Soft skills are the skills that enable you to fit in at a workplace. They relate to your personality, attitude, flexibility, motivation, and social and emotional intelligence. Soft skills are often underestimated, yet they can be the key difference to you becoming truly effective and seen as a valued member of the team or company. In this practical and savvy guide, Dan White describes the soft skills that anyone in today's world of work needs to learn, absorb and demonstrate if they are to progress in their work and career. Uniquely illustrated and presented, the author explains each soft skill clearly, why it is relevant and important, and how to apply that skill to your working life. In short, the book provides the missing link to ensuring your job and career is successful and fulfilling.

In 1969, the luxury Hotel Inter-Continental Kabul opened its doors: a glistening white box, high on a hill, that reflected Afghanistan’s hopes of becoming a modern country, connected to the world.

Lyse Doucet – now the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent, then a young reporter on her inaugural trip to Afghanistan – first checked into the Inter-Continental in 1988. In the decades since, she has witnessed a Soviet evacuation, a devastating civil war, the US invasion, and the rise, fall and rise of the Taliban, all from within its increasingly battered walls. The Inter-Con has never closed its doors.

Now, she weaves together the experiences of the Afghans who have kept the hotel running to craft a richly immersive history of their country. It is the story of Hazrat, the septuagenarian housekeeper who still holds fast to his Inter-Continental training from the hotel’s 1970s glory days – an era of haute cuisine and high fashion, when Afghanistan was a kingdom and Kabul was the ‘Paris of Central Asia’. Of Abida, who became the first female chef after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. And of Malalai and Sadeq, the twenty-somethings who seized every opportunity offered by two decades of fragile democracy – only to see the Taliban come roaring back in 2021.

Through these intimate portraits of Kabul life, the story of a hotel becomes the story of a people.

Through this book we hope to open hands, minds, and hearts in organizations to a new world of opportunities. Today (in the early years of the second decade of the 21st century) the world's population is something over 7 billion people. That's a lot of people and a lot of potential brain power, buying power, and leadership power. This book can help organizations to connect to and capture this great potential by understanding the necessary value exchanges and engagement opportunities.

Thorstein Veblen's groundbreaking treatise upon the evolution of the affluent classes of society traces the development of conspicuous consumption from the feudal Middle Ages to the end of the 19th century. Beginning with the end of the Dark Ages, Veblen examines the evolution of the hierarchical social structures. How they incrementally evolved and influenced the overall picture of human society is discussed. Veblen believed that the human social order was immensely unequal and stratified, to the point where vast amounts of merit are consequently ignored and wasted. Veblen draws comparisons between industrialization and the advancement of production and the exploitation and domination of labor, which he considered analogous to a barbarian conquest happening from within society. The heavier and harder labor falls to the lower members of the order, while the light work is accomplished by the owners of capital: the leisure class.

Adam Smith's theory on morals provides the philosophical bedrock for his future works on economics, including his most famous book The Wealth of Nations. Published in 1759, this work sees Smith follow the lead of his tutor and mentor Francis Hutcheson. He divides his ethical examinations into four broad categories: ethics and virtue; private rights and natural liberties; rights of the family; and state and individual rights. Although lesser known compared to Adam Smith's later works, The Theory of Moral Sentiments is an influential work of philosophy in its own right, with the greatest effect being upon its author.

The social economy sector (SES) faces pressures for greater accountability to their funders, users, and citizens, and a growing need to report good practices in the social, economic, and financial impact that they have on the community. However, these entities often face difficulties related to the lack of an accounting framework that allows them to properly disseminate the results of their activities. Thus, practices that involve financial reporting and an assessment of their social, economic, and financial impact are needed to improve their accountability, sustainability, and operational performance. Modernization and Accountability in the Social Economy Sector is an essential reference source that discusses future avenues of development for the management of SES entities, accounting, control in SES management, and measures of performance in the SES. Featuring research on topics such as online communication, social accounting, and value reporting, this book is ideal for managers, financial consultants, academicians, researchers, and students interested in accounting, management, internal control, auditing, and technology use in the SES.