From Product Description to Cost or The Structure of Womens Nonprofit Organizations

From Product Description to Cost: A Practical Approach: Volume 1 the Parametric Approach

Author: Pierre Foussier

Parametric cost estimating, when properly used, is a very powerful and cost effective technique. Unfortunately, this technique is often misunderstood and rejected by many potential users for whom it could be a beneficial tool. The development of an agreement on how to use it and how to recognise its limitations is a major benefit to the cost estimating community.

From Product Description to Cost: A Practical Approach:

presents different ways of parametrically forecasting costs, and the advantages and disadvantages of these methods by using real examples from the mechanical, software and building industries;

discusses most of the mathematical procedures which are useful for parametrically forecasting costs;

introduces the judgement needed to audit the ways in which these forecasting techniques are used, firstly as a process, and secondly as a tool to generate estimates.

Volume 1: The Parametric Approach contains four parts. Over the course of this volume, cost estimating is introduced; the preparation of data before utilization is discussed; the basic concepts of 'general' cost estimating models are examined; the use of cost models is considered and finally, risk analysis (as it can be used during parametric cost estimating) is introduced.

Interesting book: I Am Almost Always Hungry or Bombers and Mash

The Structure of Women's Nonprofit Organizations

Author: Rebecca L Bordt

In the decades since the women's movement first called for new collective, nonhierarchical modes of organization, have distinctly "feminist" organizational structures evolved? Focusing on women's nonprofit organizations founded in New York City between 1967 and 1988, Rebecca Bordt describes what these organizations look like structurally and explains why they have adopted a particular form.

Booknews

Bordt (sociology, U. of Notre Dame) describes the organizational structure of women's nonprofit organizations and uses organizational theory to explain why they adopt a particular form. She presents results of a study of 30 women's nonprofit organizations established in the years 1967-88 in New York City. She concludes that the majority of these groups are hybrid organizations and that as such, their structure is best predicted by a set of factors that differ from those that predict the form of bureaucracies and collectives. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Table of Contents:

	Acknowledgments
	Introduction	1
I	The debate about organizational form in the contemporary women's movement	9
II	What do women's nonprofits look like?	15
III	Rarely bureaucracies or collectives: a typology of women's nonprofits in New York City	35
IV	Why do women's nonprofits look the way they do?	49
V	Conclusion	77
	Appendix: Methodology	83
	Notes	99
	References	103
	Index	111