economics-textbook

Seventeen chapters divided into seven parts is the way Dr. Dunham has arranged the contents of this book on organizational behavior. It starts with a definition of the field and ends with a discussion on the management of change.

In seeking to define the field, a bit of caution is given. He writes, "Rather than providing 'the one perfect solution' to a problem, this book offers guidance from the OB field to help you learn how to find a good answer for each situation."
Inserts from professionals add another dimension to the content. Their comments are quite helpful.

Part two of the book addresses the issue of how attitudes are formed. The process is gradual and personal. Social learning takes place on the job. Individuals learn how things are "really" done as contrasted with official publications.

There are charts and graphs along with other visuals throughout the book to assist in one's understanding. The writing is clear. Anyone seeking to learn about organizational behavior would benefit from reading this book.

This book is very good and gave me an incredible overview with is uniq broadness and depth. The book integrate theory and practice at once, which is very good for the understanding of the marketing concept. It is primarily for students within the field of marketing.

This is a wonderful book that covers all aspects of investing. It will be helpful to the first timer as well as those who want to continue their investment knowledge. The first few chapters take you through the basics of investing. The final chapters explain investment timing and predicting economic conditions. 'Personal Portfolio Management' will help you through all investment problems by breaking them down so that you can understand and master them. I recomend this book to anyone who is interested in understanding the ideas and theories in personal portfolio management.

This book is a great way to find scholarships and competitions to earn money for college. I have made use of this great resourse many times and many more to come. I recommend it if you are planning to go to grad school. I know I am.

The Readings in International Political Economy is well-balanced with all the classic texts as well as new ones. However, there is a need to boost the relevance of texts on IPE to the contemporary scene considering two key trends that affect the discipline today: international finance and the implications of information technology and e-commerce. Gilpin's much-used textbook, for instance (at least the 1987 edition), is still written within the context of 1980s economics. It is difficult to capture such an elusive subject, undoubtably, but the challenge still remains to keep up with the times and posit new theories on how such forces work on the global economy and international community. The "Readings in IPE" is a great introduction to new students in the field, but a better balance still has to be struck between the old and the new in order to sustain interest.

Instead of providing a dry recitation of rules and regs, this book takes an anecdotal approach to securities compliance rules. Its story-telling approach is useful in helping both securities producers and compliance professionals understand real world concerns.

Although not an in depth study of the securities industry, this book is highly recommended as a primer for compliance issues. It is also one of the easiest books on the topic to read. Overall, time well spent.

This book is the second and most comprehensive of three reports edited by Brotchie, Hall and Newton. This volume is based on an international workshop held in Melbourne in 1985. The first report was published as The Future of Urban Form: The Impact of New Technology (Brotchie et al. (ed.), Croom Helm, London and Nichols, New York) in 1985.

The book is divided into four segments, focusing respectively on the "emerging information economy", the role of information technologies in this economy, the geographical patterns of production and consumption of these new technologies, and the role that government policy is playing and could play in future.

The emphasis is on macroeconomics and spatial issues at the scale of cities and above. Some mention is made of the "household economy" and retailing, but there is scant commentary on the impact of information technology on places at the neighborhood, store or home level.

I found the most useful factoid to be reference to the three types of structure that would be affected by technology: social, economic and spatial. This volume focuses on the interaction of the economic and spatial factors.

Many of the authors, and Hall in particular, explore the implications of a shift from an industrial to an informational economy. They conclude that growth favors existing world cities and some more specialized smaller service centers, at the expense of old-line industrial cities.

The expected impacts of the new technologies on the formal economy have a rather quaint and dated air - understandably, since the work is more than a decade old. For example, it is argued that computing breaks down the physical constraints of the physical body, putting it on a par with the freedom and capacity of the human mind and leading to pervasive and effective tele-presence. Information technologies are seen as space-extending, allowing individuals and firms to operate within geographically larger sets of boundaries. It is argued that the new technologies will benefit larger retail chains operating in suburban centers at the expense of the smaller street-corner shop.

The third segment on new technology and space explores mostly the regional/global disposition of new technologies. The fourth segment on policy likewise focuses on interventions at a regional/national level that could lead to increased competitiveness.

While nearly all SPSS versions now have pull-down windows, there are many times where you don't want to use the defaults and want to modify the pull-down options. This book includes syntax for all commands in SPSS Base for use on statistical procedures. There is an introduction that explains some of the common commands and then a comprehensive user's manual for the language alphabetized by main commands. There is also a subject index and a keyword index that is very helpful. While the examples in the book leave something to be desired, the book takes some of the fear out of creating syntax for novices. It is a much needed companion for students and experts alike. This book can be used with all SPSS versions 7.5 and higher.

This book reads into the lives of past traders. If you like "Market Wizards", you'll like this book. Each operater story is short and interesting, this book does not go in details on how each operator trades, just their life story.

The Textbook of Total Quality in Health Care attempts to summarize in an introductory didactic format the state of the "total quality" (TQ) movement in today's health care industry. The target audience is "TQ and health care professionals and students in management, clinical, and support services." Although the editors present their work as a "textbook," it is actually a reader, comprising articles--some original and some published previously -- on the various dimensions of the TQ movement in health care and written by clinicians, academicians, health care administrators, and health law experts, mostly from the Oklahoma area. The result is a collection of articles characterized by the pluses and minuses typical of such synthetic attempts: the inclusion of number of different perspectives (even if somewhat localized) and an interesting combination of different types of articles.

The perspectives of organized medicine and health care accrediting agencies proffered in this book are a welcome addition. The editors have done satisfactory job of bridging the sections with introductory transitional pieces. However, the book reflects the challenge involved in compiling a cohesive, well-integrated set of articles and presenting them in a "seamless" format. The book also suffers from some of the repetition that results when several authors are writing on the same subject. For example, W. Edwards Deming, probably the best-known TQM guru, is discussed in no less than eight articles. The book is divided into five parts and contains an annotated bibliography.

The articles in Part I provide a useful introduction, to the concept of total quality, especially as it relates to health care. The short, but surprisingly enlightening history of U.S. health care and its obsession with "quality" is worthwhile.

In Part II, the concepts of "structure", "process" and "outcome" as they relate to total quality are introduced, and the importance of these concepts is constantly reconfirmed throughout the work. Part II also introduces the reader to the leading thinkers in the history of total quality--an important section for TQM neophytes. Perhaps the most useful section of Part II is the distinction that is made between traditional quality assurance (QA) activities in health care and the more contemporary concept of TQ and TQM. While this section clarifies what TQ is, the reader has to wait until a later section to find out how TQ is distinguished from some of the other "quality" disciplines. The efforts to translate experiences with TQ in other industries to health care are not very convincing, given the unique character of the health care field. Some of the earlier experiments with TQ in health care are described, however, and these are helpful. The importance of process in health care is clearly brought home here. Chapter 5 in this section is devoted to data management for TQ. The material, however, does not appear to be specific to either total quality initiatives or health care. It is actually a compendium of data collection, analysis, and presentation techniques that have been utilized in total quality initiatives. The chapter does introduce some of the organizational development techniques that have been popularized through TQ efforts, such as run charts, control charts, and force field diagrams. This chapter almost represents a standalone reference document.

Part III, which is devoted to the TQ environment, opens with an insightful chapter on the "cost" of quality. It breaks down cost factors into prevention costs, appraisal costs, and failure costs, and then outlines techniques for measuring these costs and determining their implications for the process. Chapter 7 in this section examines the TQ issue from a legal perspective. Although this chapter is not a very comfortable fit in this section, it does introduce key issues, players, etc. from a legal perspective. Chapter 8 describes the types of organizations that exist in U.S. society and briefly discusses the implications of each from a TQ perspective. The increasingly important concept of "corporate culture" is introduced in this chapter.

Part IV, on TQ strategies, opens with a chapter on the integration of TQ and QA within health care. This is followed by a chapter on outcome analysis. Clearly, if this anthology were being compiled today, this issue would be given much more attention. Outcomes analysis twill no doubt be one of the major issues in health care for the rest of the decade. The final chapter presents research aspects of TQ, and reminds us that timely and accurate data provide the foundation for any meaningful analysis in health care today. This chapter also presents a long-overdue review of terms often used in TQ discussions. This chapter suffers, however, from the same deficiency as the outcomes chapter (i.e., too little too late in an environment that is deteriorating in the face of inadequate data). The final section includes a case study on the application of total quality methods at a particular Veterans Administration medical center. There is probably some benefit to be derived here but, standing as the sole case study, its usefulness is limited. In conclusion,

The Textbook of Total Quality in Health Care represents a reasonable attempt to pull together articles dealing with disparate aspects of TQ. Most of the articles are well written and include enough technical material to be informative but not enough to confuse the readers targeted by this work. The contributors incorporate most of the buzzwords and acronyms being used in the field today. On the negative side, the work is essentially about where total quality in health care has been and not where it is going. Critical considerations in today and tomorrow's health care system are not adequately covered. Managed care is mentioned only once in passing and capitation is not mentioned at all, to give two examples. Because of this, the reader is left with the need to follow up this work with more future-oriented materials. The book offers a reasonable introduction, but more will be required by any serious student of TQ.