SWOT Analysis: A guide for business studies students
Book 86 pages.Written for students who have an assignment to do. It covers the critical theory, Worked examples, and references. There is also a suggested plan for going about your SWOT assignment and where to look for the factors.
Includes access to downloadable resources. [Link] How to buy.
Published November 2016, Spectaris Limited
A Project Leader's guide to Recruitment and Selection
Book 122 pages.A project oriented guide to recruitment and selection. Follows the business process from why recruit, designing job advertisements, interview planning and designing questions, leading the assessment team. Includes access to downloadable resources. [Link] How to buy.
Published May 2015, Spectaris Limited
A Useful Guide to Delivering Training
Book 11k words.You know your subject and now it is time to train others. This book fills the knowing-doing gap and presents a manual for delivering training. It includes the application of learning theory to the practical planning and organising aspects of presenting training to adults. Published July 2014, Pansophix Limited
A Useful Guide to Managing Email
Book 20k words.Knowing how to drive the email software and being a good email citizen are different things. The aim is to help you survive the busy motorway-like world of corporate email. Published August 2011, Pansophix Limited
Leadership and Management ship – why you need both
600 wordsThe notion of leaders and leadership has had a long journey spanning thousands of years, and used by special interest groups (military, religious, quality gurus, and so on) for their own ends. With such a diverse history, it’s no surprise there is confusion. The problem is compounded when management is added to the mix.
By separating the various components of leadership and management, and clarifying the scope of each, we discover one or other is often missing when both are needed for success. Published January 2009, Anglia Industry and Business
The e-learning scorecard
800 wordsWhat you measure is what you get – so what you put in your business scorecard defines what you get from e-learning. If ‘e’ is for efficiency the business scorecard drives e-learning towards cost control. But if ‘e’ is for effectiveness, enterprise, or enhancement — the scorecard needs to be very different. Published Jan-Feb 2008, Human Capital Management
Are SMART objectives a daft idea for the arts?
1000 wordsAn increasingly common requirement from funding bodies is for bids to include SMART objectives. Funders like the concept of SMART, because it crystallises a project and gives the clarity needed for funding decisions. But it has a dark side: apply it in inappropriate circumstances and it will strangle creativity. Published 5 May 2003, Arts Professional
Rethinking e-learning from operational efficiency to strategic advantage
4000 wordsMost large companies view e-learning as, at best, an efficient and inexpensive way to deliver low-level compliance and skills training. They use it to cut training costs and deliver information efficiently, but fail to see its capacity to create and sustain strategic advantage. Companies that rethink their e-learning strategy gain strategic advantage by educating customers, through operational efficiencies, and by supporting vendors. The real promise of e-learning will not be achieved until organisations integrate today’s learning silos. This article examines where current e-learning efforts fall short, suggests principles to guide their redirection, and identifies the technologies that will help realise e-learning’s greater promise. Published July 2001, CSC Foundation Research Journal.
Making good on the promise of E-learning
1500 wordsThe newest use of the internet, e-learning, has generated excitement by promising to reduce costs, increase capabilities, and provide strategic advantages. E-learning is a system of technologies, processes and people that builds capabilities across the enterprise. Companies should build these capabilities with two interrelated factors in mind: timeliness and social interaction. Published September 2001, Spectra.
Creating IS value — challenging old ideas of IS governance
3500 wordsThe purpose of IS governance is to ensure the coherent and sustained creation of value from the use of information technology. IS Governance used to be a ‘command and control’ exercise by the central IS function, which imposed standards, products and processes on its users. Business environments used to be stable and long- term decisions could be made on the basis of reducing costs. But as business structures change and as the pace of change increases, so too does the role of IS governance. With more participants inside and outside the business, IS governance must become as much about increasing value as reducing cost and as much about promoting dialogue as imposing control. It has emerged as a key competence that acts as the enabler of innovation; the resolver of cross-business tensions; the promoter of debate and dialogue; the facilitator of change; and the creator of frameworks for governance itself.
Published July 2001, CSC Foundation Research Journal.
Social Protocols – the soft things need not be hard
8000 wordsMost business and IT change initiative failures are blamed on that most elusive of foes – ‘culture’. Because there is no handy way to describe the culture, or to measure it, or to understand its impact, culture makes an easy fall guy. After all, it is the wild card in any project or strategy – the one thing that is unpredictable and unmanageable. But there is a way to improve on this dismal record: get the interaction between social protocols, codes of conduct, and workstyles right. Research Services has developed a social protocol framework that sits alongside other business disciplines and addresses just these issues.
Published November 2001, CSC Foundation Research Journal.