This book investigates the adoption of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in Caribbean travel firms, particularly for sales and marketing purposes. By examining the decision-making process in tourism companies deciding whether to become more dependent on digital capabilities and artificial intelligence, this text seeks to understand the role of strategy and resources in technology adoption. Further, the author assesses the role of factors both external (such as culture) and internal (such as leadership) in this strategic process. Economies in the Caribbean are reliant on tourism to bring prosperity to the region, and with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the industry is being forced to transform the way it operates. With implications for those studying organizational behavior as well as strategic and tourism management, this study analyzes rapid change in this pivotal industry.

This handbook is focused on the analytical dimension in researching international entrepreneurship. It offers a diverse collection of chapters focused on qualitative and quantitative methods that are being practised and can be used by future researchers in the field of international entrepreneurship. The qualitative cluster covers articles, conceptual and empirical chapters as well as literature reviews, whereas the quantitative cluster analyses international entrepreneurship through a broad range of statistical methods such as regressions, panel data, structural equation modelling as well as decision-making and optimisation models in certain and uncertain circumstances. This book is essential reading for researchers, scholars and practitioners who want to learn and implement new methods in analysing entrepreneurial opportunities across national borders.

Entrepreneurship these days is evident, even showcased, in so many places that it is harder for anyone interested in the field to really know about all of its many facets. That diversity is what makes the Concise Guide so essential. The Guide's ability to provide an expert's take in just a couple of pages on key topics in entrepreneurship is a boon to anyone interested in entrepreneurship. This is not a volume for your bookcase. You will want it at-hand as your explore the world of entrepreneurship.' - Jerome Katz, Saint Louis University, USThe Concise Guide to Entrepreneurship, Technology and Innovation brings together internationally recognized scholars to summarize the state of knowledge about fundamental topics in entrepreneurship, technology, and innovation. Written by the top international scholars in their field, this book has an encyclopaedic range; from academic entrepreneurship to valuing an entrepreneurial enterprise. Each chapter provides an informed overview of the topic and references in each chapter guide the reader to the more advanced literature. This landmark book will be the first port of call for any student or scholar seeking a brief introduction to each of the fundamental topics in entrepreneurship, technology, and innovation. Contributors: D.B. Audretsch, C. Boardman, B. Bozeman, S.R. Bradley, A. Burke, U. Cantner, M. Casson, S. Cazzago, J.A. Cunningham, P. Davidsson, A. De Massis, M. Deloof, D. Dunlap, W. Geoghegan, V. Ghosal, J. Hanssens, C.S. Hayter, M. Herzig, A. Kao, M. Kenney, D.F. Kuratko, H. Landstroem, E.E. Lehmann, D.P. Leyden, X. Liu, A.N. Link, S. Manigart, G.D. Markman, H. Meier, M.H. Morris, A.J. Nelson, C. O'Kane, D. Organ, S. Parker, G.T. Payne, M. Perkmann, L.S. Peters, P.H. Phan, E.A. Prasetio, J.H. Rooksby, G.E. Shockley, T. Standaert, A. Talrico, R. Thurik, T. Vanacker, S. Vismara, N.S. Vonortas, J. West, P. Westhead, K. Wirsching, M. Wright

Entrepreneurial Competition and Industrial Location explores the notion of entrepreneurial competition from its theoretical foundations in early Austrian and contemporary evolutionary economics. Focusing on the structural development of the intangible factors of production such as labour skills, advertising and research and development, the book's empirical implications are tested in a comparative study of competitive performance in the EU, Japan and the USA. Typical mechanisms of external spillovers, shaping industrial location by means of Marshallian cluster formation, highlight the dimension of industrial location. Peneder finally employs the three evolutionary principles of variation, cumulation and selection to establish entrepreneurship, learning and fair markets as the main pillars of modern competitiveness policy. This volume paves the way for a better understanding of the market process, demonstrating the importance of intangible factors as sources of competitive advantage both by conclusive theoretical argument and careful empirical investigation.

The provision of water and sanitation services (WSS) in developing countries has traditionally been the preserve of the state, but recently there has been a move towards greater private sector participation (PSP). While the potential economic benefits of PSP are well-known, the authors extensively discuss the environmental and social implications unique to the sector. The focus of the book is on the crucial role public authorities must continue to play to guarantee sustainability, levels of service and access to a variety of consumers. The authors show how these objectives are realised in very different ways - and not always successfully - in developing countries. The authors critically review the current literature and include new case studies from Manila, Buenos Aires, Cordoba, Abidjan and Mexico City. Private Firms and Public Water will be of interest to regulatory officials, economists, development professionals and scholars, as well as government, business and NGOs.

Entrepreneurship has significant impacts on a nation's economic infrastructure. Discovering new ways to promote entrepreneurial growth within undervalued communities can help ensure financial growth, as well as provide a boost to the current economy. Evolving Entrepreneurial Strategies for Self-Sustainability in Vulnerable American Communities is an essential scholarly resource that identifies initiatives for entrepreneurs in underdeveloped areas to utilize. Featuring pertinent topics that include poverty reduction, informal investment, and social entrepreneurship, this reference publication is ideal for academicians, students, entrepreneurs, business owners, and researchers that are seeking innovative strategies to boost the economy and provide more jobs across the nation.

The mainstream perception of Russian business today is framed by images of wild capitalism and a Dutch-diseased resource-dependent economy with poorly functioning rules and institutions. Despite the continued relevance of these issues in the current environment, readers of this book will discover that business in Russia has undergone a remarkable transformation. Important characteristics of the contemporary Russian business climate include the rise of a new generation of Russian business leaders and entrepreneurs, a variety of innovative and adaptive business strategies developed to respond to the increasingly VUCA world, a confident middle class with significant purchasing power, as well as a surprising level of integration in the world economy, including increasingly with China and its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). These evolving developments have received little attention from researchers and practitioners. This book has been written by Russian experts and thought leaders to address this knowledge gap. The five sections provide a diverse but integrated set of opinion pieces, analyses and cases about Russian business covering markets and macro perspectives, strategy and governance, innovation and entrepreneurship, internationalization and leadership. The aim is to overcome preconceptions by illustrating the underreported and multifaceted nature of the life of Russian business and take the reader closer to what is really happening on the ground. The book contains more than 50 contributions from 54 authors representing opinion leaders in Russia and abroad including prominent academics and businessmen. The Life of Russian Business is aimed at practitioners, policy-makers and educators, as well as those generally interested in Russia. By disseminating state-of-the-art insights on Russian decision-makers and institutions, the book ultimately delivers a well informed and balanced guide for those wishing to participate in Russia's economy.

New firm creation is one of the most important topics at economic, social and political level. The emergence of new ventures is central to economic adaptation and change and one of the major features associated with growth in employment and in sector productivity. Entrepreneurship is now at the centre of many policy questions related to science and technology, research and development, sustainability, poverty, human capital, employment, tangible and intangible resouces. This book provides a better understanding of the process for setting up new initiatives, analysing the several factors related to entrepreneurship dynamic. It specifically analyses the factors explaining the entrepreneurial rates in Italy and the differences in entrepreneurial dynamics in a sample of EU countries. This book shows that the entrepreneurial dynamics is very different across countries and to establish a policy to foster entrepreneurship, there is a need to investigate which factors drive the entrepreneurial process. This book will be of interest to academics and practitioners in Entrepreneurship, and it also offers interesting indications to policy makers. Stimulating innovative entrepreneurship is one of the highest priorities in the current economic debate, and is particularly important in countries like Italy, where economic growth is slow and youth unemployment rates are very high.

This book provides an overview of the historical financial reforms and regulatory changes in China, highlighting the background to and causes of changes in the income structure of China's banks. It also investigates ongoing concerns with regard to banking diversification in China, and its consequences, amid the global trend of banks' shift to non-traditional businesses. Focusing on three critical aspects of bank-income diversification, namely the effects on profitability, risk level, and efficiency, it employs the concept of systemically important banks, which describes the scale and degree of influence a bank has in global and domestic financial markets. More importantly, rather than replicating techniques employed in the research on developed markets, it applies several improved methodologies to address bank diversification in the specific context created by China's unique institutional background and data characteristics, such as GMM-type threshold models and stochastic frontier analysis with the within maximum likelihood estimation. Shedding new light on the current status of income diversification in the Chinese banking sector, this book is a valuable resource for readers in fields such as banking and financial stability. It will also help banking professionals and financial regulatory authorities to better understand the reform of China's financial industry and the future direction of banking.

This book discusses corporate citizenship, corporate responsibility and business ethics across Africa generally, and Botswana specifically. It begins by contextualizing Botswana within the broader context of Africa, using nine other countries - Angola, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe - to provide a comparative perspective, examining the common factor: that weak legalization makes it challenging for corporate social responsibility to be actualized.From this background, the book then discusses Botswana as a key study. Botswana has been described as 'Africa's economic miracle' due to its growing economy since independence This puts it in a unique position for the implementation and study of corporate social responsibility. The interdisciplinary team of authors employ various research methods to examine the complex relationship between business, society, corporations and social justice issues.This book will be valuable reading for any academic working on corporate social responsibility in Africa, and will present an interesting insight to an often neglected area of study. France Maphosa is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Botswana. His research interests include migration and transnationalism, the sociology of entrepreneurship, corporate social responsibility, urban and rural livelihoods, labour studies and alternative dispute resolution (ADR). Langtone Maunganidze is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Midlands State University in Zimbabwe. His research interests include industrial sociology, business and society, rural livelihoods and sustainable development, and entrepreneurship.

The retail industry has undergone enormous changes during the last thirty years.

But there is one retailer that not only has remained consistent in the fluctuating―even tenuous―market, but also has grown in the process.

"More Than a Hobby "takes you inside the story of David Green, the man who built the phenomenal success of Hobby Lobby. Green went beyond surviving in a competitive retail market to thriving, ultimately expanding his $600 start-up company into a $1.3 billion per-year enterprise.

Green's incredible accomplishments were based not on business-school theory but on his grassroots experiences as a store manager and his creative application of cutting edge ideas, including:

• Allow managers to spend no more than thirty minutes per day on paperwork
• Instead of paying a middleman, assemble as much of the product as possible in-house
• Give buyers the freedom to purchase without restraint--but within the realm of common sense
• Keep God and family first

"More Than a Hobby "is a practical field manual, filled with revolutionary ideas for all those who dream of success in the world of retail business.

Economic resilience is an emergent field in the social sciences. In this timely book, key scholars examine how individuals, organisations, regions and nations are affected by internal and external crises, and consider how the ways in which they respond will determine their future growth path. Providing a coherent and clear narrative, Creating Resilient Economies offers a theoretical analysis of resilience and provides guidance to policymakers with regards to fostering more resilient economies and people. It adeptly illustrates how resilience thinking can offer the opportunity to re-frame economic development policy and practice and provides a clear evidence base of the cultural, economic, political and social conditions that shape the adaptability, flexibility and responsiveness to crises in their many forms. Academics and scholars across the social sciences will find this book an enlightening gateway into the subject of economic resilience. Its eminently practical approach will also benefit government policy makers interested in how localities, regions and nations can respond more effectively to crises. Contributors include: D. Bailey, G. Bentley, C. Brooks, C. Brunelle, J. Clark, P. Di Caro, R. Doern, E. Evenhuis, S. Dawley, H. Gong, N. Gray, R. Hassink, R. Huggins, C.K. Monsson, L. Pugalis, J. Simmie, B. Spigel, P. Thompson, A. Townsend, T. Vorley, N. Williams

Thousands of small, retail stores open every year, but 70 to 80 percent of them close within five years. Many are done in by the "big box" and Internet retailers who crush competition with low prices and convenience. But smaller retail stores and service providers have distinct competitive advantages: They are local. They can connect on a personal level with customers in a way the big guys can't. And they can add immense value to the customer experience. To capitalize on these advantages, marketing experts Steve O'Leary and Kim Sheehan offer dozens of inexpensive "Word of Mouth" marketing methods small businesses can use right away. Done well, these efforts will help smaller merchants do more than survive--they'll prosper. For independent retailers to succeed, it is no longer enough to create a loyal customer base. Local store marketers need to put their loyal customers to work, encouraging them to talk about the store to their friends, family members, and others in their social networks. When they do, the result is Word of Mouth (or Buzz) marketing, a powerful tool that creates an army of advocates who become even more loyal and help attract new customers. Besides learning how to leverage the power of word of mouth marketing, readers will learn: -How to understand their customers better. -How to increase customer loyalty to their store. -How to communicate with customers to maintain loyalty. -How to encourage loyal customers to talk to others about their store. -How to create a customer community, both in the store and on line. -How to measure results. The book also includes numerous examples from current businesses, as well as thought-provoking ideas and templates to help readersgenerate their own successful buzz marketing plans. Most resources available today on buzz marketing focus on techniques for large companies and online retailers. This book offers something priceless for the little guy by showing ways to increase loyalty and gain new customers.

This book discusses social innovations by cooperatives from the Asia and Pacific region. Social innovations emerge when the state and market in developing countries find it difficult to solve problems such as poverty, hunger, ill health, poor education systems, inadequate drinking water and poor sanitation. These countries also face barriers to economic growth such as climate change, poor governance, unequal opportunities and social exclusion. This volume therefore addresses the following questions. What are the distinctive features of social innovations by cooperatives? How social innovations bring in changes in the process and outcome of development? After presenting theories of social innovation and a critical review of cooperatives and social innovation, the book presents 15 chapters on social innovations by cooperatives in the Asia Pacific region. These social innovations are related to health insurance, community based tourism, disaster response, climate smart agriculture, use of social media for youth empowerment, training for the emergence of second-line leaders in cooperatives, social inclusion through innovative finance, profitable marketing of organic produce to strengthen economic status of small farmers, digital auction and value addition for income security of farmer members, collaboration between cooperative members and workers for the mutual benefit, worker cooperatives, women leadership and participation, building union-cooperative partnership in finance and rating of cooperatives to promote transparency and accountability. A chapter on innovative services of cooperatives during the time of Covid19 is also included. This volume will be quite significant for co-operators, researchers, teachers, practitioners and policy-makers at the global level. The theme is relevant for international development community and national cooperatives with concern for their communities, which is the seventh cooperative principle of International Cooperative Alliance and the Sustainable Development Goal of the UN.