Firm growth. This concept has interested researchers for generations. Economists have sought to predict and measure firm growth using a host of different variables, while strategic management scholars depict growth as the result of clever analyses and rational resource exploitation. Entrepreneurship scholars - ever engrossed by successful start-ups - have pondered why growth sometimes comes fast and sometimes never at all, while the field of business history has given countless examples of growing firms in a range of different settings. Yet despite research across fields, our knowledge of how growth in a firm actually comes about is limited and we still know little about the process. This book offers a new reading of economist Edith Penrose's The Theory of the Growth of the Firm. The bold statement is that although Penrose's work - across fields and generations - is amongst the most quoted on firm growth, the basic points of her work have yet to be realized and explored empirically. Essentially, growth is created by a dynamic interrelation between the firm's self-conception and its image of context. Based on these two subjective categories, the firm makes decisions and its actions lead it to develop along a particular path. To Penrose this is the basic engine that drives the growth and development of firms. This book discusses how the engine of firm growth can be captured in empirical analysis using interpretative theory and narrative methods inspired by recent streams of research in business history.

Globalization, consumerism, legislation and human rights issues impact on workplace demographics, changing the very nature thereof. It is of strategic importance to ensure that the benefits of diverse viewpoints and stakeholders are leveraged. However the underlying worldviews of economists, business leaders and consultants are often informed from a Western paradigm and solutions proposed and interventions facilitated are not integrated, integral, systemic or congruent with the containing environment or ecology. In Inclusive Organizational Transformation, Dr Rica Viljoen acknowledges that diversity of thought presents both gifts and challenges to leadership in multi-national organizations. The existential question with which an individual is confronted impacts on his or her worldview. By continuously applying a specific worldview, certain gifts manifest. These are called Human Niches. Here, Inclusivity is positioned as a radical transformational methodology with the purpose of unleashing the benefits of engagement and diversity of thought. The process of Inclusivity enables organizations to optimize the gifts of and contributions from a diverse workforce and unleash tacit knowledge. Case studies from Ghana, South Africa, and one where the same strategy had to be implemented in Australia, Peru and Tanzania are included and insights gained from the dynamics observed are shared. A synthesis of Inclusivity is presented in a model, meta-insights are derived and the prerequisites for Inclusivity on individual, group and organizational domain are illustrated.

The book is distinct as it critically revisits what is 'social' in an enterprise without being limited by theoretical definitions Each chapter includes several case examples from international and well-renowned organizations to depict the dimensions and dilemmas a social enterprise can assume in practice It adopts a pragmatic hands-on community-based approach to drive in the message of social entrepreneurship Online resources include chapter by chapter PowerPoints slides, a video overview and additional case studies.

First published in 1973, this title examines the development patterns of small businesses. It considers why people found firms; the factors that contribute to entrepreneurial success; problems of management succession and inheritance; the strengths and weaknesses of family firms; the reasons why small firms are taken over; and the social, economic and managerial context of their growth, decline, and revival. Based on a survey of sixty-four firms, each employing fewer than five hundred people, in engineering, hosiery, and knitwear, and on the records of 370 similar organisations, a striking gap in performance and management attitudes emerges as between dynamic, mostly founder-run firms and stagnant, mostly inherited ones. Where many books are either minutely specialised or highly abstract and over-generalised, Jonathan Boswell's work is practical and diagnostic, probing the inner recesses of the small firm sector. With particular relevance to the difficulties faced by entrepreneurs in today's economic environment, this title advances selective measures to deal with old firms and inheritance, and a wide range of policies to encourage new entrepreneurship.

Written for first-time buyers who have never owned a property or had a mortgage, rather than buy-to-let investors. Provides a holistic view of the property purchase process, and examines several key aspects: property, mortgages, and legal considerations. Written by academics who have extensive practical experience in property and mortgages.

First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Does Information Technology matter? This book argues that even as Information Technology hardware, software, data and associated processes are becoming more of a commodity, it has never been more important to manage Information Technology as a strategic asset. However, managing Information Technology as a strategic asset is notoriously difficult, as is studying the impact of Information Technology on firm performance. This book sets out to identify, explain and critically evaluate current research in this area. A unique feature of this book is the use of economic theory to explain management theory and its consequences in professional practice. Beginning with a thorough introduction to Schumpeterian economic theory, the authors re-cast the pre-eminent theory in strategic management research (the Resource Based View) in the light of a Schumpeterian analysis and identify Dynamic Capabilities as an extension of, but also a radical departure from, RBV. The role of Information Technology as an endogenous technology is discussed and it is argued that how we define Information Technology determines not only how we study it but also how we use it and benefit from it. The book is aimed primarily at the academic research market, but should also be of some interest to managers. It is useful more specifically for all those studying business, Information Technology, strategy, management and innovation.

Unlike the competition, which can be much more theory-heavy texts, this book focuses on how strategy works in everyday practice, which is becoming the core focus of Strategic Management courses globally; New edition has been fully updated throughout, including new case studies from emerging markets and pedagogy such as practice boxes and reflective questions to aid student comprehension of the theory; Online resources include chapter-by-chapter PowerPoint slides and a test bank of questions.

Equips students and recent graduates with the tools and confidence to develop their own digital presence, addressing the growth in employability and professional skills courses globally; Unlike competing texts, requires no pre-existing technical knowledge, approaching the subject from a strategic and employability perspective rather than a technical or purely marketing approach; Introduces the new ABCDE framework and a series of practical tools and international case studies

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are increasingly viewed as valuable contributors to the global economy, which translates into their importance in business literature and academic research. Recent studies suggest that there exists a substantial variety of international activities pursued by SMEs expanding abroad, with a prominent presence of early internationalised enterprises, including born global. Despite the acknowledgement of the importance of human capital for SME internationalisation, there is a persistent knowledge gap concerning HR practices in this context. Until now, researchers investigating the accelerated internationalisation of SMEs have focused either on the human capital of decision-makers or selected attributes of employees, although these have only been at the pre-entry or entry stages. Thus, activities performed after entering foreign markets remain. This book attempts to reduce this gap and contribute to the body of knowledge concerning HR practices in early internationalised SMEs with an emphasis on the post-entry phase. By taking such an approach, this volume integrates two streams of research: HRM in the SMEs and international business. It provides managers of SMEs with useful information on dealing with internationalisation-related challenges by means of various practices including work structuring, recruitment and selection, training and development, employee appraisal and remuneration, and performance management. The discussion of these issues is based upon data from a survey conducted in 200 SMEs and case studies exemplifying HR practices in early internationalised small and medium enterprises. It offers academic researchers, postgraduate students, and reflective practitioners a state-of-the-art overview of managing human resources in small and medium enterprises expanding internationally, including both accelerated and incremental paths.

This volume presents a comprehensive analysis of microfinance initiatives in India. Through substantive field research and case studies ranging across the country, it examines Indian microfinance within its distinct socio-economic realities - the role of women, financial inclusion, rural entrepreneurship, and innovation - its interactions with multiple institutions, the challenges, as well as future directions.

For undergraduate systems analysis and design courses. A practical and modern approach to systems analysis and design Kendall and Kendall's Systems Analysis and Design, Global Edition, 10th Edition concisely presents the latest systems development methods, tools, and techniques to students in an engaging and easy-to-understand manner. The 10th Edition reflects the rapidly changing face of the IS field, with new and advanced features integrated throughout - including additional coverage of security and privacy issues, and innovative materials on new developments such as designing virtual reality and intelligent personal assistants.

The Routledge Handbook of Entrepreneurship in Developing Economies is a landmark volume that offers a uniquely comprehensive overview of entrepreneurship in developing countries. Addressing the multi-faceted nature of entrepreneurship, chapters explore a vast range of subject areas including education, economic policy, gender and the prevalence and nature of informal sector entrepreneurship. In order to understand the process of new venture creation in developing economies, what it means to be engaged in entrepreneurship in a developing world context must be addressed. This handbook does so by exploring the difficulties, risks and rewards associated with being an entrepreneur, and evaluates the impacts of the environment, relationships, performance and policy dynamics on small and entrepreneurial firms in developing economies. The handbook brings together a unique collection of over forty international researchers who are all actively engaged in studying entrepreneurship in a developing world context. The chapters offer concise but detailed perspectives and explanations on key aspects of the subject across a diverse array of developing economies, spanning Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. In doing so, the chapters highlight the heterogeneity of entrepreneurship in developed economies, and contribute to the on-going policy discourses for managing and promoting entrepreneurial growth in the developing world. The book will be of great interest to scholars, students and policymakers in the areas of development economics, business and management, public policy and development studies.

Societies today are in a period of dynamic change, highly fluid and contested in moving from traditional to liberal and from local to global, as well as varying from highly developed to emerging market economies. Alongside and facilitating this is a rapidly and exponentially changing digital media industry, including new technologies, multi-platform distributions and advertising models. This monograph highlights, identifies, evaluates and provides rich insight into the complex nature and meaning of different digital value migration in media corporations and ICT companies. It illustrates how such values affect both the internal and the external environments of media companies and industries, as well as prosumers' consumption. Including chapters from expert scholars and industry practitioners representing cutting-edge research in the U.S. and Europe in the fields of digital convergence, broadband, media and information communication technology (ICT) business and technology, the book helps academics, researchers, media policymakers and corporate executives better understand today's undulating media and ICT markets. Specifically, it illuminates where they have come from, what is at stake and what forces drive and constrain them in global hypercompetitive markets. Ultimately, it aims relatedly to facilitate high academic, business and professional standards. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and business and industry practitioners in digital media, media management, international business, media economics and media policy and, more broadly, to those in the cultural industries, strategic management, business studies and marketing.

For over a century, creativity has unfolded as a valuable field of knowledge. Emerging from disciplines like psychology, management and education, the field of creativity is making strides in others including the arts and engineering. Research and education in this field helped it establish an identity as evidenced by a growing number of courses and specialised journals. However, this progress has come with a price. In a domain like management, institutionalisation of creativity in learning, research and practice has left creativity subordinated to concerns with standardisation, employability and economic growth. Values like personal fulfilment, uncertainty, improvement and connectedness which could characterise systemic views on creativity need to be rescued to promote more and inclusive dialogue between creativity stakeholders. The author aims to recover the importance of creativity as a systemic phenomenon and explores how applied systems thinking, or AST, can further support creativity. This demonstrates how creative efforts could be directed to improve quality of life for individuals as well as their environments. The book uses the systems idea as an enquiring device to bring together different actors to promote refl ection and action about creative possibilities. The chapters offer conceptualisations, applications and refl ections of systems ideas to help readers make sense of the field of creativity in academia and elsewhere. Complemented by the author's own personal, conceptual and practical journey, the insights of the book will act as a vital toolkit for management researchers, career-driven students, practitioners and all creators to define and pursue creative ideas and thrive through their journeys to benefit themselves, other people and organisations.

In most countries family businesses make up between 50 - 95% of business entities. Families control 30% of the Fortune 500 companies. These owners and their businesses are often an important part of the social fabric in local communities, and increasingly the international economy. Despite this, Family Capitalism, or ownership, has been seen as synonymous with stagnation, conflict and crises. The authors focus on how family owners avoids these pitfalls, and how emotional resources develop strategizing capacities. The book explores how successful family businesses innovate and create Visionary Ownership, and implement it. Two crucial leadership capacities are introduced; Leadership of Paradox and Distributed Leadership. A renewed understanding of family businesses show how the family can generate unique strategic advantages in stewardship, succession, long-term thinking, risk management and building social capital. It shows a different perspective regarding value creation in the economy. The book provides new insights for family owners, advisors, leaders as well as scholars. The findings are from a best-practice research project with cases from China, USA, Germany, Colombia, Israel, Tanzania, France and Sweden. Applying strategy-as-practice theory shows how family owners, across different cultures and sectors, use generic ownership strategies and experiment, such as with cluster ownership and creating new ventures in succession.

The modern application server is a complex platform that is the linchpin of an enterprise environment that includes a very wide range of technologies-web document formatting, web protocols, server-side scripts, servlets, applets, programming languages, distributed object technologies, security capabilities, directory and naming services, load balancing, system management, and others. As such, it can be a daunting task to try to comprehend these systems. Application Servers for E-Business helps you understand the use of application servers in e-business. The book presents a comprehensive overview of the technologies related to application servers in their facilitation of E-business. These technologies include CORBA, Java, Enterprise Java Beans, Java 2, web servers, and legacy systems. It explores the role these servers play in the modern enterprise IT infrastructure and the environment in which they operate. The material also includes implementation considerations for application servers, including security, scalability, load balancing, and fault tolerance. Chapter one provides an overview of application servers, the evolution of computing that took us from hierarchical, mainframe-centric environments to the web model of computing, and the rationale for E-commerce and E-business. Chapters two through five cover specific technologies, from web browsers and servers to applets and servlets. Chapter three provides an overview of Java technologies, and chapter four covers CORBA. Chapter five discusses application servers in detail. Since application servers are increasingly supporting the key mission-critical processes of an enterprise, it is critical that organizations deploying them build in "enterprise-class" facilities for security, scalability, load balancing, fault tolerance, and management. Chapter six discusses these deployment design issues. The book concludes with chapter seven, a chapter that presents several examples of the advantages of application ser

Published in 1998. This text is designed as not only a summary of a number of years of reflections by many different researchers, but also a guide for future research and for continuing development of a theory of small business and its environment; a theory that will apply to small businesses everywhere and that will help them become what they hope to be in the 21st century.

Recent development experience points to the way business can be the key to a dynamic small business sector, especially where those links are built on high trust co-operative relations. This book reviews different types of small business network, illustrated by an international selection of case studies, including: * Chinese family business networks * ethinic minority business networks * Japanese and South Korean business group networks * Taiwan's subcontracting networks * European industrial districts Network promotion initiatives in Singapore, New Zealand, Scandinavia and the UK are each discussed to provide a comprehensive comparative assessment of small business networks.

The Frugal Innovation and Bottom of the Pyramid Markets series comprises four volumes, covering theoretical perspectives, themes and various aspects of interest across four key geographical regions where BOP markets are located - South America, Asia, Africa and more engineered countries. BOP always addresses the poorest people or socioeconomic order or groups within a country, society, region or continent, thus, this series contributes a profound understanding of BOP markets across the most important geographical areas around the world and presents valuable insights on how the private sector can work together with other stakeholders to develop and operationalize economically viable business models in BOP markets, all the while contributing to sustainable development. Private actors such as multinationals, SMEs and entrepreneurs have a critical role to play in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals agenda as laid down by United Nations in September 2015. Yet, BOP markets face unique challenges and the private sector alone cannot orchestrate sustainable value creation activities. Each volume presents several theoretical strands that highlight the diverse approaches and solutions to developing BOP markets further. Frugal, reverse and inclusive innovations can foster (sustainable) development and provide new business models and value streams that other countries can also benefit from. A variety of stylistic elements, such as research work, interviews and roundtable discussions, offer a wide and vivid impression of ongoing challenges and fruitful solutions.

First published in 1973, this title examines the development patterns of small businesses. It considers why people found firms; the factors that contribute to entrepreneurial success; problems of management succession and inheritance; the strengths and weaknesses of family firms; the reasons why small firms are taken over; and the social, economic and managerial context of their growth, decline, and revival. Based on a survey of sixty-four firms, each employing fewer than five hundred people, in engineering, hosiery, and knitwear, and on the records of 370 similar organisations, a striking gap in performance and management attitudes emerges as between dynamic, mostly founder-run firms and stagnant, mostly inherited ones. Where many books are either minutely specialised or highly abstract and over-generalised, Jonathan Boswell's work is practical and diagnostic, probing the inner recesses of the small firm sector. With particular relevance to the difficulties faced by entrepreneurs in today's economic environment, this title advances selective measures to deal with old firms and inheritance, and a wide range of policies to encourage new entrepreneurship.

The modern consumer is no longer attracted by single-minded, predictable and one-benefit-focused brand promises. The old-fashioned FMCG communication strategies based on television, radio and print with constant repetition have become outdated. From Great to Gone shows that what's needed are 'Lego' strategies, whereby the marketing and communication strategies are built up by many key facets (like building blocks) and delivered to the consumer through a mix of various touch points. Most importantly, you need to leave consumers to put all of that together themselves. There are major internal and external hurdles to transforming FMCGs successfully into FICGs - Fast Innovating Consumer Goods. It requires new brand strategies and flatter, more top-down than bottom-up, decision-making organisations and a 21st-century model for advertising agencies. Externally these companies need a new route to market through transformation of their old retail dependencies. Changes are also required in all communication delivery, reflecting modern consumers' connectivity and unlimited access to information. In the book the authors showcase what the winners of the 21st century have in common that has enabled them to become FICGs. New, unimagined models continue emerge, to which, with the authors' guidance producers and retailers may develop their own sustainable responses.

This volume emphasises knowledge transfer from the lab to the field and describes collaboration technology through three lenses: Proof of Concept, Proof of Value, and Proof of Use. The contributors focus on work practices that extend collaboration into a structured form where groups can work together to solve real-world complex problems. As with the other AMIS volumes, the contributors comprise internationally known experts in the field of Information Systems. Includes online access.

This companion provides broad and in-depth insights into family business in Asia and how Asian family firms navigate in the digital economy. The first part of the book looks at key concepts of family business while the second part presents Asian family firms' cases from Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia and other Asian economies. This comprehensive reference will help readers understand how family firms in Asia compete and survive in the world market especially in the digital age and why and how Asian economies can emerge as one of the most dynamic regions in the world.