Patients at Risk: The Rise of the Nurse Practitioner and Physician Assistant in Healthcare exposes a vast conspiracy of political maneuvering and corporate greed that has led to the replacement of qualified medical professionals by lesser trained practitioners. As corporations seek to save money and government agencies aim to increase constituent access, minimum qualifications for the guardians of our nation's healthcare continue to decline--with deadly consequences. This is a story that has not yet been told, and one that has dangerous repercussions for all Americans. With the rate of nurse practitioner and physician assistant graduates exceeding that of physician graduates, if you are not already being treated by a non-physician, chances are, you soon will be. While advocates for these ...

This Sixth Edition of The Generic Challenge provides important new updates on current regulatory, legal and commercial issues affecting brand and generic pharmaceutical products, including new laws establishing generics for biologics, and changes brought about by the recently enacted America Invents Act. It explains clearly and understandably the roles of patents, FDA regulation of drugs and the Hatch Waxman Act in commercial drug development in light of generic challenges and how improvements in innovative drug products provide benefits to patients while extending the commercial lives of the drugs. There is simply no other book of its kind on this important subject. REVIEWS [W]ho would benefit from a book toeing the line of enabling appreciation without going into too much detail? .... ...

Protecting information systems to reduce the risk of security incidents is critical for organizations today. This writing provides instruction for security leaders on the processes and techniques for managing a security program. It contains practical information on the breadth of information security topics, referring to many other writings that provide details on technical security topics. This provides foundation for a security program responsive to technology developments and an evolving threat environment.The security leader may be engaged by an organization that is in crisis, where the priority action is to recover from a serious incident. This work offers foundation knowledge for the security leader to immediately apply to the organization's security program while improving it to the...

Current and future managers are regularly confronted with decisions that create risk in the legal environment of business. This book provides a framework for qualifying legal risk and then determining if the legal risk is worth taking. This framework begins by looking at the relationship between the firm, its suppliers, customers, owners, agents, and others in society as a whole to understand specific risks in personal injury, agreements, products, borrowing money, employees, independent contractors, and business entity selection. When the manager is aware of the magnitude of the risk and the likelihood of the risk, the manager is in a strong position to determine if the risk is worth taking. This book uses numerous applications from Game Theory to determine how risks of the firm compare t...

Speed of Purpose delivers a powerful step-by-step process to achieve 2.8x productivity gains. This is a must-read, and must-implement, book for every aspiring top-performing team and organization! SPEED OF PURPOSE is launched with the three key Drivers of Purpose. These Drivers were developed through years of testing. Organizations were involved in measuring the impact of fully wrapping teams in Purpose as compared to the performance of those without Purpose. Each driver is brought to full speed by leveraging its three Accelerators. These nine Accelerators ultimately create the SPEED in SPEED OF PURPOSE.* SPEED OF PURPOSE has proven to be a productivity multiplier of 2.8X through significantly increased team engagement that spikes productivity and discretionary effort, leaving a sense o...

Police oversight agencies are citizens' watchdog organizations designed to ensure that the police are operating with integrity and accountability. Integrity is defined as the quality of being honest and morally upright. Accountability refers to situations in which someone is required or expected to justify actions or decisions. Based on integrity and accountability challenges in police forces all over the world, this book discusses the roles and methods of police oversight agencies. Knowledge management in police oversight is presented by identifying knowledge categories and knowledge management systems. A model for police oversight performance is developed in the book, and the model is applied to an oversight agency as a case study. By the same author: White-Collar Crime: Detection...

Managing Bids, Tenders and Proposals shows suppliers and vendors how they can gain competitive advantage by being more effective and productive when pursuing sales opportunities and competing to win new contracts. Suppliers and vendors can also learn how to identify and reduce delivery risk and commercial risk. Responding to requests-for-tenders (RFTs) and requests-for-proposals (RFPs) is frequently a challenging time for the supplier and vendor bid teams. Within tight timeframes, they must finalise their win strategy, determine their delivery plans and create compelling documentation that responds to the customer's questions and requirements. This essential reference work explores what needs to happen when responding to RFTs and RFPs and explains the essential knowledge needed by the bid...

Temporary employment is on the rise. In uncertain economic times, many businesses view employing temps as a cost-effective strategy to both maximize productivity and foster flexibility. Being noticed and ultimately hired by clients in this increasingly competitive market requires staffing services and temps to perform at new levels of excellence. Working with staffing service firms and temps for over 20 years, Cathy A. Reilly has learned a thing or two about the staffing industry and the bottom line: what temporary employment success looks like to a client. No matter where you are in this three-sided working arrangement, The Temp Factor: The Complete Guide to Temporary Employment for Staffing Services, Clients, and Temps is the most comprehensive and innovative manual on temporary emplo...

How can an economy based on something as volatile as knowledge be sustained? The urgency of improving our understanding of a knowledge-based economy provides the context and necessity of this study. In a previous study entitled A Sociological Theory of Communications: The Self-Organization of the Knowledge-based Society (2001) the author specified knowledge-based systems from a sociological perspective. In this book, he takes this theory one step further and demonstrates how the knowledge base of an economic system can be operationalized, both in terms of measurement and by providing simulation models. The measurement instruments are applied to the German and Dutch economies and elaborated in terms of regional and sectorial differences. The knowledge base is specified in th...

This book provides a contemporary theoretical insight into the fashion and luxury industry, addressing potential gray areas within the literature. The authors analyze the luxury and fashion industry using multiple perspectives, allowing for a critical comprehensive overview of the phenomenon across diverse streams. The book provides insight into fashion and luxury retailing in the context of both online and brick and mortar retailers based on a variety of market scenarios. It deciphers the rationale of customer behavioral and decision making in online and offline luxury and fashion purchasing contexts. It provides an overview of the challenges that the industry faces with the advent of the evolving omni-channel environment.The multiple theoretical and practical nuances of the fashion and l...

This book offers an introduction to transfer pricing with particular reference to China, for those who are looking for an overview that can be rapidly comprehended and who value diagrammatic images as a vehicle for learning. The subject is of importance both for Chinese and foreign personnel engaged in foreign company activity in China and for those who are similarly engaged in Chinese-owned companies already operating abroad, or which are to be extended to foreign locations.

This book shows you one thing: How to deal with moisture problems in buildings and their components: Roofs, walls, attics, heating/ventilation/air conditioning systems, etc.; as well as how to deal with moisture problems in insulated chilled water pipes and underground pipes. You'll discover the basics of moisture control in an easy-to-understand manner through real-life moisture problems that the author himself has been through, and managed to solve. Not only does Mr. William A. Lotz, P.E. write about his extensive moisture control experience with 2000 buildings and projects, but also convey the moisture control facts in a forthright, solution-oriented, jargon-free language. This language can be grasped by all building professionals: Architects, engineers, builders, facility managers, con...

Gapology is the term Mark Thienes and Brian Brockhoff coined to describe what winning leaders do to identify and close performance gaps in their teams. Gapology is their process. For more than a decade, they analyzed the results, leadership behaviors and tactics of winning leaders as compared to those of leaders who were not winning. They wanted to understand how winning leaders win and if winning could be replicated. They were deeply curious about whether winning can be taught to those not winning or if winning leaders are simply born with the skills to win. As they interviewed and documented their conversations with winning leaders they found commonalities. The most amazing was that all performance gaps are either; Knowledge Gaps, Importance Gaps, Action Gaps, or some combination of th...

Lack of effective leadership strategies contributes to a reduction in employee engagement and productivity. Managers are concerned about the lack of effective leadership strategies because it negatively affects employee engagement and productivity, reducing organizational growth. Grounded in Bass's transformational leadership theory, the purpose of this qualitative single case study was to explore effective leadership strategies used to enhance employee engagement and increase productivity. Five managers from an electric cooperative in Northwest Florida who implemented effective leadership strategies participated in the study. Data were collected using semistructured interviews and a review of organizational documents. Data were analyzed using Yin's five-step approach. The four emergent th...

Business Database Technology provides essential knowledge of database technology for four-year college/university business students who study information technology and data resource management. Students will learn basic data structure techniques in databases, relational database model, design and implementation of relational databases, normalization, SQL, physical relational database design techniques, database administration, relational databases in computer networks, data warehouses, overview of OLAP (online analytical processing), and introduction to NoSQL databases.

Why do so many leaders reach the senior level and fail? Simply, most are unprepared for the unique leadership roles and responsibilities a senior role requires. They hadn’t mastered the three critical factors necessary to reach the senior level and attain success. Embracing Senior Leadership provides the answers. Whether you are a senior leader looking for answers, aspire to be a senior leader, support a senior leader, or play a role as a human resources officer, recruiter, or executive coach, you will find practical strategies to hone the skills required at this level. Embracing Senior Leadership will help you master the three critical factors necessary for success: * The Job. Having in-depth knowledge and skillsets to meet the extraordinary challenges faced at the senior level and pe...

Whether you are a project manager tasked with overseeing an outsourced capital project or an owner investing in a major project critical to the future of your business, you are most likely starting at a disadvantage. A savvy contractor’s project team is likely to be populated with project management professionals who have read an abundance of literature on how to maximize project value for themselves. Unfortunately, as any book search will show you, there is virtually no guidance out there for how to successfully oversee a capital project from an owner’s perspective. In project management terms, the client or owner is just a “managed external stakeholder.” The Project Oversight Guide (POG) is intended to bridge the gap between knowing how to run a project and knowing how to overse...

The book charts the course and the history of how the regulation of financial services has evolved looking particularly at data protection. It addresses concepts like integration theory, the behaviour of nation-states when they attempt to forge geo-political unions and the implications and outcomes of state interaction in regulatory matters. Unlike many other General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) publications in the market, it contains useful analyses of the GDPR but it does so in a very practical and informative way. It recognises the perspectives of various interests including academics and commercial organisations and presents the subject in a compelling, historical and easy to digest manner, starting with the challenges of integration that the EU has faced. It then charts the cours...

We come in contact with many trademarks each day on television, retail stores, Internet. The Business of Trademarks explains why trademarks are so important to businesses and how they identify the manufacturer and guarantee consistent quality to achieve brand loyalty. The Business of Trademarks is intended as a practical guide for those new to trademarks, including attorneys, paralegals and law students requiring a concise, comprehensive book on trademark prosecution to gain the skills and knowledge necessary to perform day-to-day trademark work diligently, confidently and with efficiency. Specific topics covered are:* Trademark searching for clearance* Forms to be filed with the Patent and Trademark Office* Famous trademarks and trade dress * Responding to office actions* Methods of enfor...

What do Plato and the Bible tell us about bribery? Does it even matter? When it comes to ethical guidance on bribery should we look less to traditional wisdom and instead be seeking understanding and guidance primarily from modern sources? From economists with their talk of efficient markets, and from the critical theorists who focus on inequities in power relations? This book explores such questions in depth.Taking the form of a Platonic dialogue, the book contains a discussion of claims made for recognition of the positive aspects of bribery. This goes beyond the well-known "harmless" bribe - the facilitating or “grease” payment which encourages an official to speed up the performance of his or her existing duties, without additional favors. This type of baksheesh may be unattractive...

Policing Financial Crime presents theories of financial crime, stages of financial crime, and criminal entrepreneurship. Response, regulation, and prevention of financial crime are described in terms of police intelligence strategy, intelligence information sources, and information systems. By combining insights into the broad variety of financial crime types and behaviors and alternative law enforcement approaches, this book provides a unique insight into the growing local and global phenomena of financial crime. By the same author: White-Collar Crime: Detection, Prevention and Strategy in Business Enterprises Knowledge Management in Police Oversight: Law Enforcement Integrity and Accountability Essential Knowledge and Management Issues in Law Firms

Organizations are often rewarded for doing the trendy and flashy, as the recent fashionable university efforts related to Massively Open Online Course's demonstrate all too clearly. Innovations demonstrate many things symbolically to external stakeholders: you are on the cutting edge, you are the future, you are worthy of investment, you can respond to competitive pressures, you are attuned to a larger world, and so on. Ultimately, unfortunately, it is often not the work you do, but what your efforts stand for symbolically that is critical to evaluations of work performance. Here we will explore symbolic innovations comprehensively. Studying them provides a more thorough view of innovation processes and the underlying factors that motivate, generate them. Looking at innovations as sym...

A Practical Guide to Airline Customer Service is written for airline executives and undergraduate students who are preparing for a career in the airline service industry. Those working in similar functions and fields can also benefit from this book. This book primarily focuses on the importance of customer service in the airline industry. This includes basic airline operations and essential communication skills, and how airline service agents interact with passengers at every contact point of the travel process. This textbook is for anyone seeking a successful and rewarding career in the airline industry. TEACHING MATERIAL for INSTRUCTORS Contact Publisher for PowerPoint companion slide presentation available for each chapter for classroom use. Samples chapters below Chapter 5 - Airline...

Understanding risk is important. Prior to 2008, as the yields on safe assets hit rock bottom, investors began to focus on an alphabet soup of more complex instruments. These complex securities were rated AAA and appeared as safe as U.S. Treasuries, but with much higher yields. The 2008 financial crisis revealed, however, that higher yields on these instruments came with higher risk, albeit too late for these investors. This study seeks to understand the risk--return tradeoff, managerial skill, and factor exposures on the risk-return tradeoff in two financial instruments that have been limitedly investigated: commodity trading advisors (CTAs) and managed futures funds (MFFs).This study begins by documenting the differences between CTAs/MFFs and hedge funds and mutual funds, starting with th...

With the ever-increasing interconnection between markets, businesses and individuals from all over the globe, professionals are asked to develop a greater interest in the international implications of contracts. This book focuses attention on the distribution agreement, one of the most widely used contractual schemes in the practice of international exchanges, providing a analysis and information on the issues that should be considered by the practitioner when drafting, interpreting or executing an international agreement. Issues relating to the choice of the governing law, the competent court, the validity or invalidity of some clauses, the impact that the language of the contract may have, as well as the different meaning and scope of application of some principles, such as good faith an...

Economics demonstrates how markets can serve as remarkably efficient institutions in allocating scarce resources. At the same time, incomplete information generates prices that can lead to a mis-allocation, producing in some cases too little while in others too much of a good. Matters become more complicated when striking a balance is influenced by our perceptions of risk. Here, neuroscience provides insights into which, and what kind of public sector interventions one should consider. While there are many types of risk – political, economic, financial, and environmental as individuals confront any crisis, our perceptions of risk can alter significantly the extent to which we look to public sector intervention as a response. In the short run, crises many be managed through greater pu...

This text provides a comprehensive overview on how modern cruise ships are run, covering the most important topics of today’s shipboard operation involving Deck, Engine and Hotel divisions, with a focus on the recent innovations in the Culinary Arts, Entertainment productions, Spa and Beauty facilities and a specific reference on how to maximize "onboard revenues" such as Casino, Bar, Duty-Free Shops, Shore Tours, Photo Gallery, and onboard Art Auctions. A special chapter is dedicated to the procedures to prevent virus outbreaks including Norovirus and Coronavirus. World Class Shipboard Hospitality is addressed to all those who want to get an unbiased understanding of today’s cruise industry such as worldwide media professionals, tourism and hospitality college teachers, cruise indu...

Mark Thienes and Brian Brockhoff discovered the pathway of transformation called IMBAR. Whether in your professional career, organization, personal life or any specific situation, leveraging your IDENTITY gives you the tremendous power to intentionally produce whatever RESULTS you desire. Our IDENTITY creates our MINDSET, BEHAVIOR, and ACTIONS culminating in our RESULTS...thus IMBAR! Here is an excerpt from a lecture given by Mark, where he describes IMBAR: "We are all wired for greatness. We are wired to achieve extraordinary things. The hardware is already installed in each of us. More than 90 percent of humans just let their lives play out. What happens just happens, and what will be will be. Somehow, the other 10 percent got a different user's manual, and it says that we ar...

Theory and Practice of Modern Islamic Finance seeks to contribute to the existing body of work in the area of Islamic finance through examining the extent of divergence in practice of Islamic financing from the traditional Shari`ah in the Australian context. The author makes a discursive analysis of the regulation of Islamic finance in Australia in terms of (a) the financing instruments used, (b) certainty of transactions between participants in the system, and (c) institutional risk management of Islamic financial institutions. The work's objectives are two-fold: (a) to analytically study the extent to which Islamic Financial Services Providers (IFSPs) of Australia differ from the traditional Shari`ah in their current practices of Islamic legal financial system by their use of different f...

One of the primary concerns in a small business is the problem of risk. Many who begin the start-up process terminate it in less than one year. Of those that survive, many are unable to achieve sustained growth and profits. Small-to-medium business enterprises (SME) have a 50% to 90% chance of failure within the first five years. While there are measures of personal risk behavior of entrepreneurs, the literature contains no measure of risk orientation for the enterprise. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a researcher-designed instrument to measure the critical forces of business risk. The 37-item Entrepreneurial Risk Assessment Scale (ERAS) was developed from key theoretical concepts grounded in economics, marketing, management, finance, and entrepreneurship literatu...