Performance Books

This is an extremly important book by the great and most influencial music theorist of the 20th Century, Henrich Schenker. In this book, he speaks about contemporary performance practice and focuses in particularly on the technique of piano playing and piano practicing. There are chapters dedicated to specific techniques such as legato-playing and pedalling, and detailed discussions on dynamics, fingering, and rests. I highly recommend this book to all the musicians out there, it is simply too important to be overlooked.

THE ARTIST'S BODY is one of the finer compilations of an art form that drew attention from the press, museum curators, the public, the critics and fellow artists, probably more intensely focused than any other 'art movement' of the 20th Century. In this well documented and copiously illustrated volume the multiple authors contribute historical data, psychological responses and etiologies,and the works are all edited with skill and sensitivity by Tracey Warr and Amelia Jones. First published in 2000 in an expensive hardbound edition, the current release is now in affordable paperback form and belongs in the libraries of all who are interested in the trends and spectrum of contemporary art.

The title of the book explains the content well. This is a collection of the works of artists who have turned their art inward and use their own bodies as the matrix for expression. Here are the 'crucifixion' of Chris Burden on a Volkswagen, the cutting and piercing of skin by artists who use their own body fluids as paint, performance art in which the artist publicly reveals body functions with attributes assigned to various organs that were never imagined before, the famous 'Piss Christ' of Andres Serrano, the transgender photographs of Lyle Ashton Harris and the explicit sexuality of Robert Mapplethorpe - in each of these the artist speaks to the audience about life expressions as acted out by or realized by the artist using the format of his/her body. And in many ways these at times disturbing images created are simply another form of self-portraiture.

Amelia Jones' writing is cogent and non-judgmental and her survey begins with none other than Marcel Duchamp and examines most all of the artists who have participated in this movement up to the year 2000. Tracey Warr has gathered not only copious photographs and excerpts from videotapes to illustrate Jones' survey, but she has also added statements by the artists, responses from the critics, examinations by historians, and even details of public response to this medium.

While many may view this book as shock material, closer examination and actual reading of the superb writing (with significant contributions by such luminaries as Lucy Lippard, Thomas McEvilley, George Bataille and Gilles Deleuze) will acquaint the novice of the true significance of this art form. Whether the human body is used as a surface, as a 'paint brush', as ritualistic mutilation reaching for meaning in a world that seems dulled to invention, in performance, or in using the body as an imprinter of image on various substrates, the need for this type of expression is as valid as any other form of the artists' invention. This is a challenging book, in some ways a disturbing book, but it is the finest volume to address this art movement as has been written. THE ARTIST'S BODY is a very important book and one that belongs in the library of all art lovers. Grady Harp, September 07

Excellent for the intermediate and advance trumpet player. Candaza section is great. CD illustrates Sandovals excellence.

Let's face it. You don't have to like this book. You're not buying it for the plot. You either need it or you don't.

Plenty of info for the materials guy or gal. I bought it used.

Written by college and university organizational development consultant Barbara A. Miller, Assessing Organizational Performance in Higher Education is a guide especially for leaders in higher education, offering a tested and proven model for integrating and expanding assessment practices that give a genuinely accurate picture of organizational successes, strengths, and weaknesses. Chapters discuss both internal and external elements in organizations as systems, practical assessment methods and terminology, how to define and measure organizational performance, how to create and maintain reliable assessment programs, and more. Black-and-white charts and tables help clarify the points and procedures spelled out in straightforward, readily accessible terms, in this excellent resource for garnering the necessary information to optimize institutional educational performance.

This book is complete, detailed, structured & full of good information that is easy to follow. It is the best book that I have bought on the subject of maintenance management to date, and is now one of the few constant companion books that travel with me. I would recommend Asset Maintenance Management to anyone in any field of maintenance management. At least one of the articles has a definite electrical diagnostic slant for our electrical bretheren.

My only criticisms would be that the spell checker wasn't functioning particularly efficiently at the time of editing, and I've noted that at least two of the graphics have been partially cut off at the base. Finally, this book is based entirely around fixed processing plant, and as yet have no seen no applications of the information to mobile plant.

In closing, maintenance principles, philosophies, strategies & tactics are roundly universal and this book is a "must-buy" for anyone of any maintenance persuasion seeking to continue down the road of Continuous Improvement.

Robert Korajczyk's "Asset Pricing and Portfolio Performance"

Reviewed by Craig W. French

One might wonder, since the bulk of Robert Korajczyk's "Asset Pricing and Portfolio Performance: Models, Strategy and Performance Metrics" (London: Risk Books 1999) is available through JSTOR and at public libraries at virtually no cost, whether it is reasonable to spend two hundred dollars on such a volume. This consideration certainly crossed my mind. The correct conclusion is in the affirmative, for there are two valuable sources of alpha in this collection of nineteen of the most influential works in the financial economics literature.

First, Dr. Korajczyk's introduction provides a clear and concise survey of the twin topics of asset pricing and performance evaluation. The nineteen papers, whose reprints comprise the book, are grouped into four primary categories - section 1, asset pricing theory; section 2, tests of the models and anomalous empirical evidence; section 3, structural market imperfections; and section 4, performance evaluation. Dr. Korajczyk does a commendable job of discussing these areas of financial economics and provides a nice contextual framework for the papers he has selected.

The second source of value-added is chapter 2, which, for the first time, publishes the capital asset pricing model that Jack L. Treynor developed in 1962. This paper alone is worth many times the cost of the book. Although Treynor (1962) was circulated during the 1960s and has been cited (usually with the inaccurate date of 1961) in important seminal papers of prominent financial economists, the paper had heretofore fallen by the wayside in the history of the CAPM. Prior to publication in "Asset Pricing and Portfolio Performance", Treynor (1962) was not publicly available, and could only be found in private collections. Dr. Korajczyk has done both the academic and practitioner communities a great service by publishing Mr. Treynor's CAPM.

Section 1 includes Treynor (1962), Sharpe (1964), Merton (1973 and 1987) and Ross (1976). These works introduced the single-period discrete-time CAPM, the intertemporal CAPM, the APT and the extension of the CAPM to include asymmetric information. I would have liked, if not the paper itself (as a chapter), to see at least some discussion of the important interpretation of Fama (1968) in Dr. Korajczyk's introduction. Also, no mention of Rubinstein (1973) is made, which incorporated higher moments well before Ingersoll (1975) and Kraus and Litzenberger (1976), and also derived the CAPM without a riskless asset independently of Black (1972).

Section 2 is comprised of some of the noteworthy tests of asset pricing models and the anomalies that have been found as a result. The papers of Fama and French (1992 and 1996), Jegadeesh and Titman (1993), Daniel and Titman (1997), Brennan, Chordia and Subrahmanyam (1998) and Ferson and Harvey (1991) can be found here. While section 1 focused on early work, Section 2 avoids the original research in this vein, such as the papers by Black, Jensen and Scholes (1972) and Fama and MacBeth (1973). However, their findings are discussed in Fama and French (1992), which is reprinted as chapter 6, so the reader is not too deprived by their absence. Of course, a single volume is hardly enough to contain much of the anomaly literature, and Dr. Korajczyk chooses to focus on collections of anomalies and/or models, which necessarily excludes the earliest work. This choice offers an economical presentation of a broad scope of work in the territory.

Section 3 offers three papers that explore two market frictions, transactions costs and illiquidity. Amihud and Mendelson (1986), Brennan and Subrahmanyam (1996) and Jagannathan and Wang (1996) explore these areas. While Dr. Korajczyk discusses the earliest contribution, that of Mayers (1973), in his introduction, I wish it too had been included as a chapter in this section.

Section 4 presents five excellent studies on the topic of performance evaluation, including Grinblatt and Titman (1989), Jagannathan and Korajczyk (1986), Leland (1999), Ferson and Schadt, (1996), and Brown, Goetzmann, Ibbotson and Ross (1992). Dr. Korajczyk does an impressive job of reviewing the literature on this topic in his introduction, covering the early studies of Treynor (1965), Sharpe (1966), Treynor and Mazuy (1966), Jensen (1968), Jensen (1972), Treynor and Black (1973), as well as most of the important later studies. However, I was disappointed not to see any discussion of Carhart (1997), which really deserves to have been included as a chapter in the book.

In summary, the consolidation of these important papers into a single volume provides a convenient reference text for both students of finance and investment professionals. My few points of criticism essentially indicate a wish for more. "Asset Pricing and Portfolio Performance" is a large volume that stands tall on my bookshelf, dwarfing more manageable tomes such as Merton's "Continuous-Time Finance", Markowitz' "Portfolio Selection" and Cox and Rubinstein's "Options Markets". With its attractive cover art, it would also sit comfortably on the coffee table. Those who prefer British spelling conventions will be especially pleased with this book. Dr. Korajczyk has produced a useful and unique compendium that deserves to find its way into the library of every academic and practitioner in the investment community.

Drs. Rankin and Ingersoll have taken the art of management and applied it to health care. This book has a target audience of athletic trainers but it is approproiate for any health care facility. The selection and progression of chapters assists the student in learning the complex subject of management. They have done an excellent job of presenting various views in a non-partial manner. Well recommended!

This book is a wonderful representation of the Greek Attic theatre, as cited numerous times in Flickinger's "The Greek Theatre and It's Drama." Using a clear and straight-forward method of writing, the author clearly states all he needsto say from every angle possible. Using a plethera of quotations from specific plays that suit the situation of which he speaks, the author creates, in my opinion, one of the greatest resources about theatre in the antiquity.

Why do as many as half of all balanced scorecard users not achieve the results they hoped for? Doesn't the balanced scorecard work in practice?

David Niven is an expert on Balanced Scorecard and his first book was an easy-to-read, well-structured manual of how to make scorecards work: "Balanced scorecard - step-by-step" (2002). It bridged the gap between practice and theory - especially for newcomers to the concept.

In this new book, Niven tries to bridge another emerging gap. It is the gap between those questioning the usefulness of balanced scorecard, based on the many unsuccessful implementation attempts, and what people like Niven (and I) believe to be reality: that the scorecard framework remains sound, but must be instituted with rigor and discipline if you expect to get results.

Why aren't many scorecard users happy?
Niven believes that the trouble lies in the methods used to implement the Balanced Scorecard. Many firms have been lured by the seductive simplicity of the scorecard model, believing it could be easily implemented and produce results with a minimum of care and feeding. According to Niven, troubled implementations stem from many sources, e.g.
- A lack of executive sponsorship to reinforce the Scorecard's value within the organization,
- Tired [lagging] metrics reflecting the past with no regard to the drivers of future success, and
- Management systems that continue to reward unbalanced, largely financial, performance

How do we solve it?
Niven's approach is basically to put Kaplan and Norton's five principles of the "Strategy-Focused Organization" (2001) into a more practical approach. The messages, obviously, are the same. But Niven manages to make it easier to comprehend. And he challenges the reader throughout the book. The diagnostics dimension of the book is furthermore incorporated at the end of each of the nine chapters where we find self-assessment questions.

This week I went to a conference in Copenhagen where Harvard-professor Robert Kaplan spoke about the balanced scorecard. Kaplan, being one of the inventors, acknowledged that too many balanced scorecards did not succeed. It is a paradox, since the balanced scorecard was incepted to overcome to problem that strategies weren't properly implemented. But if the system (or scorecard) to finally make the strategy implementation work doesn't work either, then we're in real trouble. So is the concept, of course.

Kaplan's suggestion to make a successful implementation of the scorecard is - like Niven's - to view it as a change project. The change programme goes thru three phases: mobilization (unfreezing), alignment (change), and sustainment (re-freezing). Kaplan specified the details as described below:

1st phase: MOBILIZATION ("the case for change"):
Principle: #1 Mobilize change thru Executive leadership
Leadership objective: Achieve commitment at the top, build the executive team, and build the case for change
Core competency: The catalyst's role is to be a missionary. The action list includes to advocate, to educate, and to sell a new way of managing.
Management role: Executive education (the need for strategic execution) via conferences, in-house workshops, and readings.

2nd phase: ALIGNMENT ("early wins")
Principle: #2 translate the strategy into action, #3 align the organization.
Leadership objective: Define and clarify the strategy, specify long-term targets, and communicate to workforce
Core competency: The project team's role is as consultant and change agent. The action list includes to design strategy maps, to design scorecards/targets, to create alignment/cascade, and to overcome resistance.
Management role: Strategy maps, balanced scorecards, First Report, Link business and support groups to the strategy, and to rationalize initiatives

3rd phase: SUSTAINMENT ("irreversible momentum")
Principle: #4 Motivate the staff, #5 Govern the Organization
Leadership objective: Reinforce strategic message: Employees follow the leader, Enforce a performance-based culture: get results, and Lead the new management meeting
Core competency: The office of strategy management's role is to be the "chief of staff" (like in the military and government). The action list includes to install accountability, to shape the executive agenda, and to integrate governance.
Management role: Scorecard reporting system, HR processes aligned, Accountability and rewards aligned, and meetings focused on scorecard objectives and measures.


If you're interested in Balanced Scorecard, you should obviously read the original work by Kaplan and Norton. But I also recommend a very capable book by the Swedes Olve et al (2003) - "Making Scorecards Actionable: Balancing Strategy and Control" - that also focuses on why balanced scorecards go wrong - and what to do about it.

If you're even more interested in performance measurement systems, then do also consider "Performance Prism" by Neely et al (2002) that takes performance systems to the next level. Personally, I don't believe they've designed balanced scorecard's successor, but they have many interesting perspectives on stakeholders, choice of measurements, and the relationship between cause and effect.

Peter Leerskov,
MSc in International Business (Marketing & Management) and Graduate Diploma in E-business