This book provides a comprehensive review of both the theoretical development and empirical study of the concept of cultural intelligence. A review of previous work on cross-cultural competence provides an historical backdrop against which the two main theories of cultural intelligence are presented. These two approaches, as well as the assessments derived from them, are compared and evaluated. Issues associated with the measurement of cultural intelligence are examined in detail. An important feature of the review of the empirical work on cultural intelligence is that results are discussed in terms of the relationship of the four sub dimensions of the Cultural Intelligence Scale (CQS) and also that results using the Short Form Cultural Intelligence Scale (SFCQ) and other measures of the concept are included. The review of empirical work includes studies that cast cultural intelligence as an antecedent, as a dependent variable, and as a moderator and a mediator. Cultural intelligence at the group and organizational levels are also discussed. Finally, this review sets the stage for a discussion of appropriate future directions in the study of cultural intelligence. Scholars in organizational psychology interested in the concept of cultural intelligence will find this an essential guide.

In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, corporate collapses, accounting scandals and concerns around competition and auditor choice, the European Commission (EC) promoted the preparation of various reports on audit policy to support a harmonisation process of European auditing regulation. Consequently, the European Union Audit Regulation and Directive was implemented from 2016. This book provides a timely picture of the audit sector and how it responds to regulatory and technological challenges. It analyses the impact of EU reforms on audit practices by comparing the U.K. and Italy, which, representing two very different regulatory and cultural contexts, will offer insight into how the efforts at standardising audit regulation may lead to very different organisational firm responses within Europe. It addresses issues relating to public policy work and the concerns faced by the market for audit and assurance services, in promoting audit quality, better communication about the role of the auditor, capital market stability and confidence, and auditor independence. Moreover, it highlights what the future of auditing might look like in the EU particularly after the U.K. has left, and how meeting public expectations will continue to be a struggle for the accounting profession given the many problems ahead. The book encourages a deeper awareness of the challenges faced by those that monitor and certify the financial statements of the world's largest public companies and contributes to the general understanding of this controversial industry. It will serve as a useful guide to the recent EU audit reforms, not only for academics, and research students but also to regulators, policymakers, standard setters, industry professionals, and business executives worldwide.

This book presents a compilation of over 200 numerical problems and solutions that students can use to learn, practice and master the Inventory Control and Management concepts. Intended as a companion to any of the standard textbooks in Inventory Control and Management and written in simple language, it illustrates very clearly the steps students need to follow in order to solve a given problem. It also explains which solution methodologies can be used under which circumstances. Offering an ideal one-stop resource for mid-level engineering and business students who have taken Inventory Management or a related subject as an elective, this book is the only one students will ever need to prepare and gain confidence for their examinations in this subject.

The Chief Security Officer's Handbook: Leading Your Team into the Future offers practical advice on how to embrace the future, align with your organizations mission, and develop a program that meets the needs of the enterprise. The book discusses real-life examples of what to do to align with other critical departments, how to avoid spending time and resources on unnecessary and outdated methods, and tomorrow's security program. Today's security executives need to help their industry, their organization and the next generation of security leaders to pioneer, optimize and transform every aspect of our programs, technologies and methods. The book is ideal for current chief security officers, aspiring security executives, and those interested in better understanding the critical need to modernize corporate security.

Exploring the Cloud Computing (CC) commercial landscape as it matures; this book asserts that the key ingredient in sustaining the Software as a Service (SaaS) business model is subscription renewal. Chronicling the evolution and future trajectory of the CC concept, the authors examine the new paradigm it is creating for the distribution of computer software applications among business-to-business (B2B) clients. CC enabled SaaS has been fundamentally changing the revenue expectations and business model for the application software industry, and impacting on how SaaS providers pursue, acquire and retain B2B clients. Securing SaaS subscription renewal is critical to the survival and prosperity of this business as attrition can have a significant impact on the financial viability of SaaS businesses based on this model. Focusing on the B2B client and the SaaS industry dependency on renewal subscriptions delivered through the CC channel, the primary research presented in this book seeks to examine the key drivers behind the B2B SaaS subscription renewal decision and, in doing so, to explore the recurring revenue framework for the Cloud SaaS business.

This book provides a theoretical basis for understanding the phenomenon of renegotiations in Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). It analyzes the case of transport projects, and provides empirical evidence from a variety of real-world projects. What drives renegotiations? Why are some projects more likely to be renegotiated than others? What are the outcomes? How can we improve the performance of renegotiation processes? These questions form the core of discussion in this book. PPPs are a procurement model for the delivery of infrastructure and public services that have experienced significant growth over the last three decades, particularly in terms of the development of transportation projects. The empirical evidence suggests that most PPP projects are inevitably renegotiated, i.e., the original contract needs to be adapted to new and unforeseen circumstances. The impacts of these changes on the welfare of the respective stakeholders are frequently asymmetric. Most academic research and professional guidelines are focused on PPP contract design and preparation of the procurement process, and very little has been published on the management and, mainly, the process of renegotiating that will - in all likelihood - occur. This book fills this gap in the academic discussion. Several country-based analyses and case studies from Europe and the Americas provide the reader with practical applications of the theory.

This contributed volume focuses on the management and governance of international business networks (IBN). Specifically, the chapters refer to theoretical, conceptual, empirical, and case study papers from all areas in economics and management of IBN. These include cooperatives, franchising, retail chains, strategic alliances, public-private partnerships and new network forms in the digital economy. This book is ideal for researchers and strategists who are keen to improve their understanding of the latest developments in the field.

Managing data continues to grow as a necessity for modern organizations. There are seemingly infinite opportunities for organic growth, reduction of costs, and creation of new products and services. It has become apparent that none of these opportunities can happen smoothly without data governance. The cost of exponential data growth and privacy / security concerns are becoming burdensome. Organizations will encounter unexpected consequences in new sources of risk. The solution to these challenges is also data governance; ensuring balance between risk and opportunity. Data Governance, Second Edition, is for any executive, manager or data professional who needs to understand or implement a data governance program. It is required to ensure consistent, accurate and reliable data across their organization. This book offers an overview of why data governance is needed, how to design, initiate, and execute a program and how to keep the program sustainable. This valuable resource provides comprehensive guidance to beginning professionals, managers or analysts looking to improve their processes, and advanced students in Data Management and related courses. With the provided framework and case studies all professionals in the data governance field will gain key insights into launching successful and money-saving data governance program.

This book provides state-of-the-art descriptions of smart service innovations in the industry, supported by novel scientific approaches. It gathers findings and insights presented at the fourth Smart Services Summit, held in Zurich, Switzerland, in October 2021, which primarily focused on how smart services have enabled companies to adapt during and to the COVID-19 pandemic. The book includes examples of remote and collaborative working that actively involve customers in service processes, requiring a change in mindset for more traditional firms. Moreover, it explores how services can be delivered faster and more affordable with the aid of new technologies and in collaboration with the customers, leading to new value propositions and business models and thus an evolution of smart services. Given its scope, the book offers an essential guide for practitioners and advanced students alike.

This book explores the relationship between and the compatibility of lean management (LM) and value-based management (VBM) approaches at the systems level. It then develops a model to improve LM and VBM professional practice by fostering a shared understanding of the value creation process within a lean system, and in doing so helps to remove existing barriers. The results promote future fruitful alliances between a company's operational and financial communities, enhancing the benefits to the enterprise and its stakeholders. The book is of primary interest to LM and VBM professionals and researchers.

Business managers, management consultants and researchers regularly question whether and how the contribution of IT to business performance can be measured. This book contributes to the art and science of the expost valuation of IT, by posing and answering key management questions, offering insights into the value of IT once it has been developed, implemented and used. Measuring the Value of Information Technology targets business managers, IT managers, business students and researchers and will enable its readers to systematically, effectively and consistently measure the value of Information Technology.

This book proposes essential methods, models, and case studies for Sustainable Logistics and Production in Industry 4.0. In addition to identifying and discussing various challenges and future prospects, it also features numerous case studies and quantitative research from different sectors. The authors (which include academics and managers) present insightful tips on the technical, organizational and social aspects of implementing Sustainable Logistics and Production in Industry 4.0. In today's world, changes are coming faster and more unpredictably. Production is becoming more automated, computerized and complex. In short, Industry 4.0 is creating many new opportunities, but at the same time several new challenges. This book offers a valuable resource for all academics and practitioners who want to deepen their knowledge of Sustainable Logistics and Production in Industry 4.0.

This volume explores the challenge of engaging knowledge management in a sharing economy. In a hyper-competitive business environment, everything tends to be digital, virtual and highly networked, which raises the issue of how knowledge management can support the decision whether or not to share strategic resources or capabilities. The book answers questions such as: to what extent does the sharing economy preserve or compromise the competitive advantage of organizations? And what are the knowledge-management strategies for competitive, yet cautious sharing dynamics?

This book offers a political analysis and sociological critique of the UK government's response to the novel coronavirus outbreak, interpreting the inadequacies of government policy with regard to COVID-19 as the results of neoliberal ideology, the protection of corporate interests, Brexit nationalism, and the peculiarities of a British model of capitalism based on international trade and labour market precarity. Arguing that institutionalised corporate-capitalist control of state and science generates new and growing public health risks, and that consumer-driven individualism has eroded community life and the protections this might offer against pandemics, it contends that the UK government's catastrophic response to the COVID-19 pandemic was the result of peculiarly British socioeconomic and political phenomena. The Pandemic in Britain will appeal to scholars of sociology, philosophy and politics with interests in the COVID-19 pandemic as well as neoliberal ideology and its manifestation in political life.

This book is in honor of Yasuhiko Takahara, a first-class researcher who has been active for some 50 years at the global level in systems research. Researchers and practitioners from Japan and other countries who have been influenced by Takahara have come together from far and wide to contribute their major research masterpieces in the field of systems research in the broadest sense. While the roots of Takahara's systems research are in general systems theory and systems control theory, he developed his research and teaching in diverse directions such as management information science, engineering, social simulation, and systems thinking. As a result, many of the researchers and practitioners he supervised or influenced have established their own positions and are now active around the world in a wide range of systems research. Volume II is a collection of their masterpieces or representative works in the fields of systems management theory and practice.

This book analyses mergers and acquisitions within the broader framework of strategic decisions. Existing studies on corporate acquisitions have produced a variegated and inconclusive spectrum of findings on the strategic mechanisms that contribute to value creation. By building on the widespread recognition that firms substantially differ in their ability to carry out successful acquisitions, this book focuses on the diverse effects of experiential learning. A unique systematic literature review is provided, which thematically highlights the connections between various streams of research. The author aims to systematise our knowledge on experience and learning dynamics in corporate acquisitions, providing a detailed analysis of conceptual implications and presenting potential avenues for future exploration.

This book proposes a new way to consider creativity in management education, inviting educators to rediscover themselves in the process. To date, creativity in management is a valuable skill, but one which has been institutionalized and subordinated to metrics such as economic growth, knowledge disciplining and employability. After a critical analysis using Foucault's governmentality to identify how creativity is being organized in management education, this book examines diverse initiatives intended to nurture creativity. Then, and through a systemic recontextualization of governmentality and other notions like play, it provides conceptual and practical guidance derived from the author's own self-narratives (games) as student and educator. The book concludes with important reflections, implications and guidelines for the nurturing in creativity in management education and life in general. This book will be a valuable reading for creativity and innovation scholars, academics working in management education and students in general.

This book is intended as a guide to and manual on modeling complex problems in Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM). It encourages practitioners to consider the practicalities of real-world scenarios when modeling, while at the same time providing tips and examples of how to incorporate these realities into the initial decision matrix. The goal is to help readers build a decision matrix that replicates reality as closely as possible. Once this matrix has been constructed, the Decision Maker (DM) can select from more than a hundred MCDM methods the one that best fits the requirements and conditions of the matrix. The book features cases taken from real-world scenarios, which deal with various fields, aspects, and characteristics, and are solved using the SIMUS (Sequential Interactive Modeling for Urban Systems) method. This book is a valuable tool for practitioners, researchers and students dealing with MCDM problems.

This book addresses reliability, maintenance, risk, and safety issues of industrial systems with applications of the latest decision-making techniques. Thus, this book presents chapters that apply advanced tools, techniques, and computing models for optimizing the performance of industrial and manufacturing systems, along with other complex engineering equipment. Computing techniques like data analytics, failure mode and effects analysis, fuzzy set theory, petri-net, multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM), and soft computing are used for solving problems of reliability, risk, and safety related issues.

The plain language guide to getting things running smoothly in the world of business.

Operations management is all about efficiency, and Operations Management For Dummies is all about efficiently teaching you what you need to know about this business hot topic. This book tracks typical operations management MBA courses, and it will help you un-muddle concepts like process mapping, bottlenecks, Lean Production, and supply chain management. Learn to step into a business, see what needs improving, and plug in the latest tools and ideas to shape things up in any industry.

This latest edition covers, you guessed it, digital transformation. Technology is completely upending operations management, and Dummies walks you through the latest, so you can stay at the front of the pack. Other new stuff inside: supply chain traceability, ethical sourcing and carbon footprint, business resiliency, and modularizing the supply chain. It’s all here!

• Optimize operations and increase revenue with strategies and ideas that make businesses run better and cheaper
• Get easy-to-understand explanations of complex topics and theories in operations management
• Learn how operations management is affected by digital transformation and sustainability concerns
• Evaluate, design, improve, and scale all sorts of processes, regardless of business size or area of operation

Businesses can't operate successfully without effective operations and supply management. That makes Operations Management For Dummies a must―for MBA students and business professionals alike.

This book provides a conceptual 'Flexibility in Resource Management' framework supported by research/case applications in various related areas. It links and integrates the flexibility aspect with resource management to offer a fresh perspective, since flexibility in different levels of resource management is emerging as a key concern -- a business enterprise needs to have reactive flexibility (as adaptiveness and responsiveness) to cope with the changing and uncertain business environment. It may also endeavor to intentionally create flexibility by way of leadership change, re-engineering, innovation in products and processes, use of information and communication technology, and so on. The selected papers discussing a variety of issues concerning flexibility in resource management, are organized into following four parts: flexibility and innovation; flexibility in organizational management; operations and technology management; and financial and risk management. In addition to addressing the organizational needs of corporate bodies spread across the globe, the book serves as a useful reference resource for a variety of audiences including management students, researchers, business managers, consultants and professional institutes.

How can the public manager create and co-create value in the digital economy? While there is much exciting work being done, there is a pressing need to recontextualize public value theory (PVT), specifically in terms of its theoretical precepts, in the fluid and dynamic environment that the digital economy has produced. Much of the theoretical undergirding of PVT predates the full onset of today's digital economy, leaving aside phenomena including citizen-driven innovations, decentralized digital structures, and the algorithmic foundations of new economic life. This is why a conceptually driven exercise in contemporizing PVT would be of great value to public administration's theoreticians seeking to lead the theory in catching up to the praxis. This book seeks to answer the question of creating and co-creating public managerial value by developing chapters that revisit categories central to the functions of public managers in relation to other value-creating agents under PVT. It introduces new and important lenses to PVT that are grounded in the praxis of the digital economy, raising new questions about old problems in PVT and generating newer formulations that push PVT forward and make its debates salient to the futures that lay before the modern public manager. The book therefore constitutes an important effort to take PVT forward by shedding new light on the potency of the public manager in confronting and constructing the digital economy through co-creation with the other agents of public value. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, and policy makers in the fields of public and nonprofit management, public administration and policy, and PVT.

The Financial Crisis was a cross-sector crisis that fundamentally affected modern society. Regulation, as a concept, was both blamed for allowing the crisis to happen, but also tasked with developing and implementing solutions in the wake of the crash. In this book, a number of specialists from a range of fields have contributed their insights into the effect of the Financial Crisis upon the regulatory frameworks affecting their fields, how regulators have responded to the Crisis, and then what this may mean for the future of regulation within those industries. These analyses are joined by a picture of past financial crises - which reveals interesting patterns - and then analyses of architectural regulatory models that were fundamentally affected by the Crisis. The book aims to allow sector specialists the freedom to share their insights so that, potentially, a broader picture can be identified. Providing an interesting and thought-provoking account of this societally impactful era, this book will help the reader develop a more informed understanding of the potential future of financial regulation. The book will be of value to researchers, students, advanced level students, regulators, and policymakers.

This book charts the difficulties encountered by vulnerable consumers in their access to justice, through the contributions of prominent authors (academic, practitioners and consultants) in the field of consumer law and access to justice. It demonstrates that despite the development of ADR, access to justice is still severely lacking for the vulnerable consumer. The book highlights that a broad understanding of access to justice, which encompasses good regulation and its public enforcement, is an essential ingredient alongside access to the mechanisms of traditional private justice (courts and ADR) to protect the vulnerable consumer. Indeed, many of the difficulties are linked to normative obstacles and lack of access to justice is primarily a vulnerability in itself that can exacerbate existing ones. In addition, because it may contribute to 'pushing' already vulnerable consumers into social exclusion it is not simply about economic justice but also about social justice. The book shows that lack of access to justice is not irreversible nor is it necessarily linked to consumer apathy. New technologies could provide solutions. The book concludes with a plea for developing 'inclusive' justice systems with more emphasis on public enforcement alongside effective courts systems to offer the vulnerable with adequate means to defend themselves. This book will be suitable for both students and practitioners, and all those with an interest in the justice system.