The purpose of this book is to understand the lived experiences of Black women diversity practitioners at historically white higher education, healthcare, and corporate institutions before, during, and after the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and the racial reckoning of 2020. There is limited research on Black women's experiences in these positions outside of higher education. The stories and research provided in this book offers crucial information for institutions to look inward at the cultures and practices of their organizations that directly impact Black women diversity practitioners. In addition, implications for culture shifts and policy transformation would support Black women currently in these positions and women looking to break into the field of diversity, equity, and inclusion. This is a essential text for higher education staff and administration, CEOs, and leadership in corporate America and healthcare.

The international financial crisis of 2007 and 2008 and the situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have had a great impact on many firms' financial needs. Simultaneously, several emerging countries have bet on boosting private initiatives as a way to diversify their economies and create jobs and wealth for their populations. New forms of financing have appeared that have impacted the firm's capital structure, cost of capital, and access to finance by underprivileged communities that are normally outside the formal economy. The Handbook of Research on Acceleration Programs for SMEs provides and shares knowledge on the financial mix, alternative forms of finance, capital structure, and more. It calls attention to relevant challenges, financial institutions, and governments to guarantee funds and economic and social development with new competencies, innovations, new ways of investing, entrepreneurship, and business models with new public policies. Covering topics such as earnings management, capital structure, and foreign exchange, this major reference work is an essential resource for government officials, business leaders and executives, economists, sociologists, students and faculty of higher education, librarians, researchers, and academicians.

Given the pace at which projects must be completed in an era of global hypercompetition and turbulence, examining the project management profession within the contexts of international trade and globalization is essential to encourage the highest level of efficiency and agility. Agile project management provides a flexible approach to managing projects as it allows a team to break large projects down into more manageable tasks that can be tackled in short iterations or sprints, thus enabling a team to adapt to change quickly and deliver work fast. Contemporary Challenges for Agile Project Management highlights the modern struggles that face businesses and leaders as they work to implement agile project management within their processes and try to gain a competitive edge through cross-functional team collaboration. Covering many underrepresented topics related to areas such as critical success factors, data science, and project leadership, this book is an essential resource for project leaders, managers, supervisors, business leaders, consultants, researchers, academicians, and students and educators of higher education.

With the far-reaching global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand and the necessity for digital enterprise transformation have accelerated exponentially. Management and strategies for the adoption and wider usage of newer digital technologies for the transformation of an enterprise through digital tools such as real-time video communications have shown that people no longer need to be required to be physically present in the same place; rather, they can be geographically dispersed. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, digital banking, and cloud data have taken over tasks that were initially done by human hands and have increased both the automation and efficiency of tasks and the accessibility of information and services. Inclusion of all these newer technologies has shown the fast pace at which the digital enterprise transformation is rapidly evolving and how new ecosystems are reshaping the digital enterprise model. Disruptive Technology and Digital Transformation for Business and Government presents interesting research on digital enterprise transformation at different stages and across different settings within government and industry, along with key issues and deeper insights on the core problems and developing solutions and recommendations for digital enterprise transformation. The chapters examine the three core leaders of transformation: the people such as managers, employees, and customers; the digital technology such as artificial intelligence and robotics; and the digital enterprise, including the products and services being transformed. They unravel the underlying process for management and strategies to fully incorporate new digital tools and technologies across all aspects of an enterprise undergoing transformation. This book is ideally intended for managers, executives, IT consultants, business professionals, government officials, researchers, students, practitioners, stakeholders, academicians, and anyone else looking to learn about new developments in digital enterprise transformation of business systems from a global perspective.