Actor and Strategy Models


Book Description

A practical how-to guide for more effective planningthrough multi-actor modelling Careful planning is the cornerstone of a successful initiative, and any plan, policy, or business strategy can only be successful if it has the support of different actors. These actors may beactively pursuing their own agendas, so the plan must not only offer an optimal solution to theproblem, but must also fit the needs and abilities of the actors involved. Actor and Strategy Models: Practical Applications and Step-wise Approaches provides a primer on multi-actormodelling, based on the fundamental premise that actor strategies are explained by investigatingwhat actors can do, think, and want to achieve. Covering a variety of models with detailed background and case examples, this book focuses on practical application. Step-by-step instructions for each approach provide immediately actionable insight, while a general framework for actor and strategy modelling allows the reader to tailor any approach as needed to optimize results in terms of situation-specific planning. Oriented toward real-world strategy, this helpful resource: Provides models that shed light on the multi-actor dimensions of planning, using a variety of analytical approaches Includes literature, theoretical underpinnings, and applications for each method covered Clarifies the similarities, differences, and suitable applications between various actor modelling approaches Provides a step-wise framework for actor and strategy modelling Offers guidance for the identification, structuring, and measuring of values and perceptions Examines the challenges involved in analyzing actors and strategies Even before planning begins, an endeavor's success depends upon a clear understanding of the various actors involved in the planning and implementation stages. From game theory and argumentative analysis, through social network analysis, cognitive mapping, and beyond,Actor and Strategy Models provides valuable insight for more effective planning.




Actor and Strategy Models


Book Description

A practical how-to guide for more effective planningthrough multi-actor modelling Careful planning is the cornerstone of a successful initiative, and any plan, policy, or business strategy can only be successful if it has the support of different actors. These actors may beactively pursuing their own agendas, so the plan must not only offer an optimal solution to theproblem, but must also fit the needs and abilities of the actors involved. Actor and Strategy Models: Practical Applications and Step-wise Approaches provides a primer on multi-actormodelling, based on the fundamental premise that actor strategies are explained by investigatingwhat actors can do, think, and want to achieve. Covering a variety of models with detailed background and case examples, this book focuses on practical application. Step-by-step instructions for each approach provide immediately actionable insight, while a general framework for actor and strategy modelling allows the reader to tailor any approach as needed to optimize results in terms of situation-specific planning. Oriented toward real-world strategy, this helpful resource: Provides models that shed light on the multi-actor dimensions of planning, using a variety of analytical approaches Includes literature, theoretical underpinnings, and applications for each method covered Clarifies the similarities, differences, and suitable applications between various actor modelling approaches Provides a step-wise framework for actor and strategy modelling Offers guidance for the identification, structuring, and measuring of values and perceptions Examines the challenges involved in analyzing actors and strategies Even before planning begins, an endeavor's success depends upon a clear understanding of the various actors involved in the planning and implementation stages. From game theory and argumentative analysis, through social network analysis, cognitive mapping, and beyond,Actor and Strategy Models provides valuable insight for more effective planning.




Actor and Strategy Models


Book Description

A practical how-to guide for more effective planningthrough multi-actor modelling Careful planning is the cornerstone of a successful initiative, and any plan, policy, or business strategy can only be successful if it has the support of different actors. These actors may beactively pursuing their own agendas, so the plan must not only offer an optimal solution to theproblem, but must also fit the needs and abilities of the actors involved. Actor and Strategy Models: Practical Applications and Step-wise Approaches provides a primer on multi-actormodelling, based on the fundamental premise that actor strategies are explained by investigatingwhat actors can do, think, and want to achieve. Covering a variety of models with detailed background and case examples, this book focuses on practical application. Step-by-step instructions for each approach provide immediately actionable insight, while a general framework for actor and strategy modelling allows the reader to tailor any approach as needed to optimize results in terms of situation-specific planning. Oriented toward real-world strategy, this helpful resource: Provides models that shed light on the multi-actor dimensions of planning, using a variety of analytical approaches Includes literature, theoretical underpinnings, and applications for each method covered Clarifies the similarities, differences, and suitable applications between various actor modelling approaches Provides a step-wise framework for actor and strategy modelling Offers guidance for the identification, structuring, and measuring of values and perceptions Examines the challenges involved in analyzing actors and strategies Even before planning begins, an endeavor's success depends upon a clear understanding of the various actors involved in the planning and implementation stages. From game theory and argumentative analysis, through social network analysis, cognitive mapping, and beyond,Actor and Strategy Models provides valuable insight for more effective planning.




The Oxford Handbook of Political Networks


Book Description

Politics is intuitively about relationships, but until recently the network perspective has not been a dominant part of the methodological paradigm that political scientists use to study politics. This volume is a foundational statement about networks in the study of politics.




Great Powers and International Hierarchy


Book Description

Hierarchical relationships—rules that structure both international and domestic politics—are pervasive. Yet we know little about how these relationships are constructed, maintained, and dismantled. This book fills this lacuna through a two-pronged research approach: first, it discusses how great power negotiations over international political settlements both respond to domestic politics within weak states and structure the specific forms that hierarchy takes. Second, it deduces three sets of hypotheses about hierarchy maintenance, construction, and collapse during the post-war era. By offering a coherent theoretical model of hierarchical politics within weaker states, the author is able to answer a number of important questions, including: Why does the United States often ally with autocratic states even though its most enduring relationships are with democracies? Why do autocratic hierarchical relationships require interstate coercion? Why do some hierarchies end violently and others peacefully? Why does hierarchical competition sometimes lead to interstate conflict and sometimes to civil conflict?




Understanding Foreign Policy Decision Making


Book Description

Understanding Foreign Policy Decision Making presents a psychological approach to foreign policy decision making. This approach focuses on the decision process, dynamics, and outcome. The book includes a wealth of extended real-world case studies and examples that are woven into the text. The cases and examples, which are written in an accessible style, include decisions made by leaders of the United States, Israel, New Zealand, Cuba, Iceland, United Kingdom, and others. In addition to coverage of the rational model of decision making, levels of analysis of foreign policy decision making, and types of decisions, the book includes extensive material on alternatives to the rational choice model, the marketing and framing of decisions, cognitive biases, and domestic, cultural, and international influences on decision making in international affairs. Existing textbooks do not present such an approach to foreign policy decision making, international relations, American foreign policy, and comparative foreign policy.







Value-Based Management in an Open Economy


Book Description

This book investigates the relationship between strategy optimization mechanisms and the efficiency (performance and productivity) in the digital and open economy. The aim of this question on the interactions between strategies, performance, and market forms is to understand how, at the level of value-based management, productivity determines the optimized strategies and how the optimization process is modified according to the performance of the firm. Value-Based Management in an Open Economy: Optimizing Strategy to Improve Business and Performance outlines the conditions under which this relationship is negative, neutral, or positive in the banking sector. Applying economic and managerial principles, the book demonstrates that problems related to the competitive advantage can be successfully analyzed like all other business problems, using traditional tools of economics, finance, and strategy (provided that the dynamics of industry-specific interactions are considered). The author argues that the ability of firms to improve their performance depends on the structure in which these organizations compete and their ability to optimize their value-based management. Key features: Captures the diversity and the interconnection of management control and firm performance issues Analyzes the challenges of contemporary management control in order to provide transversal and sustainable strategic solutions Promotes understanding of the prospects of optimizing mechanisms This volume is intended primarily for those who will be called upon to work as researchers or professionals in the fields of corporate governance and value-based management. The book identifies the technical practices and proposes mechanisms to encourage growth and improve performance. The book will be helpful for renewing strategic approaches and value-based mechanisms in a digital and open economy.




The Oxford Handbook of the American Congress


Book Description

No legislature in the world has a greater influence over its nation's public affairs than the US Congress. The Congress's centrality in the US system of government has placed research on Congress at the heart of scholarship on American politics. Generations of American government scholars working in a wide range of methodological traditions have focused their analysis on understanding Congress, both as a lawmaking and a representative institution. The purpose of this volume is to take stock of this impressive and diverse literature, identifying areas of accomplishment and promising directions for future work. The editors have commissioned 37 chapters by leading scholars in the field, each chapter critically engages the scholarship focusing on a particular aspect of congressional politics, including the institution's responsiveness to the American public, its procedures and capacities for policymaking, its internal procedures and development, relationships between the branches of government, and the scholarly methodologies for approaching these topics. The Handbook also includes chapters addressing timely questions, including partisan polarization, congressional war powers, and the supermajoritarian procedures of the contemporary Senate. Beyond simply bringing readers up to speed on the current state of research, the volume offers critical assessments of how each literature has progressed - or failed to progress - in recent decades. The chapters identify the major questions posed by each line of research and assess the degree to which the answers developed in the literature are persuasive. The goal is not simply to tell us where we have been as a field, but to set an agenda for research on Congress for the next decade. The Oxford Handbooks of American Politics are a set of reference books offering authoritative and engaging critical overviews of the state of scholarship on American politics. Each volume focuses on a particular aspect of the field. The project is under the General Editorship of George C. Edwards III, and distinguished specialists in their respective fields edit each volume. The Handbooks aim not just to report on the discipline, but also to shape it as scholars critically assess the scholarship on a topic and propose directions in which it needs to move. The series is an indispensable reference for anyone working in American politics. General Editor for The Oxford Handbooks of American Politics: George C. Edwards III




The Actor's Business Plan


Book Description

The Actor's Business Plan is a self-directed practical guide for actors graduating from formal training programs, as well as for those already in the business whose careers need to move ahead more successfully. Using the familiar language of acting training, the book offers a method for the achievement of dreams through a five-year life and career plan giving positive steps to develop a happy life as an actor and as a person. It assists performers to flourish using the same kind of business/career planning that is a necessary part of life for entrepreneurs and business people. This introduction to the acting industry provides essential knowledge not only for how the business actually works, but also describes what casting directors, agents, and managers do, demystifies the role of unions, discusses how much things cost, and offers advice on branding and marketing strategies. It differs from other such handbooks in that it addresses the everyday issues of life, money, and jobs that so frequently destroy an actor's career before it is even begun. While addressing NYC and LA, the guide also gives a regional breakdown for those actors who may wish to begin careers or to settle in other cities. It is loaded with personal stories, and interviews with actors, casting directors, and agents from throughout the US. The Actor's Business Plan is the answer to the common complaint by students that they were not taught how to negotiate the show business world while at school. It is the perfect antidote for this problem and can easily fit into a ten or a thirteen-week class syllabus. Offering support as a personal career coach, empowering the actor to take concrete steps towards their life and career dreams, The Actor's Business Plan: A Career Guide for the Acting Life is a must-have book for actors who are determined to be a part of the professional world .