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While weaknesses for students with learning disabilities (LD) may exist in basic reading skills, difficulty understanding text goes beyond reading the words on the page. The complex nature of reading requires educators to provide struggling readers with reading strategies that support active engagement with text, comprehension monitoring, and a means to organize their understanding before, during, and after reading. In this chapter we describe collaborative strategic reading (CSR), a multicomponent model for teaching reading comprehension strategies. CSR has been associated with reading gains for students with LD as well as low- and high-achieving students, and English language learners. We provide information about teaching reading strategies as well as suggestions for overcoming possible stumbling blocks to implementation.

Towns and cities across Canada face rapidly changing economic circumstances and many are turning to a variety of strategies, including tourism, to provide stability in their communities. Community Economic Development (CED) has become an accepted form of economic development, with recognition that such planning benefits from a more holistic approach and community participation. However, much of why particular strategies are chosen, what process the community undertakes to implement those choices and how success is measured is not fully understood. Furthermore, CED lacks a developed theoretical basis from which to examine these questions. By investigating communities that have chosen to develop their tourism potential through the use of murals, these various themes can be explored. There are three purposes to this research: (1) to acquire an understanding of the “how” and the “why” behind the adoption and diffusion of mural-based tourism as a CED strategy in rural communities; (2) to contribute to the emerging theory of CED by linking together theories of rural geography, rural change and sustainability, and rural tourism; and (3) to contribute to the development of a framework for evaluating the potential and success of tourism development within a CED process.

Two levels of data collection and analysis were employed in this research. Initially, a survey of Canadian provincial tourism guides was conducted to determine the number of communities in Canada that market themselves as having a mural-based tourism attraction (N=32). A survey was sent to these communities, resulting in 31 responses suitable for descriptive statistical analysis, using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). A case study analysis of the 6 Saskatchewan communities was conducted through in-depth, in person interviews with 40 participants. These interviews were subsequently analyzed utilizing a combined Grounded Theory (GT) and Content Analysis approach.

The surveys indicated that mural development spread within a relatively short time period across Canada from Chemainus, British Columbia. Although tourism is often the reason behind mural development, increasing community spirit and beautification were also cited. This research demonstrates that the reasons this choice is made and the successful outcome of that choice is often dependent upon factors related to community size, proximity to larger populations and the economic (re)stability of existing industry. Analysis also determined that theories of institutional thickness, governance, embeddedness and conceptualizations of leadership provide a body of literature that offers an opportunity to theorize the process and outcomes of CED in rural places while at the same time aiding our understanding of the relationship between tourism and its possible contribution to rural sustainability within a Canadian context. Finally, this research revealed that both the CED process undertaken and the measurement of success are dependent upon the desired outcomes of mural development. Furthermore, particular attributes of rural places play a critical role in how CED is understood, defined and carried out, and how successes, both tangible and intangible, are measured.

The Nature of Business Policy Business policy — or general management — is concerned with the following six major functions:

An overview of all the elements that go into formulating a business strategy – including received wisdom from the gurus, vision and values, ideas on growth, forecasting, information, objectives, audits, customers, markets, competition, finances, structure, training – with the focus on how to make it happen. Directed at practising managers whose task this is. Making strategic plans is the easy bit; enacting them requires changing things, getting things done through people. Discusses learning, training and development, culture, quality, with the emphasis on real people in real businesses. Underpinned by the philosophy of “action learning”.

Several leading companies have employed scenarios to better understand both current competitors’ potential moves as well as the possible emergence of new rivals. They have learned several principles and some ways to avoid various pitfalls. Competitor scenarios examine three broad aspects of marketplace strategy: in which product‐customer segments the competitor chooses to compete (scope); how it competes (competitive posture); and what it seeks to achieve (goals). Competitors are always at the heart of every significant analysis of the competitive or industry context. Experienced managers use competitor scenarios as a source of learning about the broader competitive context and of the implications for their firm’s strategy and operations. Competitor scenarios work best when they produce knowledge and insight that broadly informs and prepares decision makers to act rapidly as competitive conditions change. There are two distinct types of competitor scenarios that originate in two quite different forms of what‐if questions: unconstrained what‐if scenarios and constrained what‐if competitor scenarios. Unconstrained or open‐ended questions encourage scenario developers to pose any question that occurs to them pertaining to one or more rivals’ marketplace strategies. Such questions are limited only by the experience, imagination and creativity of those involved in thinking about the possible strategies of rivals. Unconstrained competitor scenarios are ideal for answering: How might new types of competitors come into the market? A distinct class of competitor scenarios revolves around invented competitors, that is, competitors that do not exist today but which could exist at some point in the future. Invented competitors shift the frame of reference to one or more rivals that, by definition, are strikingly dissimilar to any rival managers have had to contemplate to date. In contrast, constrained competitor scenarios ask: What would the competitor do if a specific set of marketplace or macro environmental end‐states or conditions were to arise? In almost all cases, competitor scenarios lead to rich insight into the firm’s own strategy alternatives‐and sometimes to alternatives not previously on the firm’s radar screen.

An updated version of the original (1985) text, the book covers all aspects of marketing and selling bank services: the role of marketing; behaviour of customers; intelligence, planning and organisation; product decisions; promotion decisions; place decisions; price decisions; achieving sales. Application questions help to focus the readers' minds on key issues affecting practice.

To achieve a full understanding of the role of marketing from plan to profit requires a knowledge of the basic building blocks. This textbook introduces the key concepts in the art or science of marketing to practising managers. Understanding your customers and consumers, the 4 Ps (Product, Place, Price and Promotion) provides the basic tools for effective marketing. Deploying your resources and informing your managerial decision making is dealt with in Unit VII introducing marketing intelligence, competition, budgeting and organisational issues. The logical conclusion of this effort is achieving sales and the particular techniques involved are explored in the final section.

Strategy gets you from where you are now to your ideal future. Strategy is the link between mission and profit. Establish your specialisation, your area of excellence, your core business. Establish a competitive advantage, a reason why customers should buy from you. Find the segment or niche in the market place which you can dominate. Concentrate all your resources hitting your market segment with your benefit and competitive advantage in your area of excellence. Many of the ideas in corporate strategy are similar to the goal setting and goal achieving ideas relating to individuals. This should not surprise us. Organisations do not have strategies. Only people have strategies.