Interactives now has a range of publications that support our offerings. These thought leading works can be ordered by clicking on the statement at the bottom of each description. Enjoy your reading!

The Rise of The Player-Manager: How Professionals Manage While They Work. Philip Augar and Joy Palmer. ISBN 0-14-028665-9. Penguin. London, 2002.

Published in the US by Texere (part of Thomson) in Spring 2004.

Player Managers are the forgotten heroes of the modern workplace. They both manage others and work in the team in jobs such as law, finance, accounting, consultancy, education, health, and as specialists in industry. Yet conventional analysis of managers and workers has looked straight past Player Managers. This book is written for them.

For many successful professionals this dual role is baffling, exhausting and tough. It can present what seem like insurmountable problems -not least increased workload, responsibilities and a feeling of isolation. Philip Augar and Joy Palmer, who have faced these challenges themselves, have written an informative and entertaining book for anyone caught up in this neglected and hugely significant phenomenon. It includes:

• Stories about practising Player Managers, both old and new, good and bad

• Analysis across a wide variety of businesses and professions

• Straightforward advice on how to raise your game and survive

"This is an important book about workplace change. We're all managers now".

Richard Donkin, author of: Blood, Sweat and Tears: The Evolution of Work

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The Human Organization. Joy Palmer, Journal of Knowledge Management, Volume 1, Number 4, June 1998, pp294 - 307.

The Human Organization is a response to the network morphology. As networks supersede hierarchy as the predominant form of organization, fluid processes and flexible teams need to replace fixed reporting lines and familiar functions. The barriers to achieving this are more often cultural and emotional than they are commercial and technological. This paper proposes that effective knowledge-based businesses will be built on human network connections.
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Heaven and Hell: Surviving Self-Organizing Teams. Joy Palmer, Journal of High Performance Teams, Volume 3, Number 4, September 1998, pp5 - 14.

According to current management wisdom, teams need to become more self-organizing in order to cope with the demands of complex, dynamic environments. This article looks at what it takes to survive and examines how to generate the positive forces for renewal and creativity, without simultaneously unleashing a capacity for destructiveness and negativity.
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Brand Knowledge Management: Growing Brand Equity. Ian Richards, David Foster and Ruth Morgan. Journal of Knowledge Management, Volume 2, Number 1, September 1998, pp47 - 54.

Winner of the Literati Club "Outstanding Paper 1999"

The concept of Brand Knowledge Management looks to move brand-led organizations from content to process and from data to tacit knowledge. This paper proposes a manifesto for brand marketing that re-focuses its activities and challenges the roles, structures and behaviour of its management. Above all, it provides a new framework for developing, exploiting and managing brand knowledge.
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Get Knetted: Network Behaviour in the New Economy. Joy Palmer and Ian Richards. The Journal of Knowledge Management, Volume 3, Number 3, September 1999, pp191-202.

Knowledge networks, knets, will be the predominant form for successful companies in the twenty first-century. The enabler for knets is network behaviour. This is a focus on social wiring that is necessary to unleash the collective intelligence from connected, multiple nodes. This paper provides a first view of network behaviour. The results are based on responses to a web-based network quiz from more than 130 people in various organisations across the world. It shows that people believe in network behaviour but appear to be encumbered by current organisational forms. The risk for those who cannot develop network behaviour is isolation, caused by the even deeper social fragmentation created by unilateral technological progress.
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Innovation - The Strategic Imperative. Ian Richards, Management Trends International, Lavendon, UK. ISBN 1-902388-02-X

A refreshing new look at creating consistently successful innovation processes, this report breaks free of the management objectivity that currently dominates the area. Innovation is seen as a human condition, a process that is determined by human behaviours and social connections linked by the innovation chain. Managers who avoid or ignore the human side of innovation risk missing out on the most powerful aspect of this key corporate issue. This report gives managers the means to understand what makes innovation tick, how to create the environment for it and how to "manage" innovation with innoformation.
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Delivering Exceptional Performance: Aligning the Potential of Organizations, Teams and Individuals. Pam Jones, Joy Palmer, Carole Osterweil and Diana Whitehead. ISBN 0-273-62498-9. FT Pitman Publishing, London. 1996.

"The authors of Delivering Exceptional Performance provide a comprehensive treatment of the essential elements of a high performing organization. A particular strength of the book is the assessment and consulting tools which accompany each chapter and ground concepts in the real world of "how to do." - Richard Pascale, author of "The Art of Japanese Management" and the management best-seller "Managing on the Edge."

"A wake up call to people and organisations. A must for all who wish to succeed in this era of constant change and rapid technological advance". Sue Tomlinson, Director, Career Action Centre, Cable and Wireless.
This book is out of print