Opportunity: Optimizing Life's Chances

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Donald Morris, 2006 - 461 pagini
Can you recognize an opportunity when it comes your way? Even though the concept seems fairly basic, most people harbor regrets about missed opportunities that in retrospect might have significantly improved their lives. This book will give you the critical tools to sort through the complexities that often obscure the perception of an opportunity and help you take full advantage of what author Donald Morris calls "high-end opportunities" -- pivotal situations that can change your life for the better.
Morris begins by developing a model of opportunity in the abstract, analyzing its elements and the contexts and frameworks that affect our recognition of opportunities. Drawing from a wide range of applications, including investing, business, law, criminology, gambling, and even religion, he shows how opportunities can be defined in various contexts. He also examines highly undesirable situations, where opportunity is lacking, such as poverty and historical instances of slavery, to further illustrate, by way of contrast, the defining characteristics of opportunity.
How does a significant opportunity differ from a simple option? How does taking advantage of opportunities differ from being an opportunist? Does our ability to predict the future affect our opportunities? What do we mean by equality of opportunity? By addressing these and other probing questions, Morris shows how to develop more critical perceptions of real opportunities.

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Cuprins

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
15
CHAPTER
21
The matrix of opportunitythe context elements and framework
27
Putting it all togetherRobinson Crusoe
34
Questioning your understanding
40
CHAPTER
42
Riskgambling without a full deck
51
Catalyst criminology and opportunity
57
Regret or remorse
232
CHAPTER
239
Distortions in our organization of the pastextra meaning
246
Prediction and opportunity
252
Economic prediction
263
Gamblingthe source of statistical studies of probability
278
CHAPTER TWELVE
284
Marketingtechnology product and industry life cycles
294

CHAPTER THREE
66
Business strategy and SWOT analysis
73
CHAPTER FOUR
84
Equality of opportunity
102
CHAPTER FIVE
114
The poverty linerelative and absolute measures of poverty
120
Conclusions
136
Slavery
148
PredestinationJohn Calvin
157
Camus The Stranger and the lack of hope
164
CHAPTER SEVEN
168
CHAPTER EIGHT
184
Robinson Crusoe
200
Sacrifice
226
Human nature predicting conduct
300
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
310
Induction and superstition
321
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
333
The great chain of being
343
The hierarchy in 1300Dantes Paradise
350
Keplers death knell for circular assumptions
356
The other shoethe new emphasis on methodFrancis Bacon
362
Questions
375
NOTES
395
WORKS CITED
443
INDEX
457
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Despre autor (2006)

Donald Morris, CPA, Ph.D., is professor of accounting and chair of the Accounting, Finance, and CIS Department at Eastern New Mexico University. The former owner of an accounting firm and a onetime instructor of philosophy, he is the author of Dewey and the Behavioristic Context of Ethics.

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