Carmen Vazquez - Böcker

Supervisors, project managers and CEOs should find this book useful as it deals with an emerging global reality - culturally diverse people of both genders in the workplace. The new workplace environment demands that employees be selected, evaluated and promoted on the basis of performance competency, regardless of sex, race, religion or place of origin. Focusing on workplace diversity instead of concepts of majority and minority allows managers to offer all personnel equal opportunities. Affirmative action is now aimed at developing human potential. Diversity is becoming a worldwide phenomenon. Written from the North American viewpoint, this book examines the key concepts that drive American plants and offices today which are likely to be realities overseas tomorrow, and the concepts espoused in this book can be applied universally. The book fills a gap in management education and development. It is a practical manual designed to teach and encourage managers to lead and strengthen the human resources of an organization.

European metropolitan areas have experienced a marked reorganization associated with the processes of globalization and the European integration of economic act- ities on various spatial scales. Much of this change is particularly evident at the edge of central cities, further away at suburban locations and on the fringes of expanding metropolitan areas. These spatial processes of urban expansion, sprawling dev- opment, and employment deconcentration present constant challenges to urban quality of life, raising concerns about excessive consumption of land and energy, traffic congestion, and so forth. These concerns prompt the formulation of public policies at various levels of government: European Union agencies, national, and sub national public authorities. The challenges posed by the spatial reorganization of economic activities within European metropolitan areas and their implications for the quality of life inspired the research project sponsored by the European Commission 5th Framework, entitled: Spatial Deconcentration of Economic Land Use and Quality of Life in European Metropolitan Areas (SELMA). The primary goal of SELMA was to design urban planning and management strategies to ensure the maintenance of the quality of life in European metropolitan areas. To this end, three broad activities were defined. The first focused on the identification and analysis of the driving forces and dynamics behind the process of economic land-use deconcentration in metropolitan areas. An analysis of the impacts of these processes on urban quality of life formed the heart of the second activity.