Nearly everyone in the modern world is influenced to some degree by advertising and other forms of promotion. Organizations in both the private and public sectors have learned that the ability to communicate effectively and efficiently with their target audiences is critical to their success. Advertising and other types of promotional messages are used to sell products and services as well as t…

Some may wonder why public relations is a deserving topic for the extensive analysis it receives in this encyclopedia. After all, many might think, it is ?just PR.? In the view of some or even many, public relations is the art of sham, spin, buzz, sandbagging, and ?being nice.? Others fear it as deep-pockets lobbying that gives privilege to powerful companies and special interests. Having said …

Business is the backbone of American society and is one of the keys to making our system work as well as it has for more than two hundred years. Yet as a body of knowledge, business is much younger. There has been, to this point, no organized work that has attempted to present the discipline of business in a single place. The major purpose of the Encyclopedia of Business and Finance is to summa…

This book is the result of relentless hard work on the part of many talented people. While conducting research for the book and developing content, we had the pleasure of meeting and working with many marketers and hearing their stories? many of which became the foundations for case studies in this book: Lisa Gregg at American Express, Tim Riesterer at Ventaso, and David Perry at Aspen Skiing C…

Essentials of Knowledge Management is a practical survey of the field of Knowledge Management (KM)?a business optimization strategy that identifies, selects, organizes, distills, and packages information essential to the business of the company in a way that improves employee performance and corporate competitiveness. The preservation and packaging of corporate knowledge (i.e., information in t…

Financial Management and Analysis is an introduction to the concepts, tools, and applications of finance. The purpose of this textbook is to communicate the fundamentals of financial management and financial analysis. This textbook is written in a way that will enable students who are just beginning their study of finance to understand financial decision-making and its role in the decision-maki…

If there was ever a time when higher education needed sustained scholarly reflection on finance, it is now. The reality of globalization for higher education suggests an increase in competition?competition for students, faculty, and resources. Member states of the European Union are currently making a speedy and concerted effort to harmonize their curricula and educational processes. This exerc…

The history of communications is a branch of the history of technology but, strictly speaking, it is in a category of its own. The goods produced by technology, whether a piece of machinery, a piece of clothing or a piece of furniture, are tangible: they perform some useful function. The goods produced by communications are messages. They are mostly useless but when they are useful they can be …

Since 1959 Ashridge has earned the reputation of being one of the world?s leading business schools. Through all our activities, from executive education and post-graduate qualification programmes to research and consulting, we combine leading-edge thinking with a strong practical focus. We believe that learning must be involving, challenging and above all real, so that it does make a significan…

Although political communication can trace its roots to the earliest classical studies of Aristotle and Plato, modern political communication research is very much an interdisciplinary field of study, drawing on concepts from communication, political science, journalism, sociology, psychology, history, rhetoric, and other fields. In their seminal Handbook of Political Communication, Nimmo and S…