In today's increasingly globalized world, it is essential that people of diverse ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds learn to work together and communicate effectively. This book offers a breakthrough approach to recognizing that differences among people are resources for organizations to tap as they strive to anticipate change and adapt rapidly in an unpredictable world. "Catalytic Conversations" provides a conceptual framework for understanding how complex communication patterns of social networks influence, and are influenced by, organizational structures. It discusses how to enhance the quality and viability of groups and organizational life by paying attention to how people talk - and do not talk - to each other. The book distinguishes between conversations that support organizational enhancement and others that inhibit innovation, and explores the complexity of organizational communication in detail.

The science of catalytic reaction engineering studies the catalyst and the catalytic process in the laboratory in order to predict how they will perform in production-scale reactors. Surprises are to be avoided in the scaleup of industrial processes. The laboratory results must account for flow, heat and mass transfer influences on reaction rate to be useful for scaleup. Calculated performance based on these results must also be useful to maximization of profit and safety and minimization of pollution. To this end, information on products as well as byproducts and heat produced must be generated. If a sufficiently large database of knowledge is produced, optimization studies will be possible later if economic conditions change.The field of reaction engineering required new tools. For kinetic and catalyst testing, the most successful of these tools was the internal recycle reactor. Studies in recycle reactors can be made under well-defined conditions of flow and associated transfer processes, and close to commercial operation. The recycle reactor eliminates or minimizes the effect of transfer process, and allows the remaining ones to be known.Features of this book:• Provides insight into a field that is neither well understood nor properly appreciated.• Gives a deeper understanding of reaction engineering practice.• Helps avoid frustration and disappointment in industrial research. This book is short and clear enough to assist all members of the R&D and Engineering team, whether reaction engineers, or specialists in other fields. This is critical in this new age of computation and communication, when team members must each know at least something of their colleagues' fields. Additionally, many scientists in more exploratory or fundamental fields can use recycle reactors to study basic phenomena free of transfer interactions.

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Christians details the processes through which LGBT Christians resolve the fraught tensions between their religious, sexual and gendered identities, and examines the associated changes to their religious practice in the pursuit of “authenticity.” The book moves between richly described first-person accounts and clear theoretical analysis, contextualising the disucssion within contemporary theories of religion and same-sex attraction. Through careful qualitative research with LGBT Christians in the Australian Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), and the Uniting Church, Bronwyn Fielder and Douglas Ezzy show that although painful self-questioning and struggle is experienced by some LGBT Christians, many people ultimately find a resolution and a sense of peace with their sexual identity as LGBT Christians. The pursuit of authenticity is shown to be driven by participants' essentialist understanding of sexuality and gender, and the centrality of religiosity to their sense of self. Offering insight into how participants transform their relationships, emotions, beliefs, and ritual practices in order to make this authentic life possible, this study is an important contribution to the field of religion and sexuality.

Most executives have a big, hairy, audacious goal. But they install layers of stultifying bureaucracy that prevent them from realizing it. In this article, Jim Collins introduces the catalytic mechanism, a simple yet powerful managerial tool that helps turn lofty aspirations into reality. The crucial link between objectives and results, this tool is a galvanizing, nonbureaucratic way to turn one into the other. But the same catalytic mechanism that works in one organization won’t necessarily work in another. So, to help readers get started, Collins offers some general principles that support the process of building one effectively. 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.

Evaluation-based performance management systems are flawed, ineffective and inefficient. Markle shows why and describes in detail an exciting new system based on a coaching, not a coercing, paradigm. His "catalytic" approach integrates performance management into the entire people development process. Markle provides tools that can be used to quickly and easily measure the effectiveness and efficiency of any performance management system. With examples, forms, and hands on guidance, Markle's book is essential for HR professionals, business executives, and for organizational development specialists in corporations and academia.