Measuring What People Know

This book explains why it is possible, in terms of economic theory, and feasible, from the perspective of accounting practices, to implement new human capital information and decision-making systems.

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.

A bold agenda for a better way to assess societal well-being, by three of the world's leading economists and statisticians "If we want to put people first, we have to know what matters to them, what improves their well-being, and how we can supply more of whatever that is." —Joseph E. Stiglitz In 2009, a group of economists led by Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz, French economist Jean-Paul Fitoussi, and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen issued a report challenging gross domestic product (GDP) as a measure of progress and well-being. Published as Mismeasuring Our Lives by The New Press, the book sparked a global conversation about GDP and a major movement among scholars, policy makers, and activists to change the way we measure our economies. Now, in Measuring What Counts, Stiglitz, Fitoussi, and Martine Durand—summarizing the deliberations of a panel of experts on the measurement of economic performance and social progress hosted at the OECD, the international organization incorporating the most economically advanced countries—propose a new, "beyond GDP" agenda. This book provides an accessible overview of the last decade's global movement, sparked by the original critique of GDP, and proposes a new "dashboard" of metrics to assess a society's health, including measures of inequality and economic vulnerability, whether growth is environmentally sustainable, and how people feel about their lives. Essential reading for our time, it also serves as a guide for policy makers and others on how to use these new tools to fundamentally change the way we measure our lives—and to plot a radically new path forward.

Understanding your organization is a pre-requisite of effective management. This is true as much of your people as of your organization's processes or finances. The author proposes some role for one-off surveys and questionnaires but puts most emphasis on taking a systematic and objective approach to determining human situations. As well as exploring the process of measurement and comparing the various methods open to HR managers, the book focuses on how to make sense of, report and use the results.

How’s Life? charts whether life is getting better for people in 37 OECD countries and 4 partner countries. This fifth edition presents the latest evidence from an updated set of over 80 indicators, covering current well-being outcomes, inequalities, and resources for future well-being.

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.

With its conversational writing style and straightforward presentation, Neil J. Salkind’s bestselling book guides readers through the categories, design, and use of tests, as well as some of the basic social, political, and legal issues that the process of testing involves. New co-author Bruce B. Frey adds his expertise in the further development of this new edition.

A review of innovative policies in OECD countries shows that progress has already been made in moving beyond the poor information provided by standardised educational certification. Spurred by the emerging "knowledge economy", government policy makers, human resource managers, financial accountants and educators are developing methods for systematically evaluating and recording knowledge assets acquired through experience, education and training. This book explains why it is possible, in terms of economic theory, and feasible, from the perspective of accounting practices, to implement new human capital information and decision-making systems

Provides an introduction to the basic concepts of measurement, including common units of measurement, how to convert from one unit to another, and the difference between measures used in the United States and the metric system.

Knowledge when properly leveraged and harnessed contributes to effective organizational performance. How much an organization benefits from knowledge would depend on how well knowledge has been managed. There have been challenges to implementing knowledge management in today’s dramatically different world from before. This comprehensive reference work is a timely guide to understanding knowledge management. The book covers key themes of knowledge management which includes the basic framework of knowledge management and helps readers to understand the state of art of knowledge management both from the aspects of theory and practice, from the perspectives of strategy, organization, resources, as well as institution and organizational culture. This reference work reflects the increasingly important role of both philosophy and digital technologies in knowledge management research and practice. This handbook will be an essential resource for knowledge management scholars, researchers and graduate students.