Search results for ""emerald publishing limited""

This volume serves to recognize the uniqueness of the moment; the number of new users of e-services worldwide will double during 2015-2018 (moving from 2 billion users mostly living in the developed nations to an additional 2 billion users mostly living in developing nations). This radical embrace of new e-service technologies will substantially improve the quality of lives for most residents globally. A profound happening occurring now! The new technologies combine rapidly delivering of a multitude of services at extremely low cost to adopters now having extremely low incomes relative to residents living in developed nations. Adoption of e-service among residents in developing nations ends the debate as to whether or not marketing to the "bottom of the pyramid" is possible. The more relevant issues focus on describing and explaining e-service adoption processes in developing nations. How are these processes being implemented? What obstacles had to be overcome in achieving these adoptions? How were these obstacles overcome? Read this volume for research providing useful answers to these questions.

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The advertising universe is changing rapidly. New communication technologies such as live streaming, gaming, social media and social networking sites, online brand communities and blogs have given advertisers new platforms to communicate and promote their messages. Two remarkable phenomena are apparent: interactivity in online communication; and integration of editorial and commercial content - or the combination of both of these. Academic research is increasingly focusing upon these new techniques and formats, how they work, and how consumers are affected by or respond to them. This book makes an important contribution to the field of advertising in bringing together state-of-the-art insights into new advertising formats and how they work. Split into three sections: "The Changing Advertising Universe", "Advertising in a Digital Connected World" and "Hidden but Paid for: Branded Content" the book provides conceptual overviews, discusses recent academic literature, reports new research work, and develops viewpoints on the key issues. Together, it provides a valuable overview of insights into modern advertising practice for advertising academics and practitioners alike.

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New technologies, new office concepts and new working environments are all big concepts, and we are just at the start of understanding the impact of these global trends on shaping our behaviors at work. This book describes and analyses the trends known as 'New Ways of Working' primarily addressing the behavioral side of NWW practices as many researchers and practitioners claim the success of NWW is not in IT, nor in facilities, but in behavior. We have to learn and to adapt to the new possibilities of collaboration at a distance. Our managers have to learn and to show new leadership behaviors in order to get the most out of it. And we have to learn how to build organizations that can easily absorb these new practices. Therefore, we present some new data on the use of NWW practices in the Dutch case as one of the leading countries in these global trends, concentrating on 4 HR-related themes: (1) trust, social cohesion and diversity, (2) leadership, (3) teamwork and (4) innovative work behavior. We show that NWW-practices entail much more than just home-based work or telework for a few people. It is changing everyone's work anytime, anyplace, anyhow.

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This special issue of Studies in Law, Politics, and Society examines the relationship between law and disasters. The papers come from members of the Collaborative Research Network on the Jurisprudence of Disasters within the Law and Society Association. This network was formed in 2012 at a conference held by the International Institute for the Sociology of Law, titled "Workshop on Disasters and Sociolegal Studies." The volume addresses the 'myths' of contemporary disaster law and policy, such as that of society's "invincibility". The papers examine specific cases such as the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, bushfire management in Australia and wildfire prevention in the Mediterranean, as well as providing broader analysis and comment on global disaster law and policy.

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This volume will document the state-of the-science (and practice) on what contributes to effective team cohesion in complex teams. The volume will contain recent developments on theory-building, methodology and the practice of team cohesion.

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The book examines ongoing dynamics within the organizational fields of health and higher education, with a focus on collective (public universities and hospitals) and individual (professionals) actors, structures, processes and institutional logics. The fact that universities and hospitals share a number of important characteristics, both being hybrid organizations, professional bureaucracies, and operating within highly institutionalised environments, they are also characterised by their distinctive features such as the importance attributed to scientific autonomy and prestige (universities) and the needs and expectations of users and funders (hospitals). The volume brings together two relatively distinct scholarly traditions within the social sciences, namely, scholars - sociologists, educationalists, economists, political scientists and public administration researchers, etc. - involved with the study of change dynamics within the fields of health care and higher education in Europe and beyond. The authors resort to a variety of theoretical and conceptual perspectives emanating from the studies of organizational fields more generally and neo-institutionalism in particular.

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In recent years, under the impression and the burden of globalization and neoliberalism, debates about the relationship between the theory and practice of progress - including the theory and practice of social critique - have gone through an unexpected and momentous revival, renewal and rejuvenation. This is due in large part to the proliferation of manifest crises in the early years of the twenty-first century. The terrorist attacks in September of 2001, the financial crisis of 2008 that spawned the Great Recession, the Euro crisis that began in fall 2010 - these events provided glimpses of the existing system of political economy, and opportunities to begin to grasp and reveal the ongoing reconstruction of business-labor-government relations in the early 21st century. Yet, in a variety of ways, the notions that theories and practices of rigorous social critique in and of modern societies could become outdated, or that they were based on a categorical misunderstanding of the nature of social, economic, political and cultural life in the modern world, were symptomatic of an ongoing reconfiguration of the system of political economy itself.

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Volume 26 of Advances in International Marketing is devoted to a set of papers that attempt to develop new knowledge or refine the existing knowledge to account for the emerging international marketing issues in a fast changing world. These include topics such as dynamic capabilities of international marketers, entrepreneurial orientation, rise of emerging markets MNCs, cultural and institutional distances, organizational learning and knowledge transfer in MNCs, and international marketing strategies in fast changing environments. Collectively, the papers in Volume 26 shed significant light on many emerging issues and form a solid foundation for future research.

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International trade agreements are central to food security. The links between trade and the four dimensions in food security (availability, access, utilization, and stability) are examined. Freer trade in agricultural products provides additional food security. This is bolstered by factors such as increasing the use of GMOs, reducing food waste, and increasing investment in research and development. Also important is the ability of poor people to obtain food in the presence of transportation bottlenecks. Since low-income households spend most of their money on food, policy makers need to be aware of the harm caused by high and volatile food prices. Thus, food security and poverty are very much linked. We provide an understanding of the meaning and measurement of food security and the impacts of government policies in poverty alleviation. In terms of investment in research and development, even with increased productivity, problems attached to food security will remain unless there are significant changes in global income distribution. Global food shortages are due more to the lack of purchasing power rather than lack of food supplies, with the food gap continuing to widen.

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This volume examines the diverse ways in which universities and colleges around the world are partnering and collaborating with other institutions to fulfil their missions and visions. University partnerships not only include collaborations between universities but also university-school (basic education) collaborative partnerships to improve local school systems. The increasing pressures to remove access and participation barriers, and to mitigate practices that restrict the free flow of education across borders, have created a growing global space for educational services of all types. As a result, traditional institutional boundaries have expanded to better respond to the increasing pressures placed on them by the growing demand for higher education services. The boundaries between educational institutions and other entities such as government, business, and non-profit organizations have become more fluid which has resulted in increased involvement by institutions, faculty, and students in activities outside the traditional boundaries of the classroom. This edited volume will specifically explore university partnerships for community and school system development.

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The "cognitive foundations" of strategy have received increased attention in recent years. The last decade has witnessed a dramatic rise in empirical studies that seek to document the role of cognition in strategic outcomes, and in theoretical work that seeks to systematize this relationship. Drawing on psychological foundations in general, and on cognitive representation, framing, and categories in particular, this research has made significant progress, yet remains in a pre-paradigmatic phase where polysemy and terminological variety are still the norm.This volume has two goals. First, it intends to attract a representative sample of the most significant empirical and theoretical developments in the field of cognition and strategy. Second, it intends to take stock of these developments by proposing a preliminary synthesis of the disparate advances in this field.

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How do students with learning disabilities or emotional and behavioral disorders fare in adulthood? Are their rates of employment, graduation from post-secondary schools, living independently similar to their non-disabled peers? What can schools and communities do to teach and support youth and young adults with learning disabilities or emotional and behavioral disorders? This Transition of Youth and Young Adult volume presents eminent scholars discussing critical and timely topics related to the transition of youth and young adults with learning disabilities and emotional and behavioral disorders and provides a comprehensive selection of chapters that address variables, issues, practices, and outcomes related to the broad topic of transition.

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Asian Leadership in Policy and Governance examines contemporary challenges facing public leaders in Asia, providing insight into leadership processes and contexts past practices affecting effective governance and policy leadership. The book provides a broad range of insightful and detailed cases of international and domestic interest in East and Southeast Asia, and is relevant to all disciplines concerned with politics, public governance and public affairs. The cases cover such topics as regional development and integration, transnational migration, and domestic topics of economic, political and educational development. The volume is informed by modern notions of leadership which include governance in a polycentric world (including civil society), the rise of a new generation, regionally and globally connected problems, expectations for increased integrity, transparency and effectiveness from its leaders, and enduring expectations that leaders and nations meet their populace's needs for health, prosperity and security. Such a focus on Asian leadership in modern context makes this book timely and interesting.

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Good business needs a peaceful and just world in which to operate and prosper. Likewise, peace thrives in a healthy economic environment. However, many companies - either directly or indirectly - are involved in the arms race and in a battle to exploit and control scarce resources. As a result of the ambiguous power of business, a timely reflection on its impact on war and peace is needed as well as a conscious pro-peace commitment. Business, Ethics and Peace gathers a selection of papers presented at the International SPES Conference Business for Peace, Strategies for Hope at Ypres, April 10 - 12, 2014. Among the many initiatives commemorating the centennial of World War I, this project focuses on the ethical need to prevent the next conflict. It interprets and presents peace as a holistic and evolving concept, defining the need for an ethical charter of human rights and responsibilities. The papers illustrate the impact of religion in peace management and present solutions and practices for corporate peace-building.

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Volume 13 relaunches the book series after a 9-year hiatus and addresses new directions in the field of educational ethnography. The authors in the book share methodological similarities, but their applications, contexts, treatments, and contributions to the field as evidenced here are unique and vary considerably. The diversity of views and perspectives of ethnographic theory and method in educational settings are on full display, from the street to urban and suburban classrooms and to college settings, where gender, race, class, and power dynamics impact learners, teachers, parents, and communities. Taken together, the chapters reinvigorate and redirect a new set of possibilities and opportunities in ethnographic research, while highlighting shifts, problems and new directions for the field.

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Between 1990 and 2010, the English language learner (ELL) population in U.S. schools grew by 80 percent. While the highest concentration of English language learners, now more commonly referred to as emergent bilinguals (EBLs) remains in the traditional immigrant destination states of California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, and New Jersey, in all 50 states there are growing numbers of emergent bilinguals. Interest in these learners has encouraged research and publications, but most of this research has centered on the students themselves and the politics surrounding their education. Publications featuring the research of teacher educators preparing teachers to work with EBLs in schools are much needed. Teacher educators must know how to help inservice teachers provide effective instruction to the increasing number of linguistically diverse students in the schools.

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"The mission of Research Methodology in Strategy and Management is "to provide a forum for critique, commentary, and discussion about key methodology issues in the strategic management field" because "strategic management relies on an array of complex methods drawn from various allied disciplines to examine how managers attempt to lead their firms toward success." This tenth volume was commissioned following the Academy of Management Global Conference in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2013. Reflecting a diversity of Africa-born authors in the mainland and diaspora, as well as non-Africans whose research focus on Africa, it offers a collection of high impact research that makes a major contribution in advancing management education and knowledge in Africa."

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"The latest volume in the Advances in International Marketing series is a fresh addition to the international marketing literature, expanding the current knowledge in several significant ways. Divided in to two sections, the first part of Vol. 25 addresses important issues concerning entrepreneurship in the international market. Pulling together papers authored by well-known scholars they look at issues such as born-global firms' evolution, market orientation, alliance capabilities, customer orientation, and performance in the global market. Collectively, these papers shed significant new light on the role of entrepreneurship in born-global firms and exporting firms. The second part of Entrepreneurship in International Marketing brings together a collection of papers dealing with contemporary international marketing issues, including the conceptual domain of international marketing, global brands and luxury brands in emerging markets, international retail supply chains, and exit behaviour of FDI firms."

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Volume 15 of "Sociological Studies of Children and Youth" investigates the interactional procedures used by children and young people as disputes arise in varying contexts of their everyday life. Disputes are a topic of angst and anxiety for children, young people and adults alike, and yet are important times for interactional matters to be addressed. A particular intention of the book is its ethnomethodological focus, bringing a fine-grained analysis and understanding to disputes and related interactional matters. Such analysis highlights the in situ competency of children and young people as they manage their social relationships and disputes to offer insight into how children arrange their social lives within the context of school, home, neighbourhood, correctional, club and after school settings. This volume offers a contemporary understanding of the relational matters of children's peer cultures to better understand and address the complex nature of children and young people's everyday lives in today's society. Papers include: when verbal disputes get physical; conditional threats in young children's peer interaction; and young children's disputes during computer game playing.

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Today’s schools compartmentalize children and curriculum. Standardization dictates curricular content and assessment, narrowing the focus of classrooms and schools that serve diverse populations from varied geographical backgrounds. Against the backdrop of the western-derived, institutional framework of schooling are cultural ways of knowing that are place-based, holistic, experiential, and connected to oral storytelling. In the current movement toward acknowledging and understanding cultural knowledge, teacher education programs need to work in collaboration with cultural communities, honoring traditions and epistemologies and seeking to revitalize and sustain (Paris, 2012) language and culture. Such initiatives inform the big picture of educational reform and enrich mainstream university teacher education programs. This book highlights the journeys, challenges and unfolding stories of transformation that reside within university/community/school partnerships focused on cultural and linguistic revitalization through schooling.

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Since the beginning of the modern age, studies of ongoing transformations of social life, human sociality, and social relations and institutions have been at the forefront of social theory, alongside changes in politics, culture, and economy - and links between all of the above. In the twenty-first century, the speed at which these transformations have been occurring has accelerated precipitously, and it is impossible to predict what human civilization will look and exist like in a few decades. The essays included in this volume illuminate mediations of the individual-society relationship from a variety of angles, both explicitly and implicitly. They highlight the need to consider the consequences of choices made by collective decision-makers, politicians and leaders of organizations; as well as from processes that sustain the functioning and stability of individual nation-states and global society, for better or worse, and to varying degrees. They represent diverse traditions of social theorizing, including sociological and critical theory, analytically as well as normatively oriented theory, and examine the impact of transformations on several dimensions of societal life today

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This volume contains new important research on worker well-being. Topics include employment contracts, compensation schemes, worker productivity, retirement decisions, the demographic transition, time allocation, and child labor. Among the questions answered are: How important is incentive pay in increasing worker productivity? Does monitoring productivity affect a worker's earnings trajectory? How is the decision to retire different in two-earner families compared to one-earner families? How did the evolution of the family affect men's and women's proclivities to work? Do welfare subsidies encourage recipients to spend additional productive time with their children? Can property titles (land reform) affect child labor in less developed country settings?

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In the first section, broad issues associated with assessment for, of, and in learning in inclusive classrooms; measuring the implementation of inclusive policy; identifying and removing barriers to inclusion; resourcing and financing; and, evaluating effective teacher preparation for inclusion provide the structure for discussion. The second section commences with a current and in-depth review of the literature on the development of international indicators for measuring inclusive education. Examples of some of the models presently employed to frame an evaluation of inclusive practice are studied. These provide illustrations of effective measurement strategies to evaluate inclusive educational practice at all levels of administration, from governments to classrooms, and ways to recognize the positive outcomes attained by all involved.

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Around the globe, families are often faced with a variety of health issues, often as a result of social, political, religious, and economic forces. Health issues affect both individual family members and the family unit as a whole, as well as impacting family relationships and structures. Illnesses, injuries, and health problems can strike at any time, and can have long-lasting consequences for individuals and their families. This multidisciplinary volume addresses the impact health issues have on individual family members and how this affects their family relationships. The chapters cover a wide range of health related topics including illness in adults and children, long term illness, mental health, and international perspectives. Through the use of a wide variety of methodological and theoretical perspectives, the family scholars in this volume provide considerable insight into the ways in which families and their members are affected by health, as well as how they adapt to and cope with health-related dilemmas.

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Advances in Taxation publishes relevant, quality manuscripts addressing the issues of federal, state, local and international taxation including tax compliance, tax planning, and tax policy issues among others. The series uses a wide variety of research methods, including analytical modelling, archival, experimental, survey, descriptive, and legal approaches to address the problems and issues associated with taxation. Volume 21 of Advances in Taxation continues this broad approach to taxation, looking at taxpayer compliance, state tax issues and tax policy decisions, amongst others.

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The volume provides a comprehensive discussion of special education from across the globe. The volume includes chapters from major countries such as United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Russia and Japan as well as countries such as Nigeria, Israel and Pakistan. Discussions related to these countries will include information on origins of special education specific to that country, prevalence and incidence rates, trends in legislation and litigation, educational interventions, working with families, teacher training, a perspective on the progress of special education, and challenges that remain.

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This book will bring a state of the art overview of the research done in sustainable logistics. It will be structured along the four A's of sustainable logistics:- 1 Awareness: it is important that companies and policy makers are aware of the effects of their activities and policies. New methods to estimate the effects of the logistic activities and the change towards more sustainable ways will be covered. 2 Avoidance: transport can be avoided by a better collaboration between actors (vertically and horizontally. Papers covering this topic will be introduced here. 3 Acting and shifting the goods to more environmental friendly modes or to the non peak hours. 4 Anticipation of new technologies: the use of more environmental friendly vehicles (electric,.LNG,..) within the logistic chain.

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Each year, the Fellows of the Academy of International Business (AIB) spot and elect new talents to join them and expand research in international business. Only 21 Fellows were elected between 2008 and 2012. Ten of them have contributed chapters to this volume, the first of two that will feature unique insights from the AIB's best and brightest. Each chapter addresses the important questions facing researchers today and answers them in three distinct cultural, theoretical, and managerial contexts.

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This volume of Review of Marketing Research (RMR) focuses on Shopper Marketing and the Role of In-Store Marketing. The chapters draw from academic research as well as collaborations with major retailers and industry practitioners. Over the past several decades there has been research into how marketing actions influence how shoppers respond to offers. Yet, with the ever-shifting landscape due to influences such as mobile devices, the internet, and social media, there is an increasing need to understand how marketing actions influence shoppers in their path to purchase. Although there are many path to purchase points which are important to understand, this edition of RMR is devoted to the topic of in-store marketing actions to understand their impact on shopper reactions to offers. The chapters highlight new technologies (e.g., mobile, digital displays) and information aids (e.g., nutrition scores, floor signage) being used by leading retailers to influence the path to purchase. In addition, new research technologies (e.g., eye-tracking, heat maps, in-store experiments) and models that are being used to assess the effectiveness of the path to purchase tactics are discussed.

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This volume analyses several recent evolutions in global defence activities. Since the 1990s the industry has gradually repositioned because of geostrategic transformations, spatial reorganisation, budgetary trends, and evolutions within the production of defence per se, which have disrupted its economic and social fabric. These changes widen the scope of industrial activities and modify the organization of relations between armed forces, firms and local economies as well as society. They deeply affect the footprints of defence in several dimensions and its impacts on local communities, public/private boundaries and evolving requirements of armed forces. This volume analyses key features of recent and ongoing transformations of defence issues, from four perspectives. The first section considers those factors which are redefining the boundaries of defence, with a focus on defence economics; part two focuses on the spatial footprint of defence and its transformations and analyses the insertion of defence activities within urban landscapes; the third part analyses how armed forces manage their human resources; and the final section considers the international landscape of defence.

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In The Beautiful Prison incarcerated Americans and prison critics seek to imagine the prison as something better than a machinery of suffering. From personal testimony to theoretical meditation these writers explore and confront the practical and cultural limits the prison places on its transformation into a socially constructive institution. Long-term prisoner Kenneth E. Hartman engages the reader in his struggle to find beauty inside the increasingly bleak and sterile confines of the California Department of Corrections. Chuck Jackson releases his imagination on Houston's notorious Harris County Jail to envision a jailhouse transformed into a university, community, and arts center. Between the grip of the CDC and utopian vision, Leder, Ginsburg, Pinkert, and Brown report on their practical and theoretical work to understand what the prison has been and might be. The Beautiful Prison suggests that any passage from 'ugly prisons' into institutions serving the greater good will only be possible when the will and intellectual capital of their inhabitants are met by free-world critics ready to challenge assumptions of the prison acting solely as an apparatus of punishment.

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The new social media build on and further complicate all of the issues and processes of symbolic interaction. This volume builds on and expands the existing symbolic interactionist perspective to include the study of social interaction made possible by the use of new social media. This special issue demonstrates the interface between willful social interaction and structured technological features - how social media are defined by social interactions, as well as how social interactions are dictated by the use of social media.

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The worldwide shift towards a knowledge society and information based economy requires educational policy makers to re-evaluate their understanding of the knowledge and skills students need in order to achieve national development goals. This shift has influenced curriculum development, teacher preparation, and the role of formal schooling in creating lifelong learners and an educational culture, which reflects both national development interests and global norms. The Arabian Gulf countries, which largely comprise the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member countries, include Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Most of these Gulf countries have embarked on bold national experiments to pilot technology and teaching in their schools as a way to transition to knowledge societies. Their national interests and expectations have increasingly focused on the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in education and both the regional and global context in which Gulf societies, economies, and political systems operate.

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This text provides rich discussions of learning processes and subsequent pedagogical approaches to the implementation of these new theories in practice. Section One emphasizes how students learn, retain, and synthesize new information from print and digital literacies using cognitive and social psychology lenses. Section Two presents models for deep, contextualized learning needed to obtain content mastery. Section Three focuses on revised learning, or adjusting previously held misconceptions within educational development. This text not only contributes substantially to understanding the mental constructs involved in the reading and writing process but also offers novel perspectives on how to optimize instruction using current theoretical lenses to bolster literacy achievement. Theoretical Models of Literacy Development serves as an invaluable resource for researchers, teacher educators, curriculum directors, and graduate students in their efforts to help individuals learn to read and understand information in the global information age.

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Child Labour in Global Society is a critical response to the modern educational regime, compulsory schooling and the 'slavery industry' in a globalizing world; to evolving and exploitative notions of 'slavery'; to definitions of 'slavery' in international law; to approaches to 'educational labour', including in international human rights law; and to cultural, common-sense and professional perspectives on 'slavery' and 'educational labour', in the light of which it is arguable that children's 'slave labour' in modern and modernizing societies is grossly under-estimated and otherwise greatly, if conveniently, misrepresented.

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The onset of global concerns about environmental risks, climate change and threats to the planet from industry have focused the minds of a generation. Throughout the world, new movements are emerging in an attempt to challenge those who would put profits before the planet. This volume brings together global contributions that represent the cutting edge of research in the area of global environmental movements. Contributions include chapters on the spatial impacts of environmental groups in Israel, the work of Greenpeace in Brazil, environmental activism in Ireland, animal rights and anti-hunt activism in Malta, the global de-growth movement, environmental movement mobilization in China, and anti-pollution activism in India. The scope and breath of this research indicates the emergence of both a global grassroots environmental mobilization in addition to analysis and documentation of these responses by researchers world-wide. With increased threats from climatic change and ecological degradation being highlighted as a threat to much of the world's population in the coming century, this activism and ensuing research becomes all the more significant.

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This volume includes papers related to issues of technology, communication, health disparities and government options in health and health care services. It fills an existing gap by providing a clear sociological overview and focus on these topics. Technology is considered from the perspectives of providing healthcare equity, health disparities and the impact on doctor-patient relationships. The topic of communication is addressed in the format of public health messages and the use of internet chat rooms for discussions about health care services. Government roles and responsibilities are reflected upon in terms of health promotion, marketing and sales of health-related products and improving long-term care programs. Particular mention is made to learning lessons from the experiences and perspectives of other countries. Finally, health disparities are considered in socioeconomic terms, with particular reference to aging, depression, measures of health and healthcare in rural locations.

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Advances in Management Accounting publishes well-developed articles on a variety of current topics in management accounting that are relevant to researchers in both practice and academe. As one of the premier management accounting research journals, Advances in Management Accounting is well poised to meet the needs of management accounting scholars. Volume 23 of Advances in Management Accounting features articles on: The Sociological Approaches of Organizational Learning and Applications to Process Innovations of Management Accounting Systems; How Framed Information and Justification Impact Capital Budgeting Decisions; Procedural Justice and Information Sharing During The Budgeting Process; and The Impact of Production Variance Presentation Format on Employees' Decisions.

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Mergers and acquisitions are one of the cornerstones of firm growth, and have attracted considerable attention from the scholarly research community in the last three decades. Several studies have concluded that M&A transactions do not result in better performance, and can even erode the acquiring firm's shareholder value to produce highly volatile market returns. Others have identified reasons for such inefficiencies. However, very little attention has been given to business evaluation process as an influencing factor. This thirtieth volume in the acclaimed International Business & Management series investigates how the processes involved in the evaluation of a target firm influence the outcome of M&As. Co-authored by international business expert Pervez Ghauri, it highlights the processes that should be followed to evaluate potential acquisition targets, and how a proper evaluation can influence the M&A performance. It encourages greater reliance on the strength and independence of the business evaluation process, and brings clarity in understanding the relationship between different components of business evaluation.

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Research on Economic Inequality, Volume 22 begins with papers of widespread interest on the impact of the Great Recession. The first paper addresses the impact of "asset meltdown" on the wealth of the US middle class, with disparate racial and ethnic impacts. The second studies poverty and inequality in the US in the aftermath of the Great Recession. The next topic is on the evolution of poverty and inequality in the world. One paper proposes a new methodology to measure global poverty and inequality, while the second analyzes the importance of considering not only the desperately poor but also those just above the subsistence level. Great interest for inequality researchers lies on the use of wealth data. Two approaches to this issue are presented. Firstly, several papers study wealth inequality directly. Secondly, a paper uses annuitized wealth data to augment the income measure of economic well-being. An emerging field in the study of economic well-being is the use of self-reported status and perceptions data. Three papers employ this type of data, investigating happiness inequality, perception of income inequality, and the existence of a "Great Gatsby Curve" for job mobility.

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The history of modern Socially Responsible Investment began with the Apartheid crisis in South Africa in the 1970s. When asked if divestment played a role in ending South African Apartheid, Nelson Mandela answered "undoubtedly". But what about SRI in the 21st century, does it make a difference for society? The first part of this book explores the innovative approach of socially responsible investors in building engagement approaches, mobilizing networks, developing new products, and proposing alternative models showing the potential to create change. The second part interrogates the limits of SRI in making a difference. It questions the potential of SRI to create change but also proposes ways to increase societal impacts of SRI. The last section of the volume addresses the boarder issues of values and governance and shows how they are central in the SRI discussion. The book takes a critical but constructive stance on SRI with the objective of contributing to the capacity and ability of SRI to make a difference. Little research has been undertaken on the societal impacts of SRI. With this book we contribute to this debate, pushing the boundaries of SRI even further.

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Disability can be either an ascribed status or an achieved status and its combination with other statuses will affect the person's social experiences. The term intersectionality has been used most often to discuss the ways in which the dual and simultaneous statuses of 'black' and "female' exist as facets of social structure and culture, interact in both those spheres, and affect individuals in ways which neither one does separately. Little attention has been paid to disability in this context, despite the many parallels to race and gender. This volume challenges critical thinking about the interrelationships with disability. It questions if the concepts and methods of intersectionality can be applied to disability at all or if they can be applied in the same way. The authors debate whether different conception of intersectionality would fit the disability context better and if there are methodologies which could be used to examine it. A variety of empirical evidence about situations in which disability intersects with other roles are also examined.

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"Governance is about managing networks". This quote from political scientist Rod A.W. Rhodes pioneered a whole series of governance studies in different disciplines. Accordingly, destination governance describes the collective management of tourism destinations. Promoting collective action in tourism destinations means dealing with a myriad of different actors and applying various instruments. Probably the most basic requirement is to take into account the peculiarities of every single destination. Therefore, this book approaches the issue of contemporary destination governance from a case study point of view focusing on 16 destinations. In contrast to other publications in the field of destination governance, the book concentrates on the discussion of cases and the peculiarities of destinations which influence the destination governance. It demonstrates how different theories from the fields of organizational studies, strategic management, tourism research and sociology can enlighten our understanding of particular real-world situations. Last but not least the bottom-up approach supports practitioners and students by making otherwise complex theories accessible to a broader audience.

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This volume marks the 30th anniversary of the Advances in Group Processes Series. Publishing 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, exchange, justice, influence, decision-making, intergroup relations and social networks. Previous contributors have included scholars from diverse fields including sociology, psychology, political science, philosophy, computer science, mathematics and organizational behaviour.

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Countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), most of them former components of the communist bloc, have suffered diverse influences over time. Historically, the advent of communism in the 1950s has stopped the economic and political development of these countries. Its fall during the late 1980s and early 1990s triggered severe changes in the economic and social environment, with profound consequences on the countries' accounting and business models. The accounting regulatory process of these countries has mostly been a public one, although some countries also involved private sector and professional bodies. With economic and political reforms these countries are now reforming their accounting systems with for example the adoption of International Accounting Standards/International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Additionally, the CEE countries' political will to join the European Union compelled the regulators to ensure a high level of harmonization with the European Directives. This volume present theoretical and empirical papers that will further our understanding of accounting issues in CEE countries.

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This volume covers advances that have occurred in the thirty year existence of the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching (ISATT), the organization that helped transition the study of teacher thinking to the study of teachers and teaching in all of its complexities. This evolution meant that teachers and the act of teaching are no longer exclusively studied from the outside, but from the inside as well. The chapters capture an international paradigm shift that set the course of teaching and teacher education research. The origins of the movement are traced, work of researchers who contributed to the movement is featured, the spread of the movement into new regions is followed, and the future of the international research community that resulted is imagined. Thirteen section editors and the two main editors present the volume by themes, with work from several regions covered in each theme area. Each sub-section includes (1) a representative sample of research conducted historically on a particular topic; (2) a review of what developments have occurred in the interim; and (3) contemporary piece/s of scholarship.

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The research featured in this volume is devoted to understanding the competitive and collaborative challenges that firms face as they manage interactions with different actors in dynamic environments, in what are coming to be referred to as business or innovation 'ecosystems'. Rapid technological change, globalization, and recent financial turbulence have brought us to a point where managers are painfully aware that 'no man [or firm] is an island.' Success in business, in both the profit and non-profit sectors, increasingly relies upon collaboration with upstream suppliers, alliance partners, and downstream complementors. This volume presents new findings of how innovation and value are created in collaborative networks, specifically 'ecosystem analysis' and the unique roles of individual actors within this system

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This issue focuses on "radical interactionism," which recent emergence as an alternative perspective to conventional symbolic interactionism has sparked fierce debate in both North America and Europe. Lonnie Athens discusses the four fundamental differences between radical and conventional symbolic interactionism. The prominent scholars compare the relative insights offered not only between radical interactionism and symbolic interactionism, but between radical interactionism and feminism, dramaturgy, critical studies, and neo-pragmatism. Without exception, they found the radical interactionism revealed new and formidable insights that improved our general understanding of human group life and critical problems that arise during it. While some contributors believe that radical interactionism marks the development of a new and more vibrant form of interactionism which in due time will replace its much older and more conservative cousin, others believe that it only signals the need for traditional interactionists to finally start making some much-needed modifications in symbolic interactionism if they wish it to remain a viable sociological perspective in the 21st century.

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