Community colleges are under intense pressure to change in response to shifts in an increasingly complex environment. Stakeholders are placing simultaneously contradictory demands on colleges for more and better service, increased accountability, and more efficient use of resources in order to get the most from colleges in tough economic times. These demands have contributed to cultural fragmentation in community colleges as staff are pulled in competing directions by events beyond their control. The upshot is a circumstance in which leaders are finding that culture is perhaps the most powerful element affecting organizational performance and change. The old saw “culture eats strategy for breakfast’ epitomizes the importance of culture as a means for enhancing the long-term viability of an organization. This book provides fresh analysis of organizational culture in the community college context with a critical examination of the relationship between organizational culture and change. Readers will benefit from frank advice with insights to drive change by transforming and leveraging culture to shape the future of community colleges.

This book introduces a measure of firms’ competition culture based on a textual analysis and natural language processing (NPL) of firms’ 10-K filings. Using this measure, the book explores the relationship between competition culture and various phenomena in corporate finance, specifically, institutional ownership structure, stock return performance, idiosyncratic stock price crash risk, meeting/beating analysts’ earnings expectations, and earnings management activity, for a large sample of US-based financial and non-financial firms. In particular, the book provides evidence that transient institutional ownership intensifies firms’ competition culture, while dedicated institutional ownership lessens it. In addition, the book’s findings suggest that firms with greater levels of competition culture achieve higher levels of short-term stock return performance, experience greater incidence of idiosyncratic stock price crashes, and are more prone to meet/beat analysts forecast and engage in accruals-based earnings manipulation. Finally, the book examines the role played by competition culture in financial firms (i.e., banks). Specifically, the book explores the effect of competition culture on bank lending and shows that banks with greater levels of competition culture are generally more prone to engage in procyclical lending activity. The findings of the book have significant policy implications and will be of interests to regulators, accounting standard-setters, managers and those charged with firm governance, career academics and researchers, graduates, and those generally interested in the role played by corporate culture in the related fields of finance, economics, and accounting.

Shows how cultural factors have influenced the development of competition law in China, Japan and Korea.

European architectural competitions are described and evaluated for built environment students, professionals and people commissioning new buildings and public spaces. Case studies of competition design submission, with competitions data are supplemented with discourse on the culture and practice of competitions, their methodologies, opportunities, potential and pitfalls. The need for a unified language model for improving competitions practice in Europe is discussed and proposed.

After two decades of exceptional economic growth and cultural change, Ireland faces the greatest challenge yet: creating a sustainable competitive advantage to guarantee its success in the future. Finbarr Bradley and James Kennelly recommend a renewed sense of national identity as social and cultural capital to maintain and enhance Ireland’s economic development.

Like the lines of a secret map made dimly apparent by the chemical potion brushed on a piece of paper from a child's detective kit, the outlines of what may be a substantial behavioral biology of human life seem to be coming clear. From genetic science at its most molecular to demography with its assessment of the vital experience of massive populations, there is a growing understanding of the various ways in which the human species reveals underlying commonalities of experi ence through the life cycle and over the web of interactions that constitutes the basic matter of social life. At the same time, research has been successful in two super ficially and contradictory directions: first, in showing the enormous variation in human arrangements and consciousness across and with in cultures; and second, in showing the similarity between cultures as far as basic processes of physiology, neurophysiology, and even so ciallife are concerned. But the contradiction only exists in the absence of an understanding of the fact that in a species living under as many ecological, historical, and economic niches as Homo sapiens, cultural variation is what one would naturally expect.

Direct Pay: A Simpler Way to Practice Medicine examines the direct pay business model as a policy alternative and potential policy solution to the economic, technological, and sociocultural problems that have emerged for practicing physicians as a result of the Affordable Care Act. Based on a research study conducted by the author, the book address

As knowledge economies become increasingly important around the world, it is essential that organizations are able to transform their knowledge into a competitive advantage. This textbook offers an interdisciplinary approach to knowledge management written specifically for postgraduate students in business and management schools. Knowledge Management presents classic and advanced concepts, models and frameworks using a clear logical structure, which covers building knowledge competence, the knowledge lifecycle, and integration of knowledge management with business decision making. An overall framework illustrates links between chapters and ensures readers can gain a body of actionable knowledge rather than learning isolated, uncontextualized topics. Based on cutting-edge research findings and covering the most advanced IT and IS technologies, this book emphasises the need for knowledge management to span boundaries across organizations, supply chains and partnerships, rather than being limited to individual learning and sharing within businesses. Knowledge Management is international in scope and includes real world case studies and role play scenarios to show how theories are applied in practice, and "think back" and "critique discussion" questions to encourage reflective learning and critical thinking. This indispensable text provides a dynamic picture of the evolution of knowledge management and demonstrates its full potential to enable better business decisions. Accompanying online resources include PowerPoint slides for lecturers and exercise questions for students.

This book explores the intersection between adaptation studies and what James F. English has called the “economy of prestige,” which includes formal prize culture as well as less tangible expressions such as canon formation, fandom, authorship, and performance. The chapters explore how prestige can affect many facets of the adaptation process, including selection, approach, and reception. The first section of this volume deals directly with cycles of influence involving prizes such as the Pulitzer, the Man Booker, and other major awards. The second section focuses on the juncture where adaptation, the canon, and awards culture meet, while the third considers alternative modes of locating and expressing prestige through adapted and adaptive intertexts. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of adaptation, cultural sociology, film, and literature.

"This collection of essays reveals the Ming court as an arena of competition and negotiation, where a large cast of actors pursued individual and corporate ends, personal agency shaped protocol and style, and diverse people, goods, and tastes converged. Rather than observing an immutable set of traditions, court culture underwent frequent reinterpretation and rearticulation, processes driven by immediate personal imperatives, mediated through social, political, and cultural interaction. The essays address several common themes. First, they rethink previous notions of imperial isolation, instead stressing the court’s myriad ties both to local Beijing society and to the empire as a whole. Second, the court was far from monolithic or static. Palace women, monks, craftsmen, educators, moralists, warriors, eunuchs, foreign envoys, and others strove to advance their interests and forge advantageous relations with the emperor and one another. Finally, these case studies illustrate the importance of individual agency. The founder’s legacy may have formed the warp of court practices and tastes, but the weft varied considerably. Reflecting the complexity of the court, the essays represent a variety of perspectives and disciplines—from intellectual, cultural, military, and political to art history and musicology."