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Books > Business & Economics > Economics > General
The Chinese leadership anticipates that one hundred million people will move from rural areas to China's cities between 2014 and 2020-perhaps the greatest migration in human history. Property ownership and use rights, compensation for when rural land is taken for urban development, and who should receive the increment in value (betterment) are among the most contentious policy issues facing China today. Property rights in China vary from place to place, are often ambiguous, and are changing rapidly. In this remarkable book Tongji University professor Li Tian provides a comprehensive description of China's property rights, betterment, and compensation landscape. Tian reviews Western property rights, betterment and compensation theory and practice and offers her own synthesis and policy recommendations. This is a must-read book for land economists, urban planners, policy makers, and anyone interested in China's development.' - Richard LeGates, San Francisco State University, USLand value capture has long been a hotly debated topic, and it has influenced a wide variety of land ownership regimes. Property Rights, Land Values and Urban Development examines the role and impact of government intervention on land markets in China. It reveals that the state has taken selective advantage of the ambiguous definition of property rights in pursuit of the objective of rapid urban growth. Through detailed empirical analysis and case studies, the book develops approaches that are specifically designed to assess the extent of issues engendered by government activities at both macro and micro levels. It also presents a comprehensive and international review on betterment and compensation. Taking the land market of China as an example, it applies the theoretical framework of New Institutional Economics to analyze institutional arrangements at the national, municipal and project levels. It concludes with the implications of property rights reform to promote the sustainable development of land markets. The issues discussed in this book will be of particular interest to academics and researchers in land economics, Asian studies and development studies.
The rise of the information age and the digital economy has dramatically changed engineering. With tremendous advances in computing and communication systems, causing major organizational upheaval, all fueled by complexity, globalization, short cycle times, and lean supply chains, the functions of engineers have significantly changed. Engineers must be technically savvy and have product management and costing skills all while working in a distributed and often unstable environment. This new edition textbook is updated to cover the integration of cost, risk, value, scheduling, and information technologies going beyond basic engineering economics. Engineering Economics of Life Cycle Cost Analysis, Second Edition offers a systems and life cycle or total ownership cost perspective. It presents advanced costing techniques such as simulation-based costing, decision analysis, complex systems costing, software, big data, and cloud computing estimation. Examples and problems demonstrating these techniques with real-world applications are also included. All engineers will find this book useful, but it is mainly written for systems engineers, engineering management, and industrial engineers along with graduate courses on advanced engineering economic analysis and cost management, and financial analysis for engineers. To assist with classroom teaching, the textbook provides an instructor's manual for qualified course adoption and downloadable Excel solutions.
This book focuses on and promotes the applications of the diverse tools and techniques of industrial engineering to the design and operation of systems in industry, business, the government, and the military. Industrial engineering is growing rapidly as an educational option and is a practice favorite in Asia, South America, and many parts of Europe. This book will meet the needs of those growth markets. Industrial Engineering in Systems Design: Guidelines, Practical Examples, Tools, and Techniques offers a wide range of engineering tools from checklists to in-depth analysis guidelines for systems design and operation. The book discusses the integration of industrial and systems engineering from both qualitative and quantitative techniques for systems design. In addition, guidelines for operational resiliency for industry in the case of disruptions, such as a pandemic are covered, and the book provides case examples for industries in developing and under-developed nations. The inclusion of practical examples of where industrial engineering has contributed to the advancement and survival of industries makes this book a very interesting and useful resource. This is a practical guide for professional engineers and consultants involved in the design and operation of systems, particularly manufacturing, production, and supply chain systems, and can also be used as a reference for students.
Beginning in the mid-2010s, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has seen remarkable changes in information technology which have blurred the boundaries between the physical, digital, and biological worlds. Industry 4.0 has enabled so-called "smart factories" in which computer systems equipped with machine learning algorithms can learn and control robotics with minimal need for human input. While smart technology has enabled many manufacturing businesses to increase efficiency and cut costs, many others are still struggling with implementing it. This book aims to help students, practitioners and industry leaders to become change agents and take their first steps on the path of transformation. Smart Business and Digital Transformation addresses the challenge of becoming "smart" from three different perspectives: smart factory, smart industry, and smart environment. Covering technologies including the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud, artificial intelligence (AI), mobility, 5G, Big Data analytics, the book shows how enterprises can take advantage of them and ultimately beat the competition. The book considers the importance of operational processes, business models, and organizational culture. The contributing authors and editors, based at Corvinus University, present a multi-dimensional picture of industry 4.0 which is both diverse in its voices and unified in its vision. Smart Business and Digital Transformation meets the growing demand for a textbook that not only presents the latest concepts and theories but is also practical for planning, managing, and implementing digital transformation in practice. The chapters include case studies to demonstrate the practical applications, and each chapter ends with review and discussion questions to develop students' skills and competencies. Students of business and digital transformation on advanced undergraduate and MBA courses will find it an indispensable guide to a vibrant and challenging topic.
Over the last ten years mobile payment systems have revolutionised banking in some countries in Africa. In Kenya the introduction of M-Pesa, a new financial services model, has transformed the banking and financial services industry. Giving the unbanked majority access to the financial services market it has attracted over 18 million subscribers which is remarkable given that fewer than 4 million people in Kenya have bank accounts. This book addresses the legal and regulatory issues arising out of the introduction of M-Pesa in Kenya and its drive towards financial inclusion. It considers the interaction between regulation and technological innovation with a particular focus on the regulatory tools, institutional arrangements and government decisional processes through the examination as a whole of its regulatory capacity. This is done with a view to understanding the regulatory capacity of Kenya in addressing the vulnerabilities presented by technological innovation in the financial industry for consumers after financial inclusion. It also examines the way that mobile payments have been regulated by criticising the piecemeal approach that the Central Bank of Kenya has taken in addressing the legal and regulatory issues presented by mobile payments. The book argues there are significant gaps in the regulatory regime of mobile banking in Kenya.
This volume provides theory and research on organizational change and predominantly features the application of these ideas to the health care domain, broadly defined. It addresses enduring issues in advancing to an effective health care system. The aim of this book is to offer an accessible and readable text aimed at provoking thought and questioning, and aiding creativity. It proffers arguments and ideas which are firmly based in empirical data and evidence, so that the reader may make informed personal evaluations. This book is designed to furnish a comprehensive theoretical basis for understanding organizational change in health care, as well as selected core issues of contemporary and future importance to the provision of effective care within sustainable systems. A series of coherent themes are addressed throughout the book from differing perspectives. However, every chapter has been written to standalone and be read independently. Each offers resources relevant to its' focal topic, in the form of references, case studies and critique. Setting out a future research agenda, the book will be vital reading for organizational change researchers and practitioners in the healthcare industry.
Presenting the issues of discrimination in employment in a multifaceted manner, this book examines the standards on anti-discrimination law for employment at international and EU levels and those deriving from national jurisdictions. Bringing together top scholars in the field of anti-discrimination employment law, this book explains the conceptual and theoretical foundations of the principle of non-discrimination in employment and assesses the most significant changes to law and ongoing challenges in the Netherlands, Poland, Germany, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, Switzerland and Israel. Identifying emerging trends in anti-discrimination employment law, this book offers a comparative, problem-solving approach and an in-depth analysis of new developments in both anti-discrimination statutory law and case law. Addressing employment law with a focus on anti-discrimination law and human rights law, this book will be essential reading for students, academics and practitioners working in the fields of labour and employment law, anti-discrimination law and human rights law and offers an international comparative overview of the most up-to-date issues relating to discrimination.
This book is a comprehensive and practical guide to project marketing - a crucial aspect of businesses worldwide. It encompasses a variety of key infrastructure projects such as roads, airports, ports, power, irrigation, commercial, and industrial buildings. The volume: * Provides key definitions and discusses concepts such as segmentation, target marketing, positioning in projects, and organizational buyer behaviour. * Draws and adapts from extant marketing theory and provides real-life case studies to demonstrate application of concepts. * Focuses on project marketing logic, marketing mix, negotiation techniques, and strategies to aid contracting/subcontracting firms to realize better pricing and project profitability. An essential handbook for professional marketers and researchers, this book will be indispensable for B-Schools, project managers, entrepreneurs, infrastructure corporations, and start-ups. It will serve as a key text to foster hassle-free relationships between different business actors and reduce roadblocks such as time and cost escalation, litigation, and the like.
This volume advances a comprehensive transdisciplinary approach to the affective lives of institutions - theoretical, conceptual, empirical, and critical. With this approach, the volume foregrounds the role of affect in sustaining as well as transforming institutional arrangements that are deeply problematic. As part of its analysis, this book develops a novel understanding of institutional affect. It explores how institutions produce, frame, and condition affective dynamics and emotional repertoires, in ways that engender conformance or resistance to institutional requirements. This collection of works will be important for scholars and students of interdisciplinary affect and emotion studies from a wide range of disciplines, including social sciences, cultural studies, social and cultural anthropology, organizational and institution studies, media studies, social philosophy, aesthetics, and critical theory.
This book investigates China's railway transformation through history, along with culture changes and urban development. The book begins by looking at the background of China and the history and growth of railway development in China through five key phases, followed by assessing the cultural changes in the railway carriage and exploring how these are linked to social equality and national provisions. The core of this book aims to analyse the Chinese urban transformation through the development of the high-speed rail (HSR) infrastructure in China. Eleven important new HSR stations in mainland China, plus the new Hong Kong West Kowloon Station, have been selected to contextually explore how HSR infrastructures have affected the development of the Chinese urban context. The selected case studies are the stations of Beijing South, Wuhan, Shanghai Hongqiao, Guangzhou South, Xi'an North, Nanjing South, Chengdu East, Tianjin West, Zhengzhou East, Hangzhou East and Hong Kong West Kowloon. All of these were built between 2008 and 2018. In these case studies, the location and the intentions and success of promoting urban development are analysed and assessed. Following this, the book further investigates the peculiarities of the new HSR stations in China in comparison with stations in Europe. An assessment framework is established to evaluate the Chinese case studies comparatively with significant cases in Europe, attending to the urban structure of the area, the architectural quality, the functional diversity and the quality of the public space generated in the surrounding area.
This book is a practitioner's guide to sustainable development, laying out strategies for attracting investment for communities and their partners. It proposes an innovative Sustainable Development Proposition (SDP) decision-making tool based on a propositional calculus that can be used to analyse the sustainability of an infrastructure investment. It draws on environmental sustainability governance data analysis enabling investors to understand the economic indicators, income potential, return on investment, demand and legal compliance, as well as community and social benefits. Identified risks, issues and advantages are managed and monitored, and the SDP guidance can be applied to improve the prospects of the project in order to attract investment. Sustainable Community Investment Indicators (SCIIs (TM)) have been developed to assist with attracting investment and monitoring feedback on infrastructure projects, designed by the author for remote rural and indigenous communities - in response to current industry tools that are designed for urban environments. The book includes a broad range of real-world and hypothetical case studies in agricultural and indigenous areas in South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and the Pacific. Taking a diverse economies approach, these industry tools can be adapted to allow for enterprise design with unique communities. This book provides sustainable development practitioners, including government agencies, financiers, developers, lawyers and engineers, with a positive, practical guide to addressing and overcoming global issues with local and community-based solutions and funding options.
This book explains various key concepts of internal marketing and its relation to human resource management, commitment, service quality, market orientation, etc. Various human resource models are insufficient to define internal marketing. Therefore there is a need to focus on the models and key concepts of human resource management and internal marketing and in what way they contribute to organizational success. It involves motivation, internal market research, internal communication, internal segmentation, employee retention, inter-functional coordination, and internal branding. The current need for human resource management is to link human resource management and marketing practices which are called internal marketing. Internal marketing plays an eminent role in organizational success. This book helps students, practitioners, start-ups, and educationists. This is a research monograph that will assist an organization to decide the future of human resource management as well as organizational development. This book is for marketing as well as human resource discipline, as internal marketing is the integration of marketing and human resource management. Due to new technology, globalization, and liberalization market need and demand are also changing, thus it is necessary to understand new trends in the application of human resources. Therefore, it is necessary to motivate and satisfy internal customers and make them market and skill-oriented.
The ongoing digital transformation is shaping the Islamic mode of financial intermediation and the impact on the faith-based financial mode has been multifaceted. This has raised a host of interesting questions: what is the degree of penetration of Islamic finance in the fintech industry? Are Islamic financial institutions (IFIs) or banks ready to embrace fintech? Is fintech an enabler or barrier to achieve the intended purpose of Islamic finance? Will technology narrow the division between Islamic and conventional finance in the future? These are existential questions for Islamic finance and the book endeavors to examine the impact of financial technology on the industry. The book assesses various fintech business models and how they could be a threat or an opportunity. It also examines whether fintech provides IFIs an edge to serve clients following the Shariah norms and how the adoption of fintech in the Islamic mode is required for meeting the maqasid Al Shariah. The book discusses applicability of fintech like blockchain, digital currency, big data, and AI to different branches of Islamic finance. This book will interest students, analysts, policymakers, and regulators who are working on Islamic finance, financial economics, Islamic economics, and development finance.
The central questions of this book are how technologies decline, how societies deal with technologies in decline, and how governance may be explicitly oriented towards parting with 'undesirable' technology. Surprisingly, these questions are fairly novel. Thus far, the dominant interest in historical, economic, sociological and political studies of technology has been to understand how novelty emerges, how innovation can open up new opportunities and how such processes may be supported. This innovation bias reflects how in the last centuries modern societies have embraced technology as a vehicle of progress. It is timely, however, to broaden the social study of technology and society: next to considering the rise of technologies, their fall should be addressed, too. Dealing with technologies in decline is an important challenge or our times, as socio-technical systems are increasingly part of the problems of climate change, biodiversity loss, social inequalities and geo-political tensions. This volume presents empirical studies of technologies in decline, as well as conceptual clarifications and theoretical deepening. Technologies in Decline presents an emerging research agenda for the study of technological decline, emphasising the need for a plurality of perspectives. Given that destabilisation and discontinuation are seen as a way to accelerate sustainability transitions, this book will be of interest to academics, students and policy makers researching and working in the areas of sustainability science and policy, economic geography, innovation studies, and science and technology studies.
This book offers a detailed theoretical analysis of the fields of learning and management in the digital age. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, it opens a dialogue between agile management theory and agile learning theory. The book argues that there is a tension between participative and action-orientated approaches on the one hand and neoliberal enclosure of the actor on the other hand. It takes this as an opportunity for interdisciplinary dialogue between learning theories and management concepts. With contributions from a range of international experts, chapters discuss the need for suitable theoretical, epistemological, and ethical foundations as well as practice-orientated methods for learning and management to implement appropriate strategies and meet educational challenges. This highly topical book will be of great interest to academics, postgraduate students, and researchers in the fields of digital learning, educational theory, management theory, and communication studies.
Written by high-profile business school deans with deep and relevant experience of all aspects of the role. More than a simple 'how-to' guide, the book is based on extensive research and framed using the management models recognised by business school deans. The books is aimed at university leaders, particularly in business schools which represent a significant part of universities.
This book examines the digitalization of longstanding problems of technological advance that produce inequalities and automated governance, which relieves subjects of agency and critical thought, and prompts a need to weaponize thoughtfulness against technocratic designs. The book situates digital-era problems relative to those of previous sociotechnical milieux and argues that technical advance perennially embeds corrosive effects on social relations and relations of production, recognizing variation across contexts and relative to entrenched societal hierarchies of race and other axes of difference and their intersections. Societal tolerance, despite abundant evidence for harmful effects of digital technologies, requires attention. The book explains blindness to social injustice by technocratic thinking delivered through education as well as truths embraced in the data sciences coupled with governance in universities and the private sector that protect these truths from critique. Institutional inertia suggests benefits of communitarianism, which strives for change emanating from civil society. Scaling postcapitalist communitarian values through communitybased peer production presents opportunities. However, enduring problems require critical reflection, continual revision of strategies, and active participation among diverse community citizens. This book is written with critical geographic sensibilities for an interdisciplinary audience of scholars and graduate and undergraduate students in the social sciences, humanities, and data sciences.
Grounded in research: Based on a vast original data set that provides richness in understanding pragmatic ways of managing actual and near-miss incidents, guaranteeing both validity and applicability Pragmatic: Grounded in the reality and practice of managers and conveyed in a practical manner with a consistent view to implementation Contemporary: Taps into the current interest in holistic systems that are responsive to change rather than rigid, deterministic frameworks Reflective: Includes ample sections that drive self-reflection, driven not by what managers "should" do, but by what they could and would do.
Disneyization of Drug Use offers an innovative, ground-up understanding of the atypical patterns of illegal drug use that often permeate multi-day party zones such as nightlife tourist resorts and music festivals. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted over three summers in Ibiza, the book contextualizes the drug and alcohol-related experiences of tourists and seasonal workers operating in the island's infamously hedonistic party spaces. Through an innovative application of Alan Bryman's (2004) seminal work, The Disneyization of Society, the book argues how the same marketing principles that generate consumption in the legal economy of Disney theme parks also drives illicit drug use in Ibiza and music festivals, where the line between legal and illegal substances rapidly blurs to the point of collapse. This highly innovative book offers rich insights into the complex interplay between drug and alcohol use, agency, pleasure, risk, consumerism, and social context. It will be of great appeal to academics and students interested in the fields of cultural criminology, deviant leisure, drug and alcohol studies, youth culture, and ethnographic research methods.
This workbook supports students studying for the Cambridge AS and A Level Economics (9708) syllabus, for first teaching in 2014. The resource complements the coursebook to help students practise the key skills of the course. Through step-by-step guidance, structured questions explain how to use application, analysis, and evaluation in an economic context. In addition, model answers help to increase students' confidence in writing long-form responses. Answers to the workbook questions are available online.
Digital technologies have transformed the way many creative works are generated, disseminated and used. They have made cultural products more accessible, challenged established business models and the copyright system, and blurred the boundary between producers and consumers. This unique resource presents an up-to-date overview of academic research on the impact of digitization in the creative sector of the economy. In 37 chapters, this coherent volume brings together contributions by experts on many aspects of digitization in the creative industries. With its interdisciplinary approach and detailed studies of digitization in the arts, media and cultural industries, the Handbook provides accessible material for a range of courses. It will be thought-provoking reading for academics, researchers, students and policy-makers interested in progress in the creative economy. Contributors include: P. Arora, K. Atladottir, P. Bakker, J. Banks, W.J. Baumol, C. Bekar, A. Bruns, S. Cunningham, P. Di Cola, G. Doyle, K. van Eijck, J. Farchy, M. Favale, T. Flew, M. Gansemer, P. Goodridge, C. Handke, E. Haswell, A. Henten, R.M. Hilty, F. Homberg, R. Inglehart, A. Johansson, A. Katz, H. van Kranenburg, M. Kretschmer, M. Latzer, S.J. Liebowitz, M. Majorana, D. Mendis, F. Muller-Langer, T. Navarrete, S. Nerisson, P. Norris, J. Petrou, J. Poort, J. Potts, A. Pratt, M. Scheufen, N. Searle, D. Secchi, P. Stepan, A. Swift, R. Tadayoni, R. Towse, P. Tschmuck, F. Vermeylen, P. Waelbroek, R. Watt, G. White, P. Wikstrom, G. Withers, R. van der Wurff, G.W. Ziggers
Our Elgar Concise Introductions are inspiring and considered introductions to the key principles in business, expertly written by some of the world's leading scholars. The aims of the series are two-fold: to pinpoint essential principles of business and management, and to offer insights that stimulate critical thinking. Examining the psychological and social drivers of unsustainable and sustainable consumption, this Concise Introduction provides an insightful overview of the causes of unsustainable consumer behaviour and the instruments and interventions needed to create a sustainable consumption pattern. Key Features: Outlines how policy interventions can contribute to a transformation in the consumption pattern Based on a comprehensive model of the causes and consequences of (un)sustainable consumer choices Provides a precise account of how the structure and distribution of consumption are responsible for environmental problems Maps the roots of unsustainable consumption in human nature as well as in economic, institutional, social, and structural contexts Highlighting a variety of ways to promote sustainable consumption, from sustainability labelling to carbon taxes and infrastructure investments, this Concise Introduction will be essential reading for students and researchers in behavioural sciences, business and management, economic psychology, environmental sociology, and sustainable development.
What is "urban"? How can it be described and contextualised? How is it used in theory and practice? Urban processes feature in key international policy and practice discourses. They are at the core of research agendas across traditional academic disciplines and emerging interdisciplinary fields. However, the concept of "the urban" remains highly contested, both as material reality and imaginary construct. The urban remains imprecisely defined. Defining the Urban is an indispensable guide for the urban transdisciplinary thinker and practitioner. Parts I and II focus on how "Academic Disciplines" and "Professional Practices," respectively, understand and engage with the urban. Included, among others, are Architecture, Ecology, Governance and Sociology. Part III, "Emerging Approaches," outlines how elements from theory and practice combine to form transdisciplinary tools and perspectives. Written by eminent experts in their respective fields, Defining the Urban provides a stepping stone for the development of a common language-a shared ontology-in the disjointed fields of urban research and practice. It is a comprehensive and accessible resource for anyone with an interest in understanding how urban scholars and practitioners can work together on this complex theme.
Provides students with a comprehensive understanding of government's role in business to help them developing the skills needed to build successful business-government relations to achieve corporate objectives and fulfill corporate responsibilities. Strong emphasis on skills building through a series of realistic case scenarios that enhance students' ability to make informed choices and manage the complex interactions of these two sectors. To maximize learning and comprehension, each chapter includes an opening case to provide context; skill tip boxes with a description of an important skill and a practice guide; a case exercise to test learning; and discussion questions to stimulate further reflection and debate. |
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