When most people think of corporate responsibility, they are focusing on a business's effect on and relationship to stakeholders. A Responsible Business sees stakeholders as full partners and meaningful instruments for the evolution of healthier communities and more successful businesses. —from the Introduction The Responsible Business offers a new and strategic approach to doing business that holistically integrates responsibility into all aspects of an organization, allowing for returns at every level, business and social. This book goes beyond the often well intentioned but limited attempts at sustainability to present a framework that allows organizations to bring responsibility into everything they do and re-imagine success. From innovation, product development, and production processes to business management, strategic planning, and shareholder development, the author shows how being a Responsible Business is a practical skill that can be applied day-to-day at every level of the business. No longer just the role of a department or the job of CSR professionals, successful responsibility and business efforts start at the business level, are then taken to the corporate level, and are finally applied throughout the organization. The Responsible Business outlines a framework for building a responsibility and consciousness infrastructure that applies a living systems view to the business and inspires all of its stakeholders, including shareholders. Throughout the book, illustrated by examples from technology to manufacturing, large and small, public and private, Sanford demonstrates how to make responsibility integral to all aspects of a business as an engine for innovation, profitability, and purpose. Praise for The Responsible Business «This is a very significant book. It makes it clear that businesses have a single boss with five interrelated aspects. The stories are among the crispest, most evocative case histories I have seen. The book is for any corporate leader trying to do the impossible: create a business that recreates the world.» —Art Kleiner, editor-in-chief, strategy + business, and author, The Age of Heretics «Carol Sanford offers us a proven, practical, and systems-based approach that integrates five stakeholder groups into a business system working as an integral whole. Essential reading for leaders wanting a system framework for sustainability and business success!» —Otto Scharmer, MIT Sloan senior lecturer; author, Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges; and coauthor, Presence «The Responsible Business challenges many assumptions corporate leaders, investment advisors, and sustainability experts have long taken for granted. It provides a road map that can help innovative businesses think about how to be truly transformational.» —Sam Ford, Fast Company expert blogger and director, Peppercom «The powerful concepts in The Responsible Business have changed the process of sustainable development and how communities truly thrive. Indeed, these proven approaches will be the roadmap to truly achieve the deepest level of living communities.» —Bill Reed, founding member of LEED System and coauthor, The Integrative Design Guide to Green Building «Critical for re-imagining the future of business. Rarely a day goes by that I do not call on this way of thinking and looking at the world. It is useful for taking on the big business decisions that so many of us face every day.» —Chad Holliday, chairman, Bank of America
From a leading trading systems developer, how to make profitable trades when there are no obvious trends How does a trader find alpha when markets make no sense, when price shocks cause diversification to fail, and when it seems impossible to hedge? What strategies should traders, long conditioned to trend trading, deploy? In Alpha Trading: Profitable Strategies That Remove Directional Risk, author Perry Kaufman presents strategies and systems for profitably trading in directionless markets and in those experiencing constant price shocks. The book Details how to exploit new highs and lows Describes how to hedge primary risk components, find robustness, and craft a diversification program Other titles by Kaufman: New Trading Systems and Methods, 4th Edition and A Short Course in Technical Trading, both by Wiley Given Kaufman's 30 years of experience trading in almost every kind of market, his Alpha Trading will be a welcome addition to the trading literature of professional and serious individual traders for years to come.
An up-to-date look at the latest innovations in mortgage-backed securities Since the last edition of Mortgage-Backed Securities was published over three years ago, much has changed in the structured credit market. Frank Fabozzi, Anand Bhattacharya, and William Berliner all have many years of experience working in the fixed-income securitization markets, and have witnessed many cycles of change in the mortgage and MBS sectors. And now, with the Second Edition of Mortgage-Backed Securities, they share their knowledge on many of the products and structuring innovations that have taken place since the financial crisis and fiscal reform. Written in a straightforward and accessible style, and containing numerous illustrations, this timely guide skillfully addresses the investment characteristics, creation, and analysis of mortgage-backed securities. Each chapter contains cutting-edge concepts that you'll need to understand in order to thrive within this arena. Discusses the dynamic interaction between the mortgage industry, home prices, and credit performance Addresses revised valuation techniques in which all non-agency MBS must be treated as credit pieces Examines the shift in this marketplace since the crisis and the impact on industry and investors Filled with in-depth insights and expert advice, Mortgage-Backed Securities, Second Edition offers you a realistic assessment of this field and outlines the products, structures, and analytical techniques you need to know about in this evolving arena.
Embrace strategies for improving your business and reaching your organization's goals «I wholeheartedly agree with Patrick Stroh: Good leaders understand strategy and good strategists need to be good leaders. Make this book a strategic tool for improving your business strategy.» – Harvey Mackay, author of the #1 New York Times bestsellerSwim With The Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive In today's fast-moving and competitive business environment, strong leadership, insightful strategy, and effective innovation are critical links to staying ahead of your competition. Getting your business house in order can often be complicated, but does it really have to be? How do you take MBA 101 lessons, great models, and exceptional concepts and put them into play in the real world? Business Strategy: Plan, Execute, Win! strives to answers these questions in an educational and entertaining format. Working as a Fortune 20 practitioner with C-level executives, author Patrick Stroh has a keen understanding of the role played by current day strategists. With 5 chapters following the format of «All I Ever Needed to Learn About Business Strategy I Learned…» At the Movies, On the Farm, On Shark Tank, On Hell's Kitchen, and From the Bible, readers will gain valuable strategic insight regardless of industry, business maturity, or current business turbulence and how to apply these insights based on the factors impacting their own business. Each chapter ends with a One Chapter Conclusion, Two Gold Nuggets the reader is to write down and Three Additional Resources/Tools for more information, offering a practical roadmap to simplifying your success.
This practical guide reveals the nine major “fatigue factors” that can block the path to innovation success, along with solutions to energize innovation. Original advances in innovation practice and new case studies are applied to guide inventors, entrepreneurs, companies, universities, and even policy makers in conquering innovation fatigue. Cost-effective solutions include guidance on intellectual assets, dealing with disruptive innovation, and driving innovation using the “Horn of Innovation” and “Circuit of Innovation” models. A surprising view of DaVinci as an engine of open innovation is presented. Throughout the book, a unique aspect is exploring the journey of innovators, including corporate employees and entrepreneurs, at the often-overlooked personal level using the metaphor of immigrants in a strange land to identify barriers and solutions.
Learn from the concepts, capabilities, processes, and behaviors that aligned around one strategy with the hard-won, first-person wisdom found in One Strategy. Challenging traditional views of strategy and operational execution, this book-written by Microsoft executive Steven Sinofsky with Harvard Business School professor Marco Iansiti-describes how you can drive innovation by connecting the potential of strategic opportunities to the impact of operational execution. Lessons from the unique combination of real-world experience managing a large scale organization with academic research in strategy and innovation Reveals what it takes to align a complex organization around one strategy, manage its execution, and reach for «strategic integrity» Written by Microsoft executive Steven Sinofsky with Harvard Business School professor Marco Iansiti-a combined forty years of management and research experience A unique perspective on strategy development, alignment, and execution Drawn from Sinofsky's internal Microsoft blog where he communicated some of the management processes the team put to work while developing a 4,000 person, multi-year project-Microsoft Windows 7-One Strategy shares the hard-won insights you can use to successfully make the leap from strategy to execution.
As businesses continue to expand globally into new and emerging markets, bribery and corruption risks have increased exponentially. Bribery and Corruption offers a comprehensive look at this growing problem, and at the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and other international anti-bribery and corruption conventions. Presenting hypothetical examples of situations companies will face, along with practical solutions, the book offers detailed global guidance on a region and country-specific basis. The FCPA prohibits US companies and their subsidiaries from bribing foreign officials, either directly or indirectly through intermediaries, for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business. It also requires companies to keep accurate records of all business transactions and maintain an effective system of internal accounting controls. Internationally, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD's) anti-bribery convention has been adopted by 38 countries and creates legally binding standards related to bribery of foreign public officials. Written by renowned accounting fraud experts Richard A. Sibery and Brian P. Loughman, and providing an introduction and overview of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and international bribery laws, Bribery and Corruption considers: How to conduct FCPA risk assessments and investigations How to consider FCPA specific financial controls How to implement an FCPA compliance program and how to measure FCPA compliance The risk of bribery and corruption continues to be an area of concern for companies around the world, but armed with Bribery and Corruption, it is easier than ever to understand the challenges that exist and how to deal with them.
Tips, techniques, and trends on harnessing dashboard technology to optimize business performance In Performance Dashboards, Second Edition, author Wayne Eckerson explains what dashboards are, where they can be used, and why they are important to measuring and managing performance. As Director of Research for The Data Warehousing Institute, a worldwide association of business intelligence professionals, Eckerson interviewed dozens of organizations that have built various types of performance dashboards in different industries and lines of business. Their practical insights explore how you can effectively turbo-charge performance–management initiatives with dashboard technology. Includes all-new case studies, industry research, news chapters on «Architecting Performance Dashboards» and «Launching and Managing the Project» and updated information on designing KPIs, designing dashboard displays, integrating dashboards, and types of dashboards. Provides a solid foundation for understanding performance dashboards, business intelligence, and performance management Addresses the next generation of performance dashboards, such as Mashboards and Visual Discovery tools, and including new techniques for designing dashboards and developing key performance indicators Offers guidance on how to incorporate predictive analytics, what-if modeling, collaboration, and advanced visualization techniques This updated book, which is 75% rewritten, provides a foundation for understanding performance dashboards, business intelligence, and performance management to optimize performance and accelerate results.
Recommended Reading by Warren Buffet in his March 2013 Letter to Shareholders How speculation has come to dominate investment—a hard-hitting look from the creator of the first index fund. Over the course of his sixty-year career in the mutual fund industry, Vanguard Group founder John C. Bogle has witnessed a massive shift in the culture of the financial sector. The prudent, value-adding culture of long-term investment has been crowded out by an aggressive, value-destroying culture of short-term speculation. Mr. Bogle has not been merely an eye-witness to these changes, but one of the financial sector’s most active participants. In The Clash of the Cultures, he urges a return to the common sense principles of long-term investing. Provocative and refreshingly candid, this book discusses Mr. Bogle's views on the changing culture in the mutual fund industry, how speculation has invaded our national retirement system, the failure of our institutional money managers to effectively participate in corporate governance, and the need for a federal standard of fiduciary duty. Mr. Bogle recounts the history of the index mutual fund, how he created it, and how exchange-traded index funds have altered its original concept of long-term investing. He also presents a first-hand history of Wellington Fund, a real-world case study on the success of investment and the failure of speculation. The book concludes with ten simple rules that will help investors meet their financial goals. Here, he presents a common sense strategy that «may not be the best strategy ever devised. But the number of strategies that are worse is infinite.» The Clash of the Cultures: Investment vs. Speculation completes the trilogy of best-selling books, beginning with Bogle on Investing: The First 50 Years (2001) and Don't Count on It! (2011)
Invaluable guidance for complete integration of sustainability into reporting and performance management systems Global businesses are under close scrutiny from lawmakers, regulators, and their diverse stakeholders to focus on sustainability and accept responsibility for their multiple bottom line performance. Business Sustainability and Accountability examines business sustainability and accountability reporting and their integration into strategy, governance, risk assessment, performance management and the reporting process. This book also highlights how people, business and resources collaborate in a business sustainability and accountability model. Looks at business sustainability and accountability reporting and assurance and their incorporation into the reporting process Focuses on how the business sustainability and accountability model are impacted by the collaboration of people, business, and resources Presents laws, rules, regulations, standards and best practices relevant to business sustainability performance, reporting and assurance Organizations worldwide recognize the importance of all five EGSEE dimensions of sustainability performance and accountability reporting. However, how to actually assess sustainability risk, implement sustainability reporting, and obtain sustainability assurance remain a major challenge and best practices are evolving. Straightforward and comprehensive Business Sustainability and Accountability hits on all of the hottest topics around sustainability including multiple bottom line (EGSEE) performance and reporting, related financial and non-financial key performance indicators (KPIs), business social responsibility and environmental reporting.