Jim-Bob strives to be on time for meetings. Myrtle keeps improving her accuracy. What's wrong with these word pictures of employee performance? If they're part of a formal performance review, they send mixed signals - signals that could come back to haunt you in lawsuits. Here's how to make your employee performance reviews accomplish their goals.

You don't have to be a savvy manipulator to get ahead -- you just need to understand and apply your innate talents.

FT's management editor examines the state of the business book publishing world.

In every organization, something "works." Small to large pockets of time, projects, and people exist who give life to the organizing system. Finding what "works" is a matter of discovering and giving voice to the stories that sow the seeds of positive change.

Jay Abraham offers his thoughts on common marketing mistakes.

Editor's Note: These mistakes are mostly focused on retail/product companies and Jay's writing is very infomercial-like, but you might find re-considering these items worthwhile...

A good password isn't a password at all. Instead, it's a system for creating codes that are easy to remember but hard to crack. And by codes we do mean codes, plural, so that someone who finds out one of your passwords won't know them all. Here's one methodology to help you generate unguessable-but memorable-gibberish.

Globalization opens up countless opportunities for companies, such as access to multiple markets, new revenue, knowledge and technologies, thus enabling them to enhance their competitiveness. At the same time, however, their activities are under serious threat in an environment of increasing world instability caused by geopolitical and social conflicts, together with economic and financial risks. Furthermore, the solidification of an unbalanced global economic system is itself one of the main sources of conflicts and risks. These positive and negative aspects of globalization cause sharp fluctuations in markets and pose challenges for global corporate strategic management.

This article proposes a qualitative analysis of the main approaches to these questions, in order to identify the challenges, in terms of threats and opportunities, facing the management of organizations which are transforming themselves into global ones, and suggests a Model of Global Strategic Thought.

International expansion requires a sure-footed strategy. Bain analysis shows that more than 60% of geographic moves fail entirely, and only 17% of companies achieve profitable foreign growth. But for those who get it right,the rewards can be great. How can companies score similar successes in overseas fields of competition? Bain's research surfaced four major conditions linked to profitable international expansion: a strong domestic core; a repeatable expansion formula;customer differentiation that travels across national borders; and a favorable industry structure. By assessing these conditions, companies can predict whether foreign moves will pay off.

When it comes to ethics in business, many accept that standards can not only be different from, but even lower than, ethics in everyday life. That should definitely not be so, argues this author. In fact, he says, a corporation's obligations to its stakeholders bind it to those stakeholders, in turn creating new and specific moral obligations.

Someone has summarized Dale Carnegie's two most prominent books, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and How to Stop Worrying and Start Living along with Dorothy Carnegie's The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking and Don't Grow Old - Grow Up!

An interview with Professor Nirmalya Kumar of London Business School, focusing on the need for marketers to assume the role of change agents, developing strategic thinking and cross-functional skills. Discusses the decline of marketing as an engine for growth, and the rationale underpinning continuous incremental innovation as opposed to radical market-driving innovation. Reports on the means of benefiting simultaneously from the efficiencies of global scale and the effectiveness of localization through the disaggregation of activities. Outlines the most important business challenges facing India today.

Gazing at weather systems, a ground-breaking scientist spawned an ecological accounting standard that Wall Street might one day embrace.

Editor's Note: discusses emergy, a concept created by University of Florida professor Howard Odum, which is a blueprint for breaking down the world into basic, measurable energy components called solar emjoules. A joule is a unit of energy that is available now. An emjoule ("energy-embodied joule") represents an amount of energy invested in producing a specific product or providing a service.

Internet search engines use an auction system for selling business advertising on their sites. Researchers say firms buying that advertising could save time and money by using a different bidding strategy.

One of today's hottest topics in HR is the role and value of personality testing. It is science, art, or just plain voodoo? This HireDesk interview calls on one of the world's most respected researchers in workplace personality assessment, Dr. Robert Hogan, and one of the country's most experienced labor and employment lawyers, Jeffrey Ross, Esq. Learn why these experts believe the detractors of workplace personality testing have missed the mark, and why they believe personality testing can add significantly in identifying the best candidate.

A brand scorecard can fill a big gap in your marketing dashboard-but only if you present the brand as an asset in terms the CFO can understand.

IT and infrastructure shouldn't be treated like the elephant in the room that no one wants to acknowledge. Eventually, ambivalence will give way to fear and loathing if the CIO and the IT team can't account for its presence. Instead, companies should proactively set new strategic imperatives for their IT infrastructures. This may require a new operational model, more sophisticated value measurements, and tough choices about priorities and investments. But it sure beats getting trampled on.

This paper reinterprets the work of Mintzberg and Whittington to characterize the field of strategy as an orthodoxy under sustained challenge. In this analysis, the orthodoxy is underpinned by two related assumptions; the first about the nature of knowledge, which supports the second, about the nature of organizations. Both assumptions are contested, not only in other parts of the strategy literature, but also in their parent disciplines. In the empirical work conducted in the UK National Health Service, the orthodox theoretical position on strategy proved to be of little value, and the researchers had to construct their own account, based on soft systems principles so that the evaluation work could proceed. This research experience has here been used to construct a more general theoretical account of strategy, consistent with soft systems thinking, but dependent upon neither of the challenged assumptions.

Editor's Note: a good overview of Whittington's and, to a lesser extent, Mintzberg's thoughts on strategy.

The failure of many transformation efforts is caused not so much by people's resistance to change or by the details of "implementation" as by a deficient understanding of the interplay between organization and behavior.

Abstract: Research on forecasting is extensive and includes many studies that have tested alternative methods in order to determine which ones are most effective. We review this evidence in order to provide guidelines for forecasting for marketing. The coverage includes intentions, Delphi, role playing, conjoint analysis, judgmental bootstrapping, analogies, extrapolation, rule-based forecasting, expert systems, and econometric methods. We discuss research about which methods are most appropriate to forecast market size, actions of decision makers, market share, sales, and financial outcomes. In general, there is a need for statistical methods that incorporate the manager's domain knowledge. This includes rule-based forecasting, expert systems, and econometric methods. We describe how to choose a forecasting method and provide guidelines for the effective use of forecasts including such procedures as scenarios.

Editor's Note: a good article...

Typically, site analysis must be customized to individual marketing objectives. But there are a few common key performance indicators (KPIs) that can be applied across the board. Here are four KPIs every marketer or site owner can leverage to identify opportunities and improve results. Best part is, these are easy ratios to create using any Web analytics tool and Microsoft Excel.

That the terrain of decision making is mined with moral hazards has never been much in doubt. But the real question for executives is this: Just how can you make your conscience your guide? This author has suggestions and strong advice that, when taken, can help restore public confidence in business leaders.

Editor's Note: discusses the author's concept of teleopathy...

The term "hydrogen economy" is the title of a recent book [Rifkin, 2002], but the concept of using hydrogen as fuel for transportation systems has been advocated by environmentalists and others for at least three decades. There is no universally accepted definition of the "hydrogen economy," but it is generally viewed as the replacement of the vast majority of petroleum fuels used by transportation vehicles of all kinds (automobiles, trucks, trains, and aircraft) with hydrogen that is burned in internal-combustion engines, external-combustion (jet) engines, or preferably, used in fuel cells to more efficiently generate power for transportation.

Why should it take more than a quarter of a century to achieve the hydrogen economy? One can postulate many reasons - such as the difficulty of the technologies involved, the high costs involved, and competition for public funds with other worthy programs. Before hydrogen can achieve its promise, all stakeholders must work together to overcome an array of technical, economic, and institutional challenges. This article attempts to clarify and put in perspective these challenges.

Editor's Note: a bit technical at points, but still readable by the layperson...

Gender is not a good predictor of negotiation performance, but ambiguous situations can trigger different behaviors by men and women. Here is how to neutralize the differences and reduce inequities.

This manifesto helps companies of all sizes understand and implement the necessary level of security. The 25 tips cover everything from physical security to SPAM.

Building more efficient equipment is actually an important key to profitability says George David, chief executive of United Technologies.