Search results for ""emerald publishing limited""

A main theme running through this book is that we cannot understand the virtues of humility and modesty without an equally good understanding of the vices of hubris and conceit. All four attitudes express self-esteem, which flourishes in the soil of achievement. Achievement is valued in any challenging field, be it art, science, sport, entertainment, business, politics, religion, or administration. And it is for this reason alone that achievers are inclined to discuss their excellence or may be forced to discuss it when others inquire about it or remark on it. By these routes achievement and self-esteem surface frequently in the diverse academic and political exchanges that spawn humility/modesty or hubris/conceit.Achievement in a respectable activity can be a wonderful personal milestone bathed in positive emotions, where in the modern world individualism and individuation are widely valued. It may also be wonderful for other people in the achiever’s family, social network, community, or society when they are favorably affected. But in this book, when refracted through three additional analytic lenses – individualism and individuality, big- vs small-picture thinking, and tolerance and compromise – the expression of achievement-based self-esteem takes on some startling new dimensions. One of them is that, at the hubris/conceit end of the continuum of the expression of self-esteem, discussion risks becoming uncivil, owing to the disagreeable ways that achievement is sometimes conveyed (e.g., boasting, name calling, depreciating others’ related achievements). Moreover, such can turn out to be enormously unproductive. Or as Leo Tolstoy once put it: “Conceit is incompatible with understanding.”

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It is apparent that all forms of organisation have governance requirements and procedures but too often we just consider governance in a corporate environment. Equally it is accepted that the concept of governance is concerned with the relationship between the organisation and all of its stakeholders but is too often interpreted as a concern for the relationship between a corporation and its investors. Still this is essentially true as far as most corporations are concerned. Such narrow views are unrealistic and are inappropriate in the modern global world which we inhabit and many would blame problems with governance for the economic and financial turmoil which the world has experienced during the last decade. Much analysis has been undertaken about governance but little in the way of change is manifest and few seem to recognise both the need to consider radical changes in the modern global environment and the opportunities and possibilities presented by the current environment. In this book therefore we take a broad (and possibly radical) approach and consider governance requirements in the modern world - not just for corporations but for all forms of organisation.

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The legacies of a century of fossil-fuel based development and overconsumption, of treating the environment as a waste sink for industry and agriculture, have left devastating impacts on the earth’s air, water and land, and these are directly implicated in Climate Change. In response, a number of global institutions and nations, including the European Union and China, have committed themselves to the development of a ‘circular economy’. This will require a transformation of today’s ‘linear economy’ of ‘make, use and dispose’ as the market dictates, into a Circular Economy. The aim of the Circular Economy is to decouple economic growth from resource and energy use through iterative, systemic social, economic and technological reform. This book presents new theoretical and practical insights into this concept, based on case studies from both the developing and developed world, with an emphasis on economic and material transformation, design for reuse and waste reduction, industrial ‘symbiosis’ (the planned circulation of resources and energy within an industrial setting), and social innovation and entrepreneurship. Four central themes emerge through the essays presented here: the importance of ‘restorative design’ in transforming resource flows through both production and consumption, the value of understanding and enumerating wastes in more detail to enable their reuse, the central role of advancing technology and applied science to further this transformation of materials for reuse, and finally, a reconfiguration of design, consumption and retail, so that the present ‘linear’ economy of ‘make, use and trash’ can be replaced with a more ‘circular’ model.

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Researchers, practitioners, and parents have increasingly become concerned about issues related to sex, gender, and sexuality among children and adolescents. With access to the Internet, young people around the globe can readily obtain virtually any and all information they seek concerning sex and sexuality. In many cultures, the clothing and fashions of children, adolescents, and young adults are increasingly merging, leaving little clear distinction between them, and creating what some consider to be the ‘sexualization’ of children’s and adolescents’ clothing. Coinciding with such changes, young people are more openly expressing their own gender identity, often leading to considerable social debate about feminine and masculine identities, and also transgender identities. This collection provides unique insight into identity formation for contemporary youth and examines the evolving norms concerning sex, gender, and sexuality in the lives of children and adolescents addressing topics including the development of gender identity, sexual behavior among youth, LGBT youth, transgender youth, parental and peer influences upon the development of gender and gender identity and dating violence.

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Talent Management (TM) is an issue of critical importance for today’s senior managers. Employers acknowledge that an engaged, skilled and motivated workforce is key to achieving growth and competitive advantage. Organizations are hiring TM officers and implementing TM strategies and programs to attract and retain the best employees. Yet many organizations still find it difficult to develop a coherent and successful TM approach. Academic research does not give much support in finding the right solutions: despite the enormous expansion of research on the topic, ambiguity about definitions and conceptual boundaries remains. Moreover, there is little knowledge about the nature of TM in practice and how it evolves over time. Talent Management in Practice offers an integrated and contextualized framework that addresses both the nature of TM in organizations and its ever-changing dynamics. The approach is based, on the one hand, upon lessons learned from previous empirical research on TM, and on the other hand, upon established theoretical frameworks from related academic fields. The result is a unique bridge between theory and TM in practice. This volume develops a model that can guide TM researchers in their future research, and since it is presented in an accessible and jargon-free format, it provides a touchstone for managers and practitioners as they implement and improve their TM approaches.

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Faced with dwindling resources and the challenge of climate change, companies are seeking to enhance production while consuming fewer resources. At the same time, consumers are altering their behaviors by seeking local production or bulk buying products. Retailers, as boundary spanners between consumers and producers, have a major role in initiating change and sustainable development. Part one of this book analyzes the sustainable development practices of retailers within and between different European countries and presents case studies that consider best practices on this topic. Retailer include: Carrefour, Casino, Auchan, Leclerc, Intermarché and System U in France; Inditex, Cortefiel and MANGO in Spain; Edeka, Rewe, Schwarz-Group (with Lidl and Kaufland) and Aldi in Germany; and Tesco and Marks & Spencer in UK. International retailers in Poland are considered to better understand cross country activities. Part two underlines the challenges faced by European retailers in the wake of societal and technological changes. The consumers’ role and their sustainable development practices are analyzed to understand the impact on retailing and the main risks for retailers. This book will appeal to academics, students and professional educators alike, providing a crucial understanding of retailers’ practices in different countries and their impact on consumers.

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In times of globalization, global labor markets and increasingly diverse workforces, Global Leadership, Global Talent Management and integrated management systems belong to the most urgent issues and challenges for the next decade. Hence, it is not a surprise that Global Leadership and effective, integrated Global Talent Management have been identified as key success factors for global organizations. Global organizations see the world as one market for gaining the best global leadership talents. To recruit and retain the best global leaders and leadership talents worldwide, organizations must have effective (global) talent management procedures that are mutually supportive, internally consistent and correlate positively with economic success. This book illustrates integrated practices and success factors of effective Global Leadership Talent Management procedures and shows how to balance the opposing forces of global harmonization and local responsiveness. It describes how global organizations can develop an integrative conceptual framework for the (global) talent management process that sees this as an ongoing acquisition process. Acquisition connotes partnership between talent and company. Like customers, the company proactively identifies candidates for global leadership positions worldwide, attracts them and tries to hire them and win their loyalty. The onus is not solely on the applicant to impress the company. The employer also has to appear attractive to potentially interested parties and maintain that state throughout the employment experience. Globally integrated, high-quality Global Leadership Talent Management creates a long term win-win situation by gaining, retaining and providing service to global candidates and talents and by supporting the sustainable success of global organizations.

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Recent years have witnessed a dramatic surge in applied econometric work in health economics, enhanced by the availability of large micro and macro data sets as well as the rapid development of new techniques and tools in econometrics. Health economics is an important and challenging area of research for applied econometricians, due to complexity embedded in the data, arising from issues such as nonlinearity of models, the presence of individual-level unobserved heterogeneity as well as time and cross sectional dependencies. This book covers a wide range of existing and emerging topics in applied health economics. These include: behavioural economics, medical care risk, social insurance, discrete choice models, cost-effectiveness analysis, health and immigration, vignette approach, response of parental investments to child’s health at birth, determinants of innovation in the pharmaceutical industry, hospital competition, use of administrative data, spatial health econometrics, health expenditure, and networks.

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Advances in Accounting Behavioral Research publishes high-quality research encompassing all areas of accounting, including financial, auditing, taxation, managerial, and information systems, addressing a broad range of issues that affect the users, preparers, and assurers of accounting information. Further, this research incorporates theory from, and contributes knowledge and understanding to, applied psychology, sociology, management science, and behavioral economics.

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This volume contains research on how we measure poverty, inequality and welfare and how we use such measurements to devise policies to deliver social mobility. It contains ten papers, some of which were presented at the third meeting of The Theory and Empirics of Poverty, Inequality and Mobility at Queen Mary University of London, London, October 2016. The volume begins with theoretical issues at the frontier of the literature. Three papers discuss the impact of social welfare policies on poverty measurement, and with innovations on the measurement of relative bipolarisation. Two papers address the conceptualisation of multidimensional poverty by incorporating inequality within the poor, and that of chronic poverty for time dependent analyses, with applications to India and Haiti, and Ethiopia respectively. The second half of the volume consists of empirical contributions, using novel techniques and datasets to investigate the dynamics of poverty and welfare. These studies track the dynamics of poverty using unique datasets for China, the Caucasus and Italy. The volume concludes with investigations about within-household inequalities between siblings due to the unequal effects of conditional cash transfers in Cambodia and a cross-country study on the effect of historical income inequality on entrepreneurship in developing countries.

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Airports serve an essential role in domestic and international travel, facilitating the origination, termination, and connections of air flights. Airport services enhance regional, national, and global connections, increasing the mobility of people worldwide and enhancing local and regional economies. Although there is a large amount of literature that examines airline costs and productivity, consumer welfare from air travel, and the influence of economic regulation of airline services, there is much less literature that examines airports. This is important, as airport operations play a critical role in influencing airline travel. This volume examines the role that airports play in economic development and land values, the regulation and economic efficiency of airports, airport pricing and competition, and the role played by airports in influencing airline operations and networks.

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The EMU debt crisis that emerged in 2010 has identified a group of Southern countries, especially Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy, as low performers exhibiting several serious macroeconomic imbalances, and it has also highlighted that EU integration experienced by Eastern European countries (especially the latter-comers to EU) was not accompanied by a rapid process of real convergence. Since then, the research about the effects of peripherality have regained a renewed interest to ultimately ground better regional policy recommendations aimed at achieving a sustained reduction of income per capita disparities across EU regions. In this new work, Pascariu and Duarte, along with an international group of acclaimed scholars, delve into key challenges currently facing the European Union. They investigate this central question: does the domestic market system lead to the development of a center-periphery model, by highlight gaps, or does it support the convergence process? Analyzing the effects of peripherality across the EU regions, a two-fold approach is used to deliver policy recommendations grounded in economic theory, and of interest to other countries and regions facing a process of integration.

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In spite of, and because of, the attention recently paid to “big data” and the huge amount quantitative data available from online and point of sale transactions, qualitative and conceptual research is in greater demand than ever. Rather than the correlational and superficial view provided from the overflow of numerical data, qualitative and conceptual data help to make sense of what is really going on among consumers. Numerical approaches are a useful first cut at detecting changes in market patterns, but they fail to help understand the underlying and deeper meanings of these data among individual consumers, families, and consumption communities. By gathering data from observation (first hand and automated), depth interviews, projective measures, netnography, videography, qualitative marketing and consumer research help put flesh on the bones of often sterile quantitative data. This volume provides a good illustration of the sorts of insights that qualitative and conceptual analysis can provide. Using some of the latest qualitative research tools, this volume highlights insights about consumption ranging from how consumers process advertising messages, how skiers consume a ski resort, and how small retailers can combat the practice of “showrooming” by consumers comparing online prices with mobile devices to the nature of consumer “presence, rethinking the meanings of prices, and buying counterfeit luxuries with friends. These and other practices provide eye-opening insights of their own. But they also spark the imagination by demonstrating what qualitative research can do and why it is an increasingly popular set of techniques.

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In the era of the 21st century knowledge society, higher education can play an important role as a driver for innovation, leadership and creativity, as it helps develop not only well informed and knowledgeable citizens but also responsible and creative individuals. The challenges of globalization, tightly linked with rapid developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and the need to address issues of quality and inclusiveness for a better quality of life and a sustainable future, have become drivers of change in higher education institutions. We are experiencing a shift towards more interdisciplinary curricula and a more integrated and student-centred approach to teaching. Instructors increasingly use active learning and other pedagogies of engagement as a means to increase learning and improve student attitudes. This book explores best practices for effective active learning in higher education. Experienced instructors from different disciplines and countries share their experiences and reflect on best practices, as well as on the theoretical underpinnings of active learning. Contributors share their thinking on strategies based on different active learning methods such as the use of ICTs, collaborative learning and experiential learning, as well as their implications for teaching, assessment, curriculum design and higher education administration. Active learning provides skills for real life problem solving and prepares students to become responsible and active citizens. This book will be a very significant resource for educators who are interested in making a difference in students' lives.

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The book intends to make a contribution to new theoretical concepts and knowledge to existing leadership theory. Through in-depth case studies of international corporations that have achieved business innovation, the book aims to provide new leadership theory of practitioners who promote strategic knowledge creation activities to achieve business innovation and new practical insights. The book discusses in detail theoretical concepts and practical knowledge in the leadership interaction among the different management layers (top, middle and lower layers) and among the different layers (formal layer, psychological boundary layer, and informal layer).

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There have been a number of sporadic and disconnected initiatives to improve knowledge transfer between the tourism academia, government and industry. This volume presents and analyses 17 examples of knowledge transfer from countries around the world to identify future directions for business and government managers and academic researchers. Many of the chapters were presented at the first t-Forum global conference. The chapters emphasise the value from academic leadership in developing cohesion and links amongst small business and government, and the importance of a shared innovative vision beyond individual private and public organization objectives. Successful initiatives rely on the personal characteristics of key stakeholders as well as institutional arrangements, emphasising action learning and challenging traditional academic research processes. Best practice knowledge transfer requires government, industry and academia in partnership engaged in open dialogue and debate for project success. Knowledge transfer provides an opportunity to address unprecedented societal, environmental and technological change and disruption.

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As revealed in the most recent global survey of human capital trends conducted by Deloitte University, leadership is rated as the top priority across all organizational levels, geographies, and functional areas in every industry. The evolving shift in leadership from individual leaders at the top to collective leadership throughout organizations requires creating and sustaining the necessary conditions through which leaders and those being led can flourish and positive organizing can thrive. Developing Leaders for Positive Organizing examines this challenge by taking the reader on an investigative journey into everyday leadership as framed in the increasingly interconnected context of human relationships within and across organizations around the globe. This book offers broad appeal for the novice working practitioner; corporate, not-for-profit, or non-profit executive; experienced scholar or academic student.

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Marconomics is about human economics. This text introduces marconomics, examining how the use of the social sciences, consumer behavior in particular, is used to explain and develop economic activity. Blawatt argues the philosophy and principles of the classical school of economic thought are problematic and should be replaced with a new model. He develops a paradigm in the form of two correlated variables that provide the rationale for three economic domains: entrepreneurial, managed, and mass market economies that tell us how business, money, and people work. An economy is a dynamic, behavior-driven structure that is influenced by human variables and exogenous factors that need be included in the creation of models and policies. Marconomics sets an initial framework on which further social scientific research may advance an improved understanding of the discipline.

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This volume addresses general and special education inclusion and how the education field has changed over time. The topic of inclusion has transformed over the years from when it was first introduced and as a result of legislation, new trends, and current research investigations. In addition, this topic can be somewhat controversial depending on the disability the child might have or those professionals involved in the process of instructing individuals with disabilities. Currently, there is no comprehensive resource that effectively covers these advances with the breath of topics as this volume. This volume will address the most current perspectives and issues related to general and special education inclusion and will be written by leaders in the field with particular expertise in this area. This volume will be an excellent resource for special educators, administrators, mental health clinicians, school counsellors, and psychologists. The layout of the volume will allow readers to follow general and special education inclusion in a very logical and thoughtful process from students with high incidence disabilities to those with low incidence disabilities.

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Recently, many researchers have found that their work crosses the borders of design, branding and marketing. This orientation finds itself in contrast to the generally discipline-delineated world of academic journal publishing where cross-sector studies often find difficulties in acceptance (design-based work in marketing being particularly poorly represented). This unique book focuses upon service design, including retail and multi-channel marketing matters pertinent to the current age where physical contact with consumers has resurfaced as an enduring part of the marketing and branding landscape - complementary to online and virtual worlds. The span of the text goes from what may be regarded as micro-environmental issues of type design and the semiotics of brand meanings towards macro-environmental concerns of city design and ecological threat, all relative to living within any world (and all worlds) that businesses and consumers may co-create or are invited and welcomed to in their own multi-layered experience.

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With regard to developments in social theory, the past 30 years can be characterized as an Age of Deconstruction. Inspired by post-structuralism, postmodernism, critical theory, and science studies, as well as combinations of related approaches, theorists have endeavored to shatter historical meta-narratives and struggled to include previously excluded standpoints in social thought. This important trend has informed our understanding of the role of discourse, difference and expertise in determining relations of power and inequality. This volume focusses on “Reconstruction”, dedicated to taking account of and interrogating the possibility of picking up the pieces. The papers were presented at the 2015 International Social Theory Consortium (ISTC). It considers questions such as, are there limits to the deconstruction project, and have these limits been reached? What are the possibilities for the reconstruction of narratives of long-term historical change? Is it possible to include and integrate the insights and contribution of various critiques of knowledge, while at the same time developing new forms of knowledge?

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Differences in management behavior across organizations are attributed to differences in priorities and objectives or differences in the style and preferences of the individuals involved. This volume challenges this image by attending to the extra-organizational and extra-individual forces that shape and constrain how work is structured in organizations. The authors focus their attention on work within and between organizations and emphasize the ways in which the jobs are defined, the power and autonomy they engender, the opportunities that are afforded, and the constraints that are imposed, are continuously contested not only at the individual level, but also at a more aggregate and collective level. This volume is the product of an interdisciplinary gathering of scholars convened with generous support of the Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council. It presents new theoretical and empirical papers that examine aspects of the changing nature of jobs and work in organizations from multiple perspectives and methodologies.

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The 2004 reunification of Eastern and Western Europe and the subsequent economic crisis caused a surge in intra-European labour mobility and a profound shift in preceding patterns of migration in Europe. While previous decades of European integration brought very modest cross-border flows of labour, the past decade has engendered the largest European movements of labour in modern time – mostly from East to West, but eventually also from South to North. In a situation of record high European unemployment, this has sparked controversy about the very notion of free movement, one of the basic foundations of the European Community, and has unleashed heated debates about the conditions, causes, and consequences of large-scale labour migration for receiving as well as sending societies. Against this background, this volume of Comparative Social Research will contribute to improve our understanding of the drivers, mechanisms, and effects of the past decade’s surge in cross-border labour mobility and work related migration within Europe.

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Authors of this book discover the intricacies of friendship and peer cultures of children in multilingual settings. Volume 21 brings together empirical research from across the globe, and from various methodological and theoretical orientations to investigate children’s relationships within multilingual settings such as school, home, community and online. Diverse views of children and young people on cross-cultural relationships offer rich and valuable findings and contribute new knowledge for policy makers, social workers, educators and parents about strategies children use to make friends. Internationally, the linguistic diversity of communities in the minority world is at its highest to date. With increasing numbers of children learning a language other than their home language at school or other places, it is important to understand the nature of the social relationships that children and youth are experiencing in their everyday lives in order to improve their chances of successful social experiences in the future. Applying a sociological perspective, this volume features the rich, varied and complex aspects of children's experiences of friendship in multilingual settings.

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Volume 18 of the Community, Environment and Disaster Risk Management series looks at how cities and countries recover from catastrophic disasters with a specific focus on Asia. Asia has experienced devastating disasters over the centuries. Proximity to the seismically active “Ring of Fire” and other plate boundaries, long Pacific and Indian Ocean coastlines, major river and tributary courses, desert and semi-desert areas, and other geographic features create a diversity of hazards and potential hazards. Chapters cover topics including International Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Recovery, Disaster exceptionalism in India, Immigrant and refugee experiences in Canterbury and Tohoku, Citizen Participation in the Disaster Reconstruction Process after the Great East Japan Earthquake, and Social Capital and Changes in Post-Disaster Recovery Process in China after the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake.

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This volume consists of three sections connected by the elucidation of differences in perspective between people and polities. The first, concentrating on ecology, serves in part to further explore the theme of climate change. It looks into aquifer usage and ecology in the Midwestern United States, farming and climate shifts in Costa Rica and in Burkina Faso, and goat herding and conservation issues in the Himalayas. The second section focuses on exchange transactions and relations in a variety of situations and settings: among Nigerian immigrant business owners in New York City, along the path of the famous Koh-i-noor Diamond from India to the Tower of London, and between dealers and buyers in illegal narcotics markets in the Eastern, Midwestern, and Pacific Northwestern USA. Finally, papers in the third section share a concern with individual and group adaptations to certain conditions of life. Offered are investigations into relations between stock brokers and professional investors in Malaysia, attempts to foster innovation in Western Japan, women’s farming strategies and autonomy in Western Kenya, and alternative healing decisions and practices in Brazil.

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Studies in Public and Non-Profit Governance (SPNPG) publishes double-blind peer reviewed articles in a growing area of governance research. The series focuses on the 'micro' level of governance in public and non-profit sector. Compared to the wider debate on corporate governance in the private sector and to the literature on the 'macro' and 'meso' levels of governance in the public sector, the organizational (micro) level of governance remains a neglected area of governance in the public and non-profit sector. Therefore, governance systems, mechanisms and roles are primarily investigated at organizational level. SPNPG allows for the establishment of an engaged community of researchers very active in the field. It aims to contribute to the definition of the theoretical components that assign an innovation role to governance systems in public and non profit organizations. It also highlights the opportunity for a deeper analysis of governance mechanisms in their relationships with both the external (stakeholders) actors and the internal (management) actors and address the conditions which enable governance mechanisms to effectively cover their own roles.

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Volume 5 of Critical Perspectives in International Public Sector Management is comprised of three parts. The need for experimental learning in public management development, experimental learning formats and innovative teaching and transfer and value creation. This international, interdisciplinary volume is valuable for leadership, management, public management and education scholars.

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In recent years many employers in the U.S., Great Britain, Ireland, and elsewhere, often in partnership with their unions, have turned to new approaches to managing and resolving workplace disputes. In the U.S. this movement is often called “alternative dispute resolution” (ADR), an approach that involves the use of mediation, arbitration, and other third-party dispute resolution techniques, rather than litigation, to resolve workplace disputes. Some employers have established so-called “conflict management systems,” a pro-active, strategic approach to handling workplace conflict. This volume contains chapters by some of the world’s leading scholars of workplace dispute resolution and conflict management as well as chapters by emerging younger scholars in these fields. The chapters present original research that combines cutting-edge thinking about the theoretical dimensions of ADR and conflict management along with rigorous empirical analyses of real-life data.

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Education has traditionally been studied from the perspectives of educators, administrators, politicians and parents. However, the central actors of education: young people themselves have been left out of the study of education. This volume focuses on the lived experience of education from the perspectives of the students. It brings together the most recent and cutting edge research on the understanding of education from the perspectives of young people. It tries to understand how young people negotiate their childhoods and education in the context of different educational institutions. In doing so, it unravels layers of inequalities in the understanding of education.

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"Advances in Group Processes publishes theoretical analyses, reviews, and theory based empirical chapters on group phenomena. The series adopts a broad conception of “group processes.” This includes work on groups ranging from the very small to the very large, and on classic and contemporary topics such as status, power, trust, justice, social influence, identity, decision-making, intergroup relations and social networks. Previous contributors have included scholars from diverse fields including sociology, psychology, political science, economics, business, philosophy, computer science, mathematics and organizational behavior. Volume 33 brings together papers related to a variety of topics in small groups and organizational research. The volume includes papers that address theoretical and empirical issues related to balance theory, generalized exchange, identity contests and corporate social responsibility. Other contributions examine minority influence, status and identity processes, gender stereotypes and voice pitch as a measure of stress. Overall, the volume includes papers that reflect a wide range of theoretical approaches from leading scholars who work in the general area of group processes."

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Strategy Beyond Markets examines how the strategies employed by firms affect long run value. Scholars in this field focus their attention on firm interactions with entities other than the firm's primary market stakeholders. These stakeholders include international NGOs, environmental groups, local communities, regulators, politicians and the courts. This book is organized around three themes: Public politics, private politics, and integrated political strategy. In public politics, firms use sophisticated instruments (e.g., campaign funding, committee participation) to influence local, national, and international political environments. In private politics, firms work closely with NGOs and other special interest groups to preempt unfavorable policy, react swiftly to crises, and proactively develop socially responsible strategies. Additionally, firms that are heavily influenced by politics are more likely to craft integrated political strategy as part of a more comprehensive plan. This special issue comprises papers from preeminent scholars including David Baron, Jean-Philippe Bonardi, Daniel Diermeier, Thomas Lyon, John Maxwell, Ken Shotts, and Dennis Yao.

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As a response to ongoing economic, social and environmental crises, many private actors have enlarged their definition of 'value' to include environmental and social elements. Such practices, however, appear incompatible with the current epistemological structure of academic financial discourse. This paradox challenges us to reconsider the foundations of modern finance, particularly the dominant role of shareholders. The volume argues there is a need to turn the established order upside down. Studies in economics and finance have to be embedded in environmental and social welfare to answer the challenges we face, and there is a need for a radical break with the methodological individualism that dominates economics, management and (especially) finance. It is our responsibility to question social welfare when it is defined only as maximising shareholder value. Should we instead promote a substitute to the shareholder? How should we (re)define the concept of value? This volume serves as a stepping stone for rethinking academic finance, and attempts to carve out innovative paths for financial research in the 21st century.

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Advances in Econometrics is a research annual whose editorial policy is to publish original research articles that contain enough details so that economists and econometricians who are not experts in the topics will find them accessible and useful in their research. Volume 37 exemplifies this focus by highlighting key research from new developments in econometrics.

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Built Environment and Property Management - A Focus on China and Hong Kong is a unique collection of previously published articles that represent the very highest level of scholarship in the field. The articles published in this collection identify some emergent themes that have subsequently established themselves as key trends among academics in the field. These include the following:- Public-private partnerships- China's property boom and the resulting increase in prices- Waste management issues. This new collection provides an unparalleled insight into the hospitality industry and will enable readers to access the most important 'thinkers' active in this arena today.

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Research in Labor Economics 44 takes another in-depth and focussed look at Inequality. This time however it is tied in with well-being of the workforce. Research in Labor Economics volume 44 contains new and innovative research on the causes and consequences of inequality and well-being of the work force.

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In a fast moving world the transportation of goods is expected to be more efficient than ever before. This compendia features papers that address key themes in green logistics such as benchmarking and energy efficiency and includes highly cited papers from international contributors such as Alan McKinnon and Joseph Sarkis.

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New Perspectives in Policing: Stress, Public Perception and Leadership' is a new collection of articles that represent the very highest level of scholarship focussing on the management and practice of Policing. Drawn together from one of the leading journals in the field, Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, these articles examine the evolving nature of Policing policy, practice and management in an era of ever increasing demands for efficiency, transparency and accountability. The collection assesses the impact of public perception, stress, and leadership, presenting detailed analyses and new conceptual frameworks.Providing international perspectives, the articles include case studies on: - US public perceptions towards police forces;- the impact of stress and gender on Swedish officers; - Chinese college student's perception of police, and - an analysis of complaints of police misconduct. This book provides policy makers, academics and senior police officers with an essential and convenient analyses and examination of some of the most important factors impacting policing and law enforcement today.

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School shootings have raised considerable interest among scholars as a global (media) cultural phenomenon and have increased specifically in the 1990s developing into a seeming cultural epidemic. This book contributes to the current academic discussion on school shootings by analysing this phenomenon in a broader context of mediatization in contemporary social and cultural life. Mediatized logic has the power to influence us as individuals communicating about the shootings and experiencing the shootings as victimizers, victims, witnesses or bystanders. In three sections, this book explores shootings from different, yet interconnected, perspectives: (1) a theoretical focus on media and school shootings within various sociological and cultural dimensions, specifically how contemporary media transform school shootings into mediatized violence; (2) a focus on the practices of mediatization, with emphasis on mediated coverage of school shootings and its political, cultural, social and ethical implications; and (3) an examination of the audiences, victims and witnesses of school shootings as well as organizations which try to manage these public crimes of significant media interest.

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During modernity metropolitan ruralities have been regarded as land reserves for urban expansion. However, there is a growing insight that there are limits to the urban expansion into rural areas. Signs of a new position are the awakened interest in the nature, the authentic and the simple way of living among an urban, academically educated middle class, an actual instance of which is the interest in local food but which also is manifested in rural gentrification. However, a more hardcore turn to nature is also discernible in the renewed interest for green lungs and for eco-services more broadly. In the future, local post-fossil energy may be a main concern regarding rural eco-services utilised by urban areas. We can here imagine flows and exchanges that may demand heavy societal regulation and thus be one of the main objects of future democracy. However, despite these developments urban (and rural) policy and planning is still tightly connected to the modern expansion of the urban into the rural. There are signs of new developments and paradigm shifts but these have to be strengthened to lay the ground for rural-urban resilience.

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Volume 23B includes two chapters covering problems and implementations of solutions in e-services adoption processes in developing nations. The first documents the unequal access and ICT usage, which is known as digital divide, to be one of the major obstacles to the implementation of e-government systems. This research investigates the digital divide and its direct impact on e-government system success of local governments in Indonesia as well as indirect impact through the mediation role of trust. To achieve a comprehensive understanding of digital divide, this study introduced a new type of digital divide, the innovativeness divide. It provides details for successful policy formulation to improve e-government readiness. The second explores what needs to be done to enable consumers to adopt e-services by airlines in developing nations. It includes new theory and empirical evidence from both qualitative and quantitative studies in response to this issue. Exciting and useful chapters for executives and researchers seeking knowledge and theory of how to influence e-service adoptions in developing nations!

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All libraries have patrons and staff members with disabilities, making equitable service a priority for these organizations as they provide diverse services to their entire communities. Although rapid technological changes in recent years have offered challenges to libraries, these same technologies provide opportunities to embrace the concept of accessible library services and create innovative new services for patrons with disabilities. Accessibility for Persons with Disabilities and the Inclusive Future of Libraries, edited by Brian Wentz, Paul T. Jaeger, and John Carlo Bertot, focuses on the issues at the intersection of disability, accessibility, inclusion and libraries. The chapters in this volume provide best practices and innovative ideas to share amongst libraries, explore the roles that internet and communication technologies play in the context of inclusive libraries, illuminate the important contributions of libraries in promoting social inclusion of and social justice for people with disabilities, and help libraries to better articulate their contributions in these areas as they engage with disability groups, funders, policymakers, and other parts of their communities.

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The book is divided into four parts: (1) foundations of qualitative research methods consisting of a chapter summarizing the various qualitative paradigms and a research methods chapter illuminating various design features such as data collection and analysis, qualitative standards and ethics; (2) frequently used qualitative methods in the study of leadership designs; (3) underutilized qualitative methods; (4) three commissioned empirical studies illustrating content analysis, narrative analysis, and mixed methods study using content analysis and case study. The book also includes a chapter on the use non-textual, image-based sources of data for qualitative leadership research. Each of the methods chapters contains a number of leadership studies that have employed a given method such as case study, interviewing or phenomenology.The book is intended for students of leadership ranging from graduate students to seasoned leadership scholars. It was written with leadership practitioners in mind who wish to broaden their understanding of new developments in leadership research.

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To challenge gender discrimination and to secure the world's prosperity and peace, we urgently need pro-girls and pro-women policies in the contemporary, globally developing world. Such policies could mark an era of building greater gender equality across the world by sheltering domains of women's well-being that are shown to decline. These needs can be best summarized by Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations in 2005: "When women are fully involved, the benefits can be seen immediately: families are healthier, they are better fed, their income, savings and reinvestment go up. And what is true for families is true of communities and, eventually, of whole countries." The desperately needed gender equality would honor women's place in the world, would greatly honor each country's political constituencies and enrich democratic institutions. This volume of Research in Political Sociology addresses a broad range of gender equality issues from women's status and opportunities at work, education, health, political participation, community involvement and global migration; from a vast domain of countries in Europe, America, Australia, Asia and Africa.

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This latest volume of Progress in International Business Research explores novel ways in which international business is organized. Contributions advance our understanding and stretch our thinking about new organizational and geographic structures in MNCs, and other organizational forms across borders and geographies. Authors ask challenging questions: will the traditional MNC as we know it be replaced by other dominant designs, and what new forms of global organizing can we expect in the future? What do contemporary digital and technological developments, e.g. social media, virtual worlds, and cloud services, imply for the international organization of work, communication, and management practices?

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This volume provides a unique sociological focus on education, social factors and health beliefs in health and health care, including a review of the literature to date. Beliefs and health beliefs are considered, including one study evaluating cross-national differences in public beliefs about the causes of health and the role of these beliefs in shaping attitudes to health policy. Another study focuses on the complexity and variation of health care system distrust across neighborhoods in one US city. The topic of education is addressed, including a focus on the importance of identification and intervention in low health literacy. Mental health issues are considered in the context of help-seeking, connections, transitions and utilization of care among adolescents. Social factors are reflected upon including race and ethnicity, literacy and socioeconomic status. Coverage also includes special and traditionally less visible populations, including the health of prisoners and carers of people with autism.

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It is becoming increasingly difficult to deny that human activity is a factor in global climate change. This special volume of REA facilitates readers to better understand the ways in which people around the world have adapted (or failed to adapt) culturally to changing economic conditions caused by climate change. It focuses on specific situations in particular locations, showcasing (and confirming) the strength and value of intensive ethnographic or archaeological "investigation. The authors discuss: 1) How has climate change affected production, distribution, or consumption at the local level? 2) Are environmental conservation and economic development mutually exclusive? 3) What roles can public and private institutions play in successful adaptation? 4) What kinds of parallels can be drawn between current social situations and those in the past with regards to climate change?

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Dynamic factor models (DFM) constitute an active and growing area of research, both in econometrics, in macroeconomics, and in finance. Many applications lie at the center of policy questions raised by the recent financial crises, such as the connections between yields on government debt, credit risk, inflation, and economic growth. This volume collects a key selection of up-to-date contributions that cover a wide range of issues in the context of dynamic factor modeling, such as specification, estimation, and application of DFMs. Examples include further developments in DFM for mixed-frequency data settings, extensions to time-varying parameters and structural breaks, for multi-level factors associated with subsets of variables, in factor augmented error correction models, and in many other related aspects. A number of contributions propose new estimation procedures for DFM, such as spectral expectation-maximization algorithms and Bayesian approaches. Numerous applications are discussed, including the dating of business cycles, implied volatility surfaces, professional forecaster survey data, and many more.

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