This open access book offers a new management meta-theory to replace Taylorism. It presents a new paradigm in management thinking and a new, practical organizational model for implementing it in our personal and working lives, in our companies, in our communities and nations, and in a sustainable global order. It will offer an understanding of why and how "thinking-as-usual" is failing both business and political leaders in these new times, and it will advocate new thinking and new management practices that are so radically new that they turn everything we have taken for granted inside out and upside down. This new management model is called "Quantum Management Theory", because it is rooted in the new paradigm bequeathed to us by quantum physics and its younger sibling, complexity science.

This open access book discusses the challenges and opportunities faced by companies in an age that increasingly values sustainability and demands corporate responsibility. Beginning with the historical development of corporate responsibility, this book moves from academic theory to practical application. It points to ways in which companies can successfully manage their transition to a more responsible, sustainable way of doing business, common mistakes to avoid and how the UN Sustainable Development Goals are integral to any sustainability transformation. Practical cases illustrate key points. Drawing on thirty years of sustainability research and extensive corporate experience, the author provides tools such as a Step-by-Step strategic guide on integrating sustainability in collaboration with stakeholders including employees, customers, suppliers and investors. The book is particularly relevant for SMEs and companies operating in emerging markets. From a broader perspective, the value of externalities, full cost pricing, alternative economic theories and circular economy are also addressed.    

Shared value is a management strategy in which companies find business opportunities in social problems. While philanthropy and CSR focus efforts focus on "giving back" or minimizing the harm business has on society, shared value focuses company leaders on maximizing the competitive value of solving social problems in new customers and markets, cost savings, talent retention, and more. This book takes the concept of shared value to the next level, with the concept of "Me to We" (also abbreviated as "M2W") and discusses the current state of the business-environment-government relationship and shows how the shared value model can contribute to each entity. Citing real cases and examples from multiple industries, the authors show that shared value promotes shareholder interests while serving as a successful business strategy. Chapters explore the emerging phenomenon of shared value, the shareholder-stakeholder comparisons, the role of government in the stakeholder environment, shared value as it related to competitiveness, and operational issues such as implementation, communication, and leadership in their relationship to shared value. Readers will find useful strategies of Me to We and its implementation by firms that have become leaders in their market. They will receive ideas and insights into business strategies that will overshadow CSR activities as a differentiation or brand development strategy of the past. Featuring interviews with corporate executives offering their perspectives on shared value, this book will discuss shared value within the context of business and society, competitiveness, and globalization.

This casebook argues that corporate sustainability agendas should look beyond stakeholder demands and desires, towards strategic opportunities to achieve social and commercial benefits simultaneously. It encourages shifting focus from a strategic approach to a sustainable business practice. As the cases in the book highlight, it is in every company's best interest to identify a manageable number of sustainability initiatives whose shared benefits--for society at large and the company--are significant and also substantially help the company strategically position itself in the competitive marketplace. Strategic sustainable business practices can lead to shared value creation, strengthening the company's competitiveness and establishing a symbiotic relationship. Companies can achieve solid profits by doing good things for the environment; it is a "win-win" for society and for business. This casebook provides examples of multi-stakeholder partnerships that aim to create sustainable enterprises. Ideal for teaching purposes, after a brief introduction to the case method, the cases are presented with no comments or criticisms.

Rapid shifts in technology and societal changes accelerated by the Pandemic have fundamentally changed the way that customers experience luxury. While digital transformation has unlocked new opportunities to connect one-to-one with customers, the challenge for luxury brands is to engage with customers while protecting their brand equity and leveraging digital tools to build personal relationships with customers. Taking you beyond omni-channel marketing, this book takes a deep dive into the concept of omni-personal, which enables you to connect your brand to relevant and individual experiences. Highly practical in scope, it takes you on a journey to building individual and relevant experiences and relationships at scale. The authors answer the essential questions of who, why, how, what and when omni-personal matters most in luxury, offering best-practice examples, case studies and interviews with industry leaders. Ultimately, this book shows you how to embed the omni-personal strategy into your business and offers a framework to help you assess your organization's ability to deliver omni-personal marketing along the different channels and touchpoints within the customer journey. This book is for anyone who is interested in the future of luxury, including industry experts and brand managers who want a better understanding of the required steps towards an omni-personal customer relationship.

Cybersecurity, data privacy law, and the related legal implications overlap into a relevant and developing area in the legal field. However, many legal practitioners lack the foundational understanding of computer processes which are fundamental for applying existing and developing legal structures to the issue of cybersecurity and data privacy. At the same time, those who work and research in cybersecurity are often unprepared and unaware of the nuances of legal application. This book translates the fundamental building blocks of data privacy and (cyber)security law into basic knowledge that is equally accessible and educational for those working and researching in either field, those who are involved with businesses and organizations, and the general public.

Alle Grundlagen des Online-Marketings vereint in einem BuchWenn Sie sich für Online-Marketing interessieren, ist dieses Buch genau richtig für Sie. Es führt Sie behutsam in die Grundlagen der Online-Werbung ein und erläutert verschiedene Gebiete dieses umfangreichen Themenkomplexes. Neben den unterschiedlichen Erfolgsfaktoren und Zielsetzungen im Online-Marketing stellt der Autor auch zahlreiche Instrumente zur Erfolgsmessung vor. Mit diesem umfassenden Grundlagenwerk erhalten Sie nicht nur eine Einführung in das Online-Marketing, sondern auch einen detaillierten Einblick in das E-Commerce im Allgemeinen. Die vorliegende zweite Auflage wurde umfassend überarbeitet und um die neuesten Entwicklungen im Online-Marketing ergänzt. Neu sind unter anderem ausführliche Kapitel zu Themen wie E-Mail-, Social-Media- und Suchmaschinenmarketing. Optimale Prüfungsvorbereitung für Marketing-Studenten Der Autor legt großen Wert auf eine nachhaltige Wissensvermittlung, was sich in der didaktische Struktur des Werkes widerspiegelt. Es richtet sich insbesondere an Bachelorstudierende und Nebenfachstudenten des Studiengangs Marketing. Durch übersichtliche Lerneinheiten mit begleitenden Kontrollmodulen können sie das gelernte Wissen prüfen und vertiefen und sich so optimal auf Klausuren vorbereiten.Aber auch Angestellte in Werbeagenturen profitieren von der Expertise des Autors, da er nie den Praxisbezug zum Online-Marketing aus den Augen verliert. Dank vieler Leseempfehlungen können sich Interessierte spielend leicht tiefergehend mit den einzelnen Themen befassen.

This comprehensive handbook offers a state-of-the-art guide to new frontiers of African entrepreneurship. Written from a Pan-African perspective by a cast of international authors, the book addresses the rapid modernisation and evolution of African entrepreneurship and business practices. It maps new developments in entrepreneurial ecosystems, technology and digital entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship in conflict zones, and gender and diversity issues. It proposes new models for entrepreneurial financing and explores the contrast between entrepreneurship in high-technology urban centers with peripheral rural districts and conflict zones. Bringing together empirical insights and case studies from countries across Africa, the Handbook illuminates regional and contextual differences and shares theoretical and practical insights which inform policy and practice. It is an ideal guide for researchers and students working on international business, entrepreneurship and emerging economies. It will also inform policymakers in developing context-informed entrepreneurial policies and initiatives in Africa.

Business education and executive development has been one of the most fascinating industries in the world and the fastest growing segment of higher education over the past decades. Today, it is experiencing change on a scale unprecedented since the foundation of the first business schools in the early 20th Century, both due to changes in the corporate environment and also due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic across all industries. In this context how do you create world-class educational and training institutions that can cope with those challenges, and be rigorous, vocationally relevant and suited to the corporate growing needs in this new fluid world? And how do you combine the very best of traditional academic values with new learning technologies to create an educational model that is fit to compete in the global economy, threatened today by populism, nationalism and economic turmoil? Yet, as daunting as it is, some institutions have already made significant progress in the journey. In this book Santiago Iñiguez de Onzoño, President of IE University, and Peter Lorange, former President of IMD, bring together contributions from leading figures from some of the world's major universities. They share their experiences in addressing some of the challenges that the industry faces today, such as diversity and inclusion, employability, the role of AI and the advent of innovative new platforms. Packed with case studies of successful initiatives in business education and executive training, this is a truly visionary book.  Authors anticipate future trends and share their in-depth knowledge of what it takes to build world-class educational providers - and their vision of higher education in the future.

This book systematically introduces the data governance and digital transformation at Huawei, from the perspectives of technology, process, management, and so on. Huawei is a large global enterprise engaging in multiple types of business in over 170 countries and regions. Its differentiated operation is supported by an enterprise data foundation and corresponding data governance methods. With valuable experience, methodology, standards, solutions, and case studies on data governance and digital transformation, enterprise data at Huawei is ideal for readers to learn and apply, as well as to get an idea of the digital transformation journey at Huawei.    This book is organized into four parts and ten chapters. Based on the understanding of "the cognitive world of machines," the book proposes the prospects for the future of data governance, as well as the imaginations about AI-based governance, data sovereignty, and building a data ecosystem. 

In our rapidly changing world, digitalization is often either the key to survival or the driving force behind organizations' success. This book examines the impact of digitalization on organizations and the challenges it poses. It explores ways of redesigning work, improving organizational performance, developing employee skills, and creating new forms of competition in the market. In this context, not only the challenges for organizations but also those for the field of organizational studies are considered. This compilation is based on a selection of the best papers presented at the annual workshop (WOA2020) of the Association of Italian Organization Studies Academics (ASSIOA), held at the University of Milan, Italy in February 2020. The diverse road range of perspectives offered makes the book relevant for scholars and practitioners alike.

This book provides a detailed theoretical background of Logistics 4.0 using real-world examples and case studies and proposes a methodological framework to understand the technological revolutions happening in the present day from the perspective of logistics management. With the fourth industrial revolution, new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, 3D printers and the Internet of Things started to take greater prominence in the world of business. One of the sectors most affected by changes brought on by this Industry 4.0 is logistics, which has given rise to the concept of Logistics 4.0. Covering a wide range of topics on Logistics 4.0, such as warehousing, big data, 3D printing, robotics and cloud computing, this book would be a valuable read for those involved in logistics management, academics and students in the areas of supply chain management, logistics, industry 4, and big data.  . 

This book focuses on the need of leaders in professional and personal realms to understand the importance of innovative thinking to safeguard sustainability and enhance satisfaction and motivation among stakeholders in organizations. It provides professionals with a set of reflective stances, cautionary points, and roadmaps that enable them to do the right thing. From crisis management to spiritual practices, and from pro-social concepts to social responsibility and sustainability: the common denominator is a collective and concerted effort to develop leadership behaviors and strategies to safeguard generations to come.

This book explores the dynamic landscape of fashion in China since the beginning of the 21st century through an integrated perspective. The book considers key questions related to the changes in China's fashion dynamics driven largely by the shifts in the mindset of Chinese consumers due to the current sociocultural contexts. To provide an understanding of these important shifts, this three-part monograph pays close attention to the new generation of Chinese fashion designers and consumers. The book explores in detail related topics such as, how today's Chinese consumers relate to foreign brands, the meaning of apparel brands as identity symbols or cultural signs to contemporary young consumers, the attractiveness of Western fashion designers and brands in the eyes of current Chinese consumers as compared to past consumers, and how brands could adapt to the online-centered consumption behavior. The book serves as an insightful update on the Chinese fashion landscape for researchers, practitioners and passionate followers of its evolution.

This open access book is an outcome of several years of research, practice, and teaching experience of the authors on the challenges that underpin the successful switch to services for manufacturing firms. Ideal for a student as well as a practitioner, the book describes the industrial services ecosystem, the barriers and challenges, and a roadmap for building service excellence. Curated cases are used to describe the current approaches in practice to overcome the barriers. The book also provides several tools, each with a short introduction, that the authors have used successfully in projects to help overcome the servitization barriers. Many of these tools are from management, design thinking, or service design. The service excellence roadmap is based on the development methodology and helps current and future business leaders to create their own individual roadmaps.

This open access book addresses four standard business school subjects: microeconomics, macroeconomics, finance and information systems as they relate to trading, liquidity, and market structure. It provides a detailed examination of the impact of trading costs and other impediments of trading that the authors call "frictions". It also presents an interactive simulation model of equity market trading, TraderEx, that enables students to implement trading decisions in different market scenarios and structures. Addressing these topics shines a bright light on how a real-world financial market operates, and the simulation provides students with an experiential learning opportunity that is informative and fun. Each of the chapters is designed so that it can be used as a stand-alone module in an existing economics, finance, or information science course. Instructor resources such as discussion questions, Powerpoint slides and TraderEx exercises are available online.

This book offers new insights into the complex set of activities and decisions of product innovation management. It provides concepts, methods, and tools that can help accelerate the introduction of successful products to the market in an increasingly competitive and changing business landscape. It also offers examples and case studies, and it is the result of more than 20 years of study, research, and consulting carried out by the two authors in the field of innovation management. The book discusses the demanding challenges of product innovation and offers practitioners guidance on how to respond to these challenges. It presents a three-level framework (the "innovation pyramid"), which reflects the core components of a firm's innovation capability: first, intelligence - absorbing information and knowledge from the outside world by looking beyond the familiar territories of the current market, technology, and customers; second, discovery - exploring opportunities for innovation through creative ideation and technology experimentation; and third, development - transforming opportunities into profitable new products and services.  

This book addresses many of the gaps in how industry and academia are currently tackling problems associated with big data. It introduces novel concepts, describes the end-to-end process, and connects the various pieces of the puzzle to offer a holistic view. In addition, it explains important concepts for a wide audience, using accessible language, diagrams, examples and analogies to do so. The book is intended for readers working in industry who want to expand their knowledge or pursue a related degree, and employs an industry-centered perspective.

  "There's probably no better sport than Formula E to present and study the science and practice of innovation within (motor)sport, and this book is a must read for those active within this fascinating area". - Dr. Kristof de Mey, Sports Technology, Innovation & Business Developer at Ghent University, Belgium This open access book provides novel insights on management innovation and sustainability in motorsport. Utilizing the all-electric racing championship called Formula E as case, it draws upon data from multiple sources such as sustainability reports of Formula and its stakeholders, media data, podcasts and newspaper articles, partner publications, and social media outputs. It aims to generate a theoretical model that describes and explains the optimal conditions for innovation when it comes to enhancing a sport organisation's commercial product. Apart from its general transferability to sports research, this model enables further study of a motorsport phenomenon that has been hailed by media as the championship, which affirms money in sustainability. It has also been emphasized by sport researchers as a highly relevant case to study management innovation. This book will be interesting to academics working in sports management, knowledge management, innovation and sustainability. Hans Erik Næss (b. 1978) is an Associate Professor in Sport Management at Kristiania University College, Norway. He holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Oslo and is the author of several peer-reviewed articles and books on motorsports, including A History of Organizational Change: The case of Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) 1945-2020. Anne Tjønndal (b. 1988) is an Associate Professor in Sociology of Sport at Nord University, Norway. She holds a PhD in sociology from Nord University and has published articles in high-quality international journals on topics like social innovation, gender and inclusion/exclusion in sport. Tjønndal is the Celia Brackenridge International Research Award winner for 2019. 

While technology advances at a high pace in the age of machine learning, there is a lack of clear intent and framing of acceptable ethical standards. This book brings together the complex topic of "good" technology in a cross-functional way, alternating between theory and practice. The authors address the ever-expanding discussion on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and ethics by providing an orientation. Pragmatic and recent issues are especially taken into account such as the collateral effects of the COVID19 pandemic. An up-to-date overview of digitization - already a very broad field in itself - is presented along with an analysis of the approaches of AI from an ethical perspective. Furthermore, concrete approaches to consider appropriate ethical principles in AI-based solutions are offered.  The book will be appealing to academics, from humanities or business or technical disciplines, as well as practitioners who are looking for an introduction to the topic and an orientation with concrete questions and assistance.

This book offers a primer on the valuation of startups. Innovative startups are characterized by high growth potential that usually absorbs liquidity. This is unattractive for traditional banks, replaced by other specialized intermediaries such as venture capital or private equity funds, which diversify their portfolio basing their strategies on a multi-year exit. Startups coexist in an evolving ecosystem with established firms, to which they transfer innovativeness, technology, flexibility, and time-to-market speed, contributing to reinvent the business models and receiving from mature firms feedback on the current market features, the existing clients, and their unsatisfied needs. The valuation paradigms represent a central issue for any start-upper seeking external finance, either from family and friends or through a wider professional placement. This book, complemented by practical cases (concerning, for instance, FinTechs, digital platforms, and e-Health applications) offers a guide to practitioners, students, and academics about the trendy valuation patterns of the startups based on their strategic business planning

This book provides recent ideas, insights, facts, evidence, frameworks, and perspectives on how and why entrepreneurial families are successful over generations. The book focuses on how families successfully implement entrepreneurship across generations. That success, it argues, requires entrepreneurship at the level of the family, not only in the businesses the family owns and manages. Written by noted academics and consultants who are authorities on family entrepreneurship, the chapters provide a comprehensive exploration of the characteristics of successful entrepreneurial families, their motivations, how they behave over time, and, suggestions for how business families can encourage and sustain entrepreneurship. This comprehensive look at family entrepreneurship will serve as a fundamental reference text for family business consultants, owners, and scholars.

Branding is an increasingly important part of business strategy for all types of businesses, including start-ups, SMEs, NGOs, and large corporations. This textbook provides an introduction to brand management that can be applied to all these types of organizations. Using story-telling to guide the reader through the main concepts, theories and emerging issues, it offers a theoretical and applied perspective to brand management.  Highlighting the relationship between different brand concepts, this textbook explores the role of branding from both a corporate and a consumer perspective and highlights implications for employability and future career options.  With case studies, activities, learning objectives and online resources for lecturers, this book is an ideal accompaniment for undergraduates, post graduates or students who have never studied branding before. Written in an approachable way, it gives readers the basics, allowing them to enhance their understanding of the core topics and advance their study further.

This book presents ten essays that examine the potential of digital responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The essays explore new digital concepts for learning and teaching, provide an overview of organizational responses to the crisis through digital technologies, and examine digital solutions developed to manage the crisis. Scientists from many disciplines work together in the fight against the virus and its numerous consequences. This book explores how information systems researchers can contribute to these global efforts. The book will be of interest to researchers and scholars in the field of digital business and education.

This book explores how culture and tradition have impacted the tendency for African women to opt for entrepreneurship. The first section presents literature on the concept of entrepreneurship and introduces traditional African women entrepreneurs--the first-generation, culture-driven entrepreneurs, driven by the need to alleviate poverty within the family. The second section covers the modern, second-generation entrepreneurs driven by such forces as education, globalization, and technology. Further, the author assesses the regional perspectives on entrepreneurship and explores the entrepreneurial ecosystems to determine their relevance to the development of entrepreneurial spirit in Africa and among women in particular. This book expands on knowledge about the role that women play in the socio-economic development of the African continent.

This monograph seeks to identify the mechanism that successfully guides the continuity of the family business through generations. Different perspectives have been used through years: from the identification of the entrepreneurial characteristics to the succession model implemented, and to the educational path for the next generations of entrepreneurs. In this context, the book focuses the attention on the link between different generations of entrepreneurs. In particular, it presents and analyzes the evolutive circle of the family business among generations. This approach permits a holistic view of the intergenerational entrepreneurship within the entrepreneurial families and their businesses. Once intergenerational entrepreneurship has been deeply described, two areas in which the next generation must excel are analyzed: the adaptation to the evolution of the external environment, and the leadership attitude.  The author's central message is that evolution happens when the entrepreneurial processes are absorbed by the next generation through the learning of heuristics. Having a leadership style is more than setting a vision, which has to do with strategy and taking important decisions. 

This book explores the relationship between entrepreneurship and doing good. As research into entrepreneurship has evolved, so has the business environment and the society in which entrepreneurs work. Now more than ever, entrepreneurs are found to reflect on personal commitment, ethical issues and more recently, the influence they could have on society. In short they have embraced the concept of 'the good entrepreneur.' Over time many different strands of 'good' entrepreneurship have emerged; from social, green and sustainable entrepreneurship to ecopreneurship and so forth. Indeed some strands of research have merged while others have registered a lack of field research and analysis. In this book the author argues that this excessive fragmentation has created the need for a reflection on the role of niches in entrepreneurship. Providing analysis from multiple perspectives, the author provides an overview of the relationship between entrepreneurship and doing good as well as an exploration of the drivers that promote research in this field and an outline of research dynamics. Contributing to the current debate around the field of entrepreneurship and its ability to drive responsible and sustainable business practices, this book presents a comprehensive guide for students (graduate, master and PhD), academics and institutions and offers the reader an enhanced understanding of the evolution and research challenges within 'good entrepreneurship.'

Leadership is most needed in times of change, uncertainty and crisis.  We are living through those times.  To support leaders in all spheres, this book provides a guide to the territory of leadership and its three domains: the strategic (head), the operational (hands) and the interpersonal (heart).  It describes the tasks leaders have to achieve and explains the psychology of leadership based in personality.  It argues strongly that complete leadership is the province of diverse teams of leaders made up of complementary differences. And now the best has just got better.  The new edition shows how leadership has to change over time, describes how the most highly rated leaders achieve their goals and also elucidates the neuroscience of leadership to enhance understanding of leadership's foundations. Pendleton, Furnham and Cowell's work is a powerful combination of the best research on the psychology of leadership and years of iteration and practical implementation in the field - working with thousands of leaders from all walks of life and learning from their successes and challenges. There is no one secret recipe for success as a leader. What this book provides is a framework to enable you to achieve success in your own way.

The digital transformation is impacting various aspects of how we live and work. Due to the pervasive effects of the digital revolution on firms and societies, both scholars and practitioners are interested in better understanding the key mechanisms behind the related challenges. This book presents a collection of research papers focusing on the relationships between technologies (e.g. artificial intelligence, social media, and the Internet of Things) and behaviours (e.g. social learning, knowledge sharing, and decision-making). Moreover, it provides insights into how the digital transformation may improve quality of personal life and work life within public and private organisations. The plurality of views offered makes this book particularly relevant for practitioners, companies, scientists, and governments. It gathers a selection of the best papers - original double-blind peer-reviewed contributions - presented at the annual conference of the Italian chapter of the AIS which was held in Naples, Italy, in September 2019.

The COVID-19 pandemic is transforming the global economy and significantly shifting workforce demand, requiring quick, adaptive responses. The pandemic has revealed the vulnerabilities of many organizations and regional economies, and it has accelerated trends that could lead to significant improvements in productivity, performance, and resilience, which will enable organizations and regions to thrive in the "next normal." To explore how communities around the United States are addressing workforce issues laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic and how they are taking advantage of local opportunities to expand their science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) workforces to position them for success going forward, the Board of Higher Education and Workforce of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a series of workshops to identify immediate and near-term regional STEMM workforce needs in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The workshop planning committee identified five U.S. cities and their associated metropolitan areas - Birmingham, Alabama; Boston, Massachusetts; Richmond, Virginia; Riverside, California; and Wichita, Kansas - to host workshops highlighting promising practices that communities can use to respond urgently and appropriately to their STEMM workforce needs. A sixth workshop discussed how the lessons learned during the five region-focused workshops could be applied in other communities to meet STEMM workforce needs. This proceedings of a virtual workshop series summarizes the presentations and discussions from the six public workshops that made up the virtual workshop series and highlights the key points raised during the presentations, moderated panel discussions and deliberations, and open discussions among the workshop participants.

This book explores omnichannel fashion and luxury retailing with a particular emphasis on the role of computer-mediated marketing environments in determining a consumer's purchase and post-purchase trajectories. The fashion industry has evolved rapidly over the last few years with the diffusion of fast fashion and luxury democratization, not to mention the advent of ICT and the development of communication. Today, fashion companies face new challenges, such as how to manage brands and how to choose between marketplaces and digital marketspaces. While some companies focus on one channel selection, others embrace the omnichannel choice and look for a balance between the two environments. Whatever the strategy, it is essential to manage these touch-points in order to create interaction between consumers and brands, provide meaningful customer experiences, and to maximize customers' engagement. An insightful read for scholars in marketing, fashion and retail, this book investigates the triangulation between branding, marketplace, and marketspace and its impact on the organization.

Evidence suggests that economies with technology transfer initiatives provide a better supply of high-quality jobs and tend to be characterized by entrepreneurs with higher innovation contributions. This book explores the effectiveness of technology transfer policies and legislation on entrepreneurial innovation in a non-US context. It analyses the theoretical, empirical and managerial implications behind the success of technology transfer polices and legislations in stimulating entrepreneurial innovation; analyses which other contextual condition (e.g., culture) are necessary for successful implementation; and explores the extent and level of replication of US policies (e.g., Bayh-Dole Act, Small Business Innovation Research [SBIR] program) in other national and regional systems. In addition, this book looks at the effect technology transfer policies have on the adoption of open innovation and open science.

An accessible, timely and fascinating account of the revolution going on in the world of finance - and how accountants really can save the planet - from the acclaimed author of Double Entry.

Competition is present for almost every sector nowadays. Therefore, it is vital for companies to develop a set of strategies in order to survive in the competitive environment of a globalized world. This book discusses how and why not every strategy is appropriate for every sector. The volume offers a qualified and comprehensive analysis to determine effective competitive strategies taking into account the many different factors that affect company performance.

"This stimulating collection tackles the question that is uppermost in most of humanity's minds and hearts right now. The novel debating approach that is taken generates a rich understanding of the range of ways in which bad leadership is created, manifested and most importantly, remedied." - Professor Brad Jackson, Waikato Management School, The University of Waikato, New Zealand     "In the midst of a world full of incompetent and incoherent leaders this book is exactly what we need: a veritable cornucopia of critical leadership studies." - Keith Grint, Professor Emeritus, Warwick Business School, UK   "While we like to have leaders who guide, looking at the present state of the world, there are far too many leaders who misguide. It makes this anthology on bad leadership more than timely. The various contributors, taking many different perspectives, highlight the ways leaders can go astray. In these very difficult times, this book will be a must read for anybody interested in this subject." - Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries, Clinical Professor of Leadership   "Debating Bad Leadership, edited by Anders Örtenblad, is a book for this time! The rise of populism and the emergence of so-called 'strong' leaders in many countries have created a social, political, and economic climate that begs for closer examination of the origins, characteristics, and forms of, especially, bad leadership. Taking as its starting-point the question of why there are so many bad leaders in the corporate world, the impressive collection of chapters compiled in Debating Bad Leadership canvasses a comprehensive array of issues ranging from toxic, psychopathic, leadership and ethical failure to issues of poor selection, ill-considered recruitment, leader (in)competence, conflicted or weak followership, to the very concept of leadership itself. In debating these fundamental issues, this book illuminates and educates, and offers some remedies, both theoretically and practically. Debating Bad Leadership challenges scholars, students and practitioners of leadership to continue this fundamental discussion, for the benefit of us all." - Gabriele Lakomski Professor Emeritus, Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education, University of Melbourne, Australia. In this book, leadership experts explore why there are so many bad leaders, and suggest remedies for how the current situation could be improved. Some of the experts suggest that reasons for why bad leaders are so common are searched for in people: more specifically leaders-to-become, acting leaders or followers. Others suggest that reasons are to be found in the leadership role (or expectations on those having such role), in the lack of support for leaders, or in beliefs about leadership. On the backdrop of their suggested explanations as to why there are so many bad leaders, the experts suggest remedies that could be taken to decrease the number of bad leaders as well as their negative impact. The very presumption that this book rests upon also gets its fair share of critique, by some of the experts.   Anders Örtenblad is Professor of Working Life Science at the University of Agder, Norway. He is the editing founder of the book series Palgrave Debates in Business and Management. 

The rise of sustainability has swept away the traditional views about firms' competitiveness, survival and profitability, advocating new approaches. Although the strategic decisions on sustainable issues become more important, many firms have erroneously narrow view of environmental strategies and related practices generally have only an outward-looking focus. In line with these considerations, this book aims to investigate the "environmental dimension" as a new "strategic variable" for contributing to strengthen the competitive positioning of firms and to increase the value creation process. The author provides a comprehensive framework for green management by highlights practices and tools to translate strategy into effective environmental ideas. The focus is on goals and actions, from a side, and on the implementation of appropriate control systems useful for monitoring the results of environmental performance, on the other. As such, the book enriches sustainability literature, offers new insights for scholars, and provides implications for practitioners involved in green management.

Features tried-and-true, ready-to-use tools, examples, and resources, this guide teaches the nuts and bolts of HR for small businesses and startups and is the perfect desk reference for any organization who may not have the financial resources to invest in a fully-staffed HR department. Guides readers through the HR essentials, including developing policies and organizational best practices, managing and measuring performance, driving engagement and cultivating a culture, understanding legal obligations, assessing, risk, and guidance for developing leaders.

Despite a substantial body of work arguing for a new form of writing about management, organisations, workers, ourselves, and our lives, these calls are ironically made within the traditional scientific language. This volume of Dialogues in Critical Management Studiesmakes an important effort to facilitate the growth of a nascent movement to write differently and thus capitalise on the fruitful and creative margins which this opens up.  Writing Differentlyis a critical, insightful, poetic and timely collection of essays, poems, plays and auto-ethnographic pieces that showcases the potential of academic writing. These texts reflect how writing is not always something we control or have agency over, demonstrate the multiple ways of expressions that are possible when we write about that which matters and exhibit the rich and varied forms of writing that emerge in the processes of being involved in scholarly work.  The volume will be of interest to those interested in alternative ways of working, researching, thinking, organizing, writing research and research lives.

New customer technology environments are magical worlds. With the rise of virtual reality, augmented reality, the internet of things and more, customers are more engaged, more involved, and easier to reach than ever ; while being inundated with increasing amounts of marketing material. How can you market effectively using these new CTEs? Providing an accessible description of these new, emerging technologies, along with novel frameworks with which to apply them, marketing expert Devanathan Sudharshan offers a straightforward guide to leveraging CTEs. Laden with examples to make the discussion vivid for readers and excite their imaginations, Sudharshan covers decision making in CTEs, mixed reality technologies and enabling technologies. CTEs are still emerging, and their business impact is yet to be measured. This exciting investigative text offers students, practitioners and researchers the chance to learn about these technologies, see the possibilities of their impacts, and their growing applications for the world.

Would you like to be a millionaire?  If you're like most people, your answer is "yes". But unlike popular opinion, this goal is not beyond your reach. Building wealth is more common sense than secret formula. You need to invest wisely.   This easy-to-read guide focuses on traditional investments - stocks, bonds, and cash or cash equivalents. Stocks and bonds are the heartbeat of Wall Street. Finance experts H. Kent Baker, John R. Nofsinger, and Andrew C. Spieler take you through how to invest in a single security, as well as mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which offer many potential benefits to individual investors.  This practical and straightforward book is written for novice investors. It takes an innovative question-and-answer format to help you learn about traditional investments and to become a better investor. If you want to become a millionaire, and don't have the luck of buying a winning lottery ticket, this guide is for you.

Including contributions spanning a variety of theoretical and applied topics in econometrics, this volume of Advances in Econometricsis published in honour of Cheng Hsiao. In the first few chapters of this book, new theoretical panel and time series results are presented, exploring JIVE estimators, HAC, HAR and various sandwich estimators, as well as asymptotic distributions for using information criteria to distinguish between the unit root model and explosive models. Other chapters address topics such as structural breaks or growth empirics; auction models; and semiparametric methods testing for common vs. individual trends. Three chapters provide novel empirical approaches to applied problems, such as estimating the impact of survey mode on responses, or investigating how cross-sectional and spatial dependence of mortgages varies by default rates and geography. In the final chapters, Cheng Hsiao offers a forward-focused discussion of the role of big data in economics.  For any researcher of econometrics, this is an unmissable volume of the most current and engaging research in the field.

How to use the Design Thinking Tools A practical guide to make innovation happen The Design Thinking Toolbox explains the most important tools and methods to put Design Thinking into action. Based on the largest international survey on the use of design thinking, the most popular methods are described in four pages each by an expert from the global Design Thinking community. If you are involved in innovation, leadership, or design, these are tools you need. Simple instructions, expert tips, templates, and images help you implement each tool or method. Quickly and comprehensively familiarize yourself with the best design thinking tools Select the appropriate warm-ups, tools, and methods Explore new avenues of thinking Plan the agenda for different design thinking workshops Get practical application tips The Design Thinking Toolbox help innovators master the early stages of the innovation process. It's the perfect complement to the international bestseller The Design Thinking Playbook.

Financial Derivatives have long been the subject of conflicting views. For some, they are a useful instrument, too often maligned by those who do not understand them; for others, they are a complete waste of time and money. But which is it? Should we embrace financial derivatives, or fear them?  In Financial Derivatives: A Blessing or a Curse?Simon Grima and Eleftherios I. Thalassinos rigorously explore the theory and debates surrounding this controversial topic. First exploring the perceived problems and the uses of derivatives, they study and evaluate the people who use financial derivatives; the impacts of derivatives use; and examples of safe use of derivatives. Looking at real-world examples, Grima and Thalassinos include public case studies on financial firms such as Barings Bank PLC, Allied Irish Bank, and Société Générale, as well as non-financial firms including Metallgesellschaft AG and Enron. Through these case studies, the roots of firm failure and large losses become clear, asking whether it is the misuse of this financial instrument, rather than the derivatives instrument itself, that is the cause.  For students and researchers in finance, or practitioners involved in trading, regulating, or auditing, this is a fundamental text exploring a controversial and relevant concept.

This upper-level Open Access textbook aims to educate students and professionals on how to develop business models that have a positive impact on people, society, and the social and ecological environment. It explores a different view of how to organize value creation, from a focus on an almost exclusively monetary value creation to one that creates positive impact through multiple values. The book offers students and entrepreneurs a structured approach based through the Business Model Template (BMT). It consists of three stages and ten building blocks to facilitate the development of a business model. Users, be they students or practitioners, need to choose from one of the three offered business model archetypes, namely the platform, community, or circular business models. Each archetype offers a dedicated logic for vale creation. The book can be used to develop a business model from scratch (turning an idea into a working prototype) or to transform an existing business model into one of the three archetypes. Throughout the book extra sources, links to relevant online video clips, assignments and literature are offered to facilitate the development process. This book will be of interest to students studying the development of business models, sustainable management, innovation, and value creation. It will also be of interest executives, and professionals such as consultants or social entrepreneurs seeking further education.

This book addresses how Covid-19 has damaged businesses and how businesses can adapt to the new normal. In doing so, the book contributes to theories associated with the marketing management, by assessing opportunities and challenges associated with the implementation of technology and marketing management during and post Covid-19. Although there is increasing research in consumer or business management acceptance of new technologies and digital marketing, the impact of these on marketing management during the Covid-19 are not adequately investigated, leading to overstated hypothetical predictions of its future potential. Chapters in the book therefore focus on new economic models such as sharing economy and business structures such as omnichannel, where advancements have enabled firms to build a one-on-one relationship with customers by collecting, storing, aggregating and analysing customer information across various touchpoints. Contributions in the book also focus on new technologies such as blockchain, automation solution, information technology management, and customer relationship management (CRM) in highlighting connections between these new technologies and marketing management. The book will be useful for anyone aiming to gain a better understanding of the current and future technologies that may play a role or have a robust impact on marketing management during Covid-19.

This open access book provides a comprehensive look at the pluses and minuses of leadership in times of an unparalleled crisis, such as the COVID-19 global pandemic. It examines the COVID-19 crisis in terms of psychodynamics, crisis management, and especially from the standpoint of complex, messy systems. It analyses how leaders need to think and act differently to cope better with--and potentially prevent--future crises.

We might think sustainable management is a new idea, created in the 1960s by enlightened modern scientists. We might think that it puts us on a new path, beyond what management was originally about. But this is not true. Sustainable management is as old as civilization and was a foundation stone of management science as it was formed in the first decade of the 20th century. Recovering this forgotten past provides deeper roots and greater traction to advance sustainable management in our own times. This book charts a history of sustainable management from premodern times, through the birth of management science as an offshoot of the conservation movement, to the present day. The authors argue that modern tools like Triple Bottom Line reporting and multiple Sustainable Development Goals may be less useful than a return to a more fundamental and holistic view of management.

Generation Z (Gen Z) is the demographic cohort also known as Post-Millennials, the iGeneration or the Homeland Generation. Referring to individuals born roughly between the mid-1990s and the early 2000s, they are our youngest consumers, students, colleagues, and voters. Understanding them is a key aspect. In the context of the hospitality and tourism, Gen Z-ers represent the future in human resources, and service production and consumption. This book focuses on the aspirations, expectations, preferences and behaviours related to individuals within this demographic. It critically discusses their dynamism in driving the tourism sector and offers insights into the roles that Gen Z will inhabit as visitors, guests, consumers, employees, and entrepreneurs. This book is a valuable resource for managers, scholars and students interested in acquiring concrete knowledge on how Gen Z will shape the marketing and management of tourism-related services. 

Bringing much needed clarity and definition to the term 'minority entrepreneur,' this authoritative and timely handbook explores the distinctive challenges that minority communities face when founding and managing new ventures. The handbook is inclusive of any community who might be considered disadvantaged or under-represented in terms of entrepreneurial activity and included are women, youths, seniors, disabled, immigrants, Indigenous peoples, LBGTQ+, ex-offenders, Roma, refugees and many others. Chapters highlight the idiosyncratic nature of the many communities examined before offering frameworks and models that draw together the various findings.  With a cast of international contributors, this scholarly handbook discusses the surrounding literature of minority entrepreneurship and takes an all-encompassing approach to its interpretation.  It also addresses the sorely under-researched area of entrepreneurial behaviour among minorities and disadvantaged groups. This is particularly important for policymakers tasked with designing and delivering initiatives that are appropriate for the needs of these communities.  Ultimately this handbook contributes to existing knowledge by: * providing a current understanding of the literature for each of the communities; * investigating the uniqueness of the entrepreneurial behaviour within the communities;  * offering new frameworks/models from which future researchers can build new knowledge. The handbook provides a comprehensive account of an important and fast emerging field of entrepreneurship, and is an invaluable resource for students, researchers and policymakers. 

Organisational buying is the purchase of goods and/ or services, by one or more individuals acting on behalf of the buyer firm, after a formal or informal consideration of purchase alternatives, and, the integration or use of those goods and/ or services to address one or more buyer firm problems or issues.  Organisational buying accounts for about two-thirds of economic transactions globally. However, organisational buying has traditionally been taught in discipline-specific silos. Organisational buying concepts appear in courses on marketing and sales management, procurement, contract management, supply chain management, operations management, finance, as well as accounting. Moreover, most organisations treat organisational buying activities in a similarly disjointed way. This book provides a comprehensive overview of organisational buying that integrates perspectives from across a range of disciplines and organisational functions. The primary goal of the book is to develop a holistic interpretation of organisational buying. It covers topics such as: * Purchase situations. * The organisational buying process. * The purchase decision and the value proposition. * Communications in organisational buying.  * Buyer-supplier relationships. * Organisational buying capabilities. * Organisational buying culture. * Organisational buying approach design. * Channels of supply. * Networks and organisational buying. Written in a practical, approachable way the book includes a range of exercises, case examples, learning objectives and discussion questions to support a broad spectrum of organisational buying-related courses.

This textbook presents a comprehensive analysis of organizational behavior in sport organizations from a practitioner's perspective. It covers issues related to managing employees and work teams as well as organizational structure and culture in sport.  The book has four sections: Organizational Behavior in the Sports Industry, Getting to Know Employees and Volunteers of Sport Organizations, Work Groups and Teams, and Understanding the Organization. Each chapter begins with a practitioner interview describing a challenge that was overcome by their organization. That example is used to highlight applicable theories and interventions used in the industry. Additional examples or theories are discussed to provide students a broad picture of managerial issues in the sports industry and provide alternative approaches to intervention illustrated in the practitioner interview. The case studies offer the opportunity to practice and apply the ideas to real-world scenarios in the sports industry. Students using this book will gain an understanding of how managers and leaders apply theory to communicate with and engage employees to foster desired organizational cultures while being challenged to address common issues using cases and hypothetical situations.

In today's globalised world economy, it is becoming increasingly pressing to shine a light on the interface of work and private life. In order to fully understand the issue we must take an inclusive view and not limit our understanding to Western perspectives.  This contributed volume encompasses research and perspectives from the global south, including Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and South America. In doing so, this collection fills a gap in existing literature to give a broader view of the topic. Divided by geographic territory into three sections, the book combines original research, case studies and interviews as well as comparative studies. Chapters cover a wide range of emerging issues including gender and work-life balance; the role of culture; men and household work and work and family balance, to name a few. Crucially, the book offers critical perspectives and understanding of work-life interface/balance/conflict as a collection of conceptual, theoretical, and empirical studies that draws on qualitative and mixed methodologies. Bringing a unique contribution to the field, this book is a useful resource for  students, academics, managers and policy makers.

This book presents scheduling with a medium- and short-term focus, which makes it possible to capitalize on fleeting market opportunities while simultaneously working to reconcile economic and environmental priorities. It introduces a new mixed-integer approach to hierarchical discrete-time and continuous-time scheduling, combining aspects of production and recycling, forward and reverse logistics as well as emissions trading for multi-stage supply chain networks. Problem-specific variants of relax-and-fix heuristics and genetic algorithms are also proposed. Given its scope, the book provides a range of practical tools and new perspectives for researchers and professionals in the field of supply chain management.

In this open-access-book the author concludes that expertise could be the key factor for global and interconnected problems. Experimental results have shown that expertise was a stronger predictor than public information regarding change in behavior and strategy adaption. Identifying non-routine problem-solving experts by efficient online assessments could lead to less volatile system performance, from which all decision-makers could potentially profit.  

The book provides an estimate of the size of the shadow economy in Poland. Using analogous data, it traces core determinants of the existence of the shadow economy in Poland. It compares results with neighbouring countries, and if possible, the remaining Central-Eastern economies. The book tells why the problem of the unreported economic activity matters; it presents the problem from different angles―economic, social and institutional. Next, it extensively reviews past research on the size and determinants of the shadow economy in Poland. It discusses available resources and empirical results showing the problem from micro-, and macroeconomic perspective. The authors present the methods used and the results of the survey, which are interpreted and discussed Finally it concludes on major drivers of shadow economy in Poland, providing recommendations and future research directions. The book is intended for practitioners and those seeking understanding of undeclared economic activities.

This book focuses on data and how modern business firms use social data, specifically Online Social Networks (OSNs) incorporated as part of the infrastructure for a number of emerging applications such as personalized recommendation systems, opinion analysis, expertise retrieval, and computational advertising. This book identifies how in such applications, social data offers a plethora of benefits to enhance the decision making process. This book highlights that business intelligence applications are more focused on structured data; however, in order to understand and analyse the social big data, there is a need to aggregate data from various sources and to present it in a plausible format. Big Social Data (BSD) exhibit all the typical properties of big data: wide physical distribution, diversity of formats, non-standard data models, independently-managed and heterogeneous semantics but even further valuable with marketing opportunities. The book provides a review of the current state-of-the-art approaches for big social data analytics as well as to present dissimilar methods to infer value from social data. The book further examines several areas of research that benefits from the propagation of the social data. In particular, the book presents various technical approaches that produce data analytics capable of handling big data features and effective in filtering out unsolicited data and inferring a value. These approaches comprise advanced technical solutions able to capture huge amounts of generated data, scrutinise the collected data to eliminate unwanted data, measure the quality of the inferred data, and transform the amended data for further data analysis.  Furthermore, the book presents solutions to derive knowledge and sentiments from BSD and to provide social data classification and prediction. The approaches in this book also incorporate several technologies such as semantic discovery, sentiment analysis, affective computing and machine learning. This book has additional special feature enriched with numerous illustrations such as tables, graphs and charts incorporating advanced visualisation tools in accessible an attractive display.

This book presents trends, developments, and examples of how digital disruption is currently reshaping the logistics industry. Logistics is the invisible force behind the global economy, influencing and providing a lens into all economic activities. Chapters written by respected experts in the field describe how new technologies such as autonomous vehicles, blockchain, Internet of things (IoT), and state-of-the-art freight management solutions are fundamentally changing supply chain solutions. Special emphasis is placed on promising start-ups and venture capital firms around the world that are now investing in the future of logistics. "Supply chains hold significant room for optimization to the benefit of customers, industry participants, authorities and the environment. This book provides a unique set of perspectives from industry leaders covering a wide range of topics. It is a 'must read' for anyone seeking to understand and contribute to a better tomorrow in supply chains logistics."  -- Thomas Bagge, Chief Executive Officer and Statutory Director DCSA "The need for standardisation and digitalisation in logistics is no longer an option. This book gives insights from industry experts, shows trends and innovations in platforms, underlines the need for transparency and how big data and analytics can make a world of difference. It's an incredible resource if you wish to better understand the new normal of logistics."  -- Global Chief Digital & Information Officer, MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company "This book presents readers with a straightforward and comprehensive assessment of supply chain innovation and trends and their impact on the industry. With contributions from several industry leaders, it provides critical knowledge and insight that supply chain and logistics managers need to implement disruptive technologies strategically."  -- Rene Jacquat, Founder / Advisor, LogiChain Solutions

This book presents insights from cutting-edge international business and management research relating to Africa. Economic growth and foreign investment in the region remains strong, despite some slowing down in recent years. This trend of economic growth and its impact on international trade and FDI has attracted Western businesses, eager to capitalize on this emerging market. In this context, new relationships and interactions have stimulated business research on Africa. Split into four parts covering the internationalization process, international logistics, trans-border corporate social responsibility and trust in Africa, the book covers a range of emerging trends, academic discussion and evolving issues across the spectrum of business research. It is a valuable read for students, researchers and practitioners interested in doing business in Africa.

It is of central importance for companies to be innovative. To maximize their innovation potential, companies often rely on formal systems and processes for innovation management. It has been shown that such attempts have the side effect of inhibiting a number of valuable innovations. Some employees proceed informally and smuggle their innovations past formal barriers. Stephan Eicher analyses the interaction between bootleggers and their management. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, he answers three primary research questions. What is the current state of research on bootlegging in R&D? How do bootleggers overcome illegitimacy upon disclosing their covert projects to decision-makers? How do different management styles and approaches affect the incidence of bootlegging? The results of this research paint a vivid picture of the relationship between covert innovation projects and the official management world of companies.

Enlisting memory in a new fight for freedom From the Gilded Age through the Progressive era, labor movements reinterpreted Abraham Lincoln as a liberator of working people while workers equated activism with their own service fighting for freedom during the war. Matthew E. Stanley explores the wide-ranging meanings and diverse imagery used by Civil War veterans within the sprawling radical politics of the time. As he shows, a rich world of rituals, songs, speeches, and newspapers emerged among the many strains of working class cultural politics within the labor movement. Yet tensions arose even among allies. Some people rooted Civil War commemoration in nationalism and reform, and in time, these conservative currents marginalized radical workers who tied their remembering to revolution, internationalism, and socialism. An original consideration of meaning and memory, Grand Army of Labor reveals the complex ways workers drew on themes of emancipation and equality in the long battle for workers' rights.

This book develops new balance of payments statistics for the United States from 1790 to 1919, before official statistics were kept. Part I of this book justifies construction of a new balance of payments table, and Chapter 1 surveys existing tables from that standpoint. Chapter 2 shows how this book overcomes the limitations of Office of Business Economics and its North-Simon-Goldsmith foundation. Specific features are highlighted, including measurement decisions, improvement of OBE series, development of new series, and derived implications for the structure of the US economy and for the importance of individual sectors that loom large at various times: slave trade, shipping, manufacturing, and travel. The book then generates new time series of the movement of people, the movement of goods, the movement of funds, and the provision of services. Part VI puts the new balance of payments table to use in several ways: aggregates and balances within the table, structure of the US economy, and specific sectors of the economy (slave trade, shipping, manufacturing, travel). Finally, Part VII provides concluding comments.

This book is about three key dimensions in economics--globalization, migration and the welfare state--that are of enduring interest. These issues are particularly important to consider at the present moment given the strains posed by the pandemic: there is at least a temporary setback to trade-globalization and migration, and the cost of fighting the pandemic will strain the ability of governments to provide welfare state services in a style and scope to which many of their citizens have become accustomed. The book explains the changing function of the welfare state in the presence of intensified globalization, or de-globalization, forces. The welfare state's policy-maker attitudes toward openness and migration depend on open-economy fundamentals, and the income class it represents. The author demonstrates the interactions between migration, globalization and macroeconomic policy in practice, using real-world unique episodes, with Israel deemed as well-functioning trifecta, and the US and Europe as imperfectly functioning trifecta. 

This Palgrave Pivot presents theoretical models that explain common historical sequences, such as wars of secession, the rise and fall of empires, and international war. The book uses a rational choice model to frame the incentives of specific groups coming together in a polity or leaving it. These incentives are then set in a theoretical framework to determine the outcome--unity or secession, peace or war--and are demonstrated through historical examples. The book provides two longer case studies looking directly at motives for and against secession: the first on the American Civil War from the point of view of the Confederacy, and the second on efforts by the UK government to stem the tide of Scottish independence. Another case study discusses peacekeeping as aimed at reducing the costs of secessionist wars. With its accessible use of economic theory and ability to bring to life real-world examples of conflict and secession, this book is ideal supplementary reading for courses in international relations, conflict studies, global economics and economic history.

Using an interdisciplinary lens, this book innovatively explores the conflicts and shifting boundaries in organisational, professional, legal and economic structures, caused by the rise of the gig economy. The dynamic structural model of the gig economy is introduced to interrogate the inner workings of the amorphous gig economy at the Macro, Meso and Micro levels of analysis. Conflict and Shifting Boundaries in the Gig Economyexamines a range of tensions and issues, including; The future of trade unions in the gig economy Employment status and contractual arrangements Talent management in the gig economy Employee voice and whistleblowing Career choices and organisational attractiveness Trajectory and impact at macro economic levels. Organisational examples and a focus on the perspective of those engaged in gig work introduce new insights and research questions on the current and future challenges posed by the gig economy, alongside using the structural dynamic model as a tool to understand actors and organisational experiences and build appropriate interventions.

Intelligent transport systems, from basic management systems to more application-oriented systems, vary in the technologies they apply. Information technologies, including wireless communication, are important in intelligent transportation systems, as are computational technologies: floating car data/floating cellular data, sensing technologies, and video vehicle detection. Theoretical and application technologies, such as emergency vehicle notification systems, automatic road enforcement and collision avoidance systems, as well as some cooperative systems are also used in intelligent transportation systems. This book presents papers selected from the 128 submissions in the field of information technology and intelligent transportation systems received from 5 countries. In December 2019 Chang'an University organized a round-table meeting to discuss and score the technical merits of each selected paper, of which 23 are included in this book. Providing a current overview of the subject, the book will be of interest to all those working in the field of intelligent transportation systems and traffic management.

With rapidly evolving emerging technologies, the business world is entering a phase of reform. Within times of change, transformative and disruptive environments as well as uncertain futures have created a difficult landscape for leaders within business. Exploring the landscape and providing valuable insight into the leadership among these challenging times, mean that business leaders can rely on Leading within Digital Worlds to provide them with a robust analysis of leadership practices and process to take them forward in the digital age. Pete Grindrod presents Leading within Digital Worlds in a way that will ensure this is an important text for business leaders in remaining at the forefront of the business world in these times of technological and digital evolution.The results of an in-depth study are presented in this title drawing on much of Pete's expertise in leading in the digital world.

Creating a sustainable future is one of the biggest challenges that we face as a human race. This is often made even harder by the apathy of many towards the need for sustainability. Education will play a crucial role in finding a solution to the global climate crisis, by shaping future generations who are informed, enlightened and ready to take action.  This book explores the value of institutions of higher education in leading the way on the topic of sustainability education by ensuring that it is well entrenched in the curriculum, as well as in everyday practice and lifestyles. This unique volume features authors from different parts of the world who narrate their own experience of integrating sustainability into their curriculum, and teaching sustainability to students.  By exploring the idea that education and sustainability should be seen as intrinsically linked if we are to see global change, this important text will prove invaluable for leaders, scholars and policy specialists in higher education.

The financial crisis of 2008 and its economic and social aftermath have highlighted the limits and risks of an increasingly global and embedded economy. Weakening society's trust in organizations and institutions, this has led to calls for new strategic paradigms that focus more on the ethical conduct of organizations.  Performance measurement for sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) plays a central role in these new contexts. The landscape of performance measurement and reporting is changing quickly, with calls for more integrated reporting and compulsory non-financial disclosures. Keeping up with those changes is a significant concern of managers in many organizations. Including research on the effectiveness and quality of non-financial disclosure, CSR/sustainability disclosure and Integrated Reporting, this exciting new volume looks to bridge the gaps in environmental, social and financial performance so managers can understand and successfully implement a broader, integrated view of performance measurement and reporting.  Aimed at researchers and managers interested in performance measurement, this volume includes innovative research that sheds light on topics such as the determinants of disclosure quality, the identification of appropriate metrics, the relationship among the different disclosure mechanisms and between voluntary and mandatory disclosure, and many more.

With the establishment of the innovation economy, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is becoming a reality. As this occurs, new forms of leadership arise, generated by the interaction between leadership functions and neurology.  From political leadership to organizational structure, these industrial changes will cause ripples throughout our society. It is important to get ahead of these changes, adapting to the new forms of leadership necessary, before these ripples become tidal waves. In order to do so, expert author Jon-Arild Johannessen turns to the processes that are a key part of the innovation economy, examining how value creation is changing in the new Industrial Revolution.   In this innovative book, Johannessen asks the question: what are the key value creation processes in the innovation economy? And how do these processes affect the logic of industry and industrial societies?

Step Up is a transformative journey that provides women with the necessary tools to become powerful leaders. It is an 'inner journey' to reveal commonly held beliefs that women have of themselves and others, as well as patterns of behaviour and choices that form the lens through which they see the world. Being aware of this allows them to look at the world differently and make impactful changes in their professional lives.Borrowing from the well-known frameworks of Generative Leadership (GL) and Transactional Analysis (TA), the book provides an inside-out approach advocating potent practices that can create effective leadership.

We live in the Age of Knowledge but we are heading towards the Age of Imagination. However, our current education systems still divide arts and business, juxtaposing them as different worlds, apparently ignoring the essential truth that imagination is the springboard of innovation. For business to continue to evolve, the barriers to creativity and innovation must be lowered.  In Innovation and the Arts: The Value of Humanities Studies for Business, editors Piero Formica and John Edmondson bring together a cast of expert contributors to explore how arts education can transform future business and social endeavours by developing empathy and enhancing skills frequently identified as lacking in graduates entering the workplace. Looking at arts and humanities across the broad spectrum of business and social innovation, and in the context of business education, examples of entrepreneurial and innovative developments, and the nature of the innovative mind, the contributors show how underdeveloped empathy and creativity constrain innovation. Art is disruptive, and innovation requires disruption to thrive.  By dwelling on the need for the convergence of business, innovation and the arts, Innovation and the Artshighlights the inestimable value of lowering the psychological, organizational and institutional barriers that keep them apart. For educators and practitioners, this is an in-depth discussion designed to stimulate awareness of the issues facing business education.

This open access book addresses the practical challenges that Industry 4.0 presents for SMEs. While large companies are already responding to the changes  resulting from the fourth industrial revolution , small businesses are in danger of falling behind due to the lack of examples, best practices and established methods and tools. Following on from the publication of the previous book 'Industry 4.0 for SMEs: Challenges, Opportunities and Requirements', the authors offer in this new book innovative results from research on smart manufacturing, smart logistics and managerial models for SMEs. Based on a large scale EU-funded research project involving seven academic institutions from three continents and a network of over fifty small and medium sized enterprises, the book reveals the methods and tools required to support the successful implementation of Industry 4.0 along with practical examples.

Best-selling author Cass R. Sunstein examines how to avoid worst-case scenarios The world is increasingly confronted with new challenges related to climate change, globalization, disease, and technology. Governments are faced with having to decide how much risk is worth taking, how much destruction and death can be tolerated, and how much money should be invested in the hopes of avoiding catastrophe. Lacking full information, should decision-makers focus on avoiding the most catastrophic outcomes? When should extreme measures be taken to prevent as much destruction as possible? Averting Catastrophe explores how governments ought to make decisions in times of imminent disaster. Cass R. Sunstein argues that using the "maximin rule," which calls for choosing the approach that eliminates the worst of the worst-case scenarios, may be necessary when public officials lack important information, and when the worst-case scenario is too disastrous to contemplate. He underscores this argument by emphasizing the reality of "Knightian uncertainty," found in circumstances in which it is not possible to assign probabilities to various outcomes. Sunstein brings foundational issues in decision theory in close contact with real problems in regulation, law, and daily life, and considers other potential future risks. At once an approachable introduction to decision-theory and a provocative argument for how governments ought to handle risk, Averting Catastrophe offers a definitive path forward in a world rife with uncertainty.

This textbook provides readers with evocative and analytical accounts of social processes that are linked to globalization and connectivity, which includes a wide range of multi-centred connections in history, DNA analysis, technology, art, populism and political economy. Rather than globalization, Nederveen Pieterse focuses on connectivity. His approach to globalization differs from both structuralist accounts of the world-system, and the institutionally-centred focus of much work in international studies. This synthesis will provide a new resource to reconstruct theoretical approaches to globalization and global studies. Fluently written, clearly organized and with an interdisciplinary approach, the book will be accessible to upper division undergraduates and graduates in social sciences, including students and researchers from the fields of sociology, politics, political economy, development studies and international relations.

An essential tool for individuals, organizations, and communities of all sizes to jump-start dialogue on racism and bias and to transform well-intentioned statements on diversity into concrete actions--from a leading Harvard social psychologist. "Livingston has made the important and challenging task of addressing systemic racism within an organization approachable and achievable."--Alex Timm, co-founder and CEO, Root Insurance Company How can I become part of the solution? In the wake of the social unrest of 2020 and growing calls for racial justice, many business leaders and ordinary citizens are asking that very question. This book provides a compass for all those seeking to begin the work of anti-racism. In The Conversation, Robert Livingston addresses three simple but profound questions: What is racism? Why should everyone be more concerned about it? What can we do to eradicate it?  For some, the existence of systemic racism against Black people is hard to accept because it violates the notion that the world is fair and just. But the rigid racial hierarchy created by slavery did not collapse after it was abolished, nor did it end with the civil rights era. Whether it's the composition of a company's leadership team or the composition of one's neighborhood, these racial divides and disparities continue to show up in every facet of society. For Livingston, the difference between a solvable problem and a solved problem is knowledge, investment, and determination. And the goal of making organizations more diverse, equitable, and inclusive is within our capability. Livingston's lifework is showing people how to turn difficult conversations about race into productive instances of real change. For decades he has translated science into practice for numerous organizations, including Airbnb, Deloitte, Microsoft, Under Armour, L'Oreal, and JPMorgan Chase. In The Conversation, Livingston distills this knowledge and experience into an eye-opening immersion in the science of racism and bias. Drawing on examples from pop culture and his own life experience, Livingston, with clarity and wit, explores the root causes of racism, the factors that explain why some people care about it and others do not, and the most promising paths toward profound and sustainable progress, all while inviting readers to challenge their assumptions. Social change requires social exchange. Founded on principles of psychology, sociology, management, and behavioral economics, The Conversation is a road map for uprooting entrenched biases and sharing candid, fact-based perspectives on race that will lead to increased awareness, empathy, and action.

In a time of great inequality and a gutted middle class, the dramatic story of "the strike heard around the world" is a testament to what workers can gain when they stand up for their rights. The tumultuous Flint sit-down strike of 1936-1937 was the birth of the United Auto Workers, which set the standard for wages in every industry. Midnight in Vehicle City tells the gripping story of how workers defeated General Motors, the largest industrial corporation in the world. Their victory ushered in the golden age of the American middle class and created a new kind of America, one in which every worker had a right to a share of the company's wealth. The causes for which the strikers sat down--collective bargaining, secure retirement, better wages--enjoyed a half century of success. But now, the middle class is disappearing and economic inequality is at its highest since before the New Deal. Journalist and historian Edward McClelland brings the action-packed events of the strike back to life--through the voices of those who lived it. In vivid play-by-plays, McClelland narrates the dramatic scenes including of the takeovers of GM plants; violent showdowns between picketers and the police; Michigan governor Frank Murphy's activation of the National Guard; the actions of the militaristic Women's Emergency Brigade who carried billy clubs and vowed to protect strikers from police; and tense negotiations between labor leader John L. Lewis, GM chairman Alfred P. Sloan, and labor secretary Frances Perkins. The epic tale of the strike and its lasting legacy shows why the middle class is one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century and will guide our understanding of what we will lose if we don't revive it.

The progressive economics writer redefines the national conversation about American freedom "Mike Konczal [is] one of our most powerful advocates of financial reform, [a] heroic critic of austerity, and a huge resource for progressives."--Paul Krugman Health insurance, student loan debt, retirement security, child care, work-life balance, access to home ownership--these are the issues driving America's current political debates. And they are all linked, as this brilliant and timely book reveals, by a single question: should we allow the free market to determine our lives? In the tradition of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, noted economic commentator Mike Konczal answers this question with a resounding no. Freedom from the Market blends passionate political argument and a bold new take on American history to reveal that, from the earliest days of the republic, Americans have defined freedom as what we keep free from the control of the market. With chapters on the history of the Homestead Act and land ownership, the eight-hour work day and free time, social insurance and Social Security, World War II day cares, Medicare and desegregation, free public colleges, intellectual property, and the public corporation, Konczal shows how citizens have fought to ensure that everyone has access to the conditions that make us free. At a time when millions of Americans--and more and more politicians--are questioning the unregulated free market, Freedom from the Market offers a new narrative, and new intellectual ammunition, for the fight that lies ahead.

If you only read one book on the future of work, Work Disrupted: Opportunity, Resilience, and Growth in the Accelerated Future of Work should be that book. The future of work swept in sooner than expected, accelerated by Covid-19, creating an urgent need for new maps, new mindsets, new strategies-- and most importantly, a trusted guide to take us on this journey. That guide is Jeff Schwartz. A founding partner of Deloitte Consulting's Future of Work practice, Schwartz brings clarity, humor, wisdom, and practical advice to the future of work, a topic surrounded by misinformation, fear, and confusion. With a fundamental belief in the power of human innovation and creativity, Schwartz presents the key issues, critical choices, and potential pitfalls that must be on everyone's radar. If you're anxious about robots taking away your job in the future, you will take comfort in the realistic perspective, fact-based insights, and practical steps Schwartz offers. If you're not sure where to even begin to prepare, follow his level-headed advice and easy-to-follow action plans. If you're a business leader caught between keeping up, while also being thoughtful about the next moves, you will appreciate the playbook directed at you. If you're wondering how Covid-19 will change how and where you will work, Work Disrupted has you covered. Written in a conversational style by Schwartz, with Suzanne Riss, an award-winning journalist and book author, Work Disrupted offers a welcome alternative to books on the topic that lack a broad perspective or dwell on the problems rather than offer solutions. Timely and insightful, the book includes the impact of Covid-19 on our present and future work. Interviews with leading thinkers on the future of work offer additional perspectives and guidance.Cartoons created for the book by leading business illustrator Tom Fishburne bring to life the reader's journey and the complex issues surrounding the topic. Told from the perspective of an economist, management advisor, and social commentator, Work Disrupted offers hope--and practical advice--exploring such topics as: How we frame what lies ahead is a critical navigational tool. Discover the signposts that can serve as practical guides for individuals who have families to support, mortgages to pay, and want to stay gainfully employed no matter what the future holds. The importance of recognizing the rapidly evolving opportunities in front of us. Learn how to build resilience--in careers, organizations, and leaders--for what lies ahead. Why exploring new mental models helps us discover the steps we need to take to thrive. Individuals can decide how to protect their livelihood while businesses and public institutions can consider how they can lead and support workforces to thrive in twenty-first-century careers and work. "Jeff's marvelous book is a roadmap for the new world of work with clear signposts. His insights will help readers discover opportunities, take action, and find hope in uncertain times. The ideas are fresh, beautifully crafted, and immediately applicable. This is not only a book to be read, but savored and used." --Dave Ulrich, Rensis Likert Professor, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan; Partner, the RBL Group; Co-author Reinventing the Organization

Where is the world heading? What choices need to be made to help humanity to thrive? These questions are more acute than ever in a context of growing inequalities, populism, social disorder, environmental challenges, and global health threats.The Future of the Global Order explores the six fundamental transformations ahead that will define the future of the world in the next three decades. Each chapter provides a unique and fact-based analysis of the situation at hand, reviews underlying uncertainties, and studies their inter-dependencies. As a tool to trigger debate, the book provides possible evolutions in global activity with four baseline scenarios, grasping the key issues which will shape the global order to 2050.Essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the massive forces of global change at play and the key decisions facing the future of humanity and the world.

All you need to protect and profit from your invention You've got a great idea and you're ready to strike it rich. Now, you need to find a company or partner you can trust, hash out a fair licensing deal, and get your idea to the marketplace. Profit From Your Idea will help you negotiate and draft a licensing agreement that protects your interests and maximizes your chances of earning a profit. With this all-in-one guide you'll understand how to: navigate the licensing landscape protect your intellectual property rights sort out ownership rights work with licensing agents protect confidential information find and solicit potential licensees license overseas reveal your invention safely, and negotiate and update an agreement. The 10th edition is completely updated with the latest developments in licensing law and patent filing rules, and covers industry-standard Fair, Reasonable, and Nondiscriminatory (FRAND) licensing terms. With Downloadable Forms: download forms including license agreements, assignments, joint ownership agreements, and many more (details inside).

"Shows how humans have brought us to the brink and how humanity can find solutions. I urge people to read with humility and the daring to act." --Harpal Singh, former Chair, Save the Children, India, and former Vice Chair, Save the Children International In conversations with people all over the world, from government officials and business leaders to taxi drivers and schoolteachers, Blair Sheppard, global leader for strategy and leadership at PwC, discovered they all had surprisingly similar concerns. In this prescient and pragmatic book, he and his team sum up these concerns in what they call the ADAPT framework: Asymmetry of wealth; Disruption wrought by the unexpected and often problematic consequences of technology; Age disparities--stresses caused by very young or very old populations in developed and emerging countries; Polarization as a symptom of the breakdown in global and national consensus; and loss of Trust in the institutions that underpin and stabilize society. These concerns are in turn precipitating four crises: a crisis of prosperity, a crisis of technology, a crisis of institutional legitimacy, and a crisis of leadership. Sheppard and his team analyze the complex roots of these crises--but they also offer solutions, albeit often seemingly counterintuitive ones. For example, in an era of globalization, we need to place a much greater emphasis on developing self-sustaining local economies. And as technology permeates our lives, we need computer scientists and engineers conversant with sociology and psychology and poets who can code. The authors argue persuasively that we have only a decade to make headway on these problems. But if we tackle them now, thoughtfully, imaginatively, creatively, and energetically, in ten years we could be looking at a dawn instead of darkness.

The end of our high-growth world was underway well before COVID-19 arrived. In this powerful and timely argument, Danny Dorling demonstrates the benefits of a larger, ongoing societal slowdown Drawing from an incredibly rich trove of global data, this groundbreaking book reveals that human progress has been slowing down since the early 1970s. Danny Dorling uses compelling visualizations to illustrate how fertility rates, growth in GDP per person, and even the frequency of new social movements have all steadily declined over the last few generations.   Perhaps most surprising of all is the fact that even as new technologies frequently reshape our everyday lives and are widely believed to be propelling our civilization into new and uncharted waters, the rate of technological progress is also rapidly dropping. Rather than lament this turn of events, Dorling embraces it as a moment of promise and a move toward stability, and he notes that many of the older great strides in progress that have defined recent history also brought with them widespread warfare, divided societies, and massive inequality.

In this Open Access publication Claudia Lemke develops a comprehensive Multi-Level Sustainable Development Index (MLSDI) that is applicable to micro, meso, and macro objects by conducting methodological and empirical research. Multi-level comparability is crucial because the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at macro level can only be achieved if micro and meso objects contribute. The author shows that a novel information-theoretic algorithm outperforms established multivariate statistical weighting methods such as the principal component analysis (PCA). Overcoming further methodological shortcomings of previous sustainable development indices, the MLSDI avoids misled managerial and political decision making.

This open access book clarifies confusions of strategy that have existed for nearly 40 years through the core thoughts of three fundamental elements. Unlike the traditional definition of strategy as "a plan to achieve a long-term goal from overall considerations"in a linear view, this book defines strategy from non-linear viewpoint as it is in the real world. The art of a strategy lies not only in the determination of development goals, but also in the identification of development problems and putting forward overall guiding ideology of solving problems. Rich illustrations  as well as numerous business and military cases are presented in helping readers to understand the fundamental elements of strategy. The general scope of the book includes introductions to the three fundamental elements of strategy, three-sub decisions of a complete strategic decision, incomplete strategies, relationship between tactic and strategy, three elements of competitive and corporative strategies. There may be biases in company-level, real strategic decision-making which makes a complete strategy not necessarily a perfect one. The book introduces biases and reasons for the biases, helping industrial strategic decision-makers understand the importance of knowing the nature of the company, the industry and its environment. In addition, this book also presents principles and evaluation approaches of strategic decisions,  explores the reasons for the excessive definitions of the strategy concept, and discusses directions of future's research tasks. The book will benefit business managers who are interested in knowing what a complete strategic decision is and how to avoid errors or biases in strategic decision-making. It also benefits students in business schools (especially in MBA/EMBA programs) who are (or will be) on executive positions. Academic researchers may find it is interesting to understand strategy from the view of the three elements. The new view provides a novel insight into strategy and promotes several research directions in the future. The three elements of strategy are also applicable to military strategies and readers who are interested in military and may find its value as well.

Relationship management (RM) is an essential part of business, but its success as a business model can be hard to measure, with some firms embracing a model that is truly relationship-orientated, while others claim to be relationship-orientated but in fact prefer transactional short-term gain.  This open access book aims to develop a mid-range theory of relationship management, examining truly relationship-orientated firms to discover not only what qualities these firms have that make them successful at the RM model, but also what benefits this model has for the firm. It addresses questions like how RM-mature companies achieve and sustain competitive advantage, and what determines the scale and scope of these firms, illustrating with case studies.  This book will be of interest to scholars studying leadership and strategy, especially those interested in relationship management, business ethics and corporate social responsibility. It will also be of interest to professionals looking to develop their understanding of relationship management.

This open access book presents the scientific views of some fifty experts on how they believe the COVID-19 pandemic is currently affecting society, and how it will continue to do so in the years to come. Using the concept of a "common" (in the sense of common values, common places, common goods, and common sense), they elaborate on the transition from an Old Common to a New Common. In carefully crafted chapters, the authors address expected shifts in major fields like health, education, finance, business, work, and citizenship, applying concepts from law, psychology, economics, sociology, religious studies, and computer science to do so. Many of the authors anticipate an acceleration of the digital transformation in the forthcoming years, but at the same time, they argue that a successful shift to a new common can only be achieved by re-evaluating life on our planet, strengthening resilience at an individual level, and assuming more responsibility at a societal level.

The Handbook of Regional Science is a multi-volume reference work providing state-of-the-art information, prepared by respected scientists in the field. This second edition includes new sections on the history of regional science, and on regional policy. It has been thoroughly updated to reflect new developments, including new chapters on R&D collaboration networks, knowledge spillovers, web-based tools for exploratory spatial data analysis, fuzzy modeling, multivariate spatial process models, heterogeneous coefficient spatial regression panel models, and endogeneity in spatial models, among others. The multi-volume handbook covers the field of regional science comprehensively, including topics such as location and interaction, regional housing and labor markets, regional economic growth, innovation and regional economic development, regional policy in emerging markets, new economic geography and evolutionary economic geography, environmental and natural resources, spatial analysis and geocomputation, as well as spatial statistics and spatial econometrics. The book is intended to serve the needs of graduate students, beginning and experienced scientists in regional science and related fields with an interest in exploring local and regional socio-economic issues.

This book offers a comprehensive business history of one of the largest global brewing companies. By combining industrial history with insights from corporate management and strategy, it reveals the success story of a family-owned company that has achieved a market-leading position worldwide. The author provides deep insights into the founding of the modern Danish brewery by J.C. Jacobsen Carlsberg in 1847, the company's subsequent rapid success, the relationship between brewing and science, and the importance of the Danish scientist H.C. Ørsted in establishing this relationship. Readers will also learn about the founder's son, Carl Jacobsen, and the tensions between him and his father; the establishment of the Carlsberg Foundation in 1876; and the transfer of J.C. Jacobsen's breweries to the foundation in 1888, which makes it likely the oldest managing foundation in Europe. Further chapters cover business agreements concerning the Danish beer market in the 20th century, the relations with Tuborg Ltd., the period of occupation in 1940-45, and how Carlsberg finally merged with - but in reality took over -Tuborg in 1970 and missed out on international business opportunities in the 1980s and 1990s. It also examines why Carlsberg has pursued an aggressive expansion strategy since 2000, e.g. by taking over its competitor Scottish and Newcastle together with Heineken in 2008, and has now become the third largest brewery in the world. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of brewing and the success factors of one of the leading global breweries.

Protect and profit from your invention For 35 years, Patent It Yourself has guided hundreds of thousands of inventors through the process of getting a patent, from start to finish. Patent attorneys David Pressman and David E. Blau provide the latest information, forms, and clear instructions to help you: conduct a patent search the right way evaluate your idea's commercial potential file a provisional patent application to get "patent pending" status prepare a patent application focus on your patent application's claims respond to patent examiners get your drawings done right protect your rights in foreign countries deal with infringers, and market and license your invention. The 20th edition covers the latest patent filing rule changes, including the most recent implications of the America Invents Act first-to-file rules. With downloadable forms: All essential forms, including a Nondisclosure Agreement, Patent Searcher's Worksheet, and Design Patent Application are included in the book and are available for download (details inside).

Great is no longer good enough. Beyond Great delivers a powerful new playbook of 9 core strategies to thrive in a post-COVID world where all the rules of the game are being re-written.   Beyond Great answers to two fundamental questions which face business leaders today in a world shaped by daunting and disruptive technological, economic, and social change. First, what is outstanding performance in this new volatile era?  Second, how do we build competitive advantage in a world with new and often uncertain rules? Supported by years of research and hands-on consulting practice, this book presents a comprehensive framework for building a high performing, resilient, adaptive, and socially responsible global company. The book begins by taking an incisive look at these disruptive forces transforming globalization, including economic nationalism; the boom in data flows and digital commerce; the rise of China; heightened public concerns about capitalism and the environment; and the emergence of borderless communities of digitally connected consumers. Distilled from the study of hundreds of companies and interviews with dozens of business leaders, the authors have distilled nine core strategies - the new winning playbook of the 21st century.   Beyond Great argues that business leaders today must lead with a new kind of openness, flexibility and light-footedness, constantly layering in new strategies and operational norms atop existing ones to allow for "always-on" transformation. Leaders must master a whole new set of rules about what it takes to be "global," becoming shapeshifters adept at handling contradiction, multiplicity, and nuance. This book will show them how.

The 'shale revolution' in oil and gas made possible by fracking technology, but not without controversy, has transformed the American economy, giving the United States unprecedented leverage in the world while putting an end to the 'era of shortage'. Almost overnight, and without many Americans realising it, the United States has become the world's number one energy powerhouse. Yergin brilliantly reveals and explains the 'new map' to show the great energy and geopolitical transformations looming for Americans and the world -- at the very moment they influence the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

This book addresses the role of public policy in regulating the autonomous artificial intelligence and related civil liability for damage caused by the robots (and any form of artificial intelligence). It is a very timely book, focusing on the consequences of judgment proofness of autonomous decision-making on tort law, risk and safety regulation, and the incentives stemming from these.  This book is extremely important as regulatory endeavours concerning AI are in their infancy at most, whereas the industry's development is continuing in a strong way. It is an important scientific contribution that will bring scientific objectivity to a, to date, very one-sided academic treatment of legal scholarship on AI.

This book features a selection of the best papers presented at two recent conferences organized by the SIEV (Italian Society of Appraisal and Valuation). Taking into account the current need for evaluative skills in order to make effective and sustainable investments, it highlights the multidisciplinary role of valuation, which opens the door for interactions with other sectors, scientific and professional fields. The book collects twenty-two papers, divided into three parts (Territory & Urban Planning, Real Estate Assets & the Construction Building Process, Real Estate Finance & Property Management) that reflect the main issues of interest for future urban development policies, namely: feasibility analysis for investments; selecting which decision support models to apply in complex contexts; enhancement of public and private assets; evaluating the effects produced by territorial investments; valuation approaches to properties; risk assessment; and strategies for monitoring energy consumption and soil sealing. 

Country risk has been a key notion for economists, financiers, and investors. Norbert Gaillard defines this notion as "any macroeconomic, microeconomic, financial, social, political, institutional, judiciary, climatic, technological, or sanitary risk that affects (or could affect) an investor in a foreign country. Damages may materialize in several ways: financial losses; threat to the safety of the investing company's employees, clients, or consumers; reputational damage; or loss of a market or supply source." Chapter 1 introduces the key concepts. Chapter 2 investigates how country risk has evolved and manifested since the advent of the Pax Britannica in 1816. It describes the international political and economic environment and identifies the main obstacles to foreign investment. Chapter 3 documents the numerous forms that country risk may take and provides illustrations of them. Seven broad components of country risk are scrutinized in turn: international political risks; domestic political and institutional risks; jurisdiction risks; macroeconomic risks; microeconomic risks; sanitary, health, industrial, and environmental risks; and natural and climate risks. Chapter 4 focuses on sovereign risk. It presents the rating methodologies used by four raters; next, it measures and compares their performance (i.e., their ability to forecast sovereign defaults). Chapter 5 studies the risks likely to affect exporters, importers, foreign creditors of corporate entities, foreign shareholders, and foreign direct investors. It presents the rating methodologies used by seven raters and measures their track records in terms of anticipating eight types of shocks that reflect the main components of country risk analyzed in Chapter 3. This book will be most relevant to graduate students in economics as well as professional economists and international investors.

This book analyzes new forms of capitalism that are manifesting under the pressures of global transformation. By studying economic and environmental indicators in various parts of the world, it seeks to reconcile economic growth with environmental and social sustainability, which is an important issue in both developed and emerging economies. These indicators include the explosive development of digital technologies and new global value chains, which are reshaping economies and societies all over the world. The contributing authors also address the challenge of immigration, the sustainable development transformation, the ties between productivity and social rights, automation and global value chains, the energy transition, and innovation and sustainable growth.

Globalisation is considered a success story. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the political divides between East and West Germany, nothing seemed to stand in the way of peaceful cooperation between people everywhere. Under the precepts of economic liberalism, by removing institutional obstacles to international trade and capital flows, a spontaneous global order would emerge, and the dream of a world populated by free and prosperous global citizens would eventually come true.But in the wake of the worldwide financial crisis that began in 2007-2008, in the world of an ongoing Euro-Crisis, Trump and Brexit, it has become apparent that the great liberal project has failed. Neoclassical liberal economic theory has shown itself to be fundamentally incapable of explaining the dynamics of a market economy and in guiding economic policy in developed as well as in developing countries.Given the continuing dominance of that discredited theory today, the world lacks a viable conceptual framework for global cooperation among nations, and appropriate national economic policies. With this book, the authors show how such a framework can be built on the basis of a modern and empirically sound economic theory.

The purpose of this volume is to broaden scholars' analytical perspective by placing the creative industries in frameworks that compare and contrast them with other kinds of entities, organizations, and social forms that mix creativity and production. In other words, this volume aims to set out an emerging agenda for the study of creativity in the cultural and media industries. Although this work focuses on the media and cultural industries, they are investigated in the context of other groups and organizations connecting forms of creativity with an explicit emphasis on turning ideas into concrete practices and products.  The originality of this book lies in (1) presenting a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective that develops a new framework and analytical concepts to understand the notion of creativity in the media and cultural industries, and (2) providing a series of fresh empirically based studies of the process of creativity in fields such as advertising, fashion, animation, and pop culture. This comparative move is taken in order to generate new insights about the particular features of the creative industries and new questions for future analysis.

This book presents the latest evidence on, and new approaches to, the development of Corporate Social Responsibility in emerging and established economies. To do so, it examines a broad range of industries, from fashion to banking, and various aspects, like accounting, information security, and human resource management. Special emphasis is placed on the role of education. The case studies gathered here analyse both small and medium sized companies, as well as listed enterprises. The book is a valuable resource for researchers in the fields of sustainability and corporate responsibility, provides student teaching cases for courses on CSR and sustainable management, and offers blueprints for professionals seeking guidance and inspiration on their path towards responsible business operations.

The book provides a critical and integrative analysis of value as it pertains to different aspects of creative and cultural industries. The notion of 'value' - a frequently used but rarely considered term -  is deconstructed and considered as a spatial and structural impact, an active resource and process, and as soft institutions and embodied forms which collectively create a space through which value is constructed and negotiated. This book consists of three main sections: normative valuation, value and transformation from interactions and process, and embodied value. Together the contributions assess what value means in the creative and cultural industries, how it is constructed and added through process, and the way in which it is embodied in people and shaped through and by social space. Especially relevant for postgraduate study and research in the creative and cultural industries where critical studies are key, this book is also relevant for multiple disciplines which occupy the creative and cultural fields.

This short, accessible book seeks to explore the future of work through the views and opinions of a range of expertise, encompassing economic, historical, technological, ethical and anthropological aspects of the debate. The transition to an automated society brings with it new challenges and a consideration for what has happened in the past; the editors of this book carefully steer the reader through future possibilities and policy outcomes, all the while recognising that whilst such a shift to a robotised society will be a gradual process, it is one that requires significant thought and consideration.

In The Age of Experiences, Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt examines how the advance of happiness science is impacting the economy, making possible new experience-products that really make people happy and help forward-looking businesses expand and develop new technologies. In today's marketplace there is less interest in goods and services and more interest in buying and selling personal improvements and experiences. Hunnicutt traces how this historical shift in consumption to the "softer" technologies of happiness represents not only a change in the modern understanding of progress, but also a practical, economic transformation, profoundly shaping our work and the ordering of our life goals. Based on incisive historical research, Hunnicutt demonstrates that we have begun to turn from material wealth to focus on the enrichment of our personal and social lives.  The Age of Experiences shows how industry, technology, and the general public are just beginning to realize the potential of the new economy. Exploring the broader implications of this historical shift, Hunnicutt concludes that the new demand for experiences will result in the reduction of work time, the growth of jobs, and the regeneration of virtue--altogether an increasingly healthy public life.

This open access book provides a glimpse into the Japanese management technique known as "Kaizen," and the ways it has been disseminated around the developing world. The novelty of this book is three-fold: it provides a contextualized view of the mechanisms of initiatives implementing Kaizen in developing countries; compared with productivity studies, it places the relationship between workers and managers at the center of inquiry, reflecting the intent of SDG8 concerning decent work and economic growth; and it provides an overview of the heterogeneity of Kaizen in terms of geography and firm size.  This book explores how improving management techniques can support firms' productivity and quality. Given its wide range of case studies from across Africa, Asia and Latin America, this book will be of value to scholars, policymakers and advocates of sustainable development alike.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) reshape the corporate landscape helping companies expand market share and gain a strategic advantage. The ability to understand and analyze these transactions is a crucial skill. The first step in acquiring that skill is being able to gather and analyse information on M&As from public sources, such as financial statements. This textbook helps its readers better analyze M&A transactions using information provided in financial statements. Covering accounting and reporting of consolidations, goodwill, non-controlling interests, step acquisitions, spin-offs, equity carve-outs, joint ventures, leveraged buyouts, disposal of subsidiaries, special purpose entities, and taxes, it focuses on the link between underlying economic events and the information in financial statements and how this link affects the assessment of corporate performance. The first part of the book provides description of the accounting rules governing M&A transactions, while the second part includes cases of M&A transactions. Each case focuses on a different element of an M&A transaction, and it is followed by a detailed solution with a complete analysis. Unlike other books in this field, this textbook focuses exclusively on accounting and financial analysis for graduate and upper undergraduate level courses in financial analysis, corporate finance, and financial accounting.

In a series of conversational essays, this textbook discusses the manner in which economic thought addresses a broad array of everyday issues beyond classical textbook treatments. In the spirit of popular economics books, the author uncovers economic issues and solutions from individuals, businesses, society, and the country as a whole in a decidedly non-technical and relatable manner.  Should the federal government mandate use of child safety seats on commercial airlines?  Can genetic information substitute for a college degree?  The contents of this book touch on many of these contemporary topics in an accessible way. Addressing undergraduate and graduate students, as well as scholars in different fields of economics, this book is a must-read for everybody interested in a better understanding of economic thought.

Capturing the ecommerce edge in customer growth and retention has been a decades-long battle between eRetail startups and large traditional retailers. The two face different sets of challenges and those challenges are constantly evolving in our digital world. Goliath Strikes Back: How Traditional Retailers Are Winning Back Customers from Ecommerce Startups expands on this current industry shift in one of the most accessible, intriguing business books in recent times. Each chapter covers a different industry, as diverse and eclectic as consumer electronics, newspapers, groceries, logistics, and more. By looking at how traditional retailers are facing off against internet startups, you can gauge the landscape and form your own strategies. Author Peter S. Cohan expertly guides you from one case study to the next and makes topics enthralling even for the non-industry layperson. Goliath Strikes Back helps executives create an effective strategy in the modern ecommerce realm. Business professionals and outside enthusiasts alike are in for fascinating insights from Cohan about the mindsets and strategies of successful companies and their leaders. Changing strategies on a dime has always been essential in commerce, and never more so than in ecommerce's industry overhaul. Don't get left behind. What You Will Learn What to emulate and what to avoid by studying the mindsets and strategies of the successful and unsuccessful companies How companies can identify, attract, hire and motivate executives who embody the strategic mindset needed to remain successful  An insight into six key industries, including consumer electronics and grocery, to understand why companies are failing or succeeding Who This Book Is For Executives, business professionals, business students, and curious laypeople  

The Super Bowl is the most watched sporting event in the United States. But what does participating in this event mean for the players, the halftime performers, and the cities who host the games?  Is there an economic benefit from being a part of the Super Bowl and if so, how much? This Palgrave Pivot examines the economic consequences for those who participate in the Super Bowl. The book fills in gaps in the literature by examining the benefits and costs of being involved in the game. Previously, the literature has largely ignored the affect the game has had on the careers of the players, particularly the stars of the game. The economic benefit of being the halftime performer has not been considered in the literature at all. While there have been past studies about the economic impact on the cities who host of the game, this book will expand on previous research and update it with new data.

This book shows how digital transformation has the power to revolutionize the way procurement operates, and discusses how especially buyer decisions are empowered through artificial intelligence. Depending on a company's strategy all desired outcomes are possible, including doubling savings, innovation, sustainability, quality, speed, and halve the risk. Jumpstart to Digital Procurement is a hands-on guide on how companies can grasp the opportunities offered by digital transformation.

This book explores whether there is reason to be against entrepreneurship. Just like literature on the darker sides of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship, the book is an answer to the one-sided, overly positive and uncritical image of entrepreneurship. The "twist" in this book, in comparison with literature on dark sides of entrepreneurship, is to explore being against entrepreneurship. From various perspectives such as lexical semantics, Marxism, philosophy of science and psychology, the contributors contemplate on why there may be reason to be against entrepreneurship discourse as well as entrepreneurship practice. Some chapters are based on first-hand empirical data, others are conceptual. The main overall conclusion is that there are some strong arguments for being against entrepreneurship discourse, as well as for being against certain aspects of entrepreneurship practice. Before it is reasonable to be against entrepreneurship practice in total, a convincing and practicable alternative needs to be developed. This book will be valuable reading for entrepreneurship scholars, as well as academics working in the fields of business ethics, (critical) management, and international business.

"Digitalization significantly changes the media. To cope with this change and to exploit new market opportunities is a major challenge for media corporations. Bernd Wirtz provides a valuable guideline for this new world, combining theory, facts, and practice." Dr. Hubert Burda, German publisher and Managing Corporate Partner of Hubert Burda Media Holding KG "The media business is subject to substantial change while differences between distinctive media areas are fading away. This is due to technical innovation in areas like transmittance of content, bearer of content and recording devices but also due to new formats, trends and constant change of consumer behavior." The textbook "Media and Internet Management" stays abreast of changes and covers this topic on a well-founded and comprehensive basis. It makes a valuable contribution to theory and practice in media management and is highly recommendable to media managers." Christoph Mohn, Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Bertelsmann AG  "The world of media is full of challenges and dynamic conditions for its field. The dynamic of this market is accelerated even more by new digital technologies and ongoing globalization. This book is an absolute "must have" for everyone who wants to know more about the basics, conditions and requirements of modern media management. The analytical clearness and structure make this publication highly relevant for students, but also for managers." Urs Rohner, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Credit Suisse Group AG "Media Management is a textbook, but a very welcome newcomer for students and teachers as it fills a market gap for good educational material in this rapidly evolving field. It is concise, simple (but not simplistic), and contains a contemporary overview of concepts and tools for media managers. " Prof. Dr. Bozena I. Mierzejewska, Editor of The International Journal on Media Management, Fordham University, New York "Summed up, with his second edition Wirtz managed to strengthen the outstanding position of his publication "Media Management". His textbook shines because of its content, analytical clearness and the high relevance for business practice without losing its academic background. With the second edition this book has established its position in the field of media business as the leading standard reference book in Germany. It is suitable for business students, lectures as well as managers who can gain magnificent information from it." Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Fritz, Director of the Institute of Marketing, Braunschweig University of Technology, Germany; Honorary Professor at the Institute of Business Administration, University of Vienna, Austria.

This book proposes a new type of consumer called a voicing consumer, or a voicesumer. This type of consumer is shaping our markets and marketing interactions with the advent of social networking sites in the digital markets. Described by the author as "real establishment of market democracy," consumer voice is gaining more importance in today's world, especially with the changes in communication technologies in markets. In defining the equalizing and democratic relationship between ordinary consumers and corporations, or any other regular company, the book highlights recent transformative experiences and cases in consumption cultures and consumer behaviors. Current theory discusses new types of consumer complaint behaviors, such as consumer activism and boycott, but this book fills a void by defining how these changes have created a new type of consumer. This new conceptualization of consumer behavior will advance scholarship for consumer behavior, psychology and marketing researchers.

This open access book is among the first cross-disciplinary works about Manufacturing 4.0. It includes chapters about the technical, the economic, and the social aspects of this important phenomenon.  Together the material presented allows the reader to develop a holistic picture of where the manufacturing industry and the parts of the society that depend on it may be going in the future. Manufacturing 4.0 is not only a technical change, nor is it a purely technically driven change, but it is a societal change that has the potential to disrupt the way societies are constructed both in the positive and in the negative. This book will be of interest to scholars researching manufacturing, technological innovation, innovation management and industry 4.0.

This open access book revisits common notions on how to select and recruit the right employees. It reveals that the secret of successful individuals and teams lies in a combination of talent and four important performance indicators, offering an innovative approach that companies can fruitfully adopt.  Bas Kodden has studied key performance indicators among over 1,100 executives, senior staff and professionals, including 50 CEOs from leading Dutch companies. His findings put the present recruitment and selection procedures used by many prominent companies in a new light. Moreover, the book not only addresses theory; it also offers a practically applicable model for recruitment, selection and professional development. In closing, the book includes a variety of questionnaires and checklists for HR professionals and executives whose goal is to build sustainable and successful teams and organizations. 

Despite being vastly different both socially and economically, art and fashion are increasingly converging to collaborate in mutually advantageous ways. This book discusses the mutual benefits of collaboration through analysis of successful case studies, including corporate art collections and museums, patronage and sponsorship initiatives, and art-based brand management in the fashion sector. It provides a categorization of the strategies that fashion firms employ when they join the art world and illustrates how art and fashion brands can interact strategically at different levels. This book will be a valuable resource to researchers, providing an enhanced understanding of the potential of artification for managing brands and products.

This book deals with stochastic combinatorial optimization problems in supply chain disruption management, with a particular focus on management of disrupted flows in customer-driven supply chains. The problems are modeled using a scenario based stochastic mixed integer programming to address riskneutral, risk-averse and mean-risk decision-making in the presence of supply chain disruption risks. The book focuses on integrated disruption mitigation and recovery decision-making and innovative, computationally efficient multi-portfolio approach to supply chain disruption management, e.g., selection of primary and recovery supply portfolios, demand portfolios, capacity portfolios, etc. Numerous computational examples throughout the book, modeled in part on realworld supply chain disruption management problems, illustrate the material presented and provide managerial insights. Many propositions formulated in the book lead to a deep understanding of the properties of developed stochastic mixed integer programs and optimal solutions. In the computational examples, the proposed mathematical programming models are solved using an advanced algebraic modeling language such as AMPL and CPLEX, GUROBI and XPRESS solvers. The knowledge and tools provided in the book allow the reader to model and solve supply chain disruption management problems using commercially available software for mixed integer programming. Using the end-of chapter problems and exercises, the monograph can also be used as a textbook for an advanced course in supply chain risk management. After an introductory chapter, the book is then divided into six main parts.  Part I addresses selection of a supply portfolio; Part II considers integrated selection of supply portfolio and scheduling; Part III looks at integrated, equitably efficient selection of supply portfolio and scheduling; Part IV examines integrated selection of primary and recovery supply and demand portfolios and production and inventory scheduling, Part V deals with selection of resilient supply portfolio in multitier supply chain networks; and Part VI addresses selection of cybersecurity safequards portfolio for disruption management of information flows in supply chains.

This book is intended for human resources management academics, researchers, students, organizational leaders and managers, HR Practitioners, and those responsible for helping support employees in the 21st-century workplace. It offers a path forward to create an environment that will not only build a healthier workplace by providing appropriate and effective well-being interventions but also offers solutions to manage multi-generational and 'holistic' employees within the employment relationship.   The book describes the factors that promote healthy and WELL organizations and introduces concepts and strategies to reduce workplace stress and mental health issues and improve workplace well-being toward sustained organizational success. Employers that embrace the corporate responsibility of promoting the health and well-being of multi-generational, holistic employees will reap cost savings, employee engagement, and productivity advantages, as well as a healthier and more productive workforce. 

This open access book contributes to the creation of a cyber ecosystem supported by blockchain technology in which technology and people can coexist in harmony. Blockchains have shown that trusted records, or ledgers, of permanent data can be stored on the Internet in a decentralized manner. The decentralization of the recording process is expected to significantly economize the cost of transactions. Creating a ledger on data, a blockchain makes it possible to designate the owner of each piece of data, to trade data pieces, and to market them. This book examines the formation of markets for various types of data from the theory of market quality proposed and developed by M. Yano. Blockchains are expected to give data itself the status of a new production factor. Bringing ownership of data to the hands of data producers, blockchains can reduce the possibility of information leakage, enhance the sharing and use of IoT data, and prevent data monopoly and misuse. The industry will have a bright future as soon as better technology is developed and when a healthy infrastructure is created to support the blockchain market.   

This book provides a critical analysis of the evolution of corporate disclosure. Building upon prior academic literature, it assesses the most important changes in mandatory corporate disclosure, the growing relevance of social and environmental disclosure, and revolutionary new forms of corporate communication, in particular social media. It also includes empirical analyses that shed further light on the impact of voluntary communication, i.e. social and environmental reporting and corporate social media communication, on managerial and investment decisions. Lastly, it discusses new directions for accounting and corporate governance research on the theoretical and empirical challenges of corporate disclosure. Offering a wealth of relevant and timely advice, the book will help regulators design policies that allow businesses to overcome current and emerging economic, social, and technological challenges.

In the context of the changing nature of universities, this book discusses the progression of enterprise and entrepreneurship education, and conceptualises 'best practice' with the aim of enhancing teaching and support for entrepreneurs. Including an overview of entrepreneurship, teaching entrepreneurship, enterprising universities and industrial ecosystems, the author also discusses stakeholder theory and analysis, concluding with a perspective on effective and enterprising learning spaces. An insightful read for researchers, educators and policy-makers, this comprehensive overview provides up-to-date literature and case studies to describe the need for entrepreneurship education, its growth, the influence of key institutional stakeholders, and the future of programme delivery and assessment.

This open access book provides a glimpse into the Japanese management technique known as "Kaizen," and the ways it has been disseminated around the developing world. The novelty of this book is three-fold: it provides a contextualized view of the mechanisms of initiatives implementing Kaizen in developing countries; compared with productivity studies, it places the relationship between workers and managers at the center of inquiry, reflecting the intent of SDG8 concerning decent work and economic growth; and it provides an overview of the heterogeneity of Kaizen in terms of geography and firm size.  This book explores how improving management techniques can support firms' productivity and quality. Given its wide range of case studies from across Africa, Asia and Latin America, this book will be of value to scholars, policymakers and advocates of sustainable development alike.

At the core of institutional theories, 'values' is a central term and figures in most definitions; however it remains understudied and under-explored. The editors of this open access book identify a resurgence of interest in the values-construct which underpins discussions of identity, 'ethos' and the purpose/nature of public and civic welfare provision. Considering the importance of values and values work to social, material and symbolic work in organizations, individual chapters explore values work as performed in organizations and by leaders. Focusing on practices of values work, the book applies and combines different theoretical lenses exemplified by the integration of institutional perspectives with micro-level perspectives and approaches.

Intended as an essential introduction to philanthropy, this book provides a balanced, analytical, interdisciplinary overview of a complex, and often controversial, topic. Using case studies to illustrate the narrative, it covers everything from the history of individual, sometimes eccentric, philanthropists, to the controversies and challenges of 'philanthrocapitalism'. This book explores philanthropists and their motivations: who are they and why do they give their money away? It explains what philanthropy does: its history and scope, and the impacts it has in areas such as science and the arts. The governance of philanthropy is explored: how decisions are reached about donations and their accountability. The book addresses the major controversies surrounding philanthropy, and discusses the difficulties involved in giving and receiving, e.g. the importance of ensuring that these processes are transparent and accountable. Lastly, the book considers the future of philanthropy, especially its changing role in society and the disruptive impact of digital technologies. Given its scope, the book offers a valuable resource for researchers interested in philanthropy, innovation and entrepreneurship, the motivations for individual and corporate donations, and the business of giving in general.

How to be human at work. HBR's Emotional Intelligence Series features smart, essential reading on the human side of professional life from the pages of Harvard Business Review. Each book in the series offers proven research showing how our emotions impact our work lives, practical advice for managing difficult people and situations, and inspiring essays on what it means to tend to our emotional well-being at work. Uplifting and practical, these books describe the social skills that are critical for ambitious professionals to master. This specially priced 14-volume set includes every book in the series: Mindfulness Resilience Influence and Persuasion Authentic Leadership Dealing with Difficult People Focus Self-Awareness Happiness Empathy Leadership Presence Purpose, Meaning, and Passion Confidence Mindful Listening Power and Impact

This handbook examines ethics in finance responses to the main challenges in finance, accounting and organizations in the 21st century. It addresses a broad array of topics, including the ethics of risk management in financial markets, professionalism and codes, responsibility of financiers, trust and fidelity, microfinance, electronic trading, crisis, scandals, and sustainability.  The financialization of the economy, technological payments and digitalization of banking, combined with the inclusion of non-traditional "financial" entities in the market, will radically change the financial ecosystem as we know it. The resulting new scenario is still diffuse, bound to encounter important problems, and will require ethical reflection. This book provides a compendium of works on ethics in finance, and serves as a reference to both researchers and practitioners in the field. It will help those who are already anticipating the ethical reflection about new scenarios in finance, advanced financial products, or emergent financial market situations. 

This open access book is geared towards providing insights and stimulating new thinking about the changing nature of services, service work and workers, and service experiences during and after the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, particularly focusing on digital service technology. This book serves as a useful resource for business practitioners and academics in the areas of service and human resource management. Each chapter deals with specific current issues within these industries due to COVID-19 and issues that will come up post-pandemic. As COVID-19 is expected introduce novel methods to the service sector, such as untact service, telecommuting, alternative work arrangements, job crafting, and new work skills, digital technology is becoming more important than ever before. This books provides a range of examples and cases to elaborate on the effective application of digital service technology in order for businesses to stay relevant in the current climate.

This book focuses on intellectual property (IP) in the context of product innovation and design-led start-up management. A distinguished feature is that it analyses innovation-related scenarios within their continuously changing contexts. IP is discussed in relation to the way in which its value changes over time as a venture matures. The book reveals how IP strategies can enhance a start-up's survival prospects and its growth potential if they are connected systematically to other business development attributes. Being mainly addressed to enterprising designers, it may also support business administration programmes, innovation hubs, design educators, incubator managers, as well as business coaches and IP attorneys who support creatives and inventors. All in all, this book offers a unique and timely strategic guidance in the field of design and innovation management.   "Design and design rights have long been overlooked in the plethora of studies on the links between IPR and innovation. Matthias Hillner's thoughtful and eloquent journey provides a contemporary and meaningful analysis which will no doubt assist governments, economists, academics and designers' better understanding of design in the context of successful business strategies and IPR. Given design's significant contribution to global economies, I am confident it will offer much needed guidance." Dids Macdonald OBE, founder CEO of Anticopying in Design (ACID) "This is an immensely practical book for designers and entrepreneurs who want to understand the issues of IP, product innovation, and business development. With clear explanations, many vivid examples, and strategically useful tips, it will be a valuable resource for creative minds at all levels of experience. A serious book but written with a sensitive touch on how to protect new ideas." Richard Buchanan, Professor of Design, Management, and Innovation, Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University

This unique open access book features a selection of Living Cases on Corporate Governance, which were developed and compiled by chairpersons, members of the board of directors, and CEOs in various countries, working in close collaboration with prominent researchers. Each Living Case addresses a current issue that a given company or institution needs to resolve. For every Case, the goal is formulated by the researcher, in consultation with the client. The participants of internal or external board seminars, or university students, then work in teams to analyze the problem, develop an innovative and feasible solution, and summarize the most important lessons learned.

This open access book provides a readable narrative of the bubbles and the banking crisis Japan experienced during the two decades between the late 1980s and the early 2000s. Japan, which was a leading competitor in the world's manufacturing sector, tried to transform itself into an economy with domestic demand-led mature growth, but the ensuing bubbles and crisis instead made the country suffer from chronicle deflation and stagnation. The book analyses why the Japanese authorities could not avoid making choices that led to this outcome. The chapters are based on the lectures to regulators from emerging economies delivered at the Global Financial Partnership Center of the Financial Services Agency of Japan.

This book examines existing mineral fiscal policies covering income taxation, royalties, free carried and participative (community and government) interests and also highlights the impacts of these policies on the feasibility of mineral projects as well as on revenue and other benefits to the State. While publications already exist on the subject matter, they have invariably approached the topic primarily from a Government standpoint rather than the mining industry. This book aims to provide a balance in this debate by comparing the financial outcomes gained or foregone by both Government and industry under different policy regimes. The discussions are supported by quantitative examples to more clearly articulate the potential outcomes and better inform future fiscal policy decisions.

The book sets out to explore the economic motivations of imperial expansion under capitalism. This undoubtedly is related to two fundamental research questions in economic sciences. First, what factors explain the divergence in living standards across countries under the capitalist economic system? Second, what ensures internal and external stability of the capitalist economic system? The book adopts a unified approach to address these questions.    Using the standard growth model it shows that improvements in living standards are dependent on access to raw materials, labour, capital, technology, and perhaps most importantly 'economies of scale'. Empires ensure scale economy through guaranteed access to markets and raw materials. The stability of the system depends on growth and distribution and it is not possible to have one without the other. However, the quest for growth and imperial expansion implies that one empire invariably comes into conflict with another. This is perhaps the most unstable and potentially dangerous characteristic of the capitalist system. Using extensive historical accounts the book shows that this inherent tension can be best managed by acknowledging mutual spheres of influence within the international system along the lines of the 1815 Vienna Congress.    This timely publication addresses not only students and scholars of economics, geography, political science, and history, but also general readers interested in a better understanding of economic development, international relations, and the history of global capitalism. 

This textbook explains the main economic mechanisms behind energy markets and assesses how governments can implement policies to improve how these markets function. Adopting a micro-economic perspective, the book systematically analyses the various types of market failures on the electricity and gas markets as well as coal, oil, hydrogen and heat markets to identify government policies that can improve welfare. These shortcomings include the natural monopoly and the public-good character of energy infrastructures; market power resulting from inflexibility of supply and demand; international trade restrictions; negative externalities concerning the use of fossil energy; positive externalities concerning innovative new energy technologies; information asymmetries with regard to the product characteristics of energy commodities; and other public concerns, such as energy poverty.  In turn, readers will learn about various measures that governments can use to address these market failures, including incentive regulation for electricity grids; international integration of wholesale energy markets; environmental regulatory measures like emissions trading schemes; subsidy schemes for new technologies; green-energy certificate schemes; and energy taxes. Given its scope, the book will appeal to upper-undergraduate and graduate students from various disciplines who want to learn more about the economics and regulation of energy systems and markets.

This open access book explores one of the most fiercely debated issues in China: if and how China will surpass the middle income trap that has plagued many developing countries for years. This book gives readers a clear picture of China today and acts as a reference for other developing countries. China is facing many setbacks and experiencing an economic slowdown in recent years due to some serious issues, and income inequality is one such issue deferring China's development potential by creating a middle income trap. This book thoroughly investigates both the unpromising factors and favorable conditions for China to overcome the trap. It illustrates that traps may be encountered at any stage of development and argues that political stability is the prerequisite to creating a favorable environment for economic development and addressing this "middle income trap". Written by one of China's central planners, this book offers precious insights into the industrial policies that are transforming China and the world and will be of interest to China scholars, economists and political scientists.

This open access textbook provides a concise introduction to economic approaches and mathematical methods for the study of water allocation and distribution problems. Written in an accessible and straightforward style, it discusses and analyzes central issues in integrated water resource management, water tariffs, water markets, and transboundary water management. By illustrating the interplay between the hydrological cycle and the rules and institutions that govern today's water allocation policies, the authors develop a modern perspective on water management. Moreover, the book presents an in-depth assessment of the political and ethical dimensions of water management and its institutional embeddedness, by discussing distribution issues and issues of the enforceability of human rights in managing water resources. Given its scope, the book will appeal to advanced undergraduate and graduate students of economics and engineering, as well as practitioners in the water sector, seeking a deeper understanding of economic approaches to the study of water management.

The importance of demonstrating the value achieved from IT investments is long established in the Computer Science (CS) and Information Systems (IS) literature. However, emerging technologies such as the ever-changing complex area of cloud computing present new challenges and opportunities for demonstrating how IT investments lead to business value. Recent reviews of extant literature highlights the need for multi-disciplinary research. This research should explore and further develops the conceptualization of value in cloud computing research. In addition, there is a need for research which investigates how IT value manifests itself across the chain of service provision and in inter-organizational scenarios. This open access book will review the state of the art from an IS, Computer Science and Accounting perspective, will introduce and discuss the main techniques for measuring business value for cloud computing in a variety of scenarios, and illustrate these with mini-case studies.

This open access book presents a comprehensive and up-to-date collection of knowledge on the state of crowdfunding research and practice. It considers crowdfunding models and their different manifestations across a variety of geographies and sectors, and explores the perspectives of fundraisers, backers, platforms, and regulators. Gathering insights from a wide range of influential researchers in the field, the book balances concepts, theory, and case studies. Going beyond previous research on crowdfunding, the contributors also investigate issues of community, sustainability, education, and ethics. A vital resource for anyone researching crowdfunding, this book offers readers a deep understanding of the characteristics, business models, user-relations, and behavioural patterns of crowdfunding.

In a new world characterized by more frequent and rich flows of information, with more efficient and plenty of available external capital, how will the - simultaneous - investment and divestment decisions be affected? This book thoroughly covers the main features and relevance of asset sales as an integral component of many companies' growth strategies in the current and continually evolving corporate finance eco-system. After an introductory section on the relevance of asset sales in corporations (both non-financial and financial), it discusses the corporate asset market and the mechanisms of asset sale transactions. The focus then turns to the theory of finance in asset sales (the efficiency and financing theory) and the extensive empirical literature now available. In light of recent and rapid technological and digital advances, a concluding section presents new perspectives on analyzing asset sales transactions. Chiefly intended as a primer for PhD students and academics, the book offers roadmaps for the empirical research landscape and suggests future research directions.

This open access book revisits common notions on how to select and recruit the right employees. It reveals that the secret of successful individuals and teams lies in a combination of talent and four important performance indicators, offering an innovative approach that companies can fruitfully adopt.  Bas Kodden has studied key performance indicators among over 1,100 executives, senior staff and professionals, including 50 CEOs from leading Dutch companies. His findings put the present recruitment and selection procedures used by many prominent companies in a new light. Moreover, the book not only addresses theory; it also offers a practically applicable model for recruitment, selection and professional development. In closing, the book includes a variety of questionnaires and checklists for HR professionals and executives whose goal is to build sustainable and successful teams and organizations. 

The Internet of Things offers massive societal and economic opportunities while at the same time significant challenges, not least the delivery and management of the technical infrastructure underpinning it, the deluge of data generated from it, ensuring privacy and security, and capturing value from it. This Open Access Pivot explores these challenges, presenting the state of the art and future directions for research but also frameworks for making sense of this complex area. This book provides a variety of perspectives on how technology innovations such as fog, edge and dew computing, 5G networks, and distributed intelligence are making us rethink conventional cloud computing to support the Internet of Things. Much of this book focuses on technical aspects of the Internet of Things, however, clear methodologies for mapping the business value of the Internet of Things are still missing. We provide a value mapping framework for the Internet of Things to address this gap. While there is much hype about the Internet of Things, we have yet to reach the tipping point. As such, this book provides a timely entrée for higher education educators, researchers and students, industry and policy makers on the technologies that promise to reshape how society interacts and operates.

With major retailers closing brick-and-mortar stores every month and the continued shift to online shopping, there is a major push to strengthen customer loyalty by improving the customer experience. The two most important qualities that consumers look for are convenience and efficiency. Finally a source is available that will give retailers and companies in general the insight needed to enhance customer satisfaction while improving the overall shopping experience. This book uses the world-leading findings from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) and its accompanying Global Customer Satisfaction Index (GCSI) - invaluable, incomparable sources of consumer insights and information, to inform best practices for improving the consumer experience, better satisfying customers, and achieving profitable customer loyalty today and into the rapidly changing future. This book will help us understand where we were, where we are today, and where we are heading tomorrow in providing exceptional customer experiences. It is a must-read for marketing professionals and customer-focused senior executives alike.

This edited book serves to unify the current state of knowledge for 3D printing / Additive Manufacturing and its impact on manufacturing operations. Bringing together leading experts from across the operations and supply chain disciplines the contributions offer a concise, accessible, and focused text for researchers and practitioners alike. Showing how 3DP can be implemented in a multitude of business models, the book explores how to manage 3DP both in the production environment and wider supply chain.

Technology has made human lives incomparably better. Civilization as we know it would utterly collapse without it. However, if not properly managed, technology can and will be systematically abused and misuse and thereby become one of the biggest threats to humankind. This open access book applies proactive crisis management to the management of technology organizations to make them more sustainable and socially responsible for the betterment of humankind. It forecasts the unintended consequences of technology and offers methods to counteract it.

This open access book seeks to foster a multidisciplinary understanding of the ties between faith, financial intermediation, and economic progress by drawing on research across economics, finance, history, philosophy, ethics, theology, public policy, law, and other disciplines. Chapters in this edited volume examine themes as consequential as economic opportunities, real world outcomes and faith; values and consumerism; faith, financial intermediation and economic development in Western and Islamic societies; and the impact of faith issues on US workers, on the workplace and religion, and on the characteristics of good wealth. Though engaging with difficult questions, this book is written in an accessible style to be enjoyed by laypeople and scholars alike.

This open access book addresses the current debate on extended working life policy by considering the influence of gender and health on the experiences of older workers. Bringing together an international team of scholars, it tackles issues as gender, health status and job/ occupational characteristics that structure the capacity and outcomes associated with working longer. The volume starts with an overview of the empirical and policy literature; continues with a discussion of the relevant theoretical perspectives; includes a section on available data and indicators; followed by 25 very concise and unique country reports that highlight the main extended working life (EWL) research findings and policy trajectories at the national level. It identifies future directions for research and addresses issues associated with effective policy-making. This volume fills an important gap in the knowledge of the consequences of EWL and it will be an invaluable source for both researchers and policy makers. 

This book incorporates theoretical framework and management cases in discussions on social enterprise in China. The authors look to address two fundamental questions about social enterprises in China that have been very controversial over the years. First, what is social enterprise? This book proposes a framework that defines Chinese social enterprises based on social entrepreneurship, and includes ten case studies for justification. Second, who are well-performed social enterprises with financial viability and proved social impact? The book describes in detail some of the leading social enterprises in China. It is aimed at a wide target audience. Practitioners will learn experience and lessons from the case studies. Academics can use the cases in different teaching contexts, and gain research inspirations from our framework and case studies. Policy makers, accreditation agencies, professional service providers, and institutional investors will learn to identify and evaluate promising social enterprises.

This book focuses on leadership and strategy, corporate governance, operational excellence, and corporate social responsibility. In doing so, it offers both conceptual perspectives and case studies on these topics that are targeted at business executives who want to develop and mature towards being successful value creators in their leadership roles.  Authored by the former CEO of National Australia Bank (NAB), Don Argus, and business school professor Danny Samson, the book provides insights on the strategic leadership factors that make a significant and positive difference when they are executed effectively and, in contrast, what happens when ineffective leadership/ strategy are deployed. It proposes and illustrates core leadership axioms, and also delves into sustainable development as an element of strategy. The authors do this by developing and illustrating core concepts that relate to the two major case study companies of NAB and BHP. Readers will be particularly interested in the core elements of leadership and strategy, and the grounded reality of how they operated in the case studies. The authors bring insiders' and leaders' perspectives to these topics, including tables that document shareholder value creation, and the logic behind strategic decisions, as well as key organisational leadership and strategic decision processes. 

This book describes the millennia-long process of the genesis, formation, struggle, and change of views on the management of social organizations in various countries around the world; in other words, it characterizes the worldwide evolution of the History of Management Thought (HMT) - ideas, concepts, theories, paradigms, and scientific schools - from Antiquity to the present. The book is the outcome of extensive research, based on the analysis, generalization, and systematization of foreign and domestic published literature, as well as on the gathering and analysis of unique archival materials. For the first time in the historical and managerial literature, the book puts forward original definitions of three historical and managerial sciences - the History of Management, the History of Management Thought, and the Historiography of Historical and Managerial Research. It addresses the main challenges in pursuing Historical and Scientific Research (HSR), the main "subject" levels of HSR and specific methodological problems concerning HMT, as well as epistemological methods for identifying key factors in and causes of the advent and evolution of HMT. This book presents both the origins of management thought dating back to the 5th millennium BC and the latest management concepts of the early 21st century. In particular, it traces the origins and sources of management thought, reflected in the works of thinkers and statesmen of the Ancient World (Egypt, Western Asia, China, India, Greece, and Rome), the era of feudalism, and the Middle Ages (Byzantium, Western Europe, and England), the era of inception capitalism (Western Europe and the USA), as well as the new and recent history of management thought of the 20th and 21st centuries. In addition, for the first time in History of Management literature, it presents the history of Russian management thought from the 9th century to modern concepts and scientific schools.

Hydrogen has recently become a popular topic and is often described as the missing link to a successful green energy transition. However, hydrogen can only contribute to a carbon-free future if it is produced from renewable energy. The ability to produce renewable hydrogen is linked to the renewable energy production capacity, which is itself conditioned by the underpinning renewable energy policies. This publication offers a review and an analysis of the renewable energy and hydrogen policies of five countries of the APAC markets: Australia, China, Japan, South-Korea and Taiwan. The review is complemented by interviews of renewable energy policy experts, renewable energy project developers and potential renewable hydrogen off-takers. Altogether, the policies analysis and experts' inputs provide a comprehensive overview of the status, drivers, limitations, and recommendations for the use of renewable hydrogen as a solution for deep decarbonization. Finally, the author proposes a method to assess the potential of renewable hydrogen to decarbonize hard-to-abate industries (ammonia, methanol, oil refining and steel manufacturing) based on existing renewable energy policies.

This open access book is the proceedings of the International Federation for IT and Travel & Tourism (IFITT)'s 28th Annual International eTourism Conference, which assembles the latest research presented at the ENTER21@yourplace virtual conference January 19-22, 2021. This book advances the current knowledge base of information and communication technologies and tourism in the areas of social media and sharing economy, technology including AI-driven technologies, research related to destination management and innovations, COVID-19 repercussions, and others. Readers will find a wealth of state-of-the-art insights, ideas, and case studies on how information and communication technologies can be applied in travel and tourism as we encounter new opportunities and challenges in an unpredictable world.

This handbook proposes to present best practices in managing and leading the 21st century workforce. It offers strategies and tools to cultivate well-being in the present day boundary-less work environment. Research shows that organizations with higher levels of employee engagement routinely out-perform those with lower employee engagement. This handbook provides valuable insights into why employee well-being is such a powerful driver of employee performance and engagement and what organizations can do to enhance workplace well-being and fulfillment. It brings the research on workplace well-being up-to-date while precisely mapping its terrain and extending the scope and boundaries of this field in an inclusive and egalitarian manner.

Workplace mistreatment is a burgeoning topic of interest, with the majority of workers having experienced it in some form. This book explores workplace ostracism and its negative effects on employee and organizational outcomes, such as employee attitudes, behaviors, and well-being. This edited volume defines workplace ostracism and examines how to differentiate ostracism from other type of workplace mistreatment, such as workplace incivility and interpersonal conflict. Among the questions it seeks to answer are: 1) what are the individual, relational, and contextual factors that influence employees' workplace ostracism experiences; and 2) what constitutes ostracism in stigmatized populations, such as international students, immigrant workers, and older workers. Researchers in organizational behavior, I/O psychology, and the sociology of work will find this book to be a valuable resource.

This book examines what mechanisms enable science-intensive organizations to broaden beneficiaries of science in urban settings. Focusing on organizations that constitute urban resilience systems and networks, it maps the contributions of academic institutions, established multinationals, and entrepreneur firms in environmental, material, and related life sciences. It then develops a model of strategy and governance for organizations to invest in and implement new environmental material science projects. This book provides researchers with a framework based on management theories of R&D and resource allocation for resolving urban issues.

At this critical junction in the history of humankind, leaders that are proficient in magical thinking aren't going to solve our problems. Creating alternative realities is not the answer. We need a very different kind of leadership--leaders who can resist the calls of regression and whose outlook is firmly based in reality. We need leaders who analyze and draw conclusions from, or use their own experiences as a development tool, face their strengths and weaknesses, and critique their own experiences in order to build new understandings. In this very personal and entertaining book, Manfred Kets de Vries, one of the "gurus" in the field of leadership studies offers his thoughts on leadership and life, reflections written for executives and the people who deal with them. As a psychoanalyst and leadership professor let loose in the world of renowned global organizations--as a passionate educator and scholar, or just a human being at the receiving end of heart-rending emails--he examines the pitfalls of leadership and the challenges for the professionals who work with senior executives in today's AI-focused world. He points out why leaders can derail, and what steps they can take to prevent this from happening. Ultimately, this book encourages you to "Know yourself," but makes no bones about the challenge it represents. Understanding our "inner theatre" will always be an uphill struggle. Kets de Vries points out why deep dives into our inner world are always fraught with many anxieties. Included in the many subjects covered by the author are the loneliness of command, the management of disappointment, the destructive role of greed, the impact of stubbornness, the role of storytelling, the importance of wellness, and the role of corporate culture. In addition, the book addresses the important topic of how to create great teams and best places to work. Furthermore, the book touches on endings- the ending of our career and the growing realization of the inevitable ending of our life. As time grows short, Kets de Vries emphasizes that we have no time to lose in dealing with our anxieties, regrets, and the things we spend much of our life determined not to see. Taking a deep dive into self-knowledge requires courage and support, and he is here to guide you through it. 

What is the significance of entrepreneurship in an economy? Scholars have argued that when the market is viewed as a process of perpetual adjustment to various forces, and not as a set of end-state prices and quantities simply arrived at, the role of the entrepreneur comes to the fore. What then are fruitful ways to conceive of the phenomenon of entrepreneurship? How do entrepreneurs both respond to and shape larger forces in the economy? In what ways can political institutions and government regulation shape the decisions made by entrepreneurs, and their responsiveness to consumers? How does the cultural environment influence the types of opportunities that an entrepreneur will notice and act on? Finally, is entrepreneurial behavior strictly limited to activity we see in the market? This edited volume--comprised of chapters by scholars and students studying from the disciplines of sociology and economics--examines entrepreneurship theoretically and applied to various cases. It provides an overview of the economic literature on entrepreneurship and puts forth a framework for understanding the market process, as well the policy implications of government intervention and cultural considerations in the market. It will be of use to any scholars, students, practitioners or policymakers interested in entrepreneurship.

In H2H Marketing the authors focus on redefining the role of marketing by reorienting the mindset of decision-makers and integrating the concepts of Design Thinking, Service-Dominant Logic and Digitalization. It's not just technological advances that have made it necessary to revisit the way everybody thinks about marketing; customers and marketers as human decision-makers are changing, too. Therefore, having the right mindset, the right management approach and highly dynamic implementation processes is key to creating innovative and meaningful value propositions for all stakeholders. This book is essential reading for the following groups:             Executives who want to bring new meaning to their lives and organizations             Managers who need inspirations and evidence for their daily work in order to handle the change management needed in   response to the driving forces of technology, society and ecology              Professors, trainers and coaches who want to apply the latest marketing principles              Students and trainees who want to prepare for the future              Customers of any kind who need to distinguish between leading companies              Employees of suppliers and partners who want to help their firms stand out. The authors review the status quo of marketing and outline its evolution to the new H2H Marketing. In turn, they demonstrate the new marketing paradigm with the H2H Marketing Model, which incorporates Design Thinking, Service-Dominant Logic and the latest innovations in Digitalization. With the new H2H Mindset, Trust and Brand Management and the evolution of the operative Marketing Mix to the updated, dynamic and iterative H2H Process, they offer a way for marketing to find meaning in a troubled world.  

This open access book examines the implications of internal crowdsourcing (IC) in companies. Presenting an employee-oriented, cross-sector reference model for good IC practice, it discusses the core theoretical foundations, and offers guidelines for process-management and blueprints for the implementation of IC. Furthermore, it examines solutions for employee training and competence development based on crowdsourcing. As such, the book will appeal to scholars of management science, work studies, organizational and participation research and to readers interested in inclusive approaches for cooperative change management and the IT implications for IC platforms.

Focusing on nascent firms, established growing firms and established plateaued forms within the northern inland New South Wales regional locations in Australia, this book explores the manifestation of entrepreneurship. In particular, the authors examine the state and status of regional entrepreneurship in the bioregions and investigate how gender plays out in the entrepreneurial space. The authors present a detailed macro environmental framework, national and international literature syntheses and the differences between regional and urban businesses exploring the secondary data. Through interviews and primary data gathering, the authors explore the context in which the businesses operate and showcase the uniqueness of regional embeddedness, place-based initiatives, networking opportunities and communitarian values. Insightful reading for anyone interested in the facets regional entrepreneurship and gender studies, this book provides important implications for academic scholars, government officials, business practitioners, financial institutions, and other stakeholders who are involved in effective formulation of innovative business growth strategies.

T​his edited volume offers a descriptive analysis of foreign direct investment (FDI) flows and cumulative stock, industrial composition, and important spatial trends for each successor state of former Yugoslavia: Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia. The chapters are written by academic experts on the topic from each of these countries and are organised systematically in order to facilitate comparison between the states. The aim of this book is to advance scholarly knowledge about FDI in Southeastern Europe 25 years after the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Each chapter includes a summary of scholarly contributions published on the topic in English-language and local language journals, a discussion of origins, composition by industry, and location choice within the country from 1995-2018, using Dunning's (1980) eclectic paradigm as a discussion framework. The chapters conclude with prospects for FDI over the next twenty-five years with emphasis on economic growth projections, EU integration, and other relevant country-specific considerations the local authors deem relevant. Special attention is given to specific companies operating in Yugoslavia prior to its breakup and how these firms have been impacted by dissolution, recession, efforts toward European Union membership. The authors also examine the past and potential impact of FDI from unforeseen events such as the Global Financial Crisis and COVID-19.  This book appeals to scholars of geography, international business, economics, and economic history of the former Yugoslavia as well as professionals working in the region and on related topics elsewhere.

This open access book explores the global challenges and experiences related to digital entrepreneurial activities, using carefully selected examples from leading companies and economies that shape world business today and tomorrow. Digital entrepreneurship and the companies steering it have an enormous global impact; they promise to transform the business world and change the way we communicate with each other. These companies use digitalization and artificial intelligence to enhance the quality of decisions and augment their business and customer operations. This book demonstrates how cloud services are continuing to evolve; how cryptocurrencies are traded in the banking industry; how platforms are created to commercialize business, and how, taken together, these developments provide new opportunities in the digitalized era. Further, it discusses a wide range of digital factors changing the way businesses operate, including artificial intelligence, chatbots, voice search, augmented and virtual reality, as well as cyber threats and data privacy management. "Digitalization mirrors the Industrial Revolution's impact. This book provides a complement of perspectives on the opportunities emanating from such a deep seated change in our economy. It is a comprehensive collection of thought leadership mapped into a very useful framework. Scholars, digital entrepreneurs and practitioners will benefit from this timely work." Gina O'Connor, Professor of Innovation Management at Babson College, USA "This book defines and delineates the requirements for companies to enable their businesses to succeed in a post-COVID19 world. This book deftly examines how to accomplish and achieve digital entrepreneurship by leveraging cloud computing, AI, IoT and other critical technologies. This is truly a unique "must-read" book because it goes beyond theory and provides practical examples." Charlie Isaacs, CTO of Customer Connection at Salesforce.com, USA  "This book provides digital entrepreneurs useful guidance identifying, validating and building their venture. The international authors developed new perspectives on digital entrepreneurship that can support to create impact ventures."  Felix Staeritz, CEO FoundersLane, Member of the World Economic Forum Digital Leaders Board and bestselling author of FightBack, Germany

This open access book discusses service design capabilities in innovation processes, and provides a framework that guides design students, practitioners and researchers towards a better understanding of operational aspects of service design processes. More specifically, it revisits service designers' capabilities in light of the new roles that have opened up in innovation processes on different scales. After years of being inadequately defined, the professional profile of service designers is now taking shape. Today private and public institutions recognize service designers as essential contributors to their innovation and development processes. What are the capabilities that characterize a service designer? These essential capabilities are what service designers should acquire in their education and can sell when looking for a job.

Through a historical analysis of the bicycle industry, this book explores how the bicycle was developed, manufactured and marketed, from its origins in the late nineteenth century to the present day. The author highlights the contributions made by the bicycle industry to marketing as it is understood today, tracing key innovations in product development and marketing. Addressing a gap in the literature, this book provides an insightful history of marketing practice for one of the most important products of the twentieth century.

This book focuses on human behavioural processes and describes them from an interdisciplinary perspective. It introduces readers to the main theories and approaches in the field of organisational development and change (ODC), and discusses their relevance and purpose with a clear focus on improving how readers perceive and handle change. The book is tailor-made for business students without any background in the humanities, helping them to conceptualise organisational development and change, and to practically organise interventions to increase organisational effectiveness. The book's goal is to help future managers and consultants recognise and handle the 'full situation', which includes purposes, people and relationships. Furthermore, it elaborates on those theories and instruments that can deliver real benefits to real people working in real fuzzy and complex circumstances, and includes several practical cases focusing on the role of the interventionist.

This book provides a compact overview of the topic of change management. It contains a comprehensible introduction to the basics and techniques of organizational change and provides practical information on the most important success factors. The reading is suitable for practitioners as well as for courses at colleges and universities. Topics such as stakeholder analysis, the use of the Social Intranet for communication and idea generation or intrapreneurship programs and a whole range of new case studies complete this comprehensive work.  This book is a translation of the original German 3rd edition Change Management by Thomas Lauer, published by Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature in 2019. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation. Springer Nature works continuously to further the development of tools for the production of books and on the related technologies to support the authors.

This open access book brings together perspectives from multiple disciplines including psychology, law, IS, and computer science on data privacy and trust in the cloud. Cloud technology has fueled rapid, dramatic technological change, enabling a level of connectivity that has never been seen before in human history. However, this brave new world comes with problems. Several high-profile cases over the last few years have demonstrated cloud computing's uneasy relationship with data security and trust.                 This volume explores the numerous technological, process and regulatory solutions presented in academic literature as mechanisms for building trust in the cloud, including GDPR in Europe. The massive acceleration of digital adoption resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic is introducing new and significant security and privacy threats and concerns. Against this backdrop, this book provides a timely reference and organising framework for considering how we will assure privacy and build trust in such a hyper-connected digitally dependent world.                 This book presents a framework for assurance and accountability in the cloud and reviews the literature on trust, data privacy and protection, and ethics in cloud computing.

This book explores diversity in boardrooms to highlight the link between the heterogeneous dimensions of board diversity and their impact on the firms. The book provides a brief definition of corporate governance and focuses on the role and functions of the board of directors. The work contributes to the literature enriching the empirical findings about board diversity. After a deep review of the literature within several theoretical frameworks, such as agency, stakeholder, stewardship, resource dependence, and the institutional theory, the focus moves on the impact on financial performance. The board diversity effects are tested through an empirical analysis conducted on a sample of European listed companies, performing both a single and a joint diversity index analysis. Practitioners and academics will find this book particularly timely and useful as it combines both a review of the literature and robust empirical investigation. It will be an excellent reading for academics and practitioners interested in firm performance, corporate governance and stakeholder theory.

This book examines how a society that is trapped in stagnation might initiate and sustain economic and political development. In this context, progress requires the reform of existing arrangements, along with the complementary evolution of informal institutions. It involves enhancing state capacity, balancing broad avenues for political input, and limiting concentrated private and public power. This juggling act can only be accomplished by resolving collective-action problems (CAPs), which arise when individuals pursue interests that generate undesirable outcomes for society at large. Merging and extending key perspectives on CAPs, inequality, and development, this book constructs a flexible framework to investigate these complex issues. By probing four basic hypotheses related to knowledge production, distribution, power, and innovation, William D. Ferguson offers an analytical foundation for comparing and evaluating approaches to development policy. Navigating the theoretical terrain that lies between simplistic hierarchies of causality and idiosyncratic case studies, this book promises an analytical lens for examining the interactions between inequality and development. Scholars and researchers across economic development and political economy will find it to be a highly useful guide.

Technology has changed not only the way we do business, but also the way we look for work. The 2-Hour Job Search rejects laundry lists of conventional wisdom in favor of a streamlined job search approach that produces results quickly and efficiently. In three steps, creator Steve Dalton shows you how to select, prioritize, and make contact with potential employers so you can land that critical first interview. In this revised second edition, you'll find updated advice on how to efficiently surf online job postings, how to reach out to contacts at your dream workplace and when to follow up, and advice on using LinkedIn, Indeed, and Google to your best advantage. Dalton incorporates ideas from leading thinkers in behavioral economics, psychology, and game theory, as well as success stories from readers of the first edition. The 2-Hour Job Search method has proven so successful that it has been shared at schools across the globe and is a formal part of the curriculum for all first-year MBAs at Duke University. With this book, you'll learn how to make it work for you too.

"David Hardwick and Leslie Marsh have assembled a contentious collection of independent thinkers on liberalism's identity and prospects. Should liberalism be democratic, classical, ordo, legalistic, culture-based, market-based, or what? The international crew of authors--from Australia, Canada, China and the USA--draw upon the insights of key historic figures from Locke to Montesquieu to Burke to Dewey to Hayek to Rawls (and of course others, given liberalism's rich history), and they leave us with a set of liberalisms both in collision and in overlapping agreement. This book is stimulating reading for those engaged with next-generation liberal thought." --Stephen R. C. Hicks, Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University. This collection redresses the conceptual hubris and illiteracy that has come to obscure the central presuppositions of classical liberalism - that is, the wresting of epistemic independence from overwhelming concentrations of power, monopolies and capricious zealotries, whether they be statist, religious or corporate in character.

What was women's work truly like in late eighteenth-century America, and what does it tell us about the gendered social relations of labor in the early republic? In Entangled Lives, Marla R. Miller examines the lives of Anglo-, African, and Native American women in one rural New England community--Hadley, Massachusetts--during the town's slow transformation following the Revolutionary War. Peering into the homes, taverns, and farmyards of Hadley, Miller offers readers an intimate history of the working lives of these women and their vital role in the local economy. Miller, a longtime resident of Hadley, follows a handful of eighteenth-century women working in a variety of occupations: domestic service, cloth making, health and healing, and hospitality. She asks about the social openings and opportunities this work created--and the limitations it placed on ordinary lives. Her compelling stories about women's everyday work, grounded in the material culture, built environment, and landscapes of rural western Massachusetts, reveal the larger economic networks in which Hadley operated and the subtle shifts that accompanied the emergence of the middle class in that rural community. Ultimately, this book shows how work differentiated not only men and woman but also race and class as Miller follows young, mostly white women working in domestic service, African American women negotiating labor in enslavement and freedom, and women of the rural gentry acting as both producers and employers. Engagingly written and featuring fascinating characters, the book deftly takes us inside a society and shows us how it functions. Offering an intervention into larger conversations about local history, microhistory, and historical scholarship, Entangled Lives is a revealing journey through early America.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Gazprom has dominated the Russian gas industry. However, the markets in which it operates have changed dramatically, with the company increasingly being challenged at home and abroad. At this critical moment, this insightful book analyses the involvement of the Russian gas industry in the changing international gas market and the dramatic implications for Russia's role as a global supplier of gas in the future.James Henderson and Arild Moe explore the link between changes in Russia's domestic market, where new players have recently emerged, and the development of Russia's gas export business. In particular, they assess the growing importance of LNG exports and the role of Novatek in developing this new business area for Russia. They also review changes in European gas trade and the development of new EU regulations, analysing the ambiguities in Europe's position on gas exports from Russia and showing why efforts to limit expansion of Russian gas exports have been unsuccessful.Timely and comprehensive, this book is critical reading for academics and researchers interested in the development of the global gas market. Policymakers and economists, particularly Russian specialists, will benefit from this book's key insights into the economic and political consequences of Russia's changing role in the global gas market.

Central Bank Policy: Theory and Practiceanalyses policies and practices adopted by central banks globally, as well as the institutional arrangements underlying the principles of good governance in policymaking.  Discussion focuses on philosophical and conceptual theories that have key implications for central bank policy making and findings are supported by relevant quantitative analyses and case studies reflecting recent issues with respect to centralized financial policy making, including the adoption of the Inflation Targeting Framework in Indonesia.  The book bridges the gap between theory and practice within the central bank policy framework by going beyond the rapidity of theoretical developments to address lesser known and understood policy practices, such as the Flexible Inflation Targeting Framework and macroprudential policy.  With wide ranging scope and in-depth materials presented, alongside the authors' extensive experiences and involvement in the policymaking process at Bank Indonesia, Central Bank Policy is a vital practical tool and  reference aid for policymakers, practitioners and academic researchers in the area of financial, banking, and monetary policies.

An all-star cast of scholars and politicians from Europe and America propose and debate the creation of a new European parliament with substantial budgetary and legislative power to solve the crisis of governance in the Eurozone and promote social and fiscal justice and public investment. The European Union is struggling. The rise of Euroskeptic parties in member states, economic distress in the south, the migrant crisis, and Brexit top the news. But deeper structural problems may be a greater long-term peril. Not least is the economic management of the Eurozone, the nineteen countries that use the Euro. How can this be accomplished in a way generally acceptable to members, given a political system whose structures are routinely decried for a lack of democratic accountability? How can the EU promote fiscal and social justice while initiating the long-term public investments that Europe needs to overcome stagnation? These are the problems a distinguished group of European and American scholars set out to solve in this short but valuable book. Among many longstanding grievances is the charge that Eurozone policies serve large and wealthy countries at the expense of poorer nations. It is also unclear who decides economic policy, how the interests of diverse member states are balanced, and to whom the decision-makers are accountable. The four lead authors?St??phanie Hennette, Thomas Piketty, Guillaume Sacriste, and Antoine Vauchez?describe these and other problems, and respond with a draft treaty establishing a parliament for economic policy, its members drawn from national parliaments. We then hear from invited critics, who express support, objections, or alternative ideas. How to Democratize Europe offers a chance to observe how major thinkers view some of the Continent's most pressing issues and attempt to connect democratic reform with concrete changes in economic and social policies.

Welcome to Corporate Life. The NEW Employee Manual is not your Dad's or Mom's employee manual. It's the new playbook for corporate survival, fitting today's realities and the challenges facing employees who join or work in large, seemingly successful companies. Those companies already issued very specific and detailed employee manuals covering everything under the sun except how to compete well in our brave new world. The NEW Employee Manual will help you navigate the Corporate (with a capital C) labyrinth. Where Corporate's manual shapes you into a dutiful cog for the good of the machine, ours helps you enhance your career for the good of, well, you ... and your company. The NEW Employee Manual should make you feel skeptical: skeptical of empty slogans, obsolete rituals, obsessive pursuits, and bigwigs' playbooks that no longer work. That alone should be worth this book's price. Skepticism, you see, is a good thing, because it is only the skeptic, only the free-thinker, only the maverick, who asks new questions and finds useful answers. So, are you a maverick or a cog?

This book accounts for the transformation of organizations in a post-bureaucratic era by bringing a communicational lens to the ontological discussion on organization/disorganization, offering a conceptual and methodological toolbox for studying dis/organization　as　communication. 　Increasingly, scholars acknowledge that communication is　constitutive of　organization; because meaning is always indeterminate, communication also (and simultaneously) generates　disorganization.　 The book synthesizes the major theoretical trends and empirical studies in communication that engage with dis/organization.　Drawing on dialectics, relational ontologies, critical theory, systems theory, and affect thinking, the first part of the book offers communicational explanations of　how　dis/organization　unfolds. The second part of the book grounds this theoretical reflection,　providing　empirical studies that mobilize diverse methodological and analytical frameworks　(e.g.,　ethnography,　situational, interactional　and genre analysis)　for studying the practices of dis/organization. Overall, the book　exposes　organizations　(and organizing processes) as　significantly messier, irrational (or a-rational),　and paradoxical than scholars of organization typically think. It also offers readers the conceptual and methodological tools to understand these complex processes　as　communication. This book will be essential reading for scholars in organizational communication or management and organization studies, together with senior undergraduate and graduate students studying　 organizational communication, organizational discourse, discourse analysis (including rhetoric, semiotics, pragmatism, narratology) and courses in management studies. It will also be richly rewardnfolds. The second part of the book grounds this theoretical reflection,　providing　empirical studies that mobilize diverse methodological and analytical frameworks　(e.g.,　ethnography,　situational, interactional　and genre analysis)　for studying the practices of dis/organization. Overall, the book　exposes　organizations　(and organizing processes) as　significantly messier, irrational (or a-rational),　and paradoxical than scholars of organization typically think. It also offers readers the conceptual and methodological tools to understand these complex processes　as　communication. This book will be essential reading for scholars in organizational communication or management and organization studies, together with senior undergraduate and graduate students studying　 organizational communication, organizational discourse, discourse analysis (including rhetoric, semiotics, pragmatism, narratology) and courses in management studies. It will also be richly rewardcourse, discourse analysis (including rhetoric, semiotics, pragmatism, narratology) and courses in management studies. It will also be richly rewarding for organizational consultants, managers and executives.

Winner of the 2019 Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award Winner of the 2019 Royal Society Science Book Prize Data is fundamental to the modern world. From economic development, to healthcare, to education and public policy, we rely on numbers to allocate resources and make crucial decisions. But because so much data fails to take into account gender, because it treats men as the default and women as atypical, bias and discrimination are baked into our systems. And women pay tremendous costs for this bias, in time, money, and often with their lives. Celebrated feminist advocate Caroline Criado Perez investigates the shocking root cause of gender inequality and research in Invisible Women​, diving into women's lives at home, the workplace, the public square, the doctor's office, and more. Built on hundreds of studies in the US, the UK, and around the world, and written with energy, wit, and sparkling intelligence, this is a groundbreaking, unforgettable exposé that will change the way you look at the world.

In recent years, the effects of economic openness and technological change have fuelled dissatisfaction with established political systems and led to new forms of political populism that exploit the economic and political resentment created by globalization. This shift in politics was evident in the decision by UK voters to leave the European Union in June 2016, the November 2016 election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States, as well as the rise of populist movements on left and right throughout much of Europe. To many voters, the economy appears to be broken. Conventional politics is failing. Parties of the left and centre-left have struggled to forge a convincing response to this new phase of globalization in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. This book examines the challenges that the new era of globalization poses for progressive parties and movements across the world. It brings together leading thinkers and experts including Andrew Gamble, Jeffry Frieden and Vivien Schmidt to debate the structural causes and political consequences of this new wave of globalization.

Organizations are accepting diversity management strategies asa response to the growing diversity of the workforce around theworld. This book equips students with a systematic understandingof the advantages and challenges presented by workplacediversity, signifying techniques to manage diversity effectivelyand maximize its benefits. Effective workplace diversity managementpolicies have been demonstrated to aid creative thinkingprocesses and innovation. This book serves as a useful guide forstudents and academics of human resource management, organisational behaviour, andorganisational psychology and organisation studies.

The definitive guide to getting your way, revised and updated with new material on writing, speaking, framing, and other key tools for arguing more powerfully   "Cross Cicero with David Letterman and you get Jay Heinrichs."--Joseph Ellis, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Quartet and American Sphinx   Now in its fourth edition, Jay Heinrichs's Thank You for Arguing is your master class in the art of persuasion, taught by history's greatest professors, ranging from Queen Victoria and Winston Churchill to Homer Simpson and Barack Obama.  Filled with time-tested secrets for emerging victorious from any dispute, including Cicero's three-step strategy for inspiring action and Honest Abe's Shameless Trick for lowering an audience's expectations, this fascinating book also includes an assortment of persuasion tips, such as:   * The Chandler Bing Adjustment: Match your argument to your audience (that is, persuasion is not about you). * The Belushi Paradigm: Before people will follow you, they have to consider you worth following.  * The Yoda Technique: Transform a banal idiom by switching the words around.    Additionally, Heinrichs considers the dark arts of persuasion, such as politicians' use of coded language to appeal to specific groups. His sage guide has been fully updated to address our culture of "fake news" and political polarization.    Whether you're a lover of language books or just want to win more anger-free arguments on the page, at the podium, or over a beer, Thank You for Arguing is for you. Warm, witty, and truly enlightening, it not only teaches you how to identify a paraleipsis when you hear it but also how to wield such persuasive weapons the next time you really, really need to get your way. This expanded edition also includes a new chapter on how to reset your audience's priorities, as well as new and improved ArgueLab games to hone your skills.

During the 2016 presidential election, both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders argued that elites were hurting the economy. But, drawing together evidence and theory from across economics, political science, and even finance, Garett Jones says otherwise. In 10% Less Democracy, he makes the case that the richest, most democratic nations would be better off if they slightly reduced accountability to the voting public, turning up the dial on elite influence. To do this, Jones builds on three foundational lines of evidence in areas where he has personal experience. First, as a former staffer in the U.S. Senate, he saw how senators voted differently as elections grew closer. Second, as a macroeconomist, Jones knows the merits of "independent" central banks, which sit apart from the political process and are controlled by powerful insiders. The consensus of the field is that this detached, technocratic approach has worked far better than more political and democratic banking systems. Third, his previous research on the effects of cognitive skills on political, social, and economic systems revealed many ways in which well-informed voters improve government. Discerning repeated patterns, Jones draws out practical suggestions for fine-tuning, focusing on the length of political terms, the independence of government agencies, the weight that voting systems give to the more-educated, and the value of listening more closely to a group of farsighted stakeholders with real skin in the game--a nation's sovereign bondholders. Accessible to political news junkies while firmly rooted and rigorous, 10% Less Democracy will fuel the national conversation about what optimal government looks like.

In The Age of Experiences, Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt examines how the advance of happiness science is impacting the economy, making possible new experience-products that really make people happy and help forward-looking businesses expand and develop new technologies. In today's marketplace there is less interest in goods and services and more interest in buying and selling personal improvements and experiences. Hunnicutt traces how this historical shift in consumption to the "softer" technologies of happiness represents not only a change in the modern understanding of progress, but also a practical, economic transformation, profoundly shaping our work and the ordering of our life goals. Based on incisive historical research, Hunnicutt demonstrates that we have begun to turn from material wealth to focus on the enrichment of our personal and social lives.  The Age of Experiences shows how industry, technology, and the general public are just beginning to realize the potential of the new economy. Exploring the broader implications of this historical shift, Hunnicutt concludes that the new demand for experiences will result in the reduction of work time, the growth of jobs, and the regeneration of virtue--altogether an increasingly healthy public life.

The Tall Corn State's agricultural history influences countless aspects of modern life. To truly understand Iowa, you have to understand the culture of agriculture--the stories of the people of the land. In many ways, these are untold stories, especially as more generations of families are further removed from living or working on Iowa farms. Visitors from around the globe travel to Iowa annually for major events like the Farm Progress Show, the World Pork Expo and the World Food Prize. Agriculture has shaped Iowa's landscape from the location of towns and the evolution of the world-famous Iowa State Fair to Iowa's beloved culinary traditions like breaded pork tenderloins, sweet corn and more. Join fifth-generation Iowa farmer Darcy Dougherty Maulsby as she details the fascinating history of agriculture in Iowa.

AI may be the greatest opportunity of our time, with the potential to add nearly $16 trillion to the global economy over the next decade. But so far, adoption has been much slower than anticipated, or so headlines may lead you to believe. With this practical guide, business leaders will discover where they are in their AI journey and learn the steps necessary to successfully scale AI throughout their organization. Authors Rob Thomas and Paul Zikopoulos from IBM introduce C-suite executives and business professionals to the AI Ladder--a unified, prescriptive approach to help them understand and accelerate the AI journey. Complete with real-world examples and real-life experiences, this book explores AI drivers, value, and opportunity, as well as the adoption challenges organizations face. Understand why you can't have AI without an information architecture (IA) Appreciate how AI is as much a cultural change as it is a technological one Collect data and make it simple and accessible, regardless of where it lives Organize data to create a business-ready analytics foundation Analyze data, and build and scale AI with trust and transparency Infuse AI throughout your entire business and create intelligent workflows

Lessons for Non-Profit and Start-Up Leaders: Tales from a Reluctant CEO uses the experiences of a real company, Community Connections, to bring to life the practical dilemmas that an organization founded on a mission and guided by a set of ideals must confront and solve if it is to thrive. With no business or financial background, Maxine Harris and her partner Helen Bergman grew a tiny startup into a $35 million business. Through trial and error, they learned how to manage finances, hire staff, overcome barriers, and adapt to changing business models. In Lessons for Non-Profit and Start-Up Leaders, Harris shares her insights, struggles, and mistakes with the goal of helping others who may be starting and running non-profit organizations. She spells out the ways in which creativity, tenacity, and the power of relationships helped her and her partner overcome barriers that often cause start-ups to flounder in their first years of operation. In a humorous and novel twist, the book engages the reader with a series of original fables, each tailored to introduce a business dilemma in the language of "make-believe." Michael O'Leary provides commentary that places the stories and case studies from Community Connections into a broader context, making the lessons accessible to anyone working in the non-profit or startup sector.

The end of our high-growth world was underway well before COVID-19 arrived. In this powerful and timely argument, Danny Dorling demonstrates the benefits of a larger, ongoing societal slowdown Drawing from an incredibly rich trove of global data, this groundbreaking book reveals that human progress has been slowing down since the early 1970s. Danny Dorling uses compelling visualizations to illustrate how fertility rates, growth in GDP per person, and even the frequency of new social movements have all steadily declined over the last few generations.   Perhaps most surprising of all is the fact that even as new technologies frequently reshape our everyday lives and are widely believed to be propelling our civilization into new and uncharted waters, the rate of technological progress is also rapidly dropping. Rather than lament this turn of events, Dorling embraces it as a moment of promise and a move toward stability, and he notes that many of the older great strides in progress that have defined recent history also brought with them widespread warfare, divided societies, and massive inequality.

As the electric power industry faces the challenges of climate change, technological disruption, new market imperatives, and changing policies, a renowned energy expert offers a roadmap to the future of this essential sector. As the damaging and costly impacts of climate change increase, the rapid development of sustainable energy has taken on great urgency. The electricity industry has responded with necessary but wrenching shifts toward renewables, even as it faces unprecedented challenges and disruption brought on by new technologies, new competitors, and policy changes. The result is a collision course between a grid that must provide abundant, secure, flexible, and affordable power, and an industry facing enormous demands for power and rapid, systemic change. The fashionable solution is to think small: smart buildings, small-scale renewables, and locally distributed green energy. But Peter Fox-Penner makes clear that these will not be enough to meet our increasing needs for electricity. He points instead to the indispensability of large power systems, battery storage, and scalable carbon-free power technologies, along with the grids and markets that will integrate them. The electric power industry and its regulators will have to provide all of these, even as they grapple with changing business models for local electric utilities, political instability, and technological change. Power after Carbon makes sense of all the moving parts, providing actionable recommendations for anyone involved with or relying on the electric power system.

An economist demonstrates how LGBT equality and inclusion within organizations increases their bottom line and allows for countries' economies to flourish We know that homophobia harms LGBT individuals in many ways, but economist M. V. Lee Badgett argues that in addition to moral and human rights reasons for equality, we can now also make a financial argument. Finding that homophobia and transphobia cost 1% or more of a country's GDP, Badgett expertly uses recent research and statistics to analyze how these hostile practices and environments affect both the US and global economies. LGBT equality remains a persistent and pertinent issue. The continued passing of discriminatory laws, people being fired from jobs for their sexual orientation and/or gender identity, harassment and bullying in school, violence and hate crimes on the streets, exclusion from intolerant families, and health effects of stigma all make it incredibly difficult to live a good life. Examining the consequences of anti-LGBT practices across multiple countries, including the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, India and the Philippines, Badgett reveals the expensive repercussions of hate and discrimination, and how our economy loses when we miss out on the full benefit of LGBT people's potential contributions.

Advanced Data Science and Analytics with Python enables data scientists to continue developing their skills and apply them in business as well as academic settings. The subjects discussed in this book are complementary and a follow up from the topics discuss in Data Science and Analytics with Python. The aim is to cover important advanced areas in data science using tools developed in Python such as SciKit-learn, Pandas, Numpy, Beautiful Soup, NLTK, NetworkX and others. The model development is supported by the use of frameworks such as Keras, TensorFlow and Core ML, as well as Swift for the development of iOS and MacOS applications. Features: ·         Targets readers with a background in programming, who are interested in the tools used in data analytics and data science ·         Uses Python throughout ·         Presents tools, alongside solved examples, with steps that the reader can easily reproduce and adapt to their needs ·         Focuses on the practical use of the tools rather than on lengthy explanations ·         Provides the reader with the opportunity to use the book whenever needed rather than following a sequential path The book can be read independently from the previous volume and each of the chapters in this volume is sufficiently independent from the others providing flexibility for the reader. Each of the topics addressed in the book tackles the data science workflow from a practical perspective, concentrating on the process and results obtained. The implementation and deployment of trained models are central to the book. Time series analysis, natural language processing, topic modelling, social network analysis, neural networks and deep learning are comprehensively covered in the book. The book discusses the need to develop data products and addresses the subject of bringing models to their intended audiences. In this case literally to the users's fingertips in the form of an iPhone app. About the Author Dr Jesús Rogel-Salazar is a lead data scientist in the filed　working for companies such as Tympa Health　Technologies Barclays, AKQA, IBM Data Science Studio and Dow Jones. He is a visiting researcher at the Department of Physics at Imperial College London, UK and a member of the School of Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics at the University of Hertfordshire, UK.

This study of the Visigothic kingdom monetary system in southern Gaul and Hispania from the fifth century through the Muslim invasion of Spain fills a major gap in the scholarship of late antiquity. Examining all aspects of the making of currency, it sets minting in relation to questions of state - monarchical power, administration and apparatus, motives for money production - and economy. In the context of the later Roman Empire and its successor states in the west, the minting and currency of the Visigoths reveal shared patterns as well as originality. The analysis brings both economic life and the needs of the state into sharper focus, with significant implications for the study of an essential element in daily life and government. This study combines an appreciation for the surprising level of sophistication in the Visigothic minting system with an accessible approach to a subject which can seem complex and abstruse.

The epic story of how coffee connected and divided the modern world Coffee is an indispensable part of daily life for billions of people around the world--one of the most valuable commodities in the history of global capitalism, the leading source of the world's most popular drug, and perhaps the most widespread word on the planet. Augustine Sedgewick's Coffeeland tells the hidden and surprising story of how this came to be, tracing coffee's five-hundred-year transformation from a mysterious Muslim ritual into an everyday necessity. This story is one that few coffee drinkers know. It centers on the volcanic highlands of El Salvador, where James Hill, born in the slums of Manchester, England, founded one of the world's great coffee dynasties at the turn of the twentieth century. Adapting the innovations of the Industrial Revolution to plantation agriculture, Hill helped to turn El Salvador into perhaps the most intensive monoculture in modern history, a place of extraordinary productivity, inequality, and violence. Following coffee from Hill family plantations into supermarkets, kitchens, and workplaces across the United States, and finally into today's ubiquitous cafés, Sedgewick reveals how coffee bred vast wealth and hard poverty, at once connecting and dividing the modern world. In the process, both El Salvador and the United States earned the nickname "Coffeeland," but for starkly different reasons, and with consequences that reach into the present. This extraordinary history of coffee opens up a new perspective on how the globalized world works, ultimately provoking a reconsideration of what it means to be connected to faraway people and places through the familiar things that make up our day-to-day lives.

The United States has some of the highest levels of both wealth and income inequality in the world. Although modern-day Americans are increasingly concerned about this growing inequality, many nonetheless believe that the country was founded on a person's right to acquire and control property. But in The Lost Tradition of Economic Equality in America, 1600-1870, Daniel R. Mandell argues that, in fact, the United States was originally deeply influenced by the belief that maintaining a "rough" or relative equality of wealth is essential to the cultivation of a successful republican government. Mandell explores the origins and evolution of this ideal. He shows how, during the Revolutionary War, concerns about economic equality helped drive wage and price controls, while after its end Americans sought ways to maintain their beloved "rough" equality against the danger of individuals amassing excessive wealth. He also examines how, after 1800, this tradition was increasingly marginalized by the growth of the liberal ideal of individual property ownership without limits. This politically evenhanded book takes a sweeping, detailed view of economic, social, and cultural developments up to the time of Reconstruction, when Congress refused to redistribute plantation lands to the former slaves who had worked it, insisting instead that they required only civil and political rights. Informing current discussions about the growing gap between rich and poor in the United States, The Lost Tradition of Economic Equality in America is surprising and enlightening.

The nostalgic mist surrounding farms can make it hard to write their history, encrusting them with stereotypical rural virtues and unrealistically separating them from markets, capitalism, and urban influences. The Nature of the Future aims to remake this staid vision. Emily Pawley examines a place and period of enormous agricultural vitality--antebellum New York State--and follows thousands of "improving agriculturists," part of the largest, most diverse, and most active scientific community in nineteenth-century America. Pawley shows that these improvers practiced a kind of science hard for contemporary readers to recognize, in which profit was not only a goal but also the underlying purpose of the natural world. Far from producing a more rational vision of nature, northern farmers practiced a form of science where conflicting visions of the future landscape appeared and evaporated in quick succession. Drawing from environmental history, US history and the history of science, and extensively mining a wealth of antebellum agricultural publications, The Nature of the Future uncovers the rich loam hiding beneath ostensibly infertile scholarly terrain, revealing a surprising area of agricultural experimentation that transformed American landscapes and American ideas of expertise, success, and exploitation.

This Palgrave Pivot offers a history of and proof against claims of "buying power" and the impact this myth has had on understanding media, race, class and economics in the United States. For generations Black people have been told they have what is now said to be more than one trillion dollars of "buying power," and this book argues that commentators have misused this claim largely to blame Black communities for their own poverty based on squandered economic opportunity. This book exposes the claim as both a marketing strategy and myth, while also showing how that myth functions simultaneously as a case study for propaganda and commercial media coverage of economics. In sum, while "buying power" is indeed an economic and marketing phrase applied to any number of racial, ethnic, religious, gender, age or group of consumers, it has a specific application  to Black America.

Despite the Mexican government's projected image of prosperity and modernity in the years following World War II, workers who felt that Mexico's progress had come at their expense became increasingly discontented. From 1948 to 1958, unelected and often corrupt officials of STFRM, the railroad workers' union, collaborated with the ruling Institutionalized Revolutionary Party (PRI) to freeze wages for the rank and file. In response, members of STFRM staged a series of labor strikes in 1958 and 1959 that inspired a nationwide working-class movement. The Mexican army crushed the last strike on March 26, 1959, and union members discovered that in the context of the Cold War, exercising their constitutional right to organize and strike appeared radical, even subversive. Railroad Radicals in Cold War Mexico examines a pivotal moment in post-World War II Mexican history. The railroad movement reflected the contested process of postwar modernization, which began with workers demanding higher wages at the end of World War II and culminated in the railway strikes of the 1950s, a bold challenge to PRI rule. In addition, Robert F. Alegre gives the wives of the railroad workers a narrative place in this history by incorporating issues of gender identity in his analysis.

In the 1890s, Spanish entrepreneurs spearheaded the emergence of Córdoba, Veracruz, as Mexico’s largest commercial center for coffee preparation and export to the Atlantic community. Seasonal women workers quickly became the major part of the agroindustry’s labor force. As they grew in numbers and influence in the first half of the twentieth century, these women shaped the workplace culture and contested gender norms through labor union activism and strong leadership. Their fight for workers’ rights was supported by the revolutionary state and negotiated within its industrial-labor institutions until they were replaced by machines in the 1960s. Heather Fowler-Salamini’s Working Women, Entrepreneurs, and the Mexican Revolution analyzes the interrelationships between the region’s immigrant entrepreneurs, workforce, labor movement, gender relations, and culture on the one hand, and social revolution, modernization, and the Atlantic community on the other between the 1890s and the 1960s. Using extensive archival research and oral-history interviews, Fowler-Salamini illustrates the ways in which the immigrant and women’s work cultures transformed Córdoba’s regional coffee economy and in turn influenced the development of the nation’s coffee agro-export industry and its labor force.nbsp;

New York Times Best Seller The epic successor to one of the most important books of the century: at once a retelling of global history, a scathing critique of contemporary politics, and a bold proposal for a new and fairer economic system. Thomas Piketty's bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century galvanized global debate about inequality. In this audacious follow-up, Piketty challenges us to revolutionize how we think about politics, ideology, and history. He exposes the ideas that have sustained inequality for the past millennium, reveals why the shallow politics of right and left are failing us today, and outlines the structure of a fairer economic system. Our economy, Piketty observes, is not a natural fact. Markets, profits, and capital are all historical constructs that depend on choices. Piketty explores the material and ideological interactions of conflicting social groups that have given us slavery, serfdom, colonialism, communism, and hypercapitalism, shaping the lives of billions. He concludes that the great driver of human progress over the centuries has been the struggle for equality and education and not, as often argued, the assertion of property rights or the pursuit of stability. The new era of extreme inequality that has derailed that progress since the 1980s, he shows, is partly a reaction against communism, but it is also the fruit of ignorance, intellectual specialization, and our drift toward the dead-end politics of identity. Once we understand this, we can begin to envision a more balanced approach to economics and politics. Piketty argues for a new "participatory" socialism, a system founded on an ideology of equality, social property, education, and the sharing of knowledge and power. Capital and Ideology is destined to be one of the indispensable books of our time, a work that will not only help us understand the world, but that will change it.

A riveting real-life thriller about the rise of economic espionage from China, seen through the case of Mailong Ho, who tried to steal secrets from U.S. companies. For readers of Michael Lewis, John Carreyrou, and Andrew Ross Sorkin.

Big Data Analytics Methods unveils secrets to advanced analytics techniques ranging from machine learning, random forest classifiers, predictive modeling, cluster analysis, natural language processing (NLP), Kalman filtering and ensembles of models for optimal accuracy of analysis and prediction. More than 100 analytics techniques and methods provide big data professionals, business intelligence professionals and citizen data scientists insight on how to overcome challenges and avoid common pitfalls and traps in data analytics. The book offers solutions and tips on handling missing data, noisy and dirty data, error reduction and boosting signal to reduce noise. It discusses data visualization, prediction, optimization, artificial intelligence, regression analysis, the Cox hazard model and many analytics using case examples with applications in the healthcare, transportation, retail, telecommunication, consulting, manufacturing, energy and financial services industries. This book's state of the art treatment of advanced data analytics methods and important best practices will help readers succeed in data analytics.

In 2017, twenty-five-year-old Susan Fowler published a blog post detailing the sexual harassment and retaliation she'd experienced as an entry-level engineer at Uber. The post went viral, leading not only to the ouster of Uber's CEO and twenty other employees, but 'starting a bonfire on creepy sexual behaviour in Silicon Valley that... spread to Hollywood and engulfed Harvey Weinstein' (Maureen Dowd, The New York Times). The moving story of a woman's lifelong fight to do what she loves - despite repeatedly being told no or treated as less-than - Whistleblower is both a riveting read and a source of inspiration for anyone seeking to stand up against inequality in their own workplace.

Recent populist movements online and around the globe have drawn the attention of news media, social and political analysts, and scholars, all of whom seek to understand the patterns of influence which have produced and are produced by this populist surge. Whether nationalist or revolutionary, ideological or geopolitical, these movements have changed the way we relate to one another as leaders and followers. In its various forms, populism is changing the face and geography of global politics and society. Leadership, Populism, and Resistance draws upon the study of history, politics, policy, media, virtue, and heroism to examine the ways in which populism and popular movements have evolved, what we have learned (and failed to learn) from them, how we depict and discuss them through popular media and the press, and, finally, how we can understand virtue and heroism as a consequence-or reaction-to populism and popularity.This volume uses a multidisciplinary approach to examine the causes and impacts of populism and popular movements across time and around the world which would appeal to a wide variety of scholars and practitioners. Its chapters provide potential teaching tools within individual disciplines (history, psychology, media studies, political science, literature, education, leadership studies) which are useful for educators at all levels concerned with social movements, populism and democracy. The interdisciplinary nature of the volume is also accessible to non-academic audiences interested in modern populist and popular socio-political trends.

Ready to dive into smart contract development for the blockchain? With this practical guide, experienced engineers and beginners alike will quickly learn the entire process for building smart contracts for Ethereum--the open source blockchain-based distributed computing platform. You'llget up to speed with the fundamentals and quickly move into builder mode. Kevin Solorio, Randall Kanna, and Dave Hoover show you how to create and test your own smart contract, create a frontend for users to interact with, and more. It's the perfect resource for people who want to break into the smart contract field but don't know where to start. In four parts, this book helps you: Explore smart contract fundamentals, including the Ethereum protocol, Solidity programming language, and the Ethereum Virtual Machine Dive into smart contract development using Solidity and gain experience with Truffle framework tools for deploying and testing your contracts Use Web3 to connect your smart contracts to an applicationso users can easily interact with the blockchain Examine smart contract security along with free online resources for smart contract security auditing

After humble beginnings as faltering British colonies, the United States acquired astonishing wealth and power as the result of what we now refer to as modernization. Originating in England and Western Europe, transplanted to the Americas, then copied around the world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this process locked together science and technology, political democracy, economic freedom, and competitive capitalism. This has produced for some populations unimagined wealth and material comfort, yet it has also now brought the global environment to a tipping point beyond which life as we know it may not be sustainable. How did we come to endanger the very future of life on earth in our heedless pursuit of wealth and happiness? In Laid Waste!, John Lauritz Larson answers that question with a 350-year review of the roots of an American "culture of exploitation" that has left us free, rich, and without an honest sense of how this crisis came to be. Larson undertakes an ambitious historical synthesis, seeking to illuminate how the culture of exploitation grew out of the earliest English settlements and has continually undergirded U.S. society and its cherished myths. Through a series of meditations on key concepts, the story moves from the starving times of early Jamestown through the rise of colonial prosperity, the liberation of the revolutionary generation, the launching of the American republic, and the emergence of a new global industrial power by the end of the nineteenth century. Through this story, the book explores the rise of an American sense of righteousness, entitlement, and destiny that has masked any recognition that our wealth and success has come at expense to anyone or anything. Part polemic, part jeremiad, and part historical overview, Laid Waste! is a provocative and bracing account of how the development of American culture itself has led us to today's crises.

Chicago is celebrated for its rich diversity, but, even more than most US cities, it is also plagued by segregation and extreme inequality. More than ever, Chicago is a "dual city," a condition taken for granted by many residents. In this book, Joel Rast reveals that today's tacit acceptance of rising urban inequality is a marked departure from the past. For much of the twentieth century, a key goal for civic leaders was the total elimination of slums and blight. Yet over time, as anti-slum efforts faltered, leaders shifted the focus of their initiatives away from low-income areas and toward the upgrading of neighborhoods with greater economic promise. As misguided as postwar public housing and urban renewal programs were, they were born of a long-standing reformist impulse aimed at improving living conditions for people of all classes and colors across the city--something that can't be said to be a true priority for many policymakers today. The Origins of the Dual City illuminates how we normalized and became resigned to living amid stark racial and economic divides.  

In this practical guide, four Kubernetes professionals with deep experience in distributed systems, enterprise application development, and open source will guide you through the process of building applications with this container orchestration system. Based on the experiences of companies that are running Kubernetes in production successfully, many of the methods are also backed by concrete code examples. This book is ideal for those already familiar with basic Kubernetes concepts who want to learn common best practices. You'll learn exactly what you need to know to build your best app with Kubernetes the first time. Set up and develop applications in Kubernetes Learn patterns for monitoring, securing your systems, and managing upgrades, rollouts, and rollbacks Understand Kubernetes networking policies and where service mesh fits in Integrate services and legacy applications and develop higher-level platforms on top of Kubernetes Run machine learning workloads in Kubernetes

Much in the same way that software transformed business in the past two decades, AI is set to redefine organizations and entire industries. Just as every company is a software company today, every company will soon be an AI company. This practical guide explains how business and technical leaders can embrace this new breed of organization. Based on real customer experience, Microsoft's David Carmona covers the journey necessary to become an AI Organization--from applying AI in your business today to the deep transformation that can empower your organization to redefine the industry. You'll learn the core concepts of AI as they are applied to real business, explore and prioritize the most appropriate use cases for AI in your company, and drive the organizational and cultural change needed to transform your business with AI.

The overlooked story of how ordinary women and their husbands managed financially in the Victorian era - and why so many struggled despite increasing national prosperity Nineteenth century Britain saw remarkable economic growth and a rise in real wages. But not everyone shared in the nation's wealth. Unable to earn a sufficient income themselves, working-class women were reliant on the 'breadwinner wage' of their husbands. When income failed, or was denied or squandered by errant men, families could be plunged into desperate poverty from which there was no escape. Emma Griffin unlocks the homes of Victorian England to examine the lives - and finances - of the people who lived there. Drawing on over 600 working-class autobiographies, including more than 200 written by women, Bread Winner changes our understanding of daily life in Victorian Britain.

This book covers blockchain from the underlying principles to how it enables applications to survive and surf on its shoulder. Having covered the fundamentals of blockchain, the book turns to cryptocurrency. It thoroughly examines Bitcoin before presenting six other major currencies in a rounded discussion. The book then bridges between technology and finance, concentrating on how blockchain-based applications, including cryptocurrencies, have pushed hard against mainstream industries in a bid to cement their positions permanent. It discusses blockchain as underlying banking technology, crypto mining and offering, cryptocurrency as investment instruments, crypto regulations, and markets.

Why and how systems of political financing and representation in Europe and North America give outsized influence to the wealthy and undermine democracy, and what we can do about it. One person, one vote. In theory, everyone in a democracy has equal power to decide elections. But it's hardly news that, in reality, political outcomes are heavily determined by the logic of one dollar, one vote. We take the political power of money for granted. But does it have to be this way? In The Price of Democracy, Julia Cagé combines economic and historical analysis with political theory to show how profoundly our systems in North America and Europe, from think tanks and the media to election campaigns, are shaped by money. She proposes fundamental reforms to bring democracy back into line with its egalitarian promise. Cagé shows how different countries have tried to develop legislation to curb the power of private money and to develop public systems to fund campaigns and parties. But these attempts have been incoherent and unsystematic. She demonstrates that it is possible to learn from these experiments in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere to design a better system that would increase political participation and trust. This would involve setting a strict cap on private donations and creating a public voucher system to give each voter an equal amount to spend in support of political parties. More radically, Cagé argues that a significant fraction of seats in parliamentary assemblies should be set aside for representatives from disadvantaged socioeconomic groups. At a time of widespread political disenchantment, The Price of Democracy is a bracing reminder of the problems we face and an inspirational guide to the potential for reform.

Almost 15 years ago, in The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman popularized the latest wave of globalization as a world of giant corporate supply chains that tripled world trade between 1990 and 2010. Major corporations such as Apple, Dell, and GE offshored manufacturing to low-cost economies; China became the world's factory, mass-producing and exporting computers and gadgets to Western shoppers. This paradigm of globalization has dominated global trade policy-making and guided hundreds of billions of dollars in business investments and development spending for almost three decades. But we are now on the cusp of a new era. Revolutionizing World Trade argues that technologies such as ecommerce, 3D printing, 5G, the Cloud, blockchain, and artificial intelligence are revolutionizing the economics of trade and global production, empowering businesses of all sizes to make, move, and market products and services worldwide and with greater ease than ever before. The twin forces of digitization and trade are changing the patterns, players, politics, and possibilities of world trade, and can reinvigorate global productivity growth. However, new policy challenges and old regulatory frameworks are stifling the promise of this most dynamic, prosperous, and inclusive wave of globalization yet. This book uses new empirical evidence and policy experiences to examine the clash between emerging possibilities in world trade and outdated policies and institutions, offering several policy recommendations for navigating these obstacles to catalyze growth and development around the world.

Are you using SAP ERP and eager to unlock the enormous value of its data? With this practical guide, SAP veterans Greg Foss and Paul Modderman show you how to use several data analysis tools to solve interesting problems with your SAP data. Throughout the book, you'll follow a fictional company as it tackles real scenarios. Using actual data to create example code and visualizations, SAP business analysts will learn practical methods for gaining deeper insights into their business's data. Data engineers and data scientists will explore ways to add SAP data to their analysis processes. Through grounded explanations of both SAP processes and data science tools, you'll discover powerful methods for discovering data truths. Use data to tell revealing stories about your customers Model purchase requisition data using exploratory data analysis Create an anomaly detection system for SAP sales orders Use R and Python to make predictions on sales data Cluster and segment your customers based on their buying habits Use association rule learning to discover customer buying patterns Apply NLP to uncover the most highly actionable customer complaints

Human resource departments are key components in the people management system of nearly every medium-to-large organization in the industrial world. They provide a wide range of essential services relating to employees, including recruitment, compensation, benefits, training, and labor relations. A century ago, however, before the concept of human resource management had been invented, the supervision and care of employees at even the largest companies were conducted without written policies or formal planning, and often in harsh, arbitrary, and counterproductive ways. How did companies such as United States Steel manage a workforce of 160,000 employees at dozens of plants without a specialized personnel or industrial relations department? What led some of these organizations to introduce human resources practices at the end of the nineteenth century? How were the earliest personnel departments structured and what were their responsibilities? And how did the theory and implementation of human resources management evolve, both within industry and as an academic field of research and teaching? In Managing the Human Factor, Bruce E. Kaufman chronicles the origins and early development of human resource management (HRM) in the United States from the 1870s, when the Labor Problem emerged as the nation's primary domestic policy concern, to 1933 and the start of the New Deal. Through new archival research, an extensive review and synthesis of the historical and contemporary literatures, and case studies illustrating best (and worst) practices during this period, Kaufman identifies the fourteen ideas, events, and movements that led to the creation of specialized HRM departments in the late 1910s, as well as their further growth and development into strategic business units in the welfare capitalism period of the 1920s. The research presented in this book not only uncovers many new aspects of the early development of personnel and industrial relations but also challenges central parts of the contemporary interpretation of the concept and evolution of HRM. Rich with insights on both the present and past of human resource management, Managing the Human Factor will be widely regarded as the definitive account of the early history of employee management in American companies and a must-read for all those interested in the indispensable function of managing people in organizations.

You can launch a new app or website in days by piecing together frameworks and hosting on AWS. Implementation is no longer the problem. But that speed to market just makes it tougher to confirm that your team is actually building the right product. Ideal for agile teams and lean organizations, this guide includes 11 practical tools to help you collaborate on strategy, user research, and UX. Hundreds of real-world tips help you facilitate productive meetings and create good collaboration habits. Designers, developers, and product owners will learn how to build better products much faster than before. Topics include: Foundations for collaboration and facilitation: Learn how to work better together with your team, stakeholders, and clients Project strategy: Help teams align with shared goals and vision User research and personas: Identify and understand your users and share that vision with the broader organization Journey maps: Build better touchpoints that improve conversion and retention Interfaces and prototypes: Rightsize sketches and wireframes so you can test and iterate quickly

In 1998 Gower published the highly successful third edition of Corporate Fraud by Michael Comer. Sadly, the need for such books has not disappeared - if anything it has increased - with cases such as Enron, WorldCom and the Allied Irish Bank and so this volume concentrates on the practicalities of investigating and recovering from fraud. Fraud can be prevented by secure processes and by ensuring that people allowed access to them are honest. This is easier said than done; failures will occur and every company needs contingency plans as a safety net. Contrary to popular belief, corporate fraud happens to good companies and effective managers. What is crucial is your reaction when suspicions are first aroused - fraud changes from a problem to a disaster mainly because people's initial response is ineffective. This book is a comprehensive action plan for organizations that are victims of corporate fraud. The aim is to help make sure that you can react swiftly and effectively, recover your money, your costs with interest and punish the offenders so that a deterrent is established for others. Most importantly the book will help you return to normal working as quickly as possible. It is highly practical, featuring checklists and case examples throughout. Applying his extraordinary experience, keen insight and vast practical knowledge, Mike Comer is able to take a unique position in showing organizations what they can do and what their rights are. His writing style is entertaining and enlightening - this is no dry, laborious and incomprehensible legal reference. You will find Investigating Corporate Fraud a fascinating and invaluable source of practical expert guidance on a subject strewn with potential dangers.

Focusing on fashion, apparel and retail merchandising, this book starts with an Introduction to the apparel business, then leads on to an examination of marketing, fashion, apparel, and retail merchandising, including costing and procedures and documentation needed for export.This book will be invaluable for all textile and fashion students on both undergraduate and postgraduate courses. It outlines the guideline and basics to the students about the activities of marketing and merchandising in apparel industry.

This book examines whether continuous-time models in frictionless financial economies can be well approximated by discrete-time models. It specifically looks to answer the question: in what sense and to what extent does the famous Black-Scholes-Merton (BSM) continuous-time model of financial markets idealize more realistic discrete-time models of those markets? While it is well known that the BSM model is an idealization of discrete-time economies where the stock price process is driven by a binomial random walk, it is less known that the BSM model idealizes discrete-time economies whose stock price process is driven by more general random walks. Starting with the basic foundations of discrete-time and continuous-time models, David M. Kreps takes the reader through to this important insight with the goal of lowering the entry barrier for many mainstream financial economists, thus bringing less-technical readers to a better understanding of the connections between BSM and nearby discrete-economies.

During the 2016 presidential election, both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders argued that elites were hurting the economy. But, drawing together evidence and theory from across economics, political science, and even finance, Garett Jones says otherwise. In 10% Less Democracy, he makes the case that the richest, most democratic nations would be better off if they slightly reduced accountability to the voting public, turning up the dial on elite influence. To do this, Jones builds on three foundational lines of evidence in areas where he has personal experience. First, as a former staffer in the U.S. Senate, he saw how senators voted differently as elections grew closer. Second, as a macroeconomist, Jones knows the merits of "independent" central banks, which sit apart from the political process and are controlled by powerful insiders. The consensus of the field is that this detached, technocratic approach has worked far better than more political and democratic banking systems. Third, his previous research on the effects of cognitive skills on political, social, and economic systems revealed many ways in which well-informed voters improve government. Discerning repeated patterns, Jones draws out practical suggestions for fine-tuning, focusing on the length of political terms, the independence of government agencies, the weight that voting systems give to the more-educated, and the value of listening more closely to a group of farsighted stakeholders with real skin in the game--a nation's sovereign bondholders. Accessible to political news junkies while firmly rooted and rigorous, 10% Less Democracy will fuel the national conversation about what optimal government looks like.

Much in the same way that software transformed business in the past two decades, AI is set to redefine organizations and entire industries. Just as every company is a software company today, every company will soon be an AI company. This practical guide explains how business and technical leaders can embrace this new breed of organization. Based on real customer experience, Microsoft's David Carmona covers the journey necessary to become an AI Organization--from applying AI in your business today to the deep transformation that can empower your organization to redefine the industry. You'll learn the core concepts of AI as they are applied to real business, explore and prioritize the most appropriate use cases for AI in your company, and drive the organizational and cultural change needed to transform your business with AI.

Blockchain technology has the potential to disrupt and transform the social media business space, but the existing literature uses complex technical jargon that prevents practitioners from taking advantage of its full potential.  Nitin Upadhyay overcomes this barrier and offers a uniquely accessible discussion of how blockchain can revolutionise social media business models. His book offers an up-to-date analysis of the real benefits, usage and operationalisation aspects of blockchain and provides a systematic framework for social media business transformation through blockchain technology, all while using a simple, practical terminology. Readers learn about the utility of the blockchain ecosystem, about the innovation value proposition available to social media platforms through blockchain and about how to develop, assess and evaluate change in social media business models. Ultimately, they learn how to utilise blockchain innovation to develop a decentralised, autonomous and distributed ecosystem within the social-media space.  Transforming Social Media Business Models Through Blockchainis essential reading for stakeholders associated with social media, blockchain and management, including practitioners, leaders, and scholars working with industry partners.

This comprehensive text explains the relationship between the Arctic and the wider world through the lenses of international relations, international law, and political economy. It is an essential resource for any student or scholar seeking a clear and succinct account of a region of ever-growing importance to the international community. Highlights include: -Broad coverage of national and human security, Arctic economies, international political economy, human rights, the rights of indigenous people, the law of the sea, navigation, and environmental governance -A clear review of current climate-related change -Emphasis on the sources of cooperation in the Arctic through international relations theory and law -Examination of the Arctic in the broader global context, illustrating its inextricable links to global processes

How women increasingly became economic agents in early modern Europe is the focus of this stimulating book, which highlights how female agency was crucial for understanding the development of the Western European economy and sheds light on economic development today.Jan Luiten van Zanden, Tine De Moor and Sarah Carmichael argue that over centuries a "European Marriage Pattern" developed, characterized by high numbers of singles among men and women, high marriage ages among men and women, and neolocality, where the couple forms a new nuclear household and didnot co-reside with the parents of either bride or groom. This was due to the influence of the Catholic Church's teachings of marriage based on consensus, the rise of labor markets, and institutions concerning property transfers between generations that enhanced wage labor by women. Over time anunprecedented demographic regime was created and embedded in a highly commercial environment in which households interacted frequently with labor, capital and commodity markets. This was one of the main causes of the gradual move away from a Malthusian state towards an economy able to generatelong-term economic growth.The authors explore how the pattern was influenced by and influenced female human capital formation, access to the capital market, and participation in the labor market. They use numerous measures of economic activity, including the unique "Girlpower-Index" that measures the average age at firstmarriage of women minus the spousal age gap, with higher absolute age at marriage and lower spousal age gap both indicating greater female agency and autonomy.The book also examines how this measure can increase understanding of contemporary dynamics of women and the economy. The authors thus shed light on the degree to which women are allowed to play an influential role in and on the economy and society, which varies greatly from one society toanother.

Climate Preservation in Urban Communities Case Studies delivers a firsthand, applied perspective on the challenges and solutions of creating urban communities that are adaptable and resilient to climate change. The book presents valuable insights into the real-life challenges and solutions of designing, planning and constructing urban sustainable communities, providing real world examples of innovative technologies that contribute to the creation of sustainable, healthy and livable cities. Examples of successes, failures and solutions are presented based on a cross disciplinary approach for infrastructural systems, including discussions of drinking water, wastewater, power systems, broadband, Wi-Fi, transportation and green buildings technologies.

How to Divide When There Isn't Enough develops a rigorous yet accessible presentation of the state-of-the-art for the adjudication of conflicting claims and the theory of taxation. It covers all aspects one may wish to know about claims problems: the most important rules, the most important axioms, and how these two sets are related. More generally, it also serves as an introduction to the modern theory of economic design, which in the last twenty years has revolutionized many areas of economics, generating a wide range of applicable allocations rules that have improved people's lives in many ways. In developing the theory, the book employs a variety of techniques that will appeal to both experts and non-experts. Compiling decades of research into a single framework, William Thomson provides numerous applications that will open a large number of avenues for future research.

Across Europe the prospect of a rapidly shrinking workforce has put increased labor migration back on the political agenda However for many on the political left concerns exist that less restrictive labor migration policies threaten core features of the social democratic project. This is perhaps clearest in Sweden which in late 2008 adopted a liberal approach to third-country national labor migration allowing employers to hire freely from outside the European Union. Defending the Swedish Model explores the debate leading up to this reform focusing on the preferences of the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP) and the Swedish trade union confederation (LO). While generally positive to the economic potential of increased labor migration these allies remained highly skeptical toward calls from employers and bourgeois parties for liberalization Gregg Bucken-Knapp argues that the SAP and LO develop their labor migration policy preference on the basis of whether specific reform alternatives are perceived as being consistent with or as undermining the Swedish model in the case of third-country nationals both allies considered liberalization a threat to full employment aims instead seeking to preserve an influential role for the state labor market board and organized labor. Bucken-knapp also focuses on the Swedish labor migration debate prior to the 2004 enlargement of the European union showing how SAP concerns over potential abuse of the universal welfare sate led to its support for transitional arrangements defending the Swedish model illuminates the challenges faced by social democrats and trade unions when considering the need for increased labor migration Book jacket.

WaterConsumption, Tariffs and Regulationaims to provide a statistical overviewof water abstraction, consumption, tariffs and data on sewage and wastewatertreatment at an international level. It is mainly based on the statisticalinformation provided by the IWA Specialist Group on Statistics and Economics. Thebook is structured in three main parts. Part I presents tables and figuresrelative to water consumption and sanitation status and focuses on waterabstraction, water delivered, water consumption and the evolution of sewerconnection and wastewater treatment. PartII focuses on the analysis of water tariffs by investigating the structure ofwater tariffs by analysing the importance of the variable and fixed charge. Itpresents drinking water tariffs and illustrates the relationship between tariffsand GDP and also the size of the cities. Finally, charges in wastewater aredealt with country by country. PartIII analyses the main aspects relative to water regulation and describes theimportance of private operators in the management of the water cycle.Information relative to the principles used to fix drinking water prices ispresented with an assessment of access to public water services.

Resilient Water Services and Systems: The Foundation of Well-Being provides an overarching framework on water and sanitation services and how they are coping with resilience, aging infrastructure and climate change. The Editors present conceptual evidence about resilience backed by case studies that demonstrate resilience in practice. There are 13 case studies, from Asia, Africa, Europe and North and South America, providing informative perspectives from around the world. This is a timely collection of historic and contemporary evidence that will have increasing relevance in the coming decades. This volume will be of relevance to both scholars and practitioners."Resilient water services are the key to water security across the world. Sustaining them is a challenging task in high-income countries where aging infrastructure is a critical issue, and in low-income countries where new infrastructure is needed and ability-to-pay is a more formidable barrier to success. The editors have compiled a succinct analysis and assembled case studies that cover diverse regions and contexts. From this book the reader will gain a wealth of knowledge about water services, as well as rich vicarious experiences from the cases."Neil Grigg, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Colorado State University, USA

This book provides a synthesis of sustainable development, formulating and promoting a lifestyle that would facilitate the reasonable satisfaction of the needs of all people throughout the world, be environmental friendly, and not exceed the carrying capacity of ecosystems. It details the big picture of the human story, discussing cultural evolutions and current global issues, including the influence of humans on the environment. The text is, above all, a comprehensive and future-oriented study, mapping the potential opportunities and threats associated with development. It discusses phenomena that are both easily demonstrable and those which are harder to prove.

This extraordinary book, written by leading players in a burgeoning technology revolution, is about the merger of finance and technology (fintech), and covers its various aspects and how they impact each discipline within the financial services industry. It is an honest and direct analysis of where each segment of financial services will stand. Fintech: The New DNA of Financial Services provides an in-depth introduction to understanding the various areas of fintech and terminology such as AI, big data, robo-advisory, blockchain, cryptocurrency, InsurTech, cloud computing, crowdfunding and many more. Contributions from fintech innovators discuss banking, insurance and investment management applications, as well as the legal and human resource implications of fintech in the future.

A new way forward for sustainable quality of life in cities of all sizes Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Build American Prosperity is a book of forward-thinking ideas that breaks with modern wisdom to present a new vision of urban development in the United States. Presenting the foundational ideas of the Strong Towns movement he co-founded, Charles Marohn explains why cities of all sizes continue to struggle to meet their basic needs, and reveals the new paradigm that can solve this longstanding problem. Inside, you'll learn why inducing growth and development has been the conventional response to urban financial struggles--and why it just doesn't work. New development and high-risk investing don't generate enough wealth to support itself, and cities continue to struggle. Read this book to find out how cities large and small can focus on bottom-up investments to minimize risk and maximize their ability to strengthen the community financially and improve citizens' quality of life. Develop in-depth knowledge of the underlying logic behind the "traditional" search for never-ending urban growth Learn practical solutions for ameliorating financial struggles through low-risk investment and a grassroots focus Gain insights and tools that can stop the vicious cycle of budget shortfalls and unexpected downturns Become a part of the Strong Towns revolution by shifting the focus away from top-down growth toward rebuilding American prosperity Strong Towns acknowledges that there is a problem with the American approach to growth and shows community leaders a new way forward. The Strong Towns response is a revolution in how we assemble the places we live.

This book provides local governments and interested stakeholders with insights into the challenges and opportunities inherent in addressing climate change. Drawing on in-depth case study research on Vancouver, Portland, Glasgow and Dublin, Dekker examines the policy development processes employed by urban policy makers to respond to climate change, looking specifically at the utilisation of collaborative planning. Emerging from the case studies are lessons for local governments in relation to the role of organisational structure in supporting climate leadership; the importance of leadership, trust, relationship building and narratives for supporting ownership of the responses to climate change by stakeholders; and the need for creative and innovative public engagement to expand the reach of traditional methods such as social media and other technology-based solutions. Finally, Dekker reflects on her experience in the development of climate change action plans for the Dublin Local Authorities. This book will be of great relevance to students, scholars and policy makers with an interest in climate change resilience, environmental policy and urban planning.

No data is completely safe. Cyberattacks on companies and individuals are on the rise and growing not only in number but also in ferocity. And while you may think your company has taken all the precautionary steps to prevent an attack, no individual, company, or country is safe. Cybersecurity can no longer be left exclusively to IT specialists. Improving and increasing data security practices and identifying suspicious activity is everyone's responsibility, from the boardroom to the break room. Cybersecurity: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review brings you today's most essential thinking on cybersecurity, from outlining the challenges to exploring the solutions, and provides you with the critical information you need to prepare your company for the inevitable hack. The lessons in this book will help you get everyone in your organization on the same page when it comes to protecting your most valuable assets. Business is changing. Will you adapt or be left behind? Get up to speed and deepen your understanding of the topics that are shaping your company's future with the Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review series. Featuring HBR's smartest thinking on fast-moving issues--blockchain, cybersecurity, AI, and more--each book provides the foundational introduction and practical case studies your organization needs to compete today and collects the best research, interviews, and analysis to get it ready for tomorrow. You can't afford to ignore how these issues will transform the landscape of business and society. The Insights You Need series will help you grasp these critical ideas--and prepare you and your company for the future.

Revolutionize meetings! Over 20,000 copies sold - the easy-to-use guide for running democratic meetings of any size The key to promoting true democracy in meetings is clear, easy-to-understand rules of order that support the right of each member to participate fully and equally, and the right of the majority to make decisions while respecting minority rights. An alternative to Robert's Rules of Order and other complicated and unwieldy guides, Democratic Rules of Order is the guide for the rest of us. It lays out clear, concise, easy-to-use rules for governing meetings from clubs and non profits to formal meetings. Benefits include: A complete set of laws for governing meetings Can be read in an hour Plain language, free of complex protocol and jargon to enable equal and efficient participation Tested and honed through thousands of successful meetings Adoptable as the official rules of order for meetings of any size Allows informality, including decisions by consensus, but ensures formality when needed A sample meeting that uses all the rules plus answers to 31 common questions. Now in its tenth edition, and with over 20,000 copies sold, Democratic Rules of Order will produce fair, efficient, and harmonious decisions in meetings of any size or complexity.

This timely and compelling book presents a broad study of all key cyber security issues of the highest interest to government and business as well as their implications. * Takes a broad approach to the problems of cyber security, covering every important issue related to the threats cyber security poses to government and business * Provides detailed coverage of the political, financial, data protection, privacy, and reputational problems caused by cyber attacks * Offers a forward-looking approach, discussing emerging trends that will bring new challenges to those charged with enhancing cyber security * Makes insightful suggestions into how nations and businesses can take steps to enhance their cyber security

Risk management practices are growing both in number and complexity in businesses, notably driven by new regulatory standards that feature risk management at their core. Although large businesses are more likely to adopt a formal, holistic approach to risk management, the stakes are just as high for SMEs. Risk management in SMEs can contribute to a certain organizational, entrepreneurial and partnership dynamic which constitutes a real opportunity to evolve practices and improve performance. This book offers varied responses to this question by combining conceptual approaches, empirical illustrations and the associated managerial implications.

How the financial pressures of paying for college affect the lives and well-being of middle-class families The struggle to pay for college is one of the defining features of middle-class life in America today. At kitchen tables all across the country, parents agonize over whether to burden their children with loans or to sacrifice their own financial security by taking out a second mortgage or draining their retirement savings. Indebted takes readers into the homes of middle-class families throughout the nation to reveal the hidden consequences of student debt and the ways that financing college has transformed family life. Caitlin Zaloom gained the confidence of numerous parents and their college-age children, who talked candidly with her about stressful and intensely personal financial matters that are usually kept private. In this remarkable book, Zaloom describes the profound moral conflicts for parents as they try to honor what they see as their highest parental duty--providing their children with opportunity--and shows how parents and students alike are forced to take on enormous debts and gamble on an investment that might not pay off. What emerges is a troubling portrait of an American middle class fettered by the "student finance complex"--the bewildering labyrinth of government-sponsored institutions, profit-seeking firms, and university offices that collect information on household earnings and assets, assess family needs, and decide who is eligible for aid and who is not. Superbly written and unflinchingly honest, Indebted breaks through the culture of silence surrounding the student debt crisis, revealing the unspoken costs of sending our kids to college.

This book is intended to be a cookbook for students and researchers to understand the finite element method and optimization methods and couple them to effect shape optimization. The optimization part of the book will survey optimization methods and focus on the genetic algorithm and Powell's method for implementation in the codes. It will contain pseudo-code for the relevant algorithms and homework problems to reinforce the theory to compile finite element programs capable of shape optimization. Features Enables readers to understand the finite element method and optimization methods and couple them to effect shape optimization Presents simple approach with algorithms for synthesis Focuses on automated computer aided design (CAD) of electromagnetic devices Provides a unitary framework involving optimization and numerical modelling Discusses how to integrate open-source mesh generators into your code Indicates how parallelization of algorithms, especially matrix solution and optimization, may be approached cheaply using the graphics processing unit (GPU) that is available on most PCs today Includes coupled problem optimization using hyperthermia as an example

From the Great Depression in the twentieth century to the Great Recession in the twenty-first, systemic banking crises have been a recurring problem for both developing and developed countries. This book offers a human rights perspective on financial crises vis-à-vis low-income and least developed countries.  It systematically analyzes government's commitment to women's economic rights and basic human rights during systemic banking crises. The book combines a wealth of data with rich theoretical arguments that weave together distinct but related bodies of literature from international development, human rights, and political economy.

This book explores the internationalization of Turkish multinationals by examining a set of firms from various industries and providing eleven detailed case studies. The authors aim to discover the reasons behind the drive for internationalization within the firms, and how their internationalization processes work. By focusing on a medium-sized emerging country, which is strategically located at the intersection of European, Asian and African markets, Turkish Multinationals provide a significant contribution to research on multinational firms in emerging countries. Topics discussed include: strategic motives for and drivers of internationalization at multiple levels (firm, industry and institutional); the location, ownership and entry modes of multinational firms; and their market entry and post-acquisition strategies, which are critical to the evolution of the internationalization process. This innovative book will offer an alternative perspective to current debate on emerging markets, and will be of great interest to both academics of global strategy and international business, and policy-makers.

Finalist in the Business/Personal Finance category of the 2019 International Book Awards Every day, people around the world make financial decisions. They choose to invest in a stock, sell their holdings in a mutual fund or buy a condominium. These decisions are complex and financially tricky--even for financial professionals. But the literature available on financial research is dated and narrowly focused without any real practical application. Until now there's been a gap in the literature: a book that shows you how to conduct a step by step comprehensive financial investigation that ends in a decision. This book gives you that how. Investing in Financial Research is a guidebook for conducting financial investigations and lays out Cheryl Strauss Einhorn's AREA Method--a research and decision-making system that uniquely controls for bias, focuses on the incentives of others and expands knowledge while improving judgement--and applies it to investigating financial situations. AREA is applicable to all sorts of financial sleuthing, whether for investment analysis or investigative journalism. It allows you to be the expert in your own life. The AREA Method provides you with: *Defined tasks that guide and focus your research on your vision of success; *A structure that isolates your sources, giving you insight into their perspectives, biases and incentives; *Investigative resources, tips and techniques to upgrade your research and analysis beyond document-based sources; *Exercises to foster creativity and originality in your thinking; *A sequence and framework that brings your disparate pieces of research together to build your confidence and conviction about your financial decision.

In 1978, the citizens of California took the historic step of voting forProposition 13, thus reducing property taxes by 57%. Already knownas a trend setting state, California's tax revolt was no different,as similar tax revisions quickly spread across the United States ofAmerica. In California, state and local governments struggled to finda way to manage the loss in revenue. On many occasions budgetcuts were the solution. Library budgets were frequently the target ofthose cuts.  Proposition 13 - America's Second Great Tax Revoltdetails howlibraries prioritized, managed and reacted to hardships in this newworld, and have done so in California for the last forty years whereProposition 13 is still the law. Library and information scienceprofessionals were facing budget cuts that were as high as 65%with little to no guarantee of what future budgets were to be. Theactions they took, and the rationale behind those actions, offersignificant lessons to be learned by the library community on bothan academic and practitioner level.  Exploring the intended and unintended consequences ofProposition 13, this book provides an insightful understanding ofhow to manage a library budget given a difficult funding situation. Itexamines the thought processes behind government financing andspending priorities, and considers how libraries can organize, andparticipate in activism to influence decision makers.

A powerful new understanding of global currency trends, including the rise of the Chinese yuan At first glance, the modern history of the global economic system seems to support the long-held view that the leading world power's currency--the British pound, the U.S. dollar, and perhaps someday the Chinese yuan--invariably dominates international trade and finance. In How Global Currencies Work, three noted economists provide a reassessment of this history and the theories behind the conventional wisdom. Offering a new history of global finance over the past two centuries, and marshaling extensive new data to test established theories of how global currencies work, Barry Eichengreen, Arnaud Mehl, and Livia Chiţu argue for a new view, in which several national monies can share international currency status, and their importance can change rapidly. They demonstrate how changes in technology and in the structure of international trade and finance have reshaped the landscape of international currencies so that several international financial standards can coexist. They show that multiple international and reserve currencies have in fact coexisted in the past--upending the traditional view of the British pound's dominance prior to 1945 and the U.S. dollar's dominance more recently. Looking forward, the book tackles the implications of this new framework for major questions facing the future of the international monetary system, from whether the euro and the Chinese yuan might address their respective challenges and perhaps rival the dollar, to how increased currency competition might affect global financial stability.

Finance for Normal People shows how behavioral finance offers numerous insights into the performance of investors and managers as well as the functioning of markets.Meir Statman, a founder of behavioral finance, provides a unified approach to understanding financial behavior. He draws on his extensive experience and the most insightful research to enhance our awareness about the short-cuts and errors that normal people make in financial decisions and planning.He also emphasizes the importance learning the lessons of behavioral finance and applying them to banish ignorance, gain knowledge, and increase the ratio of smart to stupid behavior on our way to what we want.Behavioral finance is finance for normal people who experience cognitive and emotional errors, including overconfidence, exaggerated fear, and unrealistic hope. Normal people want to beat the market and feel pride they make gains and regret when they make losses. They also care about their familiesand social values. Normal people make important decisions about forming portfolios, saving and spending in working years and retirement, and readily taking gains while being reluctant to realize losses. As a result, normal people's wants and errors affect financial markets.With financial markets uncertain, standard approaches to finance suffer from wide cracks between theory, guidance, and evidence. With ordinary people uneasy about their financial future, Finance for Normal People encourages changing how we think and act in the pursuit of our goals.

The Brazilian financial markets operate in a very different way to G7 markets. Key differences include onshore and offshore markets, exponential rates, business days day-counts, and price formation from the futures markets (instead of the cash markets). This book provides a quantitative, applied guide to the offshore and onshore Brazilian markets, with a focus on the financial instruments unique to the region. It offers a comprehensive introduction to the key financial 'archaeology' in the Brazil context, exploring interest rates, FX and inflation and key differences from G7 market finance. It explores the core industry investment banking business in detail, from FX to interest rates and cash and inflation. Finally it introduces the region's unique financial instruments, as well as their pricing and risk management needs. Covering both introductory and complex topics, this book provides existing practitioners in Brazil, as well as those interested in becoming involved in these markets, everything they need to understand the market dynamics, risks, pricing and calibration of curves for all products currently available.

Following World War II the American government and philanthropic foundations fundamentally remade American universities into sites for producing knowledge about the world as a collection of distinct nation-states. As neoliberal reforms took hold in the 1980s, visions of the world made popular within area studies and international studies found themselves challenged by ideas and educational policies that originated in business schools and international financial institutions. Academics within these institutions reimagined the world instead as a single global market and higher education as a commodity to be bought and sold. By the 1990s, American universities embraced this language of globalization, and globalization eventually became the organizing logic of higher education. In Making the World Global Isaac A. Kamola examines how the relationships among universities, the American state, philanthropic organizations, and international financial institutions created the conditions that made it possible to imagine the world as global. Examining the Center for International Studies, Harvard Business School, the World Bank, the Social Science Research Council, and NYU, Kamola demonstrates that how we imagine the world is always symptomatic of the material relations within which knowledge is produced.

This Handbook responds to the needs and aspirations of current and future generations of development economists by providing critical reference material alongside or in relation to mainstream propositions. Despite the potential of globalisation in accelerating growth and development in low and middle-income countries through the spread of technology, knowledge and information, its current practice in many parts of the world has led to processes that are socially, economically and politically and ecologically unsustainable. It is critical for development economists to engage with the pivotal question of how to change the nature and course of globalisation to make it work for inclusive and sustainable development. Applying a critical and pluralistic approach, the chapters in this Handbook examine economics of development paths under globalisation, focusing on sustainable development in social, environmental, institutional and political economy dimensions. It aims at advancing the frontier of development economics in these key aspects and generating more refined policy perspectives. It is critically reflective in examining effects of globalisation on development paths to date, and in terms of methodological and analytical approaches, as well as forward-thinking in policy perspectives with a view to laying a foundation for sustainable development.

This book provides an insightful analysis of the looming refugee and mixed migration crisis in the context of four major, contemporary flows: two in west and east Europe, and one each in the Americas and Asia.  The analysis, in each case, is followed by a judicious identification of the key issues involved and the presentation of a set of proposed policy responses to them. The discussion is then placed in a global setting and dovetailed with the recently launched United Nations initiative to adopt global compacts on refugees and migrants.  The author brings to this book, the first of its kind, his vast experience of advising, and actively engaging with, many of the principal international organisations concerned with refugee and migration issues.     This book will be of interest to researchers, students, NGOs, professional bodies, national ministries, international organisations and rights groups in the fields of economics, public finance, political economy, human rights and refugee law, and international relations and demography.

Finance governs almost every aspect of modern life. Every day, we use the financial system to mortgage our homes, to insure our health, to invest in our futures through education and pension funds, to feed and clothe ourselves, to be paid for our labor, and to help others in need. As the fuelof capitalism, finance has been a major force for human progress for centuries. Yet it has periodically generated disasters too, from the Great Depression to the recent sub-prime mortgage crisis.In writing Necessary Evil, eminent human rights law scholar David Kinley spent ten years immersed in researching finance's many facets - from how it is raised and what it is spent on, to when it is gambled and who wins and who loses - to produce this unique account of how finance works from a humanrights perspective. He argues that while finance has historically facilitated many beneficial trends in human well-being, a sea change has occurred in the past quarter century. Since the end of the Cold War, the finance sector's power has grown by leaps and bounds, to the point where it is now outof control. Oversight of the sector has been weakened by deregulation, as powerful lobbyists have persuaded our leaders that what is good for finance is good for the economy as a whole. Kinley shows how finance has become society's master rather than its servant, and how, as a consequence, humanrights concerns are so often ignored, sidelined or crushed. Using episodes of financial malfeasance from around the globe - from the world's banking capitals to the mines of central Africa and the factories of East Asia - Kinley illustrates how the tools of international finance time and time againfail to advance the human condition. Kinley also suggests policies that can help finance protect and promote human rights and thereby regain the public trust and credibility it has so spectacularly lost over the past decade.An authoritative account of the extraordinary social consequences of the financial system at the heart of the world's economy, Necessary Evil will be an essential tool for anyone committed to making global capitalism a fairer and more effective vehicle for improving the lives of many, and not justproviding for the comfort of a few.

A much-needed practical guide, particularly suited for readers with engineering or science backgrounds, that provides the financial decision-making skills needed in the business world​ For engineers with little or no business background this book provides the financial decision-making skills necessary for a management career. Based on materials used by students in a Masters of Engineering and Management program at Case Western Reserve University and informed by both classroom and industry experience, this essential guide can be used in courses or independent study. The chapters introduce and integrate key concepts relevant to basic management, accounting, and finance that will enhance the critical thinking and confidence necessary for success as a chief technology officer or in any business career.

The United States today supports the strongest, most varied nonprofit sector in the world, an economic force of about $2 trillion, responsible for 5.4% of the nation¿s Gross Domestic Product in 2014, and accounting that year for 10.3% of the country's private-sector workforce. Roughly three-quarters of all households in America give to charity, with the average total donation being $2,030 annually. Yet for all this, few Americans, and more specifically, a surprisingly small proportion of the sector¿s practitioners, know where the nonprofit sector came from, or how it developed and came to be what we know it as today. This work is a historical overview of that sector, presented less as a chronology than as a discussion of the major influences¿some legal, some social, some political¿that helped shape the arena. The core message of the book is that the developmental trajectory of nonprofits has not been a straight line. Rather, its path over the years might be compared to that of a pinball, moving straight and building up momentum for a time, but then ricocheting off some event or social trend and taking off in a new direction altogether. Equally important, however, the sector is also the product of a founding genome that came out of colonial, Puritan-inspired New England and spread as that culture and its values became one of the dominant forces in American society. Knowing this history is a prerequisite for understanding and appreciating the character of this deeply influential part of American social culture.

Economic measures and concepts like GDP, inflation, business cycles and supply chains that were created decades ago are being disrupted and altered by technology. These changes affect asset values, interest rates, stock valuations, barriers to entry, as well as regression and correlation analysis. That Doesn't Work Anymore discusses how to adapt traditional data to these changes and outlines ways to use newer and better tools that help you make good investment and business decisions. The book's short pragmatic chapters grouped by topic with research and real-life anecdotes delve into how technological and societal developments have changed the meaning and value of traditional economic data-points, predictive tools, and business concepts. Robert S. Kricheff provides specifics on new and more valuable data sources as well as better methods for applying the information to investing, business, and even your career.

Big Ten football fans pack gridiron cathedrals that hold up to 100,000 spectators. The conference's fourteen member schools share a broadcast network and a 2016 media deal worth $2.64 billion. This cultural and financial colossus grew out of a modest 1895 meeting that focused on football's brutality and encroaching professionalism in the game. Winton U. Solberg explores the relationship between higher education and collegiate football in the Big Ten's first fifty years. This formative era saw debates over eligibility and amateurism roil the sport. In particular, faculty concerned with academics clashed with coaches, university presidents, and others who played to win. Solberg follows the conference's successful early efforts to put the best interests of institutions and athletes first. Yet, as he shows, commercial concerns undid such work after World War I as sports increasingly eclipsed academics. By the 1940s, the Big Ten's impact on American sports was undeniable. It had shaped the development of intercollegiate athletics and college football nationwide while serving as a model for other athletic conferences.

When the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, the black community owned less than one percent of the United States' total wealth. More than 150 years later, that number has barely budged. The Color of Money pursues the persistence of this racial wealth gap by focusing on the generators of wealth in the black community: black banks. Studying these institutions over time, Mehrsa Baradaran challenges the myth that black communities could ever accumulate wealth in a segregated economy. Instead, housing segregation, racism, and Jim Crow credit policies created an inescapable, but hard to detect, economic trap for black communities and their banks. The catch-22 of black banking is that the very institutions needed to help communities escape the deep poverty caused by discrimination and segregation inevitably became victims of that same poverty. Not only could black banks not "control the black dollar" due to the dynamics of bank depositing and lending but they drained black capital into white banks, leaving the black economy with the scraps. Baradaran challenges the long-standing notion that black banking and community self-help is the solution to the racial wealth gap. These initiatives have functioned as a potent political decoy to avoid more fundamental reforms and racial redress. Examining the fruits of past policies and the operation of banking in a segregated economy, she makes clear that only bolder, more realistic views of banking's relation to black communities will end the cycle of poverty and promote black wealth.

The financial crisis of 2007-2008 and its aftermath have resulted in the role of money and finance within the global economy becoming the subject of considerable debate in public, policy, and media circles.   Global Finance is a timely look at the contemporary international financial environment, providing an introduction to this dynamic field of research for students and more advanced researchers. Drawing on economic geography, economic sociology, and critical management, author Sarah Hall offers a broad selection of case studies that ground critical theory in our current financial climate.   Hall examines and reviews a wide range of critical approaches relating to the role of money and finance in the global economy, dividing these approaches into three key sections: Global finance and international financial centers Global finance and the "real economy" Global financial subjects and actors The text takes a uniquely interdisciplinary approach which, combined with an international spread of case studies, makes this book highly valuable to a wide range of upper level undergraduate courses across the social sciences.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, beneficiary organizations--like pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, endowments, and foundations--have been seeking ways to mitigate the risk of their investments and make better financial decisions. For them, Reframing Finance offers a path forward. This book argues that institutional investors would better serve their long-term goals by putting money into large-scale, future-facing projects such as infrastructure, green energy, innovation in agriculture, and real estate development. At the same time, redirecting long-term investments would close significant financial gaps that government cannot. Drawing on key contributions in economic sociology, social network theory, and economics, the book conceptualizes a collaborative model of investment that is already becoming increasingly common: Large investors contribute more directly to private market assets, while financial intermediaries seek to foster co-investment partnerships, better aligning incentives for all. A combination of rich case studies and rigorous theory enables asset owners to move toward more efficient, private-market investing, while also laying groundwork for research at the frontier of finance.

This book examines survey data to consider the extent to which public support for immigration, international trade, and foreign direct investment exists in a cohort of 38 heterogeneous countries. With economic globalization shaping daily life, understanding the determinants of public opinion is crucial for policy makers. This timely volume uses survey data from the Pew Research Center's 2006-2014 Global Attitudes Project (GAP) in conjunction with data from several secondary sources. White identifies the factors that underlie the reluctance of some members of the public, and some societies, to view these topics in a more positive light. Specifically, he considers the roles of culture, cultural differences ("cultural distance"), and relative social and economic development as determinants of public opinion and corresponding cross-societal differences of opinion. 

Fund and Fuel Your Dreams! You're an entrepreneur with a great idea. But your business needs money. So, do you max out your credit cards, borrow from friends and family, and do everything yourself? Or do you make a devil's bargain with some venture capitalist who'll demand a tenfold return and could easily take your business out from under you? No and no! You don't have to bootstrap, and you don't have to sell out! Jenny Kassan says the landscape of investment capital is far larger and more diverse than most people realize. She illuminates the vast range of capital-raising strategies available to mission-driven entrepreneurs and provides a six-step process for finding and enlisting investors who are a match with your personal goals and aspirations. The plan you create will inspire you, excite you, and help you achieve your dreams!

This book explains how and why large oil-producing corporations have affected government institutions, energy policy, and politics in the United States--and suggests how their influence can be reduced. * Focuses on big oil's impact on U.S. government policy--regulatory, environmental, and fiscal--and analyzes big oil's political influence through campaign contributions and lobbying * Proposes methods that could be employed to reduce big oil's influence over energy policy * Presents current information relevant to university-level courses in energy politics, public policy, and state or local politics and policy as well as to practitioners such as government regulators, business persons, and NGO representatives

Information modeling and knowledge bases have become essential subjects in the last three decades, not only in academic communities related to information systems and computer science, but also in the areas of business where information technology is applied.This book presents the proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Information Modelling and Knowledge Bases (EJC2018), held in Riga, Latvia from 4-8 June 2018. The aim of the conference was to bring together experts with a common interest in the understanding and solving of problems on information modelling and knowledge bases, as well as those from different areas of computer science and other disciplines who apply the results of research to practice. The 39 accepted papers collected here cover a variety of topics, including: conceptual modeling; knowledge and information modeling and discovery; linguistic modeling; cross-cultural communication and social computing; multimedia data modeling and systems; and environmental modeling and engineering.The book will be of interest to researchers and practitioners alike, and to anyone wanting a better understanding of current advances in information technology.

One of the world's leading experts on international trade explains that we must look beyond globalization to explain rising inequality. Globalization is not the primary cause of rising inequality. This may come as a surprise. Inequality within nations has risen steadily in recent decades, at a time when countries around the world have eased restrictions on the movement of goods, capital, and labor. Many assume a causal relationship, which has motivated opposition to policies that promote freer trade. Elhanan Helpman shows, however, in this timely study that this assumption about the effects of globalization is more myth than fact. Globalization and Inequality guides us through two decades of research about the connections among international trade, offshoring, and changes in income, and shows that the overwhelming conclusion of contemporary research is that globalization is responsible for only a small rise in inequality. The chief causes remain difficult to pin down, though technological developments favoring highly skilled workers and changes in corporate and public policies are leading suspects. As Helpman makes clear, this does not mean that globalization creates no problems. Critics may be right to raise concerns about such matters as cultural autonomy, child labor, and domestic sovereignty. But if we wish to curb inequality while protecting what is best about an interconnected world, we must start with a clear view of what globalization does and does not do and look elsewhere to understand our troubling and growing divide.

State Profiles 2017: The Population and Economy of Each U.S. State provides a wealth of current, authoritative, and comprehensive data on key demographic and economic indicators for each U.S. state and the District of Columbia. Each state is covered by a compact standardized chapter that allows for easy comparisons and timely analysis between the states. A ten-page profile for each U.S. state plus the District of Columbia provides reliable, up-to-date information on a wide range of topics, including: population, labor force, income and poverty, government finances, crime, education, health insurance coverage, voting, marital status, migration, and more. If you want a single source of key demographic and economic data on each of the U.S. states, there is no other book like State Profiles. This book provides an overview of the U.S. economy which provides a framework for understanding the state information. This book is primarily useful for public, school, and college and university libraries, as well as for economic and sociology departments. However, anyone needing state-level information-students, state officials, investors, economic analysts, concerned citizens-will find State Profiles wealth of data and analysis absolutely essential

Picture a familiar scene: long lines of shoppers waiting to check out at the grocery store, carts filled to the brim with the week's food. While many might wonder what is in each cart, Andrew Warnes implores us to consider the symbolism of the cart itself. In his inventive new book, Warnes examines how the everyday shopping cart is connected to a complex web of food production and consumption that has spread from the United States throughout the world. Today, shopping carts represent choice and autonomy for consumers, a recognizable American way of life that has become a global phenomenon. This succinct and and accessible book provides an excellent overview of consumerism and the globalization of American culture.

How colleges and universities can live up to their ideals of diversity, and why inclusivity and excellence go hand in hand. Most colleges and universities embrace the ideals of diversity and inclusion, but many fall short, especially in the hiring, retention, and advancement of faculty who would more fully represent our diverse world--in particular women and people of color. In this book, Abigail Stewart and Virginia Valian argue that diversity and excellence go hand in hand and provide guidance for achieving both. Stewart and Valian, themselves senior academics, support their argument with comprehensive data from a range of disciplines. They show why merit is often overlooked; they offer statistics and examples of individual experiences of exclusion, such as being left out of crucial meetings; and they outline institutional practices that keep exclusion invisible, including reliance on proxies for excellence, such as prestige, that disadvantage outstanding candidates who are not members of the white male majority. Perhaps most important, Stewart and Valian provide practical advice for overcoming obstacles to inclusion. This advice is based on their experiences at their own universities, their consultations with faculty and administrators at many other institutions, and data on institutional change. Stewart and Valian offer recommendations for changing structures and practices so that people become successful in ways that benefit everyone. They describe better ways of searching for job candidates; evaluating candidates for hiring, tenure, and promotion; helping faculty succeed; and broadening rewards and recognition.

Success is driven through collaboration. The field of Industrial and Systems Engineering has evolved as a major engineering field with interdisciplinary strength drawn from effective utilization, process improvement, optimization, design, and management of complex systems. It is a broad discipline that is important to nearly every attempt to solve problems facing the needs of society and the welfare of humanity. In order to carry this forward, successful collaborations are needed between industry, government, and academia. This book brings together an international group of distinguished practitioners and academics in manufacturing, healthcare, logistics, and energy sectors to examine what enables successful collaborations. The book is divided into two key parts: 1) partnerships, frameworks, and leadership; and 2) engineering applications and case studies. Part I highlights some of the ways partnerships emerge between those seeking to innovate and educate in industrial and systems engineering, some useful frameworks and methodologies, as well as some of the ideas and practices that undergird leadership in the profession. Part II provides case studies and applications to illustrate the power of the partnerships between academia and practice in industrial and systems engineering. Features Examines the success from multiple industries Provides frameworks for building teams and avoiding pitfalls Contains international perspectives of success Uses collaborative approaches from industry, government, and academia Includes real world case studies illustrating the enabling factors Offers engineering education and student-centric takeaways ms engineering, some useful frameworks and methodologies, as well as some of the ideas and practices that undergird leadership in the profession. Part II provides case studies and applications to illustrate the power of the partnerships between academia and practice in industrial and systems engineering. Features Examines the success from multiple industries Provides frameworks for building teams and avoiding pitfalls Contains international perspectives of success Uses collaborative approaches from industry, government, and academia Includes real world case studies illustrating the enabling factors Offers engineering education and student-centric takeaways

This book provides a comprehensive review of cloud philosophy, design principals, development trends as well as practical patterns to guide readers to understand, design and implement successful cloud-based solutions. This book provides both "hows" and "whys." It peers behind the buzz words such as machine learning, containers, and blockchains to help readers understand how to put those technologies into practical use. This unique book covers a broad spectrum of technologies of cloud computing.

Today, many businesses and corporations are moving their on premises IT Infrastructure to the Cloud. There are numerous advantages to do doing so, including on-demand service, scalability, and fixed pricing. As a result, the Cloud has become a popular target of cyber-based attacks. Although an ISP is often charged with keeping virtual infrastructure secure, it is not safe to assume this. Back-up measures must be taken. This book explains how to guard against cyber-attacks by adding another layer of protection to the most valuable data in the Cloud: customer information and trade secrets.

In 1998 Gower published the highly successful third edition of Corporate Fraud by Michael Comer. Sadly, the need for such books has not disappeared - if anything it has increased - with cases such as Enron, WorldCom and the Allied Irish Bank and so this volume concentrates on the practicalities of investigating and recovering from fraud. Fraud can be prevented by secure processes and by ensuring that people allowed access to them are honest. This is easier said than done; failures will occur and every company needs contingency plans as a safety net. Contrary to popular belief, corporate fraud happens to good companies and effective managers. What is crucial is your reaction when suspicions are first aroused - fraud changes from a problem to a disaster mainly because people's initial response is ineffective. This book is a comprehensive action plan for organizations that are victims of corporate fraud. The aim is to help make sure that you can react swiftly and effectively, recover your money, your costs with interest and punish the offenders so that a deterrent is established for others. Most importantly the book will help you return to normal working as quickly as possible. It is highly practical, featuring checklists and case examples throughout. Applying his extraordinary experience, keen insight and vast practical knowledge, Mike Comer is able to take a unique position in showing organizations what they can do and what their rights are. His writing style is entertaining and enlightening - this is no dry, laborious and incomprehensible legal reference. You will find Investigating Corporate Fraud a fascinating and invaluable source of practical expert guidance on a subject strewn with potential dangers.

This book discusses the following questions: Why are some conflicts so enduring and why is conflict resolution so hard? The author begins by introducing two conflicting perspectives, Skeptics and Believers, to highlight the lack of consensus on conflict resolution. The book further examines the literature on the sources of violent conflict, including ethnic, economic, environmental, and religious sources, and investigates the claim that an absence of knowledge, power, or political will are at the center of conflict resolution failures. By focusing on the problem of state formation, the author demonstrates the ways in which the nature of the state contributes to violent conflict. In the end, conflict resolution fails because individuals, groups, and external powers choose war and often prefer it over peaceful alternatives.  

Style guides come in many shapes and sizes, usually focused toward scientific or academic use only. However, business writing is a space occupied by many individuals that has not been given the attention it deserves. The Style Guide for Business Writing, Second Edition, is designed specifically to assist business writers in both the public and private sector, including those publishing with English as a second language; authors of academic papers; business book authors; financial journalists; and writers of reports, proposals or even just e-mail and memoranda. This book provides a comprehensive guide to clear and precise writing that will help develop basic communication skills for the beginner, and refresh the basics for the experienced business writer. Major topics are arranged alphabetically and the cross references and index enable quick and easy access to information. Michael C. Thomsett is a market expert, author, speaker, and coach. His many books include Stock Market Math, Candlestick Charting, The Mathematics of Options, and A Technical Approach to Trend Analysis.

This volume contains contributions on a range of important issues in current research in finance and economics. Topics include the IPO underwriting spreads, the moral hazard problems in bank regulation as well as in the cost of deposit insurance, the loan yield spreads, and the aggregate bank performance at the state-level. The topics in global investments such as diversification benefits, overreaction and seasonality among international stock markets are also included in this volume. The contributions to this volume also address the appropriate asset allocation of hedge funds, the effects of partial hedging in incentive stocks and options, the relation between board size and firm performance, the impact of higher oil prices on stock market returns, and the futures hedging effectiveness with alternative settlement specifications in the contracts. This volume contains articles contributed by leading experts in finance and economics. It includes articles on the hot topics of oil-prices and hedge-funds.

This book describes the modelling of prices of ?nancial assets in a simple d- crete time, discrete state, binomial framework. By avoiding the mathematical technicalitiesofcontinuoustime?nancewehopewehavemadethematerial accessible to a wide audience. Some of the developments and formulae appear here for the ?rst time in book form. We hope our book will appeal to various audiences. These include MBA s- dents,upperlevelundergraduatestudents,beginningdoctoralstudents,qu- titative analysts at a basic level and senior executives who seek material on new developments in ?nance at an accessible level. The basic building block in our book is the one-step binomial model where a known price today can take one of two possible values at a future time, which might, for example, be tomorrow, or next month, or next year. In this simple situation "risk neutral pricing" can be de?ned and the model can be applied to price forward contracts, exchange rate contracts and interest rate derivatives. In a few places we discuss multinomial models to explain the notions of incomplete markets and how pricing can be viewed in such a context, where unique prices are no longer available. The simple one-period framework can then be extended to multi-period m- els.TheCox-Ross-RubinsteinapproximationtotheBlackScholesoptionpr- ing formula is an immediate consequence. American, barrier and exotic - tions can all be discussed and priced using binomial models. More precise modelling issues such as implied volatility trees and implied binomial trees are treated, as well as interest rate models like those due to Ho and Lee; and Black, Derman and Toy.