How do firms cope with changing environments? Is flexibility really the solution? Based on an Igor Ansoff Award winning study, Building the Flexible Firm shows how flexibility has become the new strategic challenge for contemporary firms. Offering a wealth of insights and based on extensive interviews with practitioners, Henk Volberda provides a strategic framework which explains what types of flexibility are effective under different organizational conditions and environmental characteristics. He also demonstrates an integrated method for diagnosing a firm's flexibility and for guiding the transition to greater flexibility and responsiveness.

Linking various disciplines and management functions, Integrated Performance Management provides the reader with a concrete framework to manage organizations successfully. The authors do not isolate a single strategy to manage performance. Instead, the book focuses on a range of strategies providing the reader with an introduction to each one. The concepts under analysis were developed through intense dialogue with business managers. While maintaining academic rigour, Integrated Performance Management presents ideas that students will find relevant outside of the classroom. Postgraduate and MBA students in a range of areas including strategy, accounting, finance, operations management, marketing, leadership and human resource management will find this book useful.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication discusses the value proposition of cross-channel solutions and describes the IBM Retail Integration Framework Commerce Product Strategy solution and service-oriented architecture (SOA) as an enabler. In depth, this book describes cross-channel processes and cross-channel features and proposes scenarios and configurations to meet the challenges in a competitive environment. This book describes the latest features and techniques of IBM WebSphere® Commerce Version 7. In it, we present an overview of the WebSphere Commerce order and inventory management systems, the distributed order management (referred to as DOM throughout this book) integration framework, and a sample DOM integration scenario. We discuss the Madisons starter store (Web 2.0 storefront) and present a hands-on experience that integrates MapQuest with the WebSphere Commerce V7 Store Locator feature. We discuss how a merchant can use the mobile features that are included in WebSphere Commerce V7 to define e-Marketing Spots and promotion for mobile users. In addition, we demonstrate how to use Google Maps with the Store Locator feature on a mobile device. We include in this book an example about how to apply WebSphere Commerce features on a cross-channel solution as applied at the Easy Hogary Construccion home improvement retail company in South America. The scenario explains how to scale from an SOA store to a cross-channel business model. This book is designed for use by WebSphere Commerce developers, practitioners, and solution architects in various industries.

This set of proceedings is based on the International Conference on Advances in Building Technology in Hong Kong on 4-6 December 2002. The two volumes of proceedings contain 9 invited keynote papers, 72 papers delivered by 11 teams , and 133 contributed papers from over 20 countries around the world. The papers cover a wide spectrum of topics across the three technology sub-themes of structures and construction, environment, and information technology. The variety within these categories spans a width of topics, and these proceedings provide readers with a good general overview of recent advances in building research.

How do firms cope with changing environments? Is flexibility really the solution? How can we measure a firm's flexibility? Can a more flexible firm be created? Based on an Igor Ansoff Award-winning study and now available for the first time in paperback, Henk Volberda's Building the Flexible Firm shows how flexibility has become the new strategic challenge for contemporary firms. Although traditional organizational forms have worked well in the relatively stable environments of the past, the globalization of markets, rapid technological change, shortening product life cycles, and increasing aggressiveness of competitors have radically altered the ground rules for competing in the 1990s and beyond. Increased competition forces firms to move more quickly and boldly than before, and to experiment in ways that do not conform to traditional administrative theory. This book offers a wealth of insights into the way firms can increase their flexibility. It is based on extensive interviews with practitioners and supported by many longitudinal case studies on flexibility improvement within large corporations. The author provides a strategic framework which explains what types of flexibility are effective under different organizational conditions and environmental characteristics. He also demonstrates an integrated method for diagnosing a firm's flexibility and for guiding the transition to greater flexibility and responsiveness.

Towards the Next Orbit: A Corporate Odyssey brings forth ideas, experiences, studies, insights, and suggestions from renowned theoreticians and practitioners towards changing and succeeding in a new world. The first part of the book comprises rich conceptual papers and research-based empirical papers written primarily by thought leaders from all over the world. The second part comprises dialogs with persons who are well known in the business landscape as “change masters.” The chapters discuss cutting-edge ideas in the areas of corporate behavior, positioning, growth, leadership, employee relations, and so on.