Amazing and inspiring business journeys of real people in Hertfordshire, United Kingdom! Their struggles, what motivated them and how they kept on going and believed in their dreams. There are some fantastic business gems in this book that you do not want to miss. "They believed they could, so they did!"

Megaproject Leaders brings together 18 prominent academics who interviewed 16 great megaproject leaders originating from 10 different countries. Based on a reflective methodological approach, these chapters investigate the managing of megaprojects from a human perspective, identify new trends in the managing of megaprojects and identify lessons learned from the personal views of the interviewees. The novel ideas presented will appeal to academics, practitioners and university students.

This authoritative Handbook compiles a diverse set of contributions on digital entrepreneurship, providing an in-depth study of how digital entrepreneurship research has evolved over the years, and where it stands today. Offering a snapshot of the major themes in digital entrepreneurship research, the Handbook highlights a wide range of both practice-engaged and practice-relevant works and explores the fundamental concepts and common themes in the field. Chapters examine key topics including the digital platform economy, the digitalization of work, the blockchain economy, and the rural-urban digital divide. The Handbook further analyzes the history and theory of digital entrepreneurship, while also sparking ideas for future research through a consideration of emerging phenomena and new ways to approach research in this broad area of study. Discussing a diverse set of questions, contexts, theories, and methods, this Handbook will be a key resource for researchers and advanced students with a particular interest in entrepreneurship, innovation, technology management, and digital business models. Managers and entrepreneurs will also find the discussion of digital entrepreneurship in relation to financing, social issues, and technology beneficial.

Performance information is playing a bigger and bigger role in the public service environment. Governments worldwide increasingly realise that without reliable, useful performance information, no government or manager can plan for and monitor the success of programmes and projects. Managers must therefore be able to develop, implement and maintain a performance information system, based on the business cycles of the organisation, and internal auditors must have the knowledge to audit it. Performance information for managers and internal auditors sets out best practice based on the Framework for Managing Programme Performance Information and other relevant frameworks published by the South African government in its drive towards establishing a government-wide monitoring and evaluation system. The principles provided for internal auditing can serve as the basis for developing audit programmes. Performance information for managers and internal auditors is aimed at managers who are responsible for implementing a performance information system within government, and internal auditors who have to assist management in its role.

The scope and depth of family business research have been quickly expanding in the last two decades. The editors and contributors to this book present eight recent studies examining the impact of external or internal family conditions on the innovation, growth, and succession of family firms in Asia. By examining the influence of families on firm behaviors and decisions, researchers have been pushing the boundaries of this field. As researchers develop a better understanding of how families influence their businesses, the family conditions, including the properties and dynamics of families, have been found to play significant roles in the business decisions. In addition, globalization as a pressing issue has brought new opportunities and challenges to families and their businesses. This volume comprises diverse topics, including less commonly examined issues such as kinship, immigrant family enterprises, and family asset management. This book is a rich resource for researchers, students, and family business consultants.

Contracts form an integral part of strategic sourcing in modern supply chains. They bind people, customers, suppliers and organisations into a coherent working relationship whereby goods and services are exchanged in a mutually agreed framework. Contract management provides an introduction to the basic management principles of planning, organising, directing and control as an approach to managing contracts. Contract management explains the importance of managing the content of the contract as well as the contracting process so that unnecessary problems can be prevented and, as a result, important relationships can be maintained. The chapter on broad-based black economic empowerment has been removed from this edition as this is now well established, and new regulations in terms of the Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act have been introduced. South African and US case studies are included, which should give learners a broad insight into some practical problems that may occur in contracts. The late Gideon Nieman is was professor emeritus and former head of the Department of Business Management at the University of Pretoria. He worked for more than 20 years in senior positions in trade and industry before joining academia. He also presents presented short courses on contract management and procurement.

Elgar Research Agendas outline the future of research in a given area. Leading scholars are given the space to explore their subject in provocative ways, and map out the potential directions of travel. They are relevant but also visionary. Explaining why contemporary problematic phenomena require a more expansive understanding than what is allowed in conventional organizational studies scholarship, this forward-looking Research Agenda brings insights from recent feminist new materialisms and critical posthumanist theorizing into the field of organization studies. Marta B. Calas and Linda Smircich have assembled herein an international and transdisciplinary community of scholars, whose research in fertile transnational spaces demonstrates the differences this novel scholarship could make in the domain of organization studies. The book serves as a tool and means for questioning fundamental metatheoretical premises and knowledge production practices, focusing particularly on those which, unwittingly, may be contributing to issues of concern across the globe. Chapters further articulate which premises and practices may help in decentering the 'common sense' nature of the field, facilitating engagement with affirmative possibilities for a world that is straying further from conventions. Coining the phrase 'thinking-saying-doing-otherwise' as an ontological shift and a call to action, the book ultimately highlights the importance of transdisciplinary, transnational research collectivities for accomplishing necessary changes. Providing novel critical approaches by intersecting feminist new materialisms with organization studies, this dynamic Research Agenda will prove invaluable to early and more established scholars interested in future-oriented organization and management research and practices in business studies and the sociology of organizations.

Wouldn't charity governance be so much easier if it wasn't for all of your fellow trustees? Being knowledgeable and experienced as a trustee is important, but having the ability to interact effectively with your fellow board members, that is where good governance really starts. Get it wrong and, very quickly, you've got a battle on the board. Working in sustained harmony towards a common goal can be a tall order for many trustees. Debra Allcock Tyler's approach to this challenging subject is characteristically engaging as she adopts a different ABBA tune as the theme for each chapter. Frank and with real-life examples firmly to the fore, she mixes leadership theory with practical advice delivered straight from the shoulder. It includes: * Understanding the trustee role * Working with fellow trustees and the CEO * Compliance and regulation * Dealing with information and understanding the money * The psychology of decision-making * Managing risk and handling crisis So, if you are a trustee or about to become one, you will benefit from the insights and hard-won wisdom distilled in this book. If you want to be the dancing queen (or king) of good governance and avoid a waterloo for your charity, then this book is for you.

A clear and lively account of the machinery, innovation and personalities that have shaped the industry that provides the all-essential daily bread. Indispensible for anyone with an interest in industrial history. There is a wealth of literature on the traditional flour milling industry, much of it concerned with the charms of rural settings and ancient crafts, whereas the history of the dramatic changes in milling methods from the 1870s onwards has been somewhat neglected. Written by Glyn Jones, engineer and lecturer in technology, `The Millers' sets out to redress the balance and tells the story of the transformation of the flour milling industry by men of vision with enterprise and engineering skill, from the first experiments with roller mills before 1880 to the sleek, automated flour mills operating at the end of the twentieth century. It is a story of technological endeavour and industrial success. The innovations were revolutionary, with roller mills, purifiers and a variety of sifting and sorting machines replacing millstones and crude sieving equipment. Change was propelled by an increasing demand for white bread, and whiter flour could be produced by roller milling of hard foreign wheats, whereas traditional millstone methods were not suitable for the production of large quantities of branless flour. Henry Simon, who became the pioneering leader of the new field of milling engineering, installed his first roller plant in Manchester in 1878; by 1887 mills on the Simon system could produce enough flour to meet the requirements of 11 million people. The mass production of flour for our daily bread began in earnest. From 1904, the most forceful innovator among British millers was Joseph Rank, who commissioned Henry Simon Ltd to supply new plants at the main ports of Hull, London, Cardiff and Liverpool. The roles played by the other leading millers, many of which are still household names, are also included in this account. Despite the hugely impressive and far-reaching technological advances made by British millers and milling engineers, they have not received the credit they deserve. In truth, they replaced the traditional, basic form of the industry rapidly and effectively, and their inventions transformed milling in Britain and further afield. `The Millers' describes, in a clear and lively way, not only the changes in machinery and processing and the effects on the traditional industry, but the personalities who shaped the trade and the companies they ran, and the myths and legends which have surrounded them. Modern mills, rooted in British innovation and enterprise, are impressive in appearance and striking inside, with machinery that looks smart and is automatically controlled, processing wheat for a range of attractive foods and for the still essential daily bread.

Innovation for Entrepreneurs presents a powerful but easy to apply toolkit for innovation, based on Professors Meyer and Lee's decades of experience as company founders and innovators for corporations around the globe. This textbook includes guidance for developing new product and service ideas with genuine impact, building teams around these ideas, understanding customers' needs, translating these needs into compelling product and service designs, and creating initial prototypes. It also helps students learn how to scope and size target markets and position an innovation successfully relative to competitors. These methods are fundamental for any new, impactful venture. The textbook is a series of frameworks and methods that build upon one another to the final deliverable - an innovation project developed by student teams, solving problems for specific types of users and use cases. Each chapter introduces readers to entrepreneurs and their stories of innovation and venture development, across different sectors of the economy and regions of the world. Going to a core theme of the book, each of these entrepreneurs has tackled a societal-focused problem and created economic value for themselves and their investors. These are stories of inspiration and achievement - and they illustrate the major frameworks provided in the book. Each entrepreneur faced a problem or challenge solved by the methods presented in that chapter. The authors' own entrepreneurial and corporate innovation experiences then complement these examples with additional industry applications of the method. Then, each chapter concludes with exercises for students to apply their newfound knowledge to their innovation projects. The book's final chapter then shows students how to best integrate their work from each chapter into a compelling presentation. Innovation for Entrepreneurs is an essential book for all undergraduate students. Entrepreneurship students in business schools will find it addressing a missing link in many business school curriculums - how to design a distinctive new product or service. At the same time, the methods-based approach combined with its inspiring stories makes this book a great learning platform for engineering and science students thinking about starting their own ventures or working for others upon graduation. Mindful, purposeful innovation is the gift that we wish to share in this book, arming readers with practical, powerful methods. Our students have started many interesting, impactful companies, and with this, have gained the deeper satisfaction of using creativity and technology to help others.

Breakthroughs in science and technology increasingly happen outside of firms in informal interorganizational communities of innovators. The effort of a group on a specific topic across firms, expertise, and geography can function as an emergent organizational form, capable of great productivity. Using data from computer science, basic research, and management strategy to identify and study these intense clusters of innovators, or 'knowledge communities,' this book illuminates the new organizational logics that govern such collective success. The interplay between organizational boundaries and interorganizational collaboration reveals interesting and counterintuitive lessons about how science and technology work in practice. These insights fundamentally challenge the centrality of both firm boundaries and geographic clusters for innovation in favor of a decentralized network perspective. Academics seeking to understand innovation in science and technology, allocators of grants and research support, corporate R&D departments, policy makers and NGOs, venture capitalists, and management consultants will all benefit from this original and challenging work.

This book offers a unique framework to understand how public institutions and private investors can collaborate to sustain long-term investments (LTIs), with a specific focus on public private partnership for infrastructure, blended finance mechanisms, and impact investing. Offering a holistic approach to long-term investing, which encompasses both infrastructure and corporate innovation and sustainability strategies, chapters explore how collaborations can mobilize resources, overcome market failures, and maximize impacts. Furthermore, it provides a deeper understanding on LTIs, both in terms of the sustainable investment approaches that investors are progressively adopting, and in terms of the main domains of LTIs such as infrastructure and corporate investments in research and innovation, sustainability, and circularity. The book also highlights how LTIs are essential to ensure the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, which represent an institutionalization of the concept of public value. Public-Private Collaborations for Long-Term Investments will be critical reading for policymakers, investors, and managers working in the public and private sectors. The combination of cutting-edge insights and depth of knowledge rooted in the scientific literature will also be beneficial for scholars and students in the fields of public administration and management, infrastructure finance, and sustainability.

This critical book presents ways to improve the impact of corporate sustainability programs on the ecological and social systems that we rely upon. Integrating three decades of multidisciplinary empirical and conceptual research undertaken by three leading management scholars in three countries, this book addresses the current state of, and the prospects for, business to help create a truly sustainable society. Providing a balanced perspective, Salvaging Corporate Sustainability expertly charts the path from the promises of corporate sustainability, to where it has gone wrong, and on to where it needs to go from here. The authors conclude by outlining a research agenda for finding a working balance between free market and formal governance that can yield substantive corporate sustainability programs. Overall, this book will challenge readers to take a broader view of how we use the planet's limited resources and the ways in which corporations can work with their stakeholders and the government to address our global sustainability challenges. Offering new directions for uncovering better ways to increase sustainability through business, this book will be core reading for academics and students of business leadership, corporate social responsibility, corporate sustainability, and strategic management. It will also be useful for practitioners who oversee and implement sustainability practices, helping them to conceptualize how to approach their jobs.

A crisis means change. And for any business owner, change means opportunity.

There is nothing new about a crisis stalling or wiping out a business. The COVID-19 pandemic that has hit businesses globally does not feel any more or less devastating to the business owner than if their business was affected by the sudden loss of a dominant client, a trade war, burst water pipes halting operations, intransient employees or their product no longer being relevant to the market.

In Reset, Rebuild, Reignite, the second book from Pavlo Phitidis, his starting point is not how to avoid crises because some are inevitable. Instead, he shows how you can use any crisis to reset your business to get relevant, rebuild it to scale, and reignite it to accelerate growth by capitalising on the change and opportunities that any crisis brings with it.

Stories of business owners who have successfully turned crisis to their advantage are underpinned by Pavlo’s practical, action-oriented insights, tactics and strategies that will have you reading with a highlighter in hand, and will equip you to tackle any crisis that affects your business.