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Books > Business & Economics > Business & management > Ownership & organization of enterprises > Small businesses & self-employed
All organisations have a responsibility to ensure they have a minimum negative impact on the environment and act as a haven for human development that contributes to positive outcomes for society. But small businesses have limited resources with which to pursue sustainability initiatives and must focus on their core objectives in order to survive. Through an in-depth exploration of quality management theory, this book proposes a "Sustainability Management Framework" as a structure for a balanced approach to developing operations strategy for corporate social responsibility (CSR). Management Systems and Performance Frameworks for Sustainability explores the frameworks, accreditations and awards that small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) can utilise to enhance their performance. In the first half of the book, the author demonstrates how complementary techniques such as the Sustainability Performance Framework can help organisational leaders to develop, implement and optimise business strategy into discrete activities of value setting, management system and performance model selection, and target setting and evaluation, to the tactical deployment of sustainability and CSR. Meanwhile, the second half of the book focuses on real SME case studies to illustrate the use of the Sustainability Strategic Growth Model, Sustainability Management Framework and Sustainability Performance Framework to align strategy and policies with compliance obligations, United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and Millennium Development Goals. This key book is vital reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of quality management, entrepreneurship and sustainability in business, executives of SMEs and sustainability policymakers.
Unlike other economies, family businesses in China are greatly affected by the derived Confucian culture, excessive marketization, as well as the seemingly endless institutional supervision by a transitional Chinese government. China has a strong historical legacy, devoted to patriarchal values and strong family-centered traditions. This volume discusses the current status, upcoming challenges, and future prospects for family businesses in China. It explores unique organizational characteristics that are associated with Chinese family firms, such as being entrepreneurial, having concentrated power in the hands of the family business owners, and extensive family and semi-family involvement in the business. It also discusses shared features of strategic actions among Chinese family firms that include technology innovations, diversification, and internationalization, as well as the political connections that Chinese family firms often have. This book offers researchers a comprehensive overview of small family firms that are likely to be home-based microenterprises as well as large publicly traded business groups that are frequently owned by business families.
SMEs are significant job creators and drivers of innovation and competition in most economic sectors. Furthermore, the traditional constraints of small and medium enterprises, such as geographic operations, are now being dissolved by technological developments. This means that there are new opportunities for SMEs, and their fundamental principles are being redefined: the aims, competencies, strategy, management, practice, and scope of these businesses are changing, with wide-ranging implications. This is the first part of a two volume work that incorporates scientific chapters on SME business theory and practice. Authors provide a balanced perspective of the present and future of SMEs across all business disciplines, including management, strategy, marketing, economics, and finance. While Volume II explores external issues such as contextual forces, the effects of the financial crisis, and macro-economic effects, this first volume focuses on the individual SME and internal issues such as innovation, quality, and digitization.
Introducing the innovative concept of Interactive Network Branding (INB), this book offers academics and professionals a theoretical framework, alongside practical examples, to develop INB in the context of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Combining a business network approach with contemporary corporate branding research, a variety of topics are explored, including: strategizing in SME networks, market management, corporate identity, corporate reputation, human-to-human (H2H) interactions. This broad range of perspectives, from business networks to corporate branding, highlights the latest trends in both business marketing and organizational research whilst emphasizing the influential role of human actors in SMEs. Looking at successful cases of INB and analysing cases where branding has gone wrong, Understanding Interactive Network Branding in SME Firms offers guidelines for researchers in marketing theory and practitioners working in SME firms to develop their branding models and processes in fast changing business environments.
Start-up Marketing Strategies in India analyses real-life marketing challenges faced by Indian start-ups from across the marketing mix of Product, Price, Place & Promotion. Eleven original case studies discuss the experiences of successful Indian entrepreneurs across a wide variety of sectors, including Health Tech, Fintech, media and entertainment, and Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG). Each case investigates the dilemmas faced by Indian start-ups on issues in their marketing mix and presents guidance on practical ways to resolve them through fine-tuning the marketing strategy. A special focus is placed on the views and actions of the start-up founder(s) or CEO dealing with the dilemma, to highlight their innovative solutions. The book is a highly informative guide for entrepreneurs, marketing scholars and practitioners who wish to explore the marketing challenges that new companies face and find new ways to overcome them.
Are you TIRED of the RAT RACE? Do you wish you had MORE TIME and
MORE MONEY? Would you like to NEVER WORK AGAIN? If you answered "YES!," then you need to look no further than
Dan "The Man" Lok's new book - F.U. MONEY.
In this no-nonsense, no-holds-barred guide, international
entrepreneur, best-selling author, and self-made multi-millionaire
Dan Lok shows you how to live the lifestyle you really
This book is not about selling products -- it is about selling yourself, your ideas, and your services. This book explains an innovative dialogue sales process, and the relationship sales principles that underpin it. In every sales situation, there is both a seller and a buyer and, at different times, either the buyer or the seller may take the lead. The dance they perform may or may not lead to a deal, but it will leave them knowing a little more about each other's strengths and weaknesses. These two dancers are "connected" and follow the same steps -- The five steps they follow are to plan, connect, dialogue, record, and follow up. The five steps are the basis of the dialogue process. In addition, this book provides easy-to-follow guidance for three groups of people: 1. Professionals wanting to sell their services and improve their business development; 2. Thought leaders, change agents, innovators, entrepreneurs, senior public servants, and advocates wanting to sell their ideas to others; 3. Mid-career job seekers and recent graduates aiming to sell themselves into a dream job role either full or part-time.
It's time to make your ideas a reality. Because if not now, when? * Are you feeling overwhelmed by all the information out there about starting a side hustle? * Do you have a great business idea but no clue where to start? * Are you looking for advice to help you build the portfolio career you desire? Side Hustle in Progress: A Practical Guide to Kickstarting Your Business is a handbook packed full of inspiration, no-nonsense advice and fresh ideas to help you feel empowered and excited about your future business idea. It also includes case studies from female founders across a range of industries who have built their own businesses and thrived, including Emma Gannon, Fisayo Longe, Jamie Schmidt, Tania Boler and Victoria Prew. As someone who has been through it before, Elizabeth Ogabi covers everything you need to know as you embark on your side-hustle journey including: * Cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset * Getting clarity on your why, your vision and your mission * Defining your customer * Connecting with your audience * Building your founding team * Financing options * PR tactics and strategies This book will set you up for success in your side hustle so you can avoid wasting your time, money and effort.
Business intelligence (BI) has evolved over several years as organizations have extended their online transaction processing (OLTP) capabilities and applications to support their routine operations. With online analytical processing (OLAP), organizations have also established the capability to extract internal and external data from a variety of sources to specifically obtain intelligence about non-routine and often less-structured arrangements. BI therefore refers to applications and technologies that are used to gather, provide access to, and analyze data and information about the operations of an organization. It has the capability of providing comprehensive insight into the more volatile factors affecting the business and its operations, thereby facilitating enhanced decision-making quality and contributing to the creation of business value. Larger and more sophisticated organizations have long been exploiting these capabilities. Business Intelligence for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) guides SMEs in replicating this experience to provide an agile roadmap toward business sustainability. The book points out that successful BI implementations have generated significant increases in revenue and cost savings, however, the failure rates are also very high. More importantly, it emphasizes that a full range of BI capabilities is not the exclusive purview of large organizations. It shows how SMEs make extensive use of BI techniques to develop the kind of agility endowing them with the organizational capability to sense and respond to opportunities and threats in an increasingly dynamic business environment. It points to the way to a market environment in which smaller organizations could have a larger role. In particular, the book explains that by establishing the agility to leverage internal and external data and information assets, SMEs can enhance their competitiveness by having a comprehensive understanding of the key to an agile roadmap for business sustainability.
Are you ready to turn your ideas into reality and build a wildly successful business? There has never been a better time to say yes! With a computer and an Internet connection you can get your ideas, messages and business out there like never before and create so much success. In this book, Carrie Green shows you how. Carrie started her first online business at the age of 20 - she knows what it's like to be an ambitious and creative woman with big dreams and huge determination...but she also knows the challenges of starting and running a business, including the fears, overwhelm, confusion and blocks that entrepreneurs face. Based on her personal, tried-and-tested experience, she offers valuable guidance and powerful exercises to help you: * Get clear on your business vision * Move past the fears and doubts that can get in the way * Understand your audience, so you can truly connect with them * Create your brand and build a tribe of raving fans, subscribers and customers * Manage your time, maintain focus and keep going in the right direction * Condition yourself for success...and so much more! If you're a creative and ambitious female entrepreneur, or are contemplating the entrepreneurial path, this book will provide the honest, realistic and practical tools you need to follow your heart and bring your vision to life.
This is the first volume in a series which explores current research, and theoretical and methodological efforts in the field of entrepreneurship, and its related disciplines of small business, family business, and population ecology. The book considers various demographic issues.
This book focuses on a central success factor for family businesses: maintaining the decision-making ability over generations while not jeopardizing the business due to family conflict, inefficient governance structures, or lack of identification. The authors identify that this is not as easy as the endeavor to bring two social systems together with contradicting logic (family and business) leads to many dangerous pitfalls. This book presents outcomes of a unique research project in which family managers of eleven of the oldest and largest German family businesses, at least the fourth generation, met for more than three years on a regular basis and presented the essence of their family governance structures to each other and to the authors. It was a joint "learning journey" that admits identifying twelve core questions that these families had been answering to keep up the relationship between family and business successfully over generations. Obviously, there is no "right" answer to these questions. The key to success is rather engaging the families in a process to find out their own answers and make them aware of the "two sides": being a family is different from being a business family.
Very few enterprising families focus on building an owner's mindset in family members. They are busy working and growing their enterprises (rightly so), which prioritizes and values the management role over the ownership role. Many rising generation family members do not choose the path of ownership but are simply born into it. Given these typical patterns, it is not surprising that there is little focus on valuing and building an educated owner to steward the family's assets for future generations. This book serves as a resource and support tool to help enterprising families learn and develop thoughtful, capable ownership by investing in and nurturing an owner's mindset. This includes building "ownership literacy," along with a genuine sense of stewardship. It offers a learning structure and approach for each stage of an owner's development across the lifespan (from earliest years to retirement), taking into consideration the lifecycle stages of the family. The authors make clear that ownership development shouldn't be confined to earlier ages; any owner at any age can gain ownership-related perspective and skills that can contribute to greater family harmony and business success. The book provides enterprising families and their advisors with examples and practical advice for the promotion of knowledge, skills, and capabilities that incorporate a broad range of topics spanning from personal and interpersonal, to leadership and wealth, to business, ownership, and financial.
Between cases of study, theoretical panorama and practical reflections, this book gives brand leaders the means to defend their brand in a changing environment, where new technologies and manipulation techniques have rendered old defense schemes obsolete. Rather than suggesting a reflection from the point of view of the crisis, the authors deal with the question under another, broader theme: conflict.
Written from an insiders perspective, this book presents the straight truth on small business success. It's not a get-rich-quick scheme and it doesn't offer cure-alls for every small business. Instead, it outlines real, effective principles for sustained small business growth and success. Written by business growth expert Steven Little, The 7 Irrefutable Rules of Small Business Growth skips pie-in-the-sky theory in exchange for real-world, practical solutions. Readers will find answers to the small business owner's most important questions on such topics as technology, planning, hiring, globalization, and the near-term future of small business in America. Steven S. Little (Wilmington, NC) is a speaker, consultant, and writer on business growth and the future of opportunity. The former president of three fast-growing companies, he is an expert on small business growth.
This book provides an extensive overview of family business-related topics such as context and uniqueness, lifecycle and ownership configurations, conflict management, corporate governance, succession challenges, internationalization, innovation, and socioemotional wealth. Each chapter features clear learning objectives, key concepts and terminology, and dedicated case studies to demonstrate the main messages. The book not only considers the day-to-day dynamics in family businesses, but also places substantial emphasis on the entrepreneurial skills needed for these businesses to survive and thrive, today and tomorrow. In addition, it elaborates and discusses a number of best practice examples, which offer valuable guidance not only for scholars, but also for students who wish to study these challenges.
Starting a new business takes a lot of energy and organization. The failure rate is alarmingly high and the task can look herculean at the outset. This new textbook provides a simple guide to help plan a successful new business, taking entrepreneurs and students through the steps required to avoid pitfalls and get a business going. Unlike most entrepreneurship textbooks, the author avoids dwelling on theories in favour of providing effective and practical guidance on how to start and manage a profitable business, with a focus on new ventures operating in high-growth, innovative sectors. Written by an expert with experience in academia and business consulting, this concise textbook will be valuable reading for students of entrepreneurship, new ventures and small business. The practical focus of the book means that it will be useful both for students in the classroom and for entrepreneurs wanting to start a new business.
What is the role of culture in the innovation dynamic of small firms within the context of their territorial environments? How do shared values, beliefs and practices underpin the knowledge production process that leads to innovation? In what way do symbolic aspects of social life shape European SMEs' innovation processes? This volume gives an extensive insight into the complex links between culture and innovation in one of the key agents of economic life: SMEs and micro firms. The chapters employ different analytical and methodological strategies in regions of Europe to identify dimensions of culture, especially values, norms, skills and institutions, and to scrutinize which specific components of culture are relevant to firm innovation and to the more general dynamics of regional innovation. The original research presented shows how small firms learn, interact, compete and collaborate with other key agents of the innovation system. Taken as a whole, the volume points the way towards a more comprehensive framework for understanding the nature of innovation in SMEs and micro firms. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of European Planning Studies.
Business schools have long enticed students into their MBA programs with the promise that, after a short stint spent studying the ins and outs of the business world, they will be able to step right into the upper echelons of management or launch a business that soon has them flitting about the world in a private jet. "Sounds great," you say. "Sign me up " Not so fast.Sure, business school might prove a necessary prerequisite for those aiming to gain employment at a large financial institution, land a job with a consultancy, or accelerate their journey tomanagerial superstardom at a Fortune 500 company. But for aspiring entrepreneurs and established business owners alike, the truth of the matter is this: The ability to get a business off the ground and running successfully is not the byproduct of toiling away in a classroom, learning esoteric subjects like the economics of competition.Rather, all it takes to start and run a truly successful business are a few sensible, time-proven techniques that have been needlessly forgotten in business innovators' haste to reinvent the wheel.That's why, in The Street Smart MBA, Steve Babitsky and James J. Mangraviti, Jr., encourage youto ditch classor, better yet, ditchb-school altogetherandgo back to the business basics with a series of ten simple steps that will do more for your company than the letters M, B, and A ever will. There are no forays into game theory in The Street Smart MBA, no parables, and no intellectualizing. Instead what you will find is a practical, easy-to-understand, step-by-step business strategy guide that encourages you to revive a handful of basic yet essential practices that many business owners have lost sight of, such as: Building a brand that is so synonymous with quality that you'll be able to maximize your company's profits in no time; Turning your company's products and services into profits by finding your company a niche, working with deadlines, and honoring your company's image above all else; Dealing with customer complaints head-on so that you can turn gripes into opportunities; Doing favors, mentoring, and sending gifts, in order to grow your business network; And much more. With its emphasis on ten simple yet time-honored principles that lead to business success, The Street Smart MBAis all the business education that entrepreneurs with great ideas and business owners with the drive to succeed will ever need. What you'll learn Practical, proven advice on building a brand that maximizes your company's profits How to get people to help your company out and give you invaluable information (for free) Simple steps and checklists for developing products and services your company can profit from Marketing techniques that will turn your company's services and products into profits Money-saving tactics that will save your company's bottom line Practical pointers for minimizing your pain and maximizing your gain when managing people Who this book is for The Street Smart MBAis geared toward the tens of millions of businesspeople who own or run small, medium, and large businesses or are planning to do so in the future. Additionally, the book will appeal to college students and young professionals who are contemplating whether or not to attend business school; novice and seasoned entrepreneurs alike who want to position their new venture for business success; and even current undergraduate and MBA students who are thinking about starting up a company and have begun searching for an alternative business education that will help them do so. Table of Contents Step 1: Build a Superb Brand Step 2: Grow and Tap Your Network Step 3: Develop Products Customers LoveStep 4: Sell Your Company's Products and Services in a Cost-Effective Manner Step 5: Control YourCosts and IncreaseYour Productivity Step 6: Take Charge Recruit, Motivate, and Retain a Superior Workforce Deal with Customer Complaints Head-On Manage Yourself Become a Better Negotiator
In tough economic times and with rising unemployment, people are looking to take the bull by the horns and start their own home-based businesses.... From GPP's enormously successful "How to Start a Home-Based Business "series (more than half a million copies sold!), comes the essential guide to starting up a home-based Bookkeeping business.
This book demonstrates that during Japan's early modern Edo period (1603-1868) an ethical code existed among the merchant class comparable to that of the well-known Bushido. There is compelling evidence that contemporary merchants, who were widely and openly despised as immoral by the samurai, in fact acted in highly ethical ways in accordance with a well-articulated moral code. Japanese society was strictly stratified into four distinct and formally recognized classes: warrior, farmer, craftsman and merchant. From the warriors' perspective, the merchants, at the base of the social order, had no virtue, and existed only to skim profits as middlemen between producers and consumers. But were these accusations correct? Were the merchants really unethical beings who engaged in unfair business practices? There is ample evidence that negates the ubiquitous slanders of the warrior class and suggests that merchants - no less than the warriors - possessed and acted in accordance with a well-developed ethical code, a spirit that may be called shonindo or "The Way of the Merchant." This book examines whether a comparison of shonindo, depicting the ethical point of view of the merchant class, and Bushido, embodying that of the warrior class, reveals that shonindo may have in fact surpassed Bushido in some aspects. Comparing contemporarily published historical documents concerning both shonindo and Bushido, as well as Inazo Nitobe's classic work Bushido: The Soul of Japan, published in 1900, the author examines how Bushido surpassed shonindo in that warriors were willing to die for their strict ethical code. Shonindo, however, may have surpassed Bushido in that merchants were liberal, willing to expand and extend application of their ethical beliefs into all aspects of everyday life for the overall benefit of society. This ethical code is compared with that of the conservative Bushido, which demonstrably proved not up to the task for the modernization and improved well-being of Japan. Ichiro Horide is professor emeritus of Reitaku University. Edward Yagi (Reitaku University) and Stanley J. Ziobro II (Trident Technical College) collaborated in the translation of the original Japanese manuscript into English.
Find creative ways to make money in businesses with little competition Using interviews with unconventional entrepreneurs, the author's own wide-ranging experience with weird jobs, and extensive research, 101 Weird Ways to Make Money reveals unusual, sometimes dirty, yet profitable jobs and businesses.?Whether you're looking for a job that suits your independent spirit, or want to start a new business, this unique book shows you moneymaking options you haven't considered. Most of these outside-the-box jobs don't require extensive training, and are also scalable as businesses, allowing you to build on your initial success. Jobs and businesses covered include cricket and maggot farming, environmentally friendly burials, making and selling solar-roasted coffee, daycare services for handicapped children, and many more Each chapter features a "where the money is" section on how to scale-up and be profitable Author writes a popular website and email newsletter on unusual ways to make money Whether you're seeking a new career, an additional revenue stream, or a new business idea, you will want to discover 101 Weird Ways to Make Money.
WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER Every business owner dreams of success, but the majority of businesses are doomed to fail. This book offers a journey through the pitfalls that cause 90% of companies to crash-and the crucial remedies entrepreneurs can use to avoid (or fix) them. Kim Hvidkjaer was 29 years old when he became a millionaire. Two years later, after a cluster of disasters, he found himself basically broke. Now, having rebuilt his fortune as the founder of several successful enterprises and studied thousands of failed startups, Hvidkjaer has become an expert in failure: what it means, what it looks like, and the strategies that business owners can use to prevent it. In How to F*ck Up Your Startup, he takes us on an entertaining and enlightening journey through the complex patterns of failure in the life cycle of a business, covering: Attitude mistakes Business model missteps Market research snafus Funding and financial blunders Product development errors Organization oversights Sales slip-ups Growing pains Most important, he tackles what to do when your business has gone wrong. Hvidkjaer fleshes out a tangible, usable blueprint for entrepreneurs looking to learn (the easy way) from the mistakes of businesses gone before. Chock-full of easy-to-follow business lessons that will keep you from f*cking up your startup, this down-to-earth guide offers crucial, actionable advice for seasoned business owners and startup founders alike. A masterclass in failure, How to F*ck Up Your Startup is required reading for reaching success.
Using institutional economics as a theoretical framework, this book analyzes institutional environment conducive to entrepreneurial activity in order to enhance economic performance across countries. In particular, the main contributions of this book to the entrepreneurship literature are the following: * Identify past and current research about the institutional context shaping entrepreneurial activity and its effect on economic growth * Examine social progress orientation as those institutional factors that are shaping innovative entrepreneurial activity * Explore the effect of different types of entrepreneurial activities on economic growth * Examine how social progress orientation through opportunity-driven entrepreneurship affects economic development* Analyze the interrelationships between institutions, entrepreneurial activity and economic development across countries * Study how the country's institutional context influences the way in which entrepreneurial activity affects social progress Two sides of the same coin might be observed when analyzing policy aspects of those institutions affecting entrepreneurial activity. On the one hand, effective public policy to promote entrepreneurship is predicated on understanding the underlying forces as well as the consequences and impacts of entrepreneurship. On the other hand, different endeavors to promote entrepreneurial activity might have deleterious economic effects since they could actually reduce employment in the long-term. Thus, it is crucial to understand the institutional environment in which entrepreneurs are interacting and making decisions. The comprehension of these phenomena serves to move forward the theoretical, practical and policy debate on entrepreneurship as a mechanism to achieve higher economic performance. |
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