Amidst a backdrop of political unrest and voter disillusionment, South Africa finds itself at a crossroads, challenging its resiliency like never before. Bruce Whitfield, leveraging his deep connection with the nation's most innovative minds, presents The One Thing: Small Ideas, Big Outcomes, A Brighter Future for South Africa. This book is a clarion call for focused action, inspired by the wisdom that when everything is a priority, nothing truly is.

Through exclusive insights from business leaders to pioneers in various fields, Whitfield orchestrates a compelling narrative on the transformative power of single, impactful ideas.

'The One Thing' is not just a book; it's a blueprint for individual and collective commitment to propelling South Africa towards a brighter, more potent future.

“Crypto”, a loose term that means many things to different people, only entered public consciousness within the last five years or so, now evident by the volume of public discussion, commentary and analysis spread across every conceivable media outlet. It’s Mine digs into the history and concept of “ownership”, which ecosystems nurture it, and where we are now.

Filled with anecdotes, observations and interviews, the book takes an entertaining and accessible look at how Bitcoin made its mark, how its technology is being re-purposed to enable a revolution, and (in non-technical terms) how it all works.

It explores how these new crypto “life-forms” will interact with the rest of the virtual and physical world, while making some very rich and some very poor.

About 50km outside of Cape Town lies the beautiful town of Stellenbosch, nestled against vineyards and blue mountains that stretch to the sky. Here reside some of South Africa’s wealthiest individuals: all male, all Afrikaans – and all stinking rich. Johann Rupert, Jannie Mouton, Markus Jooste and Christo Weise, to name a few.

Julius Malema refers to them scathingly as ‘The Stellenbosch Mafia’, the very worst example of white monopoly capital. But who really are these mega-wealthy individuals, and what influence do they exert not only on Stellenbosch but more broadly on South African society?

Author Pieter du Toit begins by exploring the roots of Stellenbosch, one of the wealthiest towns in South Africa and arguably the cradle of Afrikanerdom. This is the birthplace of apartheid leaders, intellectuals, newspaper empires and more. He then closely examines this ‘club’ of billionaires. Who are they and, crucially, how are they connected? What network of boardroom membership, alliances and family connections exist? Who are the ‘old guard’ and who are the ‘inkommers’, and what about the youngsters desperate to make their mark? He looks at the collapse of Steinhoff: what went wrong, and whether there are other companies at risk of a similar fate. He examines the control these men have over cultural life, including pulling the strings in South Africa rugby.

Master the fundamental concepts and today's applications of operations (OM) and supply chain management (SCM) with OPERATIONS AND SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT, 3rd Edition by award-winning authors Collier and Evans.

This edition provides balanced coverage of both manufacturing and service businesses with updates, recent developments and new concepts that highlight the latest changes in OM and SCM. This edition clearly explains concepts while using contemporary practical examples ideal for business students, updated boxed features and new and updated case studies. Discussions highlight new concepts and new Excel techniques and digital tools, while solved problems illustrate key formulas and computations.

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Major scholars examine different aspects of the ICU's record in the 1920s and 1930s, assessing its achievements and its failures in relation to the post-apartheid present.

The Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU)―the largest black political organization in southern Africa before the 1940s―was active in six African colonies, as well as in global trade union networks. Labour Struggles in Southern Africa provides fresh perspectives on the ICU, exploring its record in the 1920s and 1930s and assessing its achievements and failures in relation to the present.

In its One Big Union approach to protecting workers' rights, its emphasis on economic freedoms, its internationalism, and its robust protection of women and migrant workers, the ICU fundamentally challenged the axioms, tactics, and programs of rival organizations like the African National Congress. Reflecting that, this book demonstrates that the legacies of the ICU continue to be of crucial contemporary relevance.

South Africa is facing an extraordinary ‘polycrisis’. The dimensions of this crisis include an energy collapse; a failing rail network; weak education outcomes; an interrupted water supply; and the effects of decades of endemic corruption that have brought much of government to a halt.

But the country also has incredible assets: a wealth of sought-after minerals; an enviable Constitution that protects rights and advocates social inclusion; an advanced financial and services sector; thriving agricultural and auto industries that compete with the best in the world; a prosecution service that is rapidly rebuilding; and, most of all, strong-willed people determined to make life better through hard work, entrepreneurship and hustling.

The choice is stark: we either build on the positives and take the country forward or we will be overwhelmed by the negatives and end up as another Zimbabwe or Venezuela. We have the people, the policies and the resources. What is missing is the political will to make the difficult choices that will save South Africa from disaster.

This book takes you on a journey that ends with one of three possible future scenarios: the Good, the Bad or the Ugly. Compiled by The Brenthurst Foundation and In Transformation Initiative, and workshopped with high-powered leaders in business and politics, the scenarios have stimulated intense public interest as the country grapples with its mounting problems.

The good news is that there is a clear road towards a positive future. It will take courageous leadership and smart thinking to get there, but the ‘Good’ scenario is tantalisingly within grasp.

Labour Disrupted exposes the precariousness of union organisation and how labour movements have had to respond to the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic. It addresses issues related to the fourth industrial revolution on the working class, and the challenges of skills development and inclusiveness.

Labour Disrupted reflects on the past and the future of labour, primarily in South Africa but also globally. It focuses on how South Africa’s lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic further exposed key contradictions and challenges that labour movements face.

The contributions include a diverse range of topics currently engaged with by those actively engaged in the field of labour movement. Essays by academics and activists tackle thorny issues: from redefining democracy in South Africa, to experiences of inclusiveness (or lack thereof) in workplace environments by women, young people, migrant workers, LGBTI people and people living with disabilities. The volume addresses contemporary issues related to the use of technology and the impact of the fourth industrial revolution on the youth and the working class, and the challenges of skills development and restructuring in the workplace.

Labour Disrupted shows new forms of organising and alliances that labour movements are involved in to address issues of social justice in education, health and community solidarity.

The story of the idealists, technologists, and opportunists fighting to bring cryptocurrency to the masses.

In their short history, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have gone through booms, busts, and internecine wars, recently reaching a market valuation of more than $2 trillion. The central promise of crypto endures—vast fortunes made from decentralized networks not controlled by any single entity and not yet regulated by many governments.

The recent growth of crypto would have been all but impossible if not for a brilliant young man named Vitalik Buterin and his creation: Ethereum. In this book, Laura Shin takes readers inside the founding of this novel cryptocurrency network, which enabled users to launch their own new coins, thus creating a new crypto fever. She introduces readers to larger-than-life characters like Buterin, the Web3 wunderkind; his short-lived CEO, Charles Hoskinson; and Joe Lubin, a former Goldman Sachs VP who became one of crypto’s most well-known billionaires. Sparks fly as these outsized personalities fight for their piece of a seemingly limitless new business opportunity.

This fascinating book shows the crypto market for what it really is: a deeply personal struggle to influence the coming revolution in money, culture, and power.

South Africa stands at the edge of a precipice. Almost thirty years after its first democratic election, poor policy and rampant corruption have left the country standing on the brink of becoming a failed state. In this thought-provoking book, Bronwyn Williams interviews a diverse group of public intellectuals, business leaders, and political mavericks to discuss tangible ways South Africa can rescue itself from itself. Through a series of illuminating conversations, a group of independent thinkers explore the root causes of South Africa’s problems and offer insightful – and radical – ways of how to solve them.

From addressing land reform and economic development to rooting out corruption and overhauling political institutions, the conversations in this book come together as a roadmap towards a better South Africa that leaves no one behind. While the challenges facing the young democracy are immense, these experts provide hope and inspiration towards productive actions we can take together to build a brighter future.

For anyone interested in understanding the complex issues facing South Africa today and how they can be addressed, Rescuing Our Republic is essential reading. It is a powerful reminder that the fate of a nation is not predetermined; that individuals, citizens and corporations still have powerful agency and that when that agency is directed towards the right ideas and actions, South Africa can still realise its full potential.

LIST OF INTERVIEWEES:

• Why nations succeed with Dr Adrian Saville
• Measuring what matters with Malcolm Ray
• The promise of Africa beyond borders with Dr Débísí Àràbà
• An antidote to the tragedy of the commons with Wandile Sihlobo
• Property is a big deal with Lars Doucet
• Democratisation of ownership with Charles Savage
• The economic importance of optimism with Bruce Whitfield
• Good neighbours with Giulietta Talevi
• The perpetual struggle for democracy with Justice Malala
• A new vision for South Africa with Songezo Zibi
• Beyond the Constitution with TK Pooe

This official ICSA study text has been specially designed to support students taking the Trust and Company Administration module of ICSA's Level 5 qualifications in International Finance and Administration.The text covers the syllabus for each module and is structured to help in planning a programme of study. Learning outcomes linked to the syllabus are highlighted to help students focus on the examination requirements for each module.The text follows a standard format and includes a range of features to encourage active learning and to help students apply principles and theory to real-life business situations, including: case law and case examples stop and think scenarios worked examples test yourself review questions and answers glossaries of key termsThe text provides an excellent guide for students, but also serves as a useful reference for anyone who needs an accessible and practical introduction to the subject.

Americans have contradictory beliefs about how international trade affects the country as whole and specific communities. Yet notwithstanding the heat of political rhetoric, these beliefs are rarely mobilized into political action. Alexandra Guisinger examines this apparent disconnect by examining the bases of Americans' trade preferences in today's post-industrial economy and why do so few politicians attempt to take advantage of these preferences. The changing American economy has made the direct effects of trade less obvious, making the benefits and costs more difficult to determine. In addition, information sources, including the media, have changed in content and influence over time, their influence varies across different groups of individuals, and partly as a result individuals hold countervailing beliefs about the effect of trade on their own and others' economic outcomes. American Opinion on Trade provides a multi-method examination of the sources of attitudes, drawing on survey data and experimental surveys; it also traces how trade issues become intertwined with attitudes toward redistribution as well as gender and race.

Does a consumer who bought a shirt made in another nation bear any moral responsibility when the women who sewed that shirt die in a factory fire or in the collapse of the building? Many have asserted, without explanation, that because markets cause harms to distant others, consumers bear moral responsibility for those harms. But traditional moral analysis of individual decisions is unable to sustain this argument. Distant Harms, Distant Markets presents a careful analysis of moral complicity in markets, employing resources from sociology, Christian history, feminism, legal theory, and Catholic moral theology today. Because of its individualistic methods, mainstream economics as a discipline is not equipped to understand the causality entailed in the long chains of social relationships that make up the market. Critical realist sociology, however, has addressed the character and functioning of social structures, an analysis that can helpfully be applied to the market. The True Wealth of Nations research project of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies brought together an international group of sociologists, economists, moral theologians, and others to describe these causal relationships and articulate how Catholic social thought can use these insights to more fully address issues of economic ethics in the twenty-first century. The result was this interdisciplinary volume of essays, which explores the causal and moral responsibilities that consumers bear for the harms that markets cause to distant others.

For much of its history, human population growth increased at a glacial pace. The demographic rate only soared about 200 years ago, climaxing in the period 1950-2000. In that 50-year span, the population grew more than it had in the previous 5000 years. Though these raw numbers are impressive, they conceal the fact that the growth rate of population topped out in the 1960s. The apparent population boom may be approaching a population bust, despite our coexistence with more than seven billion people. In On the Cusp, economist Charles Pearson explores the meaning of this population trend from the arc of demographic growth to decline. He reviews Thomas Malthus's famous 1798 argument that human population would exceed the earth's carrying capacity, and explains why this surfaces periodically when birth rates strongly exceed 2.1 children per household. Analyzing population trends through dual lenses - demography and economics - Pearson examines the potential opportunities and challenges of population decline and aging. In many industrialized countries, the combination of an aging population and considerable food security may call for policies that boost fertility, immigration, and worker participation, reform pension schemes, and ease concern over moderating rates of population and economic growth. Sharp and occasionally funny, Pearson's research has thought-provoking implications for future public policies. Pearson ends his analysis with a mildly hopeful conclusion, noting that both the rich and the poor face a new demographic order. Bold and comprehensive, general readers and students alike will find On the Cusp an informative and engaging read.

Cities bring together masses of people, allow them to communicate and hide, and to transform private grievances into political causes, often erupting in urban protests that can destroy regimes. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has shaped urbanization via migration restrictions and redistributive policy since 1949 in ways that help account for the regime's endurance, China's surprising comparative lack of slums, and its curious moves away from urban bias over the past decade. Cities and Stability details the threats that cities pose for authoritarian regimes, regime responses to those threats, and how those responses can backfire by exacerbating the growth of slums and cities. Cross-national analyses of nondemocratic regime survival link larger cities to shorter regimes. To compensate for the threat urban threat, many regimes, including the CCP, favor cities in their policy-making. Cities and Stability shows this urban bias to be a Faustian Bargain, stabilizing large cities today but encouraging their growth and concentration over time. While attempting to industrialize, the Chinese regime created a household registration (hukou) system to restrict internal movement, separating urban and rural areas. China's hukou system served as a loophole, allowing urbanites to be favored but keeping farmers in the countryside. As these barriers eroded with economic reforms, the regime began to replace repression-based restrictions with economic incentives to avoid slums by improving economic opportunities in the interior and the countryside. Yet during the global Great Recession of 2008-09, the political value of the hukou system emerged as migrant workers, by the tens of millions, left coastal cities and dispersed across China's interior villages, counties, and cities. The government's stimulus policies, a combination of urban loans for immediate relief and long-term infrastructure aimed at the interior, reduced discontent to manageable levels and locales.

Ben Ross Schneider's volume, New Order and Progress takes a thorough look at the political economy of Brazil. The distinctive perspective of the 11 chapters is historical, comparative, and theoretical. Collectively, the chapters offer sobering insight into why Brazil has not been the rising economic star of the BRIC that many predicted it would be, but also documents the gains that Brazil has made toward greater equality and stability. The book is grouped into four parts covering Brazil's development strategy, governance, social change, and political representation. The authors -18 leading experts from Brazil and the United States - analyze core issues in Brazil's evolving political economy, including falling inequality, the new middle class, equalizing federalism, the politicization of the federal bureaucracy, resurgent state capitalism, labor market discrimination, survival of political dynasties, the expansion of suffrage, oil and the resource curse, exchange rates and capital controls, protest movements, and the frayed social contract.

From 1978 through the turn of the century, China was transformed from a state-owned economy into a predominantly private economy. This fundamental change took place under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is ideologically mandated and politically predisposed to suppress private ownership. In Dancing with the Devil, Yi-min Lin explains how and why such an ironic and puzzling reality came about. The central thesis is that private ownership became a necessary evil for the CCP because the public sector was increasingly unable to address two essential concerns for regime survival: employment and revenue. Focusing on political actors as a major group of change agents, the book examines how their self-interested behavior led to the decline of public ownership. Demographics and the state's fiscal system provide the analytical coordinates for revealing the changing incentives and constraints faced by political actors and for investigating their responses and strategies. These factors help explain CCP leaders' initial decision to allow limited private economic activities at the outset of reform. They also shed light on the subsequent growth of opportunism in the behavior of lower level officials, which undermined the vitality of public enterprises. Furthermore, they hold a key to understanding the timing of the massive privatization in the late 1990s, as well as its tempo and spread thereafter. Dancing with the Devil illustrates how the driving forces developed and played out in these intertwined episodes of the story. In so doing, it offers new insights into the mechanisms of China's economic transformation and enriches theories of institutional change.

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.

Social enterprises represent a new kind of venture, dedicated to pursuing profits for owners and benefits for society. Social Enterprise Law provides tools that will allow them to raise the capital they need to flourish. Social Enterprise Law weaves innovation in contract and corporate governance into powerful protections against insiders sacrificing goals such as environmental sustainability in the pursuit of short-term profits. Creating a stable balance between financial returns and public benefits will allow social entrepreneurs to team up with impact investors that share their vision of a double bottom line. Brakman Reiser and Dean show how novel legal technologies can allow social enterprises to access capital markets, including unconventional sources such as crowdfunding. With its straightforward insights into complex areas of the law, the book shows how a social mission can even be shielded from the turbulence of an acquisition or bankruptcy. It also shows why, as the metrics available to measure the impact of social missions on individuals and communities become more sophisticated, such legal innovations will continue to become more robust. By providing a comprehensive survey of the U.S. laws and a bold vision for how legal institutions across the globe could be reformed, this book offers new insights and approaches to help social enterprises raise the capital they need to flourish. It offers a rich guide for students, entrepreneurs, investors, and practitioners.

In terms accessible to non-economists, Marcos Jose Mendes describes the ways democracy and inequality produce low growth in the short and medium terms. In the longer term, he argues that Brazil has two paths in front of it. One is to create the conditions necessary to boost economic performance and drive the country toward a high level of development. The other is to fail in untying the political knot that blocks growth, leaving it a middle-income country. The source of his contrasting futures for Brazil is inequality, which he demonstrates is a relevant variable in any discussion of economic growth. Inequality illuminates causes of seemingly-unconnected problems. This book, which includes freely-accessible documents and datasets, is the first in-depth analysis of an issue that promises to become increasingly prominent.

Our modern-day word for sympathy is derived from the classical Greek word for fellow-feeling. Both in the vernacular as well as in the various specialist literatures within philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, economics, and history, "sympathy" and "empathy" are routinely conflated. In practice, they are also used to refer to a large variety of complex, all-too-familiar social phenomena: for example, simultaneous yawning or the giggles. Moreover, sympathy is invoked to address problems associated with social dislocation and political conflict. It is, then, turned into a vehicle toward generating harmony among otherwise isolated individuals and a way for them to fit into a larger whole, be it society and the universe. This volume offers a historical overview of some of the most significant attempts to come to grips with sympathy in Western thought from Plato to experimental economics. The contributors are leading scholars in philosophy, classics, history, economics, comparative literature, and political science. Sympathy is originally developed in Stoic thought. It was also taken up by Plotinus and Galen. There are original contributed chapters on each of these historical moments. Use for the concept was re-discovered in the Renaissance. And the volume has original chapters not just on medical and philosophical Renaissance interest in sympathy, but also on the role of antipathy in Shakespeare and the significance of sympathy in music theory. Inspired by the influence of Spinoza, sympathy plays a central role in the great moral psychologies of, say, Anne Conway, Leibniz, Hume, Adam Smith, and Sophie De Grouchy during the eighteenth century. The volume should offers an introduction to key background concept that is often overlooked in many of the most important philosophies of the early modern period. About a century ago the idea of Einfuhlung (or empathy) was developed in theoretical philosophy, then applied in practical philosophy and the newly emerging scientific disciplines of psychology. Moreover, recent economists have rediscovered sympathy in part experimentally and, in part by careful re-reading of the classics of the field.

The game of tennis raises many questions that are of interest to a statistician. Is it true that beginning to serve in a set gives an advantage? Are new balls an advantage? Is the seventh game in a set particularly important? Are top players more stable than other players? Do real champions win the big points? These and many other questions are formulated as "hypotheses" and tested statistically. Analyzing Wimbledon also discusses how the outcome of a match can be predicted (even while the match is in progress), which points are important and which are not, how to choose an optimal service strategy, and whether "winning mood" actually exists in tennis. Aimed at readers with some knowledge of mathematics and statistics, the book uses tennis (Wimbledon in particular) as a vehicle to illustrate the power and beauty of statistical reasoning.

The international community has donated nearly one trillion dollars during the last four decades to reconstruct post-conflict countries and prevent the outbreak of more civil war. Yet reconstruction has eluded many of these countries, and 1.9 million people have been killed in reignited conflict. Where did the money go? This book documents how some leaders do bring about remarkable reconstruction of their countries using foreign aid, but many other post-conflict leaders fail to do so. Offering a global argument that is the first of its kind, Desha Girod explains that post-conflict leaders are more likely to invest aid in reconstruction when they are desperate for income and thus depend on aid that comes with reconstruction strings attached. Leaders are desperate for income when they lack access to rents from natural resources or to aid from donors with strategic interests in the country. Using data on civil wars that ended between 1970 and 2009 and evidence both from countries that succeeded and from countries that failed at post-conflict reconstruction, Girod carefully examines the argument from different perspectives and finds support for it. The findings are important for theory and policy because they explain why only some leaders have the political will to meet donor goals in the wake of civil war. The findings also shed light on state-building processes and on the political economy of post-conflict countries. Paradoxically, donors are most likely to achieve reconstruction goals in countries where they have the least at stake.

How does the insecurity of work affect us? We know what job insecurity does to workers at work, the depressive effect it has on morale, productivity, and pay. We know less about the impact of job insecurity beyond the workplace, upon people's intimate relationships, their community life, their vision of the good self and a good life. This volume of essays explores the broader impacts of job precariousness on different groups in different contexts. From unemployed tech workers in Texas to single mothers in Russia, Japanese heirs to the iconic salaryman to relocating couples in the U.S. Midwest, these richly textured accounts depict the pain, defiance, and joy of charting a new, unscripted life when the scripts have been shredded. Across varied backgrounds and experiences, the new organization of work has its largest impact in three areas: in our emotional cultures, in the interplay of social inequalities like race, class and gender, and in the ascendance of a contemporary radical individualism. In Beyond the Cubicle, job insecurity matters, and it matters for more than how much work can be squeezed out of workers: it shapes their intimate lives, their relationships with others, and their shifting sense of self. Much more than mere numbers and figures, these essays offer a unique and holistic vision of the true impact of job insecurity.

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.