Books

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Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies

Corporate executives are struggling with a new trend: people using online social technologies (blogs, social networking sites, YouTube, podcasts) to discuss products and companies, write their own news, and find their own deals. This groundswell is global, it s unstoppable, it affects every industry and it s utterly foreign to the powerful companies running things now. When consumers you ve never met are rating your company s products in public forums with which you have no experience or influence, your company is vulnerable. In Groundswell, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester, Inc. explain how to turn this threat into an opportunity.

Beyond Communities of Practice: Language Power and Social Context

The concept of ‘communities of practice’ (Lave and Wenger 1991, Wenger 1998) has become an influential one in education, management, and social sciences in recent years. This book consists of a series of studies by linguists and educational researchers, examining and developing aspects of the concept which have remained relatively unexplored. Framings provided by theories of language-in-use, literacy practices, and discourse extend the concept, bringing to light issues around conflict, power, and the significance of the broader social context which have been overlooked. Chapters assess the relationship between communities of practice and other theories including literacy studies, critical language studies, the ethnography of communication, socio-cultural activity theory, and sociological theories of risk. Domains of empirical research reported include schools, police stations, adult basic education, higher education, and multilingual settings. The book highlights the need to incorporate thinking around language-in-use, power and conflict, and social context into communities of practice.

Communities of Practice: Critical Perspectives

Communities of practice has become an increasingly influential model of learning, organization and creativity, and is informing current debates about learning processes, managerial control of organizational knowledge, and general and vocational education. This benchmark text provides an accessible yet critical introduction to the theory and application of communities of practice and their use in a diverse range of managerial and professional contexts, from education to human resource development.The book charts the development of the idea of communities of practice and explores the key relationship between learning and identity among: newcomers and ‘old timers’; male and female workers; the low skilled and the high skilled professionals and managers; and adults and adolescents. Drawing on international empirical studies and adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, this book is useful reading for all students, researchers, practitioners and policy makers with an interest in work, employment, labour markets, learning, training or education.

The Medici Effect: Breakthrough Insights at the Intersection of Ideas, Concepts, and Cultures

Innovation is an evergreen topic because it is such an essential ingredient for successful growth – and this book provides a new and fascinating perspective on how new innovations can best be found and developed. Managers from all kinds of companies will find this book of interest. This book is so well written and is filled with such engaging examples that we expect it to break out beyond a business audience to general readers. It is similar to The Tipping Point in terms of tone, readability, and rich, interesting stories, which show how innovative ideas were born in intersections that combined arenas as diverse as card games and sky rises, Palm Pilots and carrots, airplanes and cookies, ants and truck drivers. Offers practical strategies anyone can use to develop novel new ideas big and small, in all areas of life and work. The book’s title refers to an explosion of creativity that occurred in Florence during the Renaissance, when the Medici banking family funded creators from many different disciplines to come together to debate, discuss, and discover new ideas. The book is about how any of us can create our own ‘Medici effects’ using the concept of ‘the intersection’.

Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World

Today’s leading authority on the subject of this text is the author, MIT Standish Professor of Management and Director of the System Dynamics Group, John D. Sterman. Sterman’s objective is to explain, in a true textbook format, what system dynamics is, and how it can be successfully applied to solve business and organizational problems. System dynamics is both a currently utilized approach to organizational problem solving at the professional level, and a field of study in business, engineering, and social and physical sciences.

Learning for Action: A Short Definitive Account of Soft Systems Methodology, and Its Use Practitioners, Teachers and Students

From the father of Soft Systems Methodology (SSM), Peter Checkland, comes a new, accessible text which clearly and concisely looks at SSM. The book leaves out all of the development detail and historical/intellectual material which can be found in Checkland’s other classic works, but contains the practical essentials that will allow teachers to teach SSM accurately and students to learn it with real understanding.