This book is a handbook for people who want to assure the use of reliable and valid questionnaires for collecting information about organizations. It significantly reduces the time and effort required for obtaining validated multi-question measures of aspects of organizational ‘health’ such as employee job satisfaction, organizational commitment, organizational justice, and workplace behaviors. It helps users in measuring some factors underlying employee perceptions of work such as job characteristics, role ambiguity or conflict, job stress, and the extent to which employees believe their values and those of the organization are congruent. All the measures in the book have been used and tested in research studies published in the 1990’s. In addition, all the measures describe the extent and types of reliability and validity tests that have been completed, a feature that organizational researchers should find particularly useful. All in all, this book is a handy tool to increase the efficiency of researchers, consultants, managers, or organizational development specialists in obtaining reliable and valid information about how employees view their jobs and organizations.

Taking Measure surveys the entire writing career of X. J. Kennedy from his first collection of poetry, Nude Descending a Staircase, to his latest collection, The Minimus Poems. Beginning with a study of the way Kennedy designs his poetry to reflect the poem's subject and tone, the book then traces Kennedy's poetic development through each of his poetry publications. Concluding the book is a chronology of Kennedy's life and writing history, a discussion of the influences on Kennedy's work, a list of his publications and of the titles of his poetry, and a selected bibliography.

This book breaks new ground on how policymakers and journalists can fairly assess charter school performance. The editors and authors show how good approaches to charter school assessment would also work for regular public schools, which is important because of the requirements of No Child Left Behind.

Photographs and essays express "the way the American landscape has been forged by various cultures in the past and what the possibilities are for its future design."--Jacket.

Good performance measurement frameworks show taxpayers what they are getting for their money and enable the Government to assess whether it is achieving its key objectives cost-effectively. In its final review of the quality of the data systems used by government departments to measure progress against Public Service Agreements (PSAs), the NAO concludes that the PSA framework provided a clear focus on the objectives that mattered for the then Government, and had gradually improved. The quality of data systems and of disclosures about measurement policies has risen: 58 per cent of PSA data systems, under 2007's Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR07), were fit for purpose, up from 30 per cent under the 2002 Spending Review. The NAO notes, however, that a third of CSR07 systems needed strengthening to improve controls or transparency and 10 per cent of systems were not fit for purpose. PSAs became progressively more focused on key priorities, and more clearly stated however they generally did not make clear the extent to which outcomes were the result of government activity. And financial information has been poorly linked with PSA indicators. The apportionment of annual departmental expenditure was not broken down by the indicators used to report progress and did not facilitate more in-depth analysis of the cost of progress. This hinders strategic decision-making because it is not clear what allocation of available resources could achieve the best overall results. The ability to link financial and performance information is particularly significant at a time when public sector budgets face severe cuts.

This book takes a radically different approach to the concept of autonomy. Killmister defends a theory of autonomy that is four-dimensional and constituted by what she calls ‘self-definition,’ ‘self-realisation,’ ‘self-unification,’ and 'self-constitution.' While sufficiently complex to inform a full range of social applications, this four-dimensional theory is nonetheless unified through the simple idea that autonomy can be understood in terms of self-governance. The ‘self’ of self-governance occupies two distinct roles: the role of ‘personal identity’ and the role of ‘practical agency.’ In each of these roles, the self is responsible for both taking on, and then honouring, a wide range of commitments. One of the key benefits of this theory is that it provides a much richer measure not just of how autonomous an agent is, but also the shape—or degree—of her autonomy. Taking the Measure of Autonomy will be of keen interest to professional philosophers and students across social philosophy, political philosophy, ethics, and action theory who are working on autonomy.

Social scientists seek to develop systematic ways to understand how people make meaning and how the meanings they make shape them and the world in which they live. But how do we measure such processes? Measuring Culture is an essential point of entry for both those new to the field and those who are deeply immersed in the measurement of meaning. Written collectively by a team of leading qualitative and quantitative sociologists of culture, the book considers three common subjects of measurement—people, objects, and relationships—and then discusses how to pivot effectively between subjects and methods. Measuring Culture takes the reader on a tour of the state of the art in measuring meaning, from discussions of neuroscience to computational social science. It provides both the definitive introduction to the sociological literature on culture as well as a critical set of case studies for methods courses across the social sciences.

In the spring of 2010, Harvard Business School’s graduating class asked HBS professor Clay Christensen to address them—but not on how to apply his principles and thinking to their post-HBS careers. The students wanted to know how to apply his wisdom to their personal lives. He shared with them a set of guidelines that have helped him find meaning in his own life, which led to this now-classic article. Although Christensen’s thinking is rooted in his deep religious faith, these are strategies anyone can use. Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice. The Harvard Business Review Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world.

Some of today's most prominent experts on the American presidency offer their perspectives, commentary, and analyses in this volume of studies, commissioned by the Fulbright Institute of International Relations and the Blair Center of Southern Politics and Culture, both at the University of Arkansas. With a shared focus on Bush's decision-making style, the impact of increasing partisanship, economic issues, especially after the 2008 financial meltdown, and, of course, the cumulative impact of 9/11 and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the contributors link their observations and conclusions to broader political and policy-related questions. They also take the opportunity to compare the Bush presidency with that of his successor, Barack Obama, through the latter administration's experience of disappointment in the 2010 congressional elections. The debate over the Bush legacy will not soon end, and this volume does not presume to offer the definitive, final commentary. It does, however, bridge the gap between dispassionate academic commentary written essentially for scholars and the sort of informed and unbiased analysis written for a larger public audience, contributing to the public understanding of our recent national experience. It contributes significantly to the beginnings of careful, systematic consideration of the George W. Bush presidency. -- From publisher's website.