The Arizona Diamondbacks are fresh from a season during which they led the National League in victories, racking up 90 on the way to winning the National League West Division title. The team, which debuted in 1998, won the World Series in its fourth season, but at a high cost.

Coffee juggernaut Starbucks is facing new challenges in the American-style café business that it created around the globe. Competition is increasing; even McDonalds — where the ambience is not exactly Starbucks — is adding the job title "barista" to its stores.

One of the most difficult tasks for a worker is negotiating with a boss.

Videoconferencing has been touted as a practical, here-today technology that can save companies from having to fly employees all over. But despite its practicality, adoption of this technology has been minimal.

Most assessments of employability focus on traditional models that consider skills, work experience, education and personality traits. But today more than ever, organizations need employees who can adapt and are comfortable doing so.

For many business people, politics is unfamiliar territory, where missteps bring unforeseen and often unfortunate consequences.

You don't have to be a power broker juggling corporate mergers to need negotiation skills. Just about everybody must negotiate with a superior at some point, about a raise or an assignment, or even a new idea for a project.

Once best known for making computers and selling them to corporations and government entities around the world, IBM refocused on technical support and professional services in the 1990s, in the process becoming the leading edge of a change that has swept manufacturing companies.

Under pressure from activist investors, fast food restaurant chain Wendy's International has been exploring options, including selling off the whole company, as a way to unlock value for shareholders.

Companies that attempt strategic change without considering organizational culture risk failure, according to management Professor Angelo Kinicki of the W. P. Carey School of Business. When culture is not aligned with strategy, he explains, culture wins every time.