraditional arena where PM is vital, yet it is only beginning to be seen as a vital tool. Therefore, this book will give an in depth and preeminent look at the PM processes and knowledge areas that are of utmost importance in many fields that PM is not used for currently. Seeking to understand projects in musical ways, synergies between music and the wider project management profession are many and varied. Written and developed by international experts in the project management and music professions, this book represents a unique and insightful approach to the study of the subject. The authors take a fresh look at practical models of musical thinking capable of application at every scale of project management, and in every possible project management environment. If you want to make your projects more musical, or simply have an interest exploring project management in music, this is the book for you!

Regression analysis can be used to establish causal relationships between factors and the response variable. However, in order to be able to do so, economic theory must be used to provide the causal relationship and then regression analysis is applied to verify the validity of the theory. Regression analysis is the most commonly used analytical tool and can be understood without complex mathematics. This book simplifies and demystifies regression analysis. All the examples are from economics and in almost all the cases, real data is used to show the application of the method. By limiting the use of mathematical symbols, the author enables a logical reader to learn regression, without shortchanging the subject. The book is targeted to all business students and executives who need to understand the concept of regression for practical and professional purposes.

The book contends that, while several factors can be blamed for the financial crisis of 2007, a failure of regulation was the most important one. The changes to bank regulation that have happened since are not good enough to make the banking system a great deal safer than before We need to look at radical, out-of-the-box solutions if another major financial upheaval is to be prevented.

When we discuss accelerating top line growth and maximizing profitability, we often consider hiring more people, cutting expenses, or raising prices. What we should be doing is looking at different ways to effectively utilize what we already have. Rather than hiring new people, we need to improve the performance of our current employees. As an alternative to cutting costs, we need better invest the money we already spend. Instead of raising prices, identify ideal customers to market and sell to. This book will discuss strategies on how to do all of these things and more. The author provides 25 ways to accelerate revenue growth and increase profitability immediately, without making any new financial investments. That is the Unified Theory of Profitability. It means looking at the organization and finding ways to better leverage what already exists and focusing on the activities or changes that will provide optimal results. Readers will become experts on executing on these strategies. It can be done! Find the solutions that work, commit to implementing them and results will flourish.

Marketing is arguably amidst a paradigm shift. With the emerging value co-creation perspective, a single transaction can blossom to a process in which the customer and the marketer collaborate (rather than negotiate) for best total value through products, features, delivery terms, maintenance, and financing options for both B2B as well as B2C markets. Marketers increasingly need to develop and maintain long-term, win-win relationships that extend beyond customers, such as those with distributors, dealers, suppliers, competitors and other external influencers. Business executives, marketing students, and those who are interested in learning about the transformative power of relationship marketing and CRM analytics in the business enterprise would highly benefit from reading this book.

Producing Written and Oral Business Reports: Formatting, Illustrating, and Presenting emphasizes cost-effective methods for producing reports that will do what you want them to do. Numerous examples, helpful illustrations, concise writing style, and convenient checklists let you acquire vital information rapidly. Producing Written and Oral Business Reports is a how-to guide for report creation throughout your career!

The Patient Paradigm Shifts tells readers everything successful businesses need to know about the powerful new healthcare consumer. The dynamics of healthcare are shifting the patient paradigm in dramatic ways. The former patient is now both a consumer and a customer. The mantra of this new consumer is "e;convenient, fast, simple, and high value."e; Their expectations for healthcare are similar to what they experience in other industries such as transportation, banking, short-stay rental housing, retail shopping online, same-day deliveries, and more. Smart mobile devices enable the customer to conduct transactions at any place and at any time, and without waiting in line. Healthcare providers need to offer customer service experiences similar to Apple, Amazon, Nordstrom, and other benchmark companies in order to stay competitive. The mindset of the new patient-turned-consumer has fundamentally shifted and there is no looking back. Anyone connected to healthcare needs to learn the profiles of the new consumer, better understand their behaviors, and comprehend their expectations as customers who have a choice. The Patient Paradigm Shifts tells you everything a successful business needs to know about the powerful new healthcare consumer.

Financial statements serve as a report card for a business through which managers and entrepreneurs can know their exact financial positions. These financial statements are prepared only through financial accounting. The main purpose of financial accounting is to help entrepreneurs exercise control over their business activities by controlling total costs incurred so that they are able to earn higher profits. So, in order to understand where exactly the business stands financially, knowledge of financial accounting is imperative. What is financial accounting? Why do I need to understand it? How will it help me in my business? Why is it important to me? Or Is it important to me? These are some of the questions that surface in the minds of young and aspiring entrepreneurs when they start their business or are on the verge of starting one. This book aims to answer them in the most practical and comprehensible manner possible so that accounting is no longer a nightmare for them.

Presents the viewpoints of thought leaders in the contemporary education landscape. With insights from academic administrators and experts from around the world, this book is poised to be the official 'how to guide' for success in the management of educational institutions.

This second edition features an overall updating of content, statistics, and references, especially in the sections on technology. New real-world cases provide opportunities for readers to apply principles covered in the book in developing organizational solutions.

Nearly seven decades ago, six countries in Western Europe (Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands) decided to take economic cooperation to the next level. The vision of the EU founding states, epitomized by the Schuman Declaration in 1950, was to tie their economies so closely together that war would become impossible. Robert Schuman, author of the plan, believed Europe could not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It would have to be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity. The countries within the OEuropean CommunityO benefited enormously from free trade and common economic policies, in particular structural funds designed to foster convergence by funding infrastructure and investments in poorer regions. This book examines how similar transitions and integration into the European Union are experienced in individual central and eastern European states through the use of country scans in the regional blocks of CEE, SEE, and CIS.

Rapid technology change is impacting organizations large and small. Mobile and Cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), and "e;Big Data"e; are driving forces in organizational digital transformation. Decision support and analytics are available to many people in a business or organization. Business professionals need to learn about and understand computerized decision support for organizations to succeed. This text is targeted to busy managers and students who need to grasp the basics of computerized decision support, including: What is analytics? What is a decision support system? What is "e;Big Data"e;? What are "e;Big Data"e; business use cases? Overall, it addresses 61 fundamental questions. In a short period of time, readers can "e;get up to speed"e; on decision support, analytics, and business intelligence. The book then provides a quick reference to important recurring questions.

Statistics is the branch of mathematics that deals with real life problems. As such, it is an essential tool for economists. Unfortunately, the way the concept is introduced to students is not compatible with the way economists think and learn. The problem is worsened by the use of mathematical jargon and complex derivations. However, as this book demonstrates, neither is necessary. The book is written in simple English with minimal use of symbols, mostly for the sake of brevity and to make reading literature more meaningful. The second edition also incorporates Stata software for use by more technically oriented readers who have access to sophisticated software. The objective of this book is to address the fundamentals of statistical analysis in a simple and easy-to-comprehend way. Instead of covering numerous topics, the book covers interrelated subjects that are necessary for the comprehension of the presented topics. The second edition has augmented the explanations in the first to clarify the subjects even more. The examples are based on economic theory utilizing actual data. The hope is that the use of theory will prove useful in relating the subject to actual empirical applications and help with research.

What do we need to change in order to develop a new generation of business leaders who connect profits with purpose, who see in social entrepreneurship and innovation the key opportunity for addressing our planetary challenges? The answer lies in the contents we select to teach, in the values we invite to explore and develop, and in the methods we use. In the era of 24/7 global access to information from our mobile gadgets, many institutions of higher education are still sitting students in rows or amphitheaters, measuring success via tests and evaluations, with instructors lecturing what students should learn. And instructors feel the challenge of competing with sleepy audiences that divide their attention between their cell phones and the speaker. Stop teaching, the author says, inviting instructors in management schools and higher education to adopt some proven learning principles that can reengage students, unleash their potentials, and foster them to shape the world they want to live in. And have fun doing it. Through adult learning research, guides, activities, and stories from pioneering learning facilitators in education and corporate training, Rimanoczy brings a long-needed revamp to educational institutions that want to be part of responsible management education.

Companies today routinely utilize computer models to help make decisions. These models take many forms, from simple spreadsheets to sophisticated computer simulations. The chief underlying reason for constructing a model is to assess the impact of a decision on business performance. Based on that assessment, model users will make recommendations and take actions. The tacit assumption is that the model captures the relevant factors at a sufficient level of detail to make accurate projections. The validity of the model thus depends on a host of judgments that the model builder makes in constructing the model-some transparent, others implicit. These judgments are what make building a computer model more of an art than a science. This book is about constructing and using computer models to help decision makers in the business world make more informed decisions. It is intended to provide useful case studies for individuals who are interested in building effective decision models-ones that will get used to drive important business decisions. The goal is to demonstrate how to build effective models quickly and inexpensively, using software that is widely available and often free. It is a practical guide, informed by the author's experience building such models for an array of businesses in diverse industries.

The Customer Experience is the sensory, cognitive, emotional, social and behavioral dimensions of all activities that connect the customer and the organization over time across touch points and channels. It encompasses all activities involving the customer where the organization is the focal object, including pre-purchase activities (such as exposure to a website ad), and purchase, consumption, and engagement behaviors (blogging, sharing photos). This book analyzes the challenges of creating excellent customer experiences, including the management of technology and new media. It describes how customers co-produce and co-create their experiences, and how these activities influence business revenues and costs. The book takes a deep dive into the psychology of customers, revealing the conceptual building blocks of customer experiences and how they build relationships over time. These ideas provide a business perspective on how to manage relationships with customers to generate cash flows and profitability, including the role of pricing.

According to the economic theory of the firm, businesses strive to determine the single price that maximizes profits. In fact, many firms can extract more revenue and increase profits with pricing strategies that are far more innovative than the single-price strategy. However, in the world of pricing, there is no Oone size fits allO strategy. Some pricing strategies are better suited to some situations than others. Sam's Club, owned by Walmart Stores, Inc., for example, charge a membership fee for the right to purchase the store's inventory whereas Walmart Supercenters do not. If Suddenlink Communications bundles Internet, cable, and phone service to increase profits, why does it also sell the same items separately? Is it true that passengers seated next to each other on the same flight might pay dramatically different fares? Inside you'll learn how various pricing strategies, including price discrimination, two-part tariffs, bundling, peak-load pricing, and dynamic pricing need specific and necessary ingredients in order to succeed. The authors show you how to use microeconomic theory to determine which pricing strategies will succeed, and under what conditions.

Financial ratios are an important technique of the financial analysis of a business organization. Effective financial management is the key to running a financially successful business. Ratio analysis is critical for helping you understand financial statements, for identifying trends over time, and for measuring the overall financial health of your business. Lenders and potential investors often rely on ratio analysis for making lending and investing decisions. This book aims to not only develop an understanding of the concepts of financial ratios but also to provide the students a practical insight into the application of financial ratios for decision making and control. It analyzes the financial statements of corporate enterprises in India in diverse sectors with the help of financial ratios in order to facilitate the learning process.

Contemporary management studies usually focus on positive and desirable solutions that increase the organizational effectiveness and performance. As a result, graduates of higher business schools are totally unaware of the risk associated with management misconduct that often results in corrupt scandals, erosion of public trust to their organizations, or even the collapse of profitable corporations. The last decade, in fact, has been abundant in numerous examples of corruption scandals in modern organizations and instances of management misconduct that have eroded public faith (such as Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Adelphia, Arthur Andersen, and Parmalat). Due to repeated misconducts and a highly active dark side, scholars started paying more attention to the so-called Odark sideO of organizations, as something no longer exceptional to organizational life. This book attempts to shed light on the reality of challenges for business practices and higher education management that stem from misconduct occurring in various aspects of business and educational environment.

Communication skills are a competitive advantage for today's finance professionals. Savvy professionals know that employers want and need employees with excellent relationship building, writing, and presentation skills. The Essential Guide to Business Communication for Finance Professionals asks its readers to adopt the "e;communicate or die"e; philosophy in their approach to their careers. Two business professors with years of experience in finance and communication offer advice and tips for approaching some of the most common business communication situations faced by today's finance professionals. Readers will walk away from this book with tools to manage their professional image and reputation.

The book is divided into three parts - (1) prerequisite to regression analysis followed by a discussion on simple regression, (2) multiple regression analysis with applications, and (3) regression and modeling including the second order models, nonlinear regression, and interaction models in regressions. All these sections provide examples with complete computer analysis and instructions commonly used in modeling and analyzing these problems. The book deals with detailed analysis and interpretation of computer results. This will help readers to appreciate the power of computer in applying regression models. The readers will find that the understanding of computer results is critical to implementing regression and modeling in real world situation. The book is written for juniors, seniors and graduate students in business, MBAs, professional MBAs, and working people in business and industry. Managers, practitioners, professionals, quality professionals, quality engineers, and anyone involved in data analysis, business analytics, and quality and six sigma will find the book to be a valuable resource.

This book is intended to provide project management office (PMO) executives' practical information to promote enterprise Agile for business value compatibility within their organization. The primary benefit of this book is to promote a sense of common purpose and collaboration between the project delivery and the organization. Agile project delivery methods are adaptable to the emergence of unknown requirements identified in the later part of the project delivery lifecycle. The key success factor is direct business participation and collaboration to ensure that a business focus determines the output. Agile promotes innovation and creates synergies through a business focus viewing technology deployments as a catalyst for change rather than the final objective. Technology investments implemented through Agile processes result in improved market leadership, organizational alignment, and resource efficiency delivering competitive advantage.

Preventing Litigation, for the first time, explains how to build an early warning system to identify the risk of litigation before the damage is done, and proves that there is big value in less litigation. This book puts everyone where they should be: at the top of the cliff. The authors are subject matter experts, one in litigation, the other in computer science, and each has more than four decades of training and experience in their respective fields. Together, they present a way forward to a transformative revolution for the slow-moving world of law for the benefit of the fast-paced environment of the business world. Any business adopting the teachings of this pioneering, game-changing book will have a competitive advantage.

Many books have been written about the practice of peacemaking, and few, if any, contribute to the non-violent, spiritual side of this ancient science, discipline, practice and art form. This book speaks to that lack and explores the spiritual, non-violent element in peacemaking as it applies to appropriate dispute resolution and mediating family law disputes. This book is intended for the professional peacemaker, mediator, lawyer, law student, conciliator, and dispute neutral. People wishing to improve their own communication skills and strengthen their primary relationships will profit greatly from this book. Those in the family law field, will find much benefit from the peacemaking processes, family counseling psychology, Eastern philosophy and Yoga, collected wisdom, experience and practice pointers presented in Light on Peacemaking.

Making deals globally is a fact of life in modern business. To successfully conduct deals abroad, executives like you need skills to negotiate with counterparts who have different backgrounds and experiences. This book gives you and other international executives the savvy you need to negotiate with finesse and ease. It offers valuable insights into the fine points of negotiating and guidelines on delicate issues that can influence a promising deal. The book is divided into five parts: Global business negotiations framework; the role of culture in negotiations and on choosing an appropriate negotiation style; the negotiation process; negotiation tools, such as communication skills and the role of power in negotiations; and miscellaneous topics such as negotiating on the Internet, gender issue in global negotiations, how small firms can effectively negotiate with large firms, negotiating intangibles, managing negotiating teams, developing an organizational negotiation capability and negotiating via interpreters. Clear and comprehensive, the authors outline the hallmarks of strengthening and maintaining a strong bargaining position for negotiating deals even under adverse conditions.

This book begins an adventure wherein the author outlines for us the particular shape our minds impose on that journey; he takes as his analytic, the human sensorium: the panoply of sensory channels (sight, hearing, touch, etc.) we use to grasp our world. His primary insight is that our sensorium does not, beyond immediate social groups, present smooth, mirror-like vistas of our socially networked world. Contrariwise, he shows that this uniquely human array of channels presents a mosaic of disparate inputs with subtle fissures and sutures between and among them. That more sophisticated view of our sensory apparatus allows him to describe with great practicality, the fissured, segmented architectures we inject into our enterprises and, above all, our markets. These insights particularly illuminate the revolution reshaping our understanding of the basic couplet of value exchange driving markets: Buying and selling. In this revolution a more telling focus on services as catalysts of value exchange is supplanting the traditional terms: goods and product, as the architecture of that very human sensorium broached above modulates value exchange across the chain of institutional need in markets. Armed with this novel set of insights, we come away with a far better sense of what is happening Ooverhead,O as we work out our missions and careers amid our socially constructed edifices: enterprises, institutions, and their battlegrounds, our markets.

Employers consider communication as one of the most critical skills for workers today. Writing for the Workplace: Business Communication for Professionals is an easy-to-follow guide that provides strategies for effective professional communication. Written to address the needs of both students entering the workforce and business professionals looking to improve their written communication, the book offers guides to compose typical workplace documents, from effective e-mails and convincing reports to winning presentations and engaging resumes. This concise book offers busy readers concrete strategies to improve their workplace writing.

The Language of Success provides pragmatic and practical advice on how to harness the power of language in business and in life. Influencing for results, creating a culture of intelligent inquiry, utilizing critical questioning skills, and managing critical situations are all integral to success in any setting. The concepts, skills, and techniques to achieve results are applicable whether in the office or with family or friends. In this day and age of intense focus on engagement, commitment, and most significantly, results achieved, the readers will benefit by learning thought-provoking key principles, applicable practices, and techniques to leverage and ensure success with the language they use every day.

Of those in management education who debates whether business ethics should be taught as a stand-alone course or in an embedded manner, most recommend combining both approaches for optimal results. This book provides unique insights into the experience of seasoned academics who embed business ethics in teaching management theory and practice. Its multidisciplinary approach enriches its content, since the insights of our colleagues from within their fields are invaluable. It therefore complements other business textbooks. After general themes (curriculum integration, adult learning, learner commitment, and generation Y classrooms), this volume covers ethics and responsibility in people management, team building, change management; operations management, business law, and digital marketing communications.The book provides a platform to share experiences of teaching ethical profitability. It contributes to resolving concerns experienced when faculty wish to incorporate ethics into their teaching but feel they lack preparation or ideas on how to do it. The chapters describe each discipline briefly, raise the typical ethical issues therein, and suggest teaching strategies and exercises or projects. The 'developing versus developed country perspectives' sections may interest schools with high student diversity. The book also meets in-company training needs for attaining and sustaining an ethical culture.

Leaders in the 21st-century must learn to solve problems and motivate followers with a combination of creativity, leadership, and effective change. In The New Leader: Harnessing Creativity to Promote Change, readers will develop an understanding of the relationship between creativity, leadership, and change. They will analyze the creative process, learn how to develop a creative culture, and understand effective leadership styles that promote creativity and change. They will explore training to enhance creativity and leadership, and develop practical ways to create an environment that encourages positive growth. The book offers simple techniques to enhance creativity and leadership immediately, while also pointing to long-term changes that will bring even more success. Stories, reflection questions, and theories are intertwined to help the reader develop sound strategies to lead with enhanced creativity. The book will help an overwhelmed leader learn engaging tools to lead change, while encouraging disengaged leaders to try new methods to revive their leadership and accomplish a motivating vision. In the end, leaders will become more effective, engaging, and transformational by adopting the ideas in the book. They will serve as a model for creativity, create spaces that enhance creative growth, and encourage cultures where employees are free to create positive changes for their organizations.