Communication Patterns of Engineers


Book Description

Communication Patterns of Engineers brings together, summarizes, and analyzes the research on how engineers communicate, presenting benchmark data and identifying gaps in the existing research. Written by two renowned experts in this area, the text: Compares engineering communication patterns with those of science and medicine Offers information on improving engineering communication skills, including the use of communication tools to address engineering departments' concerns about the inadequacies of communication by engineers Provides strong conclusions to address what lessons engineering educators, librarians, and communication professionals can learn from the research presented




The Emerald Handbook of Group and Team Communication Research


Book Description

This volume considers the current research of group communication scholars, provides an overview of major foci in the discipline, and points toward possible trajectories for future scholarship. It establishes group communication’s central role within research on human behaviour and fosters an identity for group communication researchers.




Advanced Quality Function Deployment


Book Description

A versatile manual that can be used to stimulate product innovation, benchmarking analysis, and engineering design, this book goes beyond theory to provide relevant advanced methods and techniques that readers can apply in their work for both short- and long-term results. The author links Quality Function Deployment (QFD) with other quality design techniques and discusses processes for improving its effectiveness. He also highlights methods for selecting a product's technical features. Real implementation case studies and numerous examples illustrate the concepts, including the Qualitometro method for designing and measuring quality in the service sector.




The Psychology and Management of Project Teams


Book Description

Organizations today are increasingly using projects in their daily activities. Projects and project-management principles frame goal attainment in academia and many business sectors, and they even serve as theoretical footing for organizational-change endeavors. However, the ubiquity of project management does not mean that project work, project teams, and the ways organizations use projects are well understood. Moreover, while project-management theory and practice aim at providing structure and control to enable successful project completion, an alarmingly high percentage of projects struggle or fail. As the authors of The Psychology and Management of Project Teams explain, this is in part because projects are still mostly managed as technical systems rather than behavioral systems. Even though project-management researchers have become increasingly interested in factors that may have an impact on project-management effectiveness, their efforts fall short of addressing the "human factor." And, unfortunately, many project-management scholars are largely unaware of the I/O psychology literature--relying, for example, on outdated models of motivation and team development. On the other side, I/O psychologists who research groups and teams often ignore the contextual influences--such as business sector, project type, placement in the organizational hierarchy, and project phase and maturity--that have a crucial impact on how a project will unfold. In this volume, a cross-disciplinary set of editors will bring together perspectives from leading I/O psychology and project-management scholars. The volume will include comprehensive coverage of team selection, development, learning, motivation, and communication; conflict management and well-being; leadership; diversity; performance from a multi-level perspective; and career development. In the concluding chapter, a research agenda will provide a roadmap for an integrated approach to the study of project teams.




Handbook of Management under Uncertainty


Book Description

A mere few years ago it would have seemed odd to propose a Handbook on the treatment of management problems within a sphere of uncertainty. Even today, on the threshold of the third millennium, this statement may provoke a certain wariness. In fact, to resort to exact or random data, that is probable date, is quite normal and con venient, as we then know where we are going best, where we are proposing to go if all occurs as it is conceived and hoped for. To treat uncertain information, to accept a new principle and from there determined criteria, without being sure of oneself and confiding only in the will to better understand objects and phenomena, constitutes and compromise with a new form of understanding the behaviour of current beings that goes even further than simple rationality. Economic Science and particularly the use of its elements of configuration in the world of management, has imbued several generations with an analytical spirit that has given rise to the elaboration of theories widely accepted by the international scientific community. In this work we are proposing something a little more modest: to use, in the best possible way, data and information that are available for drawing up and applying techniques and instruments that are useful for current reality within the world of businesses and institutions, in an attempt to mislead ourselves as little as possible.




Artificial Intelligence and Integrated Intelligent Information Systems


Book Description

Researchers in the evolving fields of artificial intelligence and information systems are constantly presented with new challenges. Artificial Intelligence and Integrated Intelligent Information Systems: Emerging Technologies and Applications provides both researchers and professionals with the latest knowledge applied to customized logic systems, agent-based approaches to modeling, and human-based models. Artificial Intelligence and Integrated Intelligent Information Systems: Emerging Technologies and Applications presents the recent advances in multi-mobile agent systems, the product development process, fuzzy logic systems, neural networks, and ambient intelligent environments among many other innovations in this exciting field.




Intelligent Information Technologies: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications


Book Description

This set compiles more than 240 chapters from the world's leading experts to provide a foundational body of research to drive further evolution and innovation of these next-generation technologies and their applications, of which scientific, technological, and commercial communities have only begun to scratch the surface.




Fundamentals of Business Marketing Research


Book Description

Get a thorough review of vital research issues! Fundamentals of Business Marketing Research examines recent industrial/business research, evaluates its current effectiveness, and offers suggestions for future use. This unique book includes and is based on Business Marketing: A Twenty Year Review, a thorough study of industrial/business research from 1978-1997 with critical commentary from a distinguished panel of business academics and the response of the study's authors. The combination of critiques, insights, and viewpoints will challenge you to think beyond the traditional role of B2B marketing into a future that's anything but business as usual. Through an unusual format that gives you access to critical academic analysis, Fundamentals of Business Marketing Research presents a comprehensive review of vital research areas, including marketing to businesses/institutions/governments; buyer-seller relationships; computer use for business marketing; industrial segmentation; channel management and development; physical distribution; advertising; and public relations. The book’s give-and-take is equally focused on areas that have traditionally received a larger share of the research effort (organizational buyer behavior, business marketing strategy and planning, industrial selling and sales management) and those that have taken a back seat in terms of research attention (computers and ethical business marketing). The original study, its criticisms, and the authors’ subsequent assessment spotlight major themes, individual contributions, and future trends in major topic areas, including: business marketing strategy organizational buying behavior and purchasing management business marketing research methodology products/services pricing management issues distribution/logistics and supply chain management promotion Fundamentals of Business Marketing Research is equally effective as a practical guide for professionals and researchers, and as an academic text for doctoral studies.




Advances in Production Management Systems. Value Networks: Innovation, Technologies, and Management


Book Description

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the International IFIP WG 5.7 Conference on Advances in Production Management Systems, APMS 2011, held in Stavanger, Norway, in September 2011. The 66 revised and extended full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 124 papers presented at the conference. The papers are organized in 3 parts: production process, supply chain management, and strategy. They represent the breadth and complexity of topics in operations management, ranging from optimization and use of technology, management of organizations and networks, to sustainable production and globalization. The authors use a broad range of methodological approaches spanning from grounded theory and qualitative methods, via a broad set of statistical methods to modeling and simulation techniques.




Governance and Governmentality for Projects


Book Description

This research-based book takes an organization-wide perspective to describe the governance and governmentality for projects in organizations. Governance of projects defines and directs the ways managers of projects, programs, and project portfolios carry out their work. Governmentality is the way the managers of these managers present themselves to those they lead. Governance and Governmentality for Projects starts with introducing existing theories, models and paradigms for governance and governmentality. It then develops a chronological framework of the ways governance and governmentality for projects is enabled in organizations, how it subsequently unfolds in organizations of different types and sectors, and the consequences of different governance approaches for project results, trust, control, and ethical issues in projects. Special emphasis is given to the link between corporate governance and the governance of project, programs and project portfolios. Three real-life case studies exemplify the research findings described in the book. Through its structure this book describes the development of governance and governmentality in the realm of projects from its organizational origins, via observable practices, to expected consequences of different implementations. Aimed at academics, post-graduate students in business and management, reflective practitioners, standards or policy developers, those in governance roles and others in need of a detailed knowledge of the spectrum of project related governance in organizations, this book will help develop a comprehensive understanding of the theoretical and practical underpinnings of the subject, their interaction, and implications for implementation. This allows for understanding and developing of both generic and idiosyncratic governance structures, such as those needed in project-based organizations.