Rafael Ramirez - Böcker

Traditional strategy assumes stability and predictability. Today's world is better characterised by turbulence, uncertainty, novelty and ambiguity - conditions that contribute disruptive changes and trigger the search for new ways of coping.This book aims to become the premier guide on how to do scenario planning to support strategy and public policy. Co-authored by three experts in the field, the book presents The Oxford Scenario Planning Approach (OSPA). The approach is both intellectually rigorous and practical. Methodological choices and theoretical aspects in practice are detailed in reference to the relevant literatures and grounded in 6 case studies the authors have been involved with.The book makes several contributions to the field, centred on how learning with scenario planning is supported by re-framing and re-perception; how this iterative process can be embedded in corporate or government settings, and how it helps those that it supports to do well in today's world.The book is written in an accessible style and will be a useful introductory text as well as a useful guide for the more experienced scenario planning practitioner and scholar.

Traditional strategy assumes stability and predictability. Today's world is better characterised by turbulence, uncertainty, novelty and ambiguity - conditions that contribute disruptive changes and trigger the search for new ways of coping. This book aims to become the premier guide on how to do scenario planning to support strategy and public policy. Co-authored by three experts in the field, the book presents The Oxford Scenario Planning Approach (OSPA). The approach is both intellectually rigorous and practical. Methodological choices and theoretical aspects in practice are detailed in reference to the relevant literatures and grounded in 6 case studies the authors have been involved with. The book makes several contributions to the field, centred on how learning with scenario planning is supported by re-framing and re-perception; how this iterative process can be embedded in corporate or government settings, and how it helps those that it supports to do well in today's world.The book is written in an accessible style and will be a useful introductory text as well as a useful guide for the more experienced scenario planning practitioner and scholar.

This work focuses on the transition faced by business organizations and their stakeholders as they move from protected markets to open competition, and it explores how these changes can be facilitated by outside interveners/agents. The four authors - two from Europe and two from the United States - have worked separately as consultants with leaders of many companies and unions facing these challenges, including AT&T, Lucent, Electricite de France, and the Italian State Railways (Ferrovie dello Stato). The reader is thus afforded an unusual insight into the process of change in a large organization - not only close-up accounts of what happened, but understanding of the relationship between the researcher/consultant and different groups within the organization - senior managers, HR people, unions, and ordinary employees.

This book focuses on the transition faced by business organizations and their stakeholders as they move from protected markets to open competition, and it explores how these changes can be facilitated by outside interveners/agents. The four authors - two from Europe and two from the United States - have worked separately as consultants with leaders of many companies and unions facing these challenges including AT&T, Lucent, Electricite de France, and the Italian State Railways (Ferrovie dello Stato). The reader is thus afforded an unusual insight into the process of change in a large organization - not only close up accounts of what happened, but understanding of the relationship between the researcher/consultant and different groups within the organization - senior managers, HR people, unions, and ordinary employees.The book draws lessons from these cases and experiences on a number of different levels: lessons about the methods of intervention in large organizations; about the nature of the organizational transitions as business faces increased competition; about the pressures this places on unions and other stakeholder groups; about the differences between the US and European context; and about possible models for advancing the change process in the future. The analysis finally focuses on the larger set of forces driving all these cases: the transition to a global post-industrial economy. The experience of change in these corporations, from this perspective, illuminates the dynamics of transition between neo-corporatist stakeholder relations and a more pluralist and decentralized system emerging throughout the industrialized world. This unusual book - by a team of highly experienced researchers/consultants - will be of interest to a broad readership of academics, students, consultants, HR professionals interested in the process and management and change, and contemporary trends in modern societies.

This book deals with the frameworks between customers and suppliers. These frameworks link a customer's own value creating activities to the competencies and resources of the supplying firm(s). Both the short term (financial) and long term (knowledge) benefits to using this approach are discussed.

Strategy is the art of creating value. It provides frameworks, conceptual models, and governing ideas that allow a company's managers to identify opportunities for bringing value to customers and for delivering that value at a profit. This book illustrates how new ways of creating value are being created by current global competition, changing markets, and new technologies. It shows how the focus of strategic analysis should not be the company or the industry, but the value-creating system itself, within which suppliers, business partners, allies, and customers work together to co-produce value.

Rafael L. RamÍrez presents an insightful examination of Puerto Rican culture and the ways in which Puerto Rican masculinity is constructed.What It Means to Be a Man begins with a discussion of machismo set in the context of the social construction of masculinity. RamÍrez presents his interpretation of what it means to be a Puerto Rican man, discussing the attributes and demands of masculinity, and pointing out the ways in which strength, competition, and sexuality are joined with power and pleasure. He examines the erotic relationships between men as part of the expressions of masculinity, and analyzes how the homosexual experience reproduces the dominant masculine ideology. Finally, RamÍrez draws on the literature of the recent men's movements, offering Puerto Rican men the possibility of constructing a new masculinity, liberated from power games, to provide them with a chance to not only be better understood by others, but also to better understand themselves and their place in society.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Richard Normann and his colleagues developed an original approach to strategy, based on seeing value as inherently co-produced in systems. Their 'Value Creating Systems' approach was a strong contrast to the idea of 'competitive advantage' that defined strategy at the time. The approach focuses on the design of the 'offerings' that define relationships among co-producers, and which connect actors in fields which transcend traditional industry borders. In the contemporary networked world, where consumers become co-producers, the ideas Normann and his colleagues developed towards strategy are uniquely effective in explaining and guiding practice.Strategy for a Networked World revisits and further develops these ideas. It is co-authored by two long-standing colleagues of Normann, Rafael Ramírez and Ulf Mannervik, who have successfully applied these ideas to their own consultancy practice. This book provides the theoretical basis for strategies of value co-creation, an accessible methodology and practical guidance, case studies of Facebook and the World Economic Forum, and examples of successful collaborations with organisations such as EDF, Scania, Essity and Shell.Designed to advise strategists and business developers working in uncertain, complex and turbulent contexts, it is suitable both for practitioners and for academics, combining theory and the means to turn it into practice. It will also serve as a valuable contribution to MBA classes and towards the development of more effective business strategies.

The world is increasingly turbulent and complex, awash with disruptions, tipping points and knock-on effects exemplified by the implosion of financial markets and economies around the globe. This book is for business and organizational leaders who want and need to think through how best to deal with increasing turbulence, and with the complexity and uncertainty that come with it. The authors explain in clear language how future orientation and, specifically, modern scenario techniques help to address these conditions. They draw on examples from a wide variety of international settings and circumstances including large corporations, inter-governmental organizations, small firms and municipalities. Readers will be inspired to try out scenario approaches themselves to better address the turbulence that affects them and others with whom they work, live and do business. This second edition extends the use of scenarios planning and methods to tackle the risk and uncertainty of financial markets and the potentially massive impacts on businesses of all kinds, providing powerful tools to give far thinking executives an advantage in these turbulent times.

The world is increasingly turbulent and complex, awash with disruptions, tipping points and knock-on effects exemplified by the implosion of financial markets and economies around the globe. This book is for business and organizational leaders who want and need to think through how best to deal with increasing turbulence, and with the complexity and uncertainty that come with it. The authors explain in clear language how future orientation and, specifically, modern scenario techniques help to address these conditions. They draw on examples from a wide variety of international settings and circumstances including large corporations, inter-governmental organizations, small firms and municipalities. Readers will be inspired to try out scenario approaches themselves to better address the turbulence that affects them and others with whom they work, live and do business. This second edition extends the use of scenarios planning and methods to tackle the risk and uncertainty of financial markets and the potentially massive impacts on businesses of all kinds, providing powerful tools to give far thinking executives an advantage in these turbulent times.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Richard Normann and his colleagues developed an original approach to strategy, based on seeing value as inherently co-produced in systems. Their 'Value Creating Systems' approach was a strong contrast to the idea of 'competitive advantage' that defined strategy at the time. The approach focuses on the design of the 'offerings' that define relationships among co-producers, and which connect actors in fields which transcend traditional industry borders. In the contemporary networked world, where consumers become co-producers, the ideas Normann and his colleagues developed towards strategy are uniquely effective in explaining and guiding practice.Strategy for a Networked World revisits and further develops these ideas. It is co-authored by two long-standing colleagues of Normann, Rafael Ramírez and Ulf Mannervik, who have successfully applied these ideas to their own consultancy practice. This book provides the theoretical basis for strategies of value co-creation, an accessible methodology and practical guidance, case studies of Facebook and the World Economic Forum, and examples of successful collaborations with organisations such as EDF, Scania, Essity and Shell.Designed to advise strategists and business developers working in uncertain, complex and turbulent contexts, it is suitable both for practitioners and for academics, combining theory and the means to turn it into practice. It will also serve as a valuable contribution to MBA classes and towards the development of more effective business strategies.

By introducing a proper class of vector field – the Cartesian vector field – given in a Riemann space, the authors explore the connections between the first order ordinary differential equations (ODEs) associated to the Cartesian vector field in the configuration space of a given mechanical system and its dynamics.

By introducing a proper class of vector field – the Cartesian vector field – given in a Riemann space, the authors explore the connections between the first order ordinary differential equations (ODEs) associated to the Cartesian vector field in the configuration space of a given mechanical system and its dynamics.

This book is dedicated to study the inverse problem of ordinary differential equations, that is it focuses in finding all ordinary differential equations that satisfy a given set of properties.