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.

Empower yourself with the knowledge to keep up with the rapidly changing technical world of work, as two workforce productivity and technology experts lay out a clear picture of the?coming?revolution?in how work is done and how jobs are shaped. If you listen to the news, robots are coming for your job. Full-time employment will soon be a thing of the past as organizations opt more to hire employees on a contract basis.?With technological advances across email, video, project management, and instant messaging platforms, being tied to a desk working full time for one company is becoming obsolete. So, where does that leave you? The Human Cloud may be the most important book you read to prepare for how work is done in the future. In these pages, human cloud technologist Matthew Mottola and AI expert Matthew Coatney help you not only clearly understand the transition you see happening around you, but they will also help you take advantage of it. In The Human Cloud, Mottola and Coatney inform you about topics including: How employees and employers will be able to take advantage of the new automated and freelance-based workplace. How they will be able to take advantage of the new technology disruptions the machine cloud will create. Why the changes employees and employers are seeing aren't the projection of doom that many are predicting. How to navigate the coming job marketplace. By replacing fear with knowledge, you will better understand how this shift in employment is a good thing, be equipped to embrace the positive?advantages new technology brings, and further secure how your own job is shaped so you are never left behind.

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.

This book is for upper-level students, managers and academics who are interested in exploring the 'messy reality' of the contemporary workplace and in considering how things might be done differently. In particular, it offers a critical perspective on organisational behaviour and the sociology of work. By challenging common sense ideas about management, this textbook offers an up-to-date view of the complex problems and dilemmas facing managers and workers in the contemporary world. Providing a fresh analysis and overview of several core themes, the chapters focus on applied ethics, social issues, diversity, continuity and change. Theoretical reflections are combined with detailed ethnographic studies to offer both breadth and depth. Individual chapters present studies on issues as diverse as teleworking, apprentices, paternalism, migration, animal charities, factory work and farm work. Underpinning all of these studies is a sense that the world of work could be a better place and that students, practitioners and tutors all have an obligation to question the assumptions in business and management. Key features include: * Original in-depth qualitative cases * Critical approach * Non-standard work situations * Presents lived experience rather than 'model' or 'idealised' problems * Focus on context, understanding and interpretation of complex situations * Examples of a variety of management practice * Discussion of management issues in wider philosophical and political context Contemporary Issues in Management would be suitable for those studying organisational behaviour, management, ethnography and sociology of work. The book will also be of interest to the general reader with an interest in developing a broader awareness of contemporary management.

Leaves from a President's Notebook shares the wisdom of Thomas K. Hearn Jr., former President of Wake Forest University, and past chairman and board member of the Center for Creative Leadership. These short essays reflect Dr. Hearn's thoughts ranging from growing up in rural Alabama to current topics including leadership development, college athletics, and the role of the modern university. Dr. Hearn graduated summa cum laude from Birmingham-Southern College, earned a divinity degree from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and a PhD in philosophy from Vanderbilt University. After teaching philosophy at the College of William and Mary for ten years, he returned to his home state in 1974 to start the philosophy department at the University of Alabama-Birmingham. Dr. Hearn was named Wake Forest University's twelfth president on June 23, 1983, and served until 2005, the second-longest tenure in the University's history. He oversaw the development of Wake Forest from a small, regional liberal arts Baptist institution into one of the nations' premier independent universities. His efforts to raise the University's national profile were recognized in 1994 when U.S. News & World Report moved Wake Forest into the national universities category in its annual college guide. Wake Forest has ranked among the top thirty universities in the country every year since.

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.

**The instant Sunday Times bestseller** What if you tried to stop doing everything, so you could finally get round to what counts? Rejecting the futile modern obsession with 'getting everything done,' Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life by embracing rather than denying their limitations. Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman sets out to realign our relationship with time - and in doing so, to liberate us from its tyranny. Embrace your limits. Change your life. Make your four thousand weeks count. 'Life is finite. You don't have to fit everything in... Read this book and wake up to a new way of thinking and living' Emma Gannon 'Every sentence is riven with gold' Chris Evans 'Comforting, fascinating, engaging, inspiring and useful' Marian Keyes

Risks can be identified, evaluated, and mitigated, but the underlying uncertainty remains elusive. Risk is present across all industries and sectors. As a result, organizations and governments worldwide are currently experiencing higher levels of risk and have had to make risky decisions during times of crisis and instability, including the COVID-19 pandemic, economic and climate perils, and global tensions surrounding terrorism. It is essential that new studies are undertaken to understand strategies taken during these times to better equip business leaders to navigate risk management in the future. Global Risk and Contingency Management Research in Times of Crisis examines the impact of crises including the COVID-19 pandemic, which has tested organizational risk and contingency management plans. It provides significant insights that should benefit business leaders on risk and contingency management in times of crisis. It emphasizes strategies that leaders can undertake to identify potential future risks and examines decisions made in past crises that can act as examples of what to do and what not to do during future crisis events. Covering topics such as auditing theories, risk assessment, and educational inequality, this premier reference source is a crucial resource for business leaders, executives, managers, decision makers, policymakers, students, government officials, entrepreneurs, librarians, researchers, and academicians.

Have you ever found yourself struggling with information overload? Have you ever felt both overworked and underutilised? Do you ever feel busy but not productive? If you answered yes to any of these, the way out is to become an Essentialist. In Essentialism, Greg McKeown, CEO of a Leadership and Strategy agency in Silicon Valley who has run courses at Apple, Google and Facebook, shows you how to achieve what he calls the disciplined pursuit of less. Being an Essentialist is about a disciplined way of thinking. It means challenging the core assumption of 'We can have it all' and 'I have to do everything' and replacing it with the pursuit of 'the right thing, in the right way, at the right time'. By applying a more selective criteria for what is essential, the pursuit of less allows us to regain control of our own choices so we can channel our time, energy and effort into making the highest possible contribution toward the goals and activities that matter. Using the experience and insight of working with the leaders of the most innovative companies and organisations in the world, McKeown shows you how to put Essentialism into practice in your own life, so you too can achieve something great.

What ingredients do you need to brew a successful career in selling and marketing consumer goods? The lessons found in Nick Millers fascinating and motivating story will tell you. Nick Miller sold a lot of beer in his many years in the UK beer industry. Starting in the bingo halls and working mens clubs of East London, he soon moved up to promoting world-class beer brands into nationwide pub chains and supermarkets. Using a powerful blend of creativity, dedication and discipline alongside a smart sales and marketing strategy he and his team turned Peroni from a niche Italian import into the UK's premier lager. Later he took the helm at the craft beer minnow Meantime, where his magic touch led to the brand's turnaround and eventual sale to SABMiller for GBP120 million. In the Meantime distils all the lessons Nick picked up during his impressive career to show any leader how you can: Think strategically about selling and marketingMaximise the strengths of your teamFind the benefits in setbacks and barriersAnalyse your own strengths and weaknessesMotivate your team and enjoy yourself along the way Unlock the confidence to believe in your own abilities and your potential to aim high and succeed as you discover a disciplined way of thinking that can enable you to become as successful in your chosen industry as you want to be. And along the way, lighten the load with some amusing anecdotes and engaging tales from a career well lived. Cheers!