The literature in female entrepreneurship has witnessed significant development in the last 30 years, with the research emphasis shifting from purely descriptive explorations towards a clear effort to embed research within highly informed conceptual frameworks. With contributions from leading and emerging researchers, The Routledge Companion to Global Female Entrepreneurship brings together the latest international research, concepts and thinking in the area. With a strong international dimension, this book will facilitate comparative discussion and analysis on all aspects of female entrepreneurship, including start-ups, socio-economic influences, entrepreneurial capital and minority entrepreneurship. Reflecting the subject's growing importance for researchers, academics and policy makers as well as those involved in supporting women's entrepreneurship through training programmes, networks, consultancy or the provision of venture capital, The Routledge Companion to Global Female Entrepreneurship will be an invaluable reference resource.

The changing character of the economies in Eastern and Western Europe are leading more people to start their own businesses. This volume, first published in 1987, highlights the trends developing over the closing decades of the twentieth century. Although business start-up requires financial and marketing skills, it also demands important physchological and sociological inputs. On the basis of detailed accounts of the relevant social processes, this volume describes the varied experiences of entrepreneurship as they are emerging among various groups in both Eastern and Western Europe including the unemployed, women, ethnic minorities and others. This book will be of interest to students of business studies and sociology.

Information is seriously undervalued and underused as a corporate resource. The pressures of global competition and a growing dependence on information technology mean that the effective use of information is more important now than it has ever been. This book is a fundamental guide for unleashing information potential, by combining the discipline of information architecture with the power of knowledge management, to drive organizational changes. Instead of unlocking the potential of information, people are drowning in detail. Current books only approach this subject from an information technology perspective. This book combines techniques from knowledge management and information architecture to provide a layer above the detail - techniques for seeing the big picture.

This book presents cutting-edge research and thinking on agile information systems. The concept of agile information systems has gained strength over the last 3 years, coming into the MIS world from manufacturing, where agile manufacturing systems has been an important concept for several years now. The idea of agility is powerful: with competition so fierce today and the speed of business so fast, a company's ability to move with their customers and support constant changing business needs is more important than ever. Agile information systems: * have the ability to add, remove, modify, or extend functionalities with minimal penalties in terms of time, cost, and effort * have the ability to process information in a flexible manner * have the ability to accommodate and adjust to the changing needs of the end-users. This is the first book to bring together academic experts, researchers, and practitioners to discuss how companies can create and deploy agile information systems. Contributors are well-regarded academics known to be on the cutting-edge of their fields. The Editor, Kevin Desouza, has organized the chapters under three categories: * discussion of the concept of agile information systems (i.e. defining agile information management, its attributes, antecedents, consequences, etc.) * discussion of information systems within the context of agility (i.e., descriptions of agile information systems and their attributes, how to build agile information systems, etc.) * discussion of organizational management issues in the context of agile information systems (i.e., how to prepare the organization for agile information systems, management of agile information systems for improved organizational performance, etc.)

Offering an approach outside the mainstream of Management of Technology (MOT) thought, the objective of this text is to inform decision-makers, policy-makers and educators/students about the range of management technology, policies and programmes in each region.

Offering an approach outside the mainstream of Management of Technology (MOT) thought, the objective of this text is to inform decision-makers, policy-makers and educators/students about the range of management technology, policies and programmes in each region.

In Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Business Clusters, Panos Piperopoulos provides a comprehensive introduction to what entrepreneurship is all about, how and why entrepreneurs innovate and how innovation systems operate. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) constitute the backbone of most economies, so the author examines their characteristics and the crucial role played by the owners and entrepreneurs who innovate to ensure the survival and continued growth of their firms. He also includes the particular phenomena that arise where the entrepreneurs are either female or from ethnic groups, or where the context is that of a developing region or country. The importance of co-operative strategic alliances and networks between firms is discussed, along with how these strengthen SMEs' competitiveness. The concept of open innovation has been proposed as a new paradigm for the management of innovation and the author presents a hypothetical model for enhancing the competitiveness and performance of SMEs by properly utilizing employees' creative potential, emotional intelligence, tacit knowledge and innovative ideas. The contemporary model of business clusters, involving partnerships with competitors, agents, universities, research centres and local, regional and national governments is discussed. The ways, means and methods through which SMEs' competitiveness and innovation can be enhanced within business clusters is illustrated by cases that identify four types of SMEs, that behave differently and play different roles in the networks and clusters of which they form a part, but all of whose performance and competitiveness is a function of their position and role in the wider scheme of things.

Throughout the history of economic thought, the entrepreneur a wide variety of roles. Once cast as a fundamental agent in production, distribution and growth theories, he has now surprisingly disappeared from economic theory. This volume accounts for this disappearance, exploring how and why such a fundamental explanatory variable disappeared from economic theory. Barreto provides a concise review and classification of the many entrepreneurial theories put forward throughout the history of economic thought. The author illustrates that the decline of the entrepreneur in economic theory coincides with the rise of "the firm" as an organizing principle and considers how the replacement of the human element with a mechanistic one has led to disenchantment with microeconomic theory. This fascinating book will interest economists from a range of disciplines including the history of economic thought, microeconomics and entrepreneurship.

This book introduces readers to the many variables and constraints involved in planning and scheduling complex systems, such as airline flights and university courses. Students will become acquainted with the necessity for scheduling activities under conditions of limited resources in industrial and service environments, and become familiar with methods of problem solving. Written by an expert author with decades of teaching and industry experience, the book provides a comprehensive explanation of the mathematical foundations to solving complex requirements, helping students to understand underlying models, to navigate software applications more easily, and to apply sophisticated solutions to project management. This is emphasized by real-world examples, which follow the components of the manufacturing process from inventory to production to delivery. Undergraduate and graduate students of industrial engineering, systems engineering, and operations management will find this book useful in understanding optimization with respect to planning and scheduling.

Most construction projects are large and costly. Collaborative working involves two or more stakeholders sharing their efforts and resources to complete the project more effectively and efficiently. Collaborative, integrative and multi-disciplinary teams can tackle the complex issues involved in creating a viable built environment. This tends to be looked at from three interrelated perspectives: the technological, organizational, and social; and of these the key issue is to improve productivity and enable innovation through the empowerment and motivation of people. This book provides insights for researchers and practitioners in the building and construction industry as well as graduate students, written by an international group of leading scholars and professionals into the potential use, development and limitations of current collaborative technologies and practices. Material is grouped into the themes of advanced technologies for collaborative working, virtual prototyping in design and construction, building information modelling, managing the collaborative processes, and human issues in collaborative working.

"Human-Computer Interaction and Management Information Systems: Foundations" offers state-of-the-art research by a distinguished set of authors who span the MIS and HCI fields. The original chapters provide authoritative commentaries and in-depth descriptions of research programs that will guide 21st century scholars, graduate students, and industry professionals. Human-Computer Interaction (or Human Factors) in MIS is concerned with the ways humans interact with information, technologies, and tasks, especially in business, managerial, organizational, and cultural contexts. It is distinctive in many ways when compared with HCI studies in other disciplines. The MIS perspective affords special importance to managerial and organizational contexts by focusing on analysis of tasks and outcomes at a level that considers organizational effectiveness. With the recent advancement of technologies and development of many sophisticated applications, human-centeredness in MIS has become more critical than ever before. This book focuses on the basics of HCI, with emphasis on concepts, issues, theories, and models that are related to understanding human tasks, and the interactions among humans, tasks, information, and technologies in organizational contexts in general.

"Human-Computer Interaction and Management Information Systems: Applications" offers state-of-the-art research by a distinguished set of authors who span the MIS and HCI fields. The original chapters provide authoritative commentaries and in-depth descriptions of research programs that will guide 21st century scholars, graduate students, and industry professionals. Human-Computer Interaction (or Human Factors) in MIS is concerned with the ways humans interact with information, technologies, and tasks, especially in business, managerial, organizational, and cultural contexts. It is distinctive in many ways when compared with HCI studies in other disciplines. The MIS perspective affords special importance to managerial and organizational contexts by focusing on analysis of tasks and outcomes at a level that considers organizational effectiveness. With the recent advancement of technologies and development of many sophisticated applications, human-centeredness in MIS has become more critical than ever before. This work focuses on applications and evaluations including special case studies, specific contexts or tasks, HCI methodological concerns, and the use and adoption process.

This book introduces readers to a wide range of knowledge management (KM) tools, techniques and terminology for enhancing innovation, communication and dedication among individuals and workgroups. The focus is on real-world business examples using commonly available technologies. The book is set out in a clear and straightforward way, with definitions highlighted, brief case studies included that illustrate key points, dialogue sections that probe for practical applications, and written exercises. Each chapter concludes with discussion questions, review questions, and a vocabulary review. An Online Instructor's Guide is available.

Featuring contributions from prominent thinkers and researchers, this volume in the "Advances in Management Information Systems" series provides a rich set of conceptual, empirical, and introspective studies that epitomize fundamental knowledge in the area of Business Process Transformation. Processes are interpreted broadly to include operational and managerial processes within and between organizations, as well as those involved in knowledge generation. Transformation includes radical and incremental change, its conduct, management, and outcome. The editors and contributing authors pay close attention to the role of IS organizations and information technologies in facilitating business process transformation. Each chapter places major emphasis on clearly articulating the "knowledge" generated, both theoretical and applied. The book incorporates case studies and tables throughout, and provides fundamental grounding for any stakeholder of business process transformation.

This book, originally published in 1996, develops a model of information gathering for small businesses. Whilst all small business owners gather and process some information, the quality and types of information gathered is limited. Size and resource constraints force small business owners to make difficult decisions related to the research that they conduct. The model developed in this book is tested in part through a study of the information gathering practices of small owners/managers in the landscaping industry in Wisconsin, USA.

Efficient technological strategy is an increasingly important element in industrial profitability. An understanding of networks - the formal and informal web of contacts between suppliers, producers and customers - is vital to the application of such strategy. In this book, first published in 1989, Hakan Hakansson brings together theory and practice to provide the first comprehensive and detailed study of technological development in companies, and the associated interactions with other companies and organizations. This book is ideal for students of business.

As more people choose to work from home, the challenges for both the home worker and traditional management increase. Many questions arise regarding how to appraise the remote worker, the logistics of home working, and productivity. The authors focus on developing the right skills to cope with this new environment and stress the importance of knowing what the homeworker needs. Other issues addressed are finding the right balance between the office, home and client sites, dealing with the creation of workable home office environment, and technological and legal issues.

This book is especially relevant to undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers studying quantitative techniques as part of business, management and finance. It is an interdisciplinary book that covers all major topics involved at the interface between business and management on the one hand and mathematics and statistics on the other. Managers and others in industry and commerce who wish to obtain a working knowledge of quantitative techniques will also find this book useful.

The primary goal of Essentials of Business Statistics is to illustrate an accurate view of business statistics in a way that students can easily understand. This is achieved in the following ways: New statistical topics and tools are introduced by using continuing case studies. This approach helps to alleviate student anxiety in learning new concepts and enhances overall comprehension Streamlined and clarified coverage of graphical and numerical methods New graphically based procedures for finding confidence intervals and performing hypothesis tests Increased emphasis on Excel and MINITAB with improved and updated step-by-step instructions in the end of chapter material Connect Business Statistics homework management

This comprehensive textbook is a basic reference which should be recommended to students and teachers in engineering, technology and management as well as to the whole community of professionals already working in quality-related areas.
The book aims to be a step-by-step introduction to statistical quality assurance. It has been specifically designed for self-study and includes over 100 fully solved exercises and worked examples. In addition to traditional quality control procedures the book also presents very carefully elaborated results of recent research in order to encourage their adoption into practice.

Thanks to digital media, coaching doesnt have to be constrained by geographical and temporal boundaries. Using digital media to facilitate coaching processes however, creates a distinct form of coaching practice that requires additional skill from the coach. The Digital Coach contains insights based on a comprehensive, exploratory research that analysed the discussions of a 1,000 member strong online community of coaches and several interviews with coaches to understand their practical experiences of working with technology. At the same time, the book offers information, insights, and examples that can be readily used by the coaching practitioner. Based on the developments in the field, the book provides suggestions about improving the usability of coaching software, and it offers reflections on how emerging technologies like immersive Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Artificial Intelligence might extend coaching practice. Whilst acknowledging the limitations and potential risks that may arise by integrating digital media in coaching, the book suggests that coaching success doesn't only depend on media capabilities, but also on the coach. The digital coach develops enhanced coaching skills and adapts coaching practice to the media in use. The book is dedicated to the coaching practitioner who uses digital media or who is considering doing so, and is relevant for coaching supervisors, buyers of coaching services, human resource professionals, and software designers.

This book presents an ethnographic study of contemporary ticket touts in the UK. Despite the recent interest in the topic of black-market ticket sales, media coverage and parliamentary interventions over the last ten years have revealed a widespread lack of knowledge with regards to the phenomenon of touting and the players involved in the practice. The Rise and Rise of Illegal Ticket Touting sheds light on the world of touting and delivers an authentic picture of the individuals involved, of their methods, values, and motivations for performing ticket touting as an organised, entrepreneurial deviant activity. The touts' attitudes, perceptions, adaptations to - or outright dismissal of - the changing legal landscape are focal points of the study. Of equal importance are the touts' varied methods of buying and selling tickets, the hierarchical structures and strict ethos of their criminal organisations, and their specific modi operandi for evading detection and arrest both on the streets and online. This book illuminates why historic and renewed attempts to challenge ticket touting have been unsuccessful, focusing on inadequate legislation, a lack of enforcement, and the widespread corruption and exploitable loopholes that exist within the official, primary ticket market. An accessible and compelling read, The Rise and Rise of Illegal Ticket Touting will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, social policy, policing and all those with an interest in live music and sport and the hidden practices that lurk beneath the surface.

Recent decades have seen substantial growth in the range of assistance programmes for SMEs and entrepreneurs across the world. Once regarded as peripheral to the economy and public policy, the role of small firms and of entrepreneurship is now recognized as of key importance in the economic growth and development strategies of many nations. The range of interventions and support focused on promoting SMEs and entrepreneurship is substantial and expanding, so Government, SMEs and Entrepreneurship Development asks 'what are some of the main policy instruments being used, and how effective are they?' It considers policies in different countries, examines key interventions and tools used to promote entrepreneurship and SME development and concludes with contributions on how to best evaluate their effectiveness. The contributor chapters by academics and practitioners from businesses, enterprise development agencies and governments, are empirical or evidence-based and use both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Drawing on experience from a wide range of both developed and emerging countries and economies, the contributions focus on the broad strategies that different governments and communities have adopted to foster entrepreneurship and SMEs; the policy tools and instruments that can be used to promote small business and entrepreneurship; and on the outcomes of policy instruments and the methods used to evaluate interventions. Their findings will help researchers, policy-makers, economic development officers, civil servants, elected officials, and business associations to better understand the issues in this important field.

This book, originally published in 1989, studies both the growth and the barriers to growth of small firms. It examines market and industrial structures, also the role of investment institutions and their handling of small business accounts. There are chapters on management attitudes and ability considered as a potential barrier to development, and other problems such as lack of finance and of a suitably qualified workforce. The book stresses the importance of communicating the latest advances in technology to small firms, and urges the need to re-think government tax and procurement policies.

This study, originally published in 1987, addresses the question of small firm performance. Drawing on an extensive database containing financial, employment and ownership data for several thousand small firms, the book examines whether small firms do actually provide jobs, whether they grow and why small firms fail. Guidance is given on how to spot the signs of impending failure in a small business, which is of use to accountants small business PR actioners and government grant providers.