Michael Morris

Some people say that a picture is worth a thousand words. The field of management often uses a "rich picture" systems methodology, "an innovative tool that encapsulates knowledge relevant to strategic reform". It is often described in the management literature as a "soft systems methodology" for linking hard and soft facts in a cartoon-like representation to illustrate a complex problem simply and clearly. The following research is presented using the rich picture methodology to capture the current long-term care and long-term services and supports (LTSS) crisis. The picture and narrative rely on expert research from the past and present, as well as on one-on-one open-ended interviews with key stakeholders in the fields of disability, long-term care, and health care. The setting for the rich picture is the ocean, with the current LTSS ship heading toward an iceberg that represents the barriers and challenges to systems reform. The "cast" for this rich picture will provide the substantive descriptions and body of research and analysis about the barriers and challenges of navigating through the current system of LTSS. The presentation of the research is purposeful, so that the reader and the researcher can begin the voyage together with a snapshot of the problem. The purpose of this research is to produce new knowledge and understanding of current experience with and future need for affordable LTSS for people with disabilities. This research on the State of LTSS Financing and Systems Reform is the first part in a five-part series that will tell the story of the current LTSS system to set the stage for the exploration of future market demands and current gaps in supply; to explore promising state practices and challenges; and to picture what the 21st century's comprehensive, consumer-responsive system might look like and make policy recommendations. The research is based on five assumptions. First, people with disabilities, whether young or old, desire and deserve choices when seeking assistance with daily living that maintains their self-determination and maximum dignity and independence. Second, the current financing mechanisms (public and private) will become unsustainable in the near future without significant reform. The system must be affordable to all Americans regardless of income levels and must consider opportunities to leverage public and private support in new ways without impoverishing beneficiaries. Third, there is an opportunity with the changing demographic picture of the United States to explore the possibilities of a universal approach to the design and financing of services and supports that is responsive to individuals under the age of 65, as well as seniors with disabilities, without sacrificing individual choice and flexibility. Fourth, formal and informal caregiving must be sustained, examining family needs and workforce recruitment and retention challenges. Fifth, the approach to quality must examine consumer direction and control of resources in addition to traditional external quality assurance mechanisms.

The purpose of this book is to explore and understand the future market demand and costs of long-term services and supports (LTSS) for individuals with disabilities through a review and analysis of the literature and in-depth case studies of six individuals to better understand the current experience with and future need for affordable LTSS nation-wide for Americans with disabilities.

The current picture of long-term services and supports (LTSS) documented by families, policymakers, researchers, and service providers is complex, confusing, and frustrating. It is a ship struggling with the weight of escalating costs and an increasing number of passengers seeking access and safe passage. Services and supports are scattered throughout numerous federal programs, with uncertain points of entry and different rules of eligibility defined by geography, income level, age, and nature and type of disability. There is no comprehensive national policy focused on LTSS that is free from the medical model and institutional bias of long-term care (LTC). However, at the state and local levels, there is a push to move forward: setting new policies, reallocating resources, testing new service delivery approaches, and engaging individuals with disabilities and families in a public dialogue to redesign the ship to support a consumer-responsive system that encourages choices, seeks flexibility in service delivery, invests in public-private colLabouration, and values the role of formal and informal caregivers. None of the highlighted activities can offer a comprehensive roadmap to reform of existing systems. However, each highlighted state or local system focuses a spotlight on innovative thinking, including policies, processes, and methods of administration to help guide the redesign efforts for the future. This book identifies and highlights selected activities at the state and local levels that are leading toward increased access to LTSS with federal and state dollars. A growing number of states are re-evaluating their current systems to identify a range of options for consumers to remain in their own homes or communities rather than be forced into more restrictive environments and skilled nursing facilities. Researchers selected five states to profile and analysed current activities that are in different stages of development toward the goal of comprehensive, person-centred service and support programs.

Live Like You Were Dying is the unforgettable story inspired by Tim McGraw's #1 Country Music song of the same name. It weaves a tale of the miracles that happen once you stop being so busy with life that you actually have time to live it.Millions have embraced the song's lyrics. Now experience the inspirational story that will touch your heart and soul.

Written by a leading expert, this is the ideal guide to the only book Wittgenstein published during his lifetime, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Michael Morris makes sense of Wittgenstein’s brief but often cryptic text, highlighting its key themes. He introduces and analyzes: Wittgenstein’s life and the background to the Tractatus the ideas and text of the Tractatus the continuing importance of Wittgenstein's work to philosophy today, Wittgenstein is the most important twentieth-century philosopher in the English speaking world. This book will be essential reading for all students of philosophy of language and metaphysics.

Written by a leading expert, this is the ideal guide to the only book Wittgenstein published during his lifetime, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Michael Morris makes sense of Wittgenstein’s brief but often cryptic text, highlighting its key themes. He introduces and analyzes: Wittgenstein’s life and the background to the Tractatus the ideas and text of the Tractatus the continuing importance of Wittgenstein's work to philosophy today, Wittgenstein is the most important twentieth-century philosopher in the English speaking world. This book will be essential reading for all students of philosophy of language and metaphysics.

This book rethinks the basic building blocks of marketing with an entrepreneurial perspective. Asks questions suing a “what if?” compass in which the emphasis is on asking the right questions, rather than finding the right answers. For entrepreneurs looking to make sense of the many new contributions that have redefined marketing. NOTE: The print may appear lighter in some copies due to the print method used.

Fertilizer use in Africa as compared to other developing regions has been limited. What types of policies and programs are needed to realize the potential benefits of fertilizer in African agriculture? This book summarizes key lessons learned from past efforts to promote fertilizer in Africa, provides an overview of the current state of knowledge concerning technical aspects of fertilizer use in Africa, and presents good practice guidelines for promoting sustainable increases in fertilizer use.

In this textbook, Michael Morris offers a critical introduction to the central issues of the philosophy of language. Each chapter focusses on one or two texts which have had a seminal influence on work in the subject, and uses these as a way of approaching both the central topics and the various traditions of dealing with them. Texts include classic writings by Frege, Russell, Kripke, Quine, Davidson, Austin, Grice and Wittgenstein. Theoretical jargon is kept to a minimum and is fully explained whenever it is introduced. The range of topics covered includes sense and reference, definite descriptions, proper names, natural-kind terms, de re and de dicto necessity, propositional attitudes, truth-theoretical approaches to meaning, radical interpretation, indeterminacy of translation, speech acts, intentional theories of meaning, and scepticism about meaning. The book will be invaluable to students and to all readers who are interested in the nature of linguistic meaning.

Rather then following a court order to return their grandson Brandon to his drug-addicted mother, the child's grandparents flee with him and assume new identities in a turbulent Southern town. With surprising delicacy and insight, Morris offers a moving meditation on the power of faith and the meaning of home.

Erma Lee is on the run . . . Running from an abusive husband . . . running from a mother who doesn't care -- never cared. Running from a soul-numbing factory job that has held her down her entire life ...Erma Lee and her granddaughter, Cher, flee to the town of Wiregrass, Alabama, to escape the past and start over -- or so Erma Lee thinks. Erma Lee forms an unlikely friendship with Miss Claudia, an elderly socialite who is hiding a few details about her own past. Life in Wiregrass is different for Erma Lee and Cher, for here they find mercy and promise -- until, that is, the day Cher's convict father arrives in town, forcing all three women to come to terms with buried secrets.

In the relations between colonial European traders and the Indians of the southern backcountry, trade was a powerful manipulative tool used by both sides in their attempts to control each other. This anthropological and sociological study examines how European traders sought out native women as cultural instructors, translators, and sexual companions. The network of native women, fur traders, and colonial diplomats functioned as an invisible social, political, and economic web throughout the backcountry. Although this web was an integral part of the colonial struggle for the region, it is often overlooked or ignored in conventional histories. Women played a key role in this system of economic exchange. They benefitted materially from this arrangement, while the traders enjoyed increased political power as a result of the cohabitation. These Anglo-Indian unions helped to impose Euroamerican values on native societies, and, in part, the women functioned as unofficial diplomats for their people. Colonial governments hoped that the efforts of these frontier traders would impose stability on the tribes, but the profit-seeking of many such traders often resulted in bloody conflict instead.

The concept of entrepreneurial intensity captures how entrepreneurship fluctuates by degree and frequency, and how it applies to personal well-being, organizational performance, and the quality of societal life. Morris develops his ideas by challenging the 13 leading myths about entrepreneurship while integrating many diverse perspectives on them. Readers will find in the EI concept a new way of examining and understanding the entrepreneurial process and strategies for fostering entrepreneuriship. Rigorously grounded in research, this book is an important resource for the academic community and for business professionals.Entrepreneurship is a subject that has come into vogue rapidly. Governments are trying to foster it, individuals are practicing it in unprecedented numbers, and large organizations are desperately trying to return to their own entrepreneurial roots. Colleges and universities, in response, are now teaching courses on entrepreneurship, and are establishing programs devoted to it. Morris explores this new interest in entrepreneurship, why it matters, and how it can be encouraged. Many controversies and unresolved issues abound such as the basic questions: how should entrepreneurship be defined? and what will its role be in the future?. Morris examines the issues in-depth and gives readers a comprehensive summary of what entrepreneurship means for today's business organizations, their people, and society.

This book provides a radical alternative to naturalistic theories of content, and offers a new conception of the place of mind in the world. Confronting head-on the scientific conception of the nature of reality that has dominated the Anglo-American philosophical tradition, Michael Morris here presents a detailed analysis of content and propositional attitudes, based on the idea that truth is a value. In the course of this analysis, he rejects the causal theory of the explanation of behaviour and replaces it with an alternative which depends upon a rich conception of the behaviour we explain with reference to states of mind. According to the theory presented here, our understanding of other people is inextricably involved with our evaluation of what they do, and the objectivity of truth depends on the objectivity of moral goodness. Dr Morris's lucid and detailed exposition of his controversial argument sounds an emphatic challenge to the naturalistic orthodoxy in areas as diverse as metaphysics, ethics, and cognitive science.

An important contribution to marketing literature, this volume offers a comprehensive guide to market-based pricing strategies. The authors present pricing as a relatively simple, but extremely powerful marketing tool--a creative variable which managers can manipulate to accomplish a wide variety of ends. Arguing that companies must move away from the traditional, short-term, reactive methods relied upon to set and manage prices, the authors call for a systematic, strategic and market-based approach to the pricing problem. Their central unifying theme is that pricing begins and ends with the customer and that every pricing action should be part of a larger pricing program build around the realities of customer needs and competitor pressures. Written with a minimum of jargon and amply illustrated with explanatory tables and figures, this is an excellent introduction to pricing for both seasoned and aspiring marketing and product managers.Morris and Morris begin by examining the overall concept of price as a statement of value. Subsequent chapters offer in-depth guidance on the development of market-based pricing, addressing such critical issues as pricing strategy over the product life cycle, linking pricing and marketing strategy, understanding and using elasticity, the psychology of pricing, and negotiating prices with customers. Particular attention is paid to the question of price differentials--charging different prices to different classes of consumers--and the legal and ethical ramifications of adopting strategies based on price differentials. The authors also explore cost-based pricing, industry and competitor analysis, pricing across the product line, and computers as an aid in pricing. Throughout, references to real-world cases and problems helps the manager to relate the concepts of market-based pricing to the pricing decisions and considerations actually confronted on the job.