This volume comprises select proceedings of the International Conference on Humanizing Work and Work Environment organized by the Indian Society of Ergonomics (HWWE2019). The book presents research findings on different areas of ergonomics for developing appropriate tools and work environment considering capabilities and limitations of working people for maximum effectiveness on their performance. This volume will be of interest to academics, professionals and practitioners in the field of ergonomics.

It is almost impossible to keep up with the pace and direction in which business and technology are moving today.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. AUTOMATION. BLOCKCHAIN. BIG DATA. INTERNET OF THINGS. THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.

Who actually knows what any of these concepts mean for their business, much less how to integrate them? Things are moving at a faster pace than ever before and trying to keep up has become intimidating and overwhelming. It’s tempting to bury your head in the sand than try to make head or tail of it all. But none of the buzzwords actually matter! You don’t have to jump aboard every single change and adjustment in the market, or trade in your suit for a T-shirt, jeans and sneaker combo. If you have the right context, it’s a lot simpler to understand and use technological shifts as an opportunity to transform your business.

Tech Adjacent is about understanding the principles of tech and its pace, hearing the footsteps of where it might be going, knowing how disruption and innovation work tangibly and, most importantly, leveraging it for your individual exponential success. Innovation is contextual, so while Uber, Airbnb and Facebook are grandiose Silicon Valley success stories, they have little relevance in our own market. This book shares stories and case studies of African businesses, exposing who is getting disrupted as we speak and why, as well as how new companies are leading the next wave of growth. Mushambi Mutuma’s experience and expertise in both business and as a tech entrepreneur give real-life context to rapid change, unlocking future opportunities and offering tools to predict where your audience and industry are heading. He sells no big ideas, but genuinely shares his unique perspectives and know-how to help whoever he can in the process.

Tech Adjacent isn’t just another book on growing your business in 100 days, nor is it dry academic theory. It is the guidebook for not only surviving but excelling in a world of exponential growth. Whether you are a start-up entrepreneur or a corporate executive, this guide is a must for both present and future leaders.

From veteran Amazon reporter for The Wall Street Journal, The Everything War is the first untold, devastating exposé of Amazon's endless strategic greed, its pursuit of total domination, by any means necessary, and the growing efforts to stop it.

For over twenty years, Amazon was the quintessential American success story, whilst its “customer obsession” approach made it indelibly attractive to consumers across the globe. But the company was not benevolent; it operated\ in ways that ensured it stayed on top, coming to dominate over a dozen industries beyond retail, growing voraciously by abusing data, exploiting partners, copying competitors, and avoiding taxes—leveraging its power to extract whatever it could, at any cost and without much scrutiny. Until now.

With unparalleled access, and having interviewed hundreds of people – from Amazon executives to competitors to small businesses who rely on its marketplace to survive – Dana Mattioli exposes how Amazon was driven by a competitive edge to dominate every industry it entered, bulldozed all who stood in its way, reshaped the retail landscape, transformed how Wall Street evaluates companies, and altered the very nature of the global economy.

In 2023, the Federal Trade Commission filed a monopoly lawsuit against Amazon in what may become one of the largest antitrust cases in the 21st century.

As Amazon’s supremacy is finally challenged, The Everything War is the definitive, inside story of how it grew into one of the most powerful and feared companies in the world – and why this is the most consequential business story of our times.

Many entrepreneurs starting up their own business have a great idea but they fail because they haven’t spent enough time planning how to carry it out. In this book, a team of successful entrepreneurs, business advisors and subject specialists lay out the process of planning and starting your own enterprise, introducing you to the world of entrepreneurship and advising how to grow a business.

Drawing on their personal experiences in the different phases of start-up and establishing their businesses they add valuable hands-on information.

Entrepreneurship – An African Perspective is a theoretical as well as practical guide to how to develop business ideas to establish a successful enterprise.

The third edition of this creative and successful textbook provides a broad overview of entrepreneurship from a theoretical and practical perspective. Engaging for undergraduates, it embeds theories of entrepreneurship with tensions and dilemmas, presented as paradoxes for each chapter. It offers insights into the entrepreneurial process and challenges readers to assess the paradoxes and pitfalls encountered on an entrepreneurial journey. Key benefits include: Opportunities for student involvement through theory, paradoxes, actions, and exercises Real-life international case stories by high profile entrepreneurship scholars, such as William B. Gartner, Saras Sarasvathy, Alain Fayolle, Benson Honig Latest thinking on phenomena such as sustainability, nascent entrepreneurship, design thinking, the circular economy and technology entrepreneurship. All undergraduate students with or without prior entrepreneurship education can enjoy the many benefits, puzzles, and insights the book has to offer. It is ideal for undergraduate students on introductory courses in entrepreneurship, as well as more advanced students interested in entrepreneurial opportunities and processes.

Leadership is not a destination. Leadership is an odyssey. A voyage of discovery, marked by changes of fortune and circumstances, informed by successes and failures. Defined by how you behaved and who you have become.

The Upside of Being Myself and Other Leadership Stories is a unique opportunity to catch a breath, step back, and take a long, hard, reflective look at who you are as a leader and where your odyssey will take you. Powered by experience, informed by the reality of operating in today’s harsh realities, and leveraging the insights gained from many leadership victories and defeats, each essay creates an opportunity for reflection, introspection and personal growth.

The book spans almost every aspect of leadership, including the journey towards that mythical corner office, the agility and flexibility of styles required for sustained success, the art of crisp, concise communication and the need for an internal compass to guide you on your journey. Ian Russell draws on his 30 years of leadership experience from around the world, using his irreverent, light-hearted but thought-provoking prose to land key leadership messages. Further diverse and powerful leadership insights come from a number of contributing writers on politics, large corporate life and entrepreneurial start-ups.

The Upside of Being Myself and Other Leadership Stories is an investment of your time into your leadership odyssey. This is not an opportunity you can pass by. So pick up a copy, settle down and enjoy.

Workplace incidents and accidents affect businesses long after the incidents occur. The interruption of business activities and running equipment results in financial loss. Injuries suffered by people damage a business’s image and competitive edge, and demotivate employees.

By approaching safety risks in a measured, responsible manner, safety professionals and business owners can mitigate the occurrence of incidents and prevent them from happening in the workplace.

This comprehensive yet accessible textbook provides readers with an advanced and applied approach to traditional international business that integrates key cross-cultural management topics. Its ten chapters give profound insights into analysing, selecting and entering international markets, strategic partnerships, strategic positioning, global value chains, organizational designs, intercultural interaction, leadership and motivation and international human resources management. For each of these topics, advanced and contemporary theoretical and analytical frameworks are discussed and translated into toolsets that will assist readers in solving practical challenges. Key Features: A strong connection of theoretical foundations with illustrative case studies Integration of current trends and challenges, such as intercultural competence, migration and digitalization, offshoring and global value chains Comprehensive practical examples from multinational firms that demonstrate the value of the frameworks and toolsets included in each chapter An integrative case study that picks up key practical challenges in each chapter and invites the reader to apply theories, frameworks and toolsets A supplementary website that provides multiple materials for furthering readers' knowledge, including toolsets, further cases and exercises, accompanying videos, quizzes, and presentation slides International Business Strategy and Cross-Cultural Management is a key resource for postgraduate courses on international business management, globalization and entrepreneurship, international human resource management and global marketing. It will also serve as a complementary text for lecturers and students involved in the X-Culture project.

Marketing is not a function by itself or a task for just one person – its success depends on several activities in the marketing value chain.

Understanding this value chain is important for companies to stay relevant, and crucial for seeing a return on their investment in marketing. Companies employ and interact with many members of the marketing value chain, and therefore need to be familiar with the relationships between each link in this chain.

Marketing Value Chain is about understanding this value chain, where marketing fits into the chain, and what role marketers play within it.

Key concepts are:

• the nature of distribution and its role in the supply chain and marketing
• the concept of value chain marketing
• distribution channels in South Africa
• understanding channel design and channel selection
• functions in the value chain
• behavioural processes in the value chain
• trends in value chain development and online channels
• the supply chain and logistics industry in South Africa
• buyer -supplier relationships

This two-volume set examines the need for a consciousness-based view of leadership, which emphasizes universal human flourishing, as opposed to a resource-based view, which focuses on sustaining a competitive advantage. This approach is built around three main principles: 1) Paradigm (Consciousness is primary including complementary existence of opposites), 2) Interpersonal (focusing on empathy and compassion), and 3) Individual (experiencing Oneness and expressing creativity). Volume One is divided into three sections. The first section focuses on Consciousness-based approaches to Inclusive, Purposeful, Quantum, and Vedic leadership. The second section focuses on leadership principles from Vedic scriptures such as Ramayana and Vedanta. The third section includes leadership principles from other scriptures such as Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, and Thirukural. Aligning leadership practices with the notion of unbounded consciousness, this edited collection will extend the literature on organizational culture, leadership, and sustainability, contributing to solving the grand challenges facing humanity.

Over the past 20 years the global political economy has experienced its most profound shifts since the onset of the industrial revolution. In South Africa and the World, Mills Soko reflects on some of the salient issues that have pervaded public discourse during this time, analysing them within the context of the contemporary South African political economy and of the country’s position in the world.

Arranged thematically, the essays were all written during a defining period in recent history, a period that has witnessed, among others, the accession of China to the WTO, the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US, the invention of the iPad, the birth of Facebook, the 2008/9 global financial crisis, Brexit and the global coronavirus pandemic which began at the end of 2019. The turbulent multipolar world demands visionary political and economic leadership, supported by institutions well attuned to contemporary conditions. Such leadership is in short supply. Nor is the existing institutional architecture sufficiently equipped to deal with a complex array of economic, social, environmental, technological and demographic challenges.

Mills Soko highlights what has not worked in terms of politics, leadership, foreign policy, the economy, the African development trajectory, corporate ethics, international trade, global governance, and the thread which underlies all these issues – the importance of strong, decisive and accountable leadership. He counters his criticism with what has worked and offers views on how some of the problems that have constrained progress in South Africa and the world can be solved.

A central message emerges from his writings: leadership and governance matter, whether in the national or international context. It is a message that permeates all the chapters in the book. And it goes to the heart of what South Africa has gone through over the past two decades and where it is today.

Practising Learning and Development in South African Organisations 4e offers an outcomes-based, occupation-directed and work-based L&D approach to workplace learning design.

Integrating theoretical and practical perspectives, this book gives a comprehensive overview of the National Skills Development Framework. It further presents a new chapter on online learning design which caters to the needs of a digital society.

Key Benefits:

• An updated overview of skills development legislation and the implications for workplace learning design, delivery, assessment, evaluation and quality assurance in the South African context
• Insight into the psychology of adult learning, motivation and performance
• Guides students and L&D professionals through the classical Dynamic Learning Cycle
• Practical guidelines for both modern online learning design and outcomes and work-based learning design, delivery, assessment and evaluation
• Explores the dynamics and methods of effective learning and development needs analysis, and how a needs analysis informs the workplace skills plan
• Explores L&D management from an HRD strategic and value-adding perspective
• Guides L&D professionals regarding the profession, ethical standards and values, and their continued professional development

This introductory textbook to Business Management covers all the topics most important to those interested in the business world and managing businesses in South Africa, Africa and globally.

They include:

• General management, including planning, organising, leading and control
• Financial management
• Operations management
• Purchasing
• Logistics and supply chain management
• Management Information Systems
• Marketing management and public relations
• Human resource management.

The book also covers the business environment, entrepreneurship, business ethics and contemporary trends in 4IR relevant to management. It has been written by distinguished authors, all experts in their respective fields from various universities and the private sector, who share their knowledge and experience with a theoretically sound but practical approach. The intended readers are undergraduate students studying Introductory Business Management as part of a degree or diploma at a university, university of technology or private college.

Removal of Directors and Delinquency Orders under the South African Companies Act is a comprehensive discussion and analysis of the removal of company directors. The South African Companies Act 71 of 2008 has introduced innovative remedies for the removal of a company director. Removal of Directors and Delinquency Orders under the South African Companies Act draws attention to the various pitfalls to be avoided when removing a director from office.

A highlight of this book is that it discusses the various nuances in removing directors that are often overlooked, such as removing directors who are also employees or shareholders who hold loaded voting rights. Another highlight is the book’s exploration of the complex issue of removing directors of state-owned companies. Furthermore, the new delinquency remedy, which has attracted much litigation and publicity in South Africa in recent years, is comprehensively discussed. A refreshing aspect of Removal of Directors and Delinquency Orders is that it also considers the removal process from the perspective of a director who has been unfairly removed by a hostile board, and considers ways to guard against the abuse of the removal power. The strength of Removal of Directors and Delinquency Orders is that it unpacks a complex topic with clarity and coherence, making it easy to understand.

Developments in the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States of America are taken into account. Recommendations are made to enhance the law on the removal of directors and to clarify some ambiguities in the statutory provisions. Some vital amendments to the Companies Act are proposed.

Removal of Directors and Delinquency Orders under the South African Companies Act is a scholarly work for the subject specialist.