One of the major challenges facing organization studies has been for a long time to develop an operational content to the notion of routines . This book offers important advances in this direction, both conceptually and through illuminating case studies. Giovanni Dosi, Sant Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy This book showcases advanced empirical research that applies the concept of organizational routines to understanding organizations and how they change and evolve. The contributions gathered in the book cover qualitative, quantitative, and archival methods for empirical research applying the concept of organizational routines. Specific issues highlighted include the use of event-sequence methods in the analysis of organizational routines, the impact of standard operating procedures on recurrent behaviour patterns, and the stability, resilience, and change of organizational routines. The book thus provides an overview of different empirical methods applied to study organizational routines, and of their prerequisites, analytical power, and contribution. This comprehensive book will be of great interest to scholars and postgraduate students in the fields of organization theory, strategy, and organization behaviour. Researchers in organization, management and economic science, organizational change and evolutionary theories will also find this book invaluable.

Creativity can be viewed as the first stage of the overall innovation process, an important dimension of the entrepreneurship and new venture creation processes, and as such, it is considered to be a cornerstone of organizational competitiveness in this global, knowledge-based economy. Research on creativity has increasingly become multilevel, with most work conducted at the individual or team level of analysis. At the same time, there is a large body of research being conducted at the organizational level of analysis on innovation, and there has been a significant amount of entrepreneurship research at the individual level, with an increasing focus on organizational entrepreneurship. However, these three research streams have developed independently, and there has been very little knowledge transfer between the three areas. Because entrepreneurship is often said to be a process that is required to convert innovation into business ventures that will deliver benefits to stakeholders, it is typically driven by an individual or small group of individuals. Creativity research, innovation research, and entrepreneurship research have the potential to inform each other, enriching our knowledge of each area, particularly with regard to the cognitive processes and behaviors that are most effective. This Handbook includes contributions from the leading scholars in these three research areas, who integrate contemporary research findings on organizational creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship and provide fruitful new research directions."

"Sometimes you just want to know the answer to a question that's been bugging you-especially when it comes to that intriguing but sometimes challenging thing called process theology! Here at last is exactly the right book, with questions written by people like you and answers developed by that best of all process thinkers ,John B. Cobb,Jr. Whether you plunge right in by reading it straight through, or dip into the issues bit by bit, you'll find yourself a partner in a deeply engaging conversation." MARJORIE SUCHOCKI, author of The Whispered Word: A Theology of Preaching and In God's Presence: Theological Reflections on Prayer "Within these lucid pages, one of the great minds of our time speaks with profound clarity. Herein lie the Big Questions. And these are the answers that changed my life!” PATRICIA ADAMS FARMER, author of Embracing a Beautiful God "After being introduced to the worldview of process thought, Christian readers so often ask: 'But how can this worldview be connected with traditional Christian belief and practice?' The Process Perspective offers a process response to the questions that are truly on people's minds: Is God personal? Is prayer effective? Who was Jesus? Why do the innocent suffer? It presents a way of thinking about Christian faith, and living the Christian life, that is a viable alternative to fundamentalism on the one hand and lukewarm liberalism on the other. It displays a Christianity with roots and wings. Thank you, John Cobb." JAY McDANIEL, author of Living from the Center: Spirituality in an Age of Consumerism In this fresh perspective on faith from a man of faith, internationally renowned process theologian John B. Cobb,Jr., addresses more than thirty questions about God, Christ, the Bible, the church, humankind, and ethics. He seeks to put process ideas into plain language, with clear implications for faithful living.

Point processes and random measures find wide applicability in telecommunications, earthquakes, image analysis, spatial point patterns, and stereology, to name but a few areas. The authors have made a major reshaping of their work in their first edition of 1988 and now present their Introduction to the Theory of Point Processes in two volumes with sub-titles Elementary Theory and Models and General Theory and Structure. Volume One contains the introductory chapters from the first edition, together with an informal treatment of some of the later material intended to make it more accessible to readers primarily interested in models and applications. The main new material in this volume relates to marked point processes and to processes evolving in time, where the conditional intensity methodology provides a basis for model building, inference, and prediction. There are abundant examples whose purpose is both didactic and to illustrate further applications of the ideas and models that are the main substance of the text.

The Template-based management (TBM) approach has been used since 2003 across the world in diverse contexts. It has evolved hand-in-hand with the evolution of business: Agile, Blueprints, Canvas, Design Thinking, or Kanban are only few of the many current concepts based on the approach. This book expands and upgrades the author's 2003 book 'Template-driven Consulting' (Springer) by tracing this evolution and offering the current state-of-the-art to practitioners. TBM combines structure and method: pre-structuring diverse processes, it helps to present complex activities and procedures in a simple, clear, and transparent manner and then implement them. The use of TBM ranges from conception or creative work in agencies to designing organizations and strategies, planning and monitoring initiatives and projects, to innovation management and optimizing cost structures, processes, or entire departments and divisions. The book also demonstrates how successful organizations use TBM to methodically and structurally apply the internal know-how in a cost and time-optimal way for attaining sustainable business success. Readers will learn to apply and use TBM, identify its importance, and benefit from a variety of case studies that illustrate the application and use for the entire business and management practice.

At the core of institutional theories, ‘values’ is a central term and figures in most definitions; however it remains understudied and under-explored. The editors of this open access book identify a resurgence of interest in the values-construct which underpins discussions of identity, ‘ethos’ and the purpose/nature of public and civic welfare provision. Considering the importance of values and values work to social, material and symbolic work in organizations, individual chapters explore values work as performed in organizations and by leaders. Focusing on practices of values work, the book applies and combines different theoretical lenses exemplified by the integration of institutional perspectives with micro-level perspectives and approaches.