Kmart's Ten Deadly Sins: How Rogue Managers Ruined an American Icon by Marcia Layton Turner, ISBN 0471435937
News that discount giant Kmart was filing for bankruptcy in early 2002 sent shockwaves through the retail community. How could a brand as widely recognized and firmly fixed in our cultural lexicon be teetering on the brink of extinction? Depending on who you talk to, Kmart’ s fall from grace can be attributed to any number of factors. In the first in-depth examination of Kmart, author Marcia Layton Turner reveals the real reason behind Kmart’ s troubles– bad management– and discusses how the large personalities and even larger dreams of Kmart’ s misguided leaders played a significant role in transforming this once profitable retail titan into a bankrupt behemoth.
Even though Kmart has emerged from bankruptcy, the truth is that the company has made a number of bad decisions throughout its forty-year history– some seemed like good decisions at the time, while others were obviously off base. But what really hurt Kmart is the fact that most of these decisions were made by rogue managers who shirked their duty to shareholders and company.
Kmart’ s Ten Deadly Sins spins an intriguing tale of the missteps and miscalculations of a retail giant which once had the industry in the palm of its hand, and foolishly let it all slip away. Interviews with financial analysts, former employees, and industry observers, coupled with in-depth research of SEC filings, news reports, and background data, paints a clear picture of exactly how Kmart management’ s thinking emerged as well as what went on behind the scenes– and why.
Weaving corporate history with financial analysis and expert commentary, this engaging book identifies and examines the tenmanagement mistakes, which ultimately brought Kmart to its knees.
You’ ll learn how a combination of . . .
Competitive Markov Decision Processes by Jerzy A. Filar, ISBN 0387948058
This book is devoted to a unified treatment of Competitive Markov Decision Processes. It examines these processes from the standpoints of modeling and of optimization, providing newcomers to the field with an accessible account of algorithms, theory, and applications, while also supplying specialists with a comprehensive survey of recent developments. The treatment is self-contained, requiring only some knowledge of linear algebra and real analysis. Topics covered include: Mathematical programming: Markov decision processes (the non-competitive case), and stochastic games via mathematical programming.- Existence, structure and applications: Summable stochastic games, average-reward stochastic games and applications and special classes of stochastic games.- Appendices on: matrix games, bimatrix games and nonlinear programming; a theorem of Hardy and Littlewood; Markov chains; and complex varieties and the limit discount equation.
Competitive Markov Decision Processes by Jerzy A. Filar, ISBN 0387948058 
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Trading 101: How to Trade Like a Pro by Sunny J. Harris, ISBN 0471144452
With a surge in the number of people trying their hand at trading today - baby boomers, retirees, individual investors - it's more important than ever to develop a solid working knowledge of the rudiments of this potentially profitable practice. Trading 101 is a clearly written, concise, and thorough introduction to the basics. The author, renowned for her successful Trading 101 seminars, creates an indispensable reference covering everything from charting techniques and trading vehicles to technical analysis and current market buzzwords. Trading 101 also provides details on which newsletters offer dependable investment advice, how to choose the best discount brokerage, and which of today's computers and financial software packages are the best for planning and evaluating trades. Complete with glossary, bibliography, and listings of networking and educational meetings on the Internet, as well as beginner seminars and conferences, software vendors, and recommended books, this comprehensive,...
Trading 101: How to Trade Like a Pro by Sunny J. Harris, ISBN 0471144452
Discount > Trading 101: How to Trade Like a Pro by Sunny J. Harris, ISBN 0471144452