Bücher der Reihe Emerald Points

Shared Service Centers (SSCs) support the management of administratively complex enterprises. Originating in the private sector, SSCs have increasingly been adopted in the public sector in an effort to reduce administrative costs, improve the quality of public services, reduce the risk of management error and make better use of human resources.The first book to thoroughly examine the organization, development and effectiveness of the shared service market in local governments across Poland, this study explores the process of creating SSCs, the key elements of unit management, the barriers and threats to both the creation and operation of SSCs, and the strategic technological solutions that local governments have utilized in shared service provision.The author argues that the implementation of SSCs represents the initial stage on the way to improving the effectiveness of public and local government administration, while stressing that further organizational changes and standardization processes are needed to achieve greater effectiveness, in a conclusion which makes essential reading for both practitioners in local government and scholars across the fields of public management, administration and economics.

The intertwining of Economics, Knowledge and Renaissance, introduced by Piero Formica in this book as 'Econaissance', fosters the culture of entrepreneurialism, and imagines the reawakening of learning and culture. Acknowledging that schools of thought inherited from the past must be reimagined to give birth to this new age, this book maps out how stakeholders across society can become agents of this unique pathway to economic development. Formica offers readers an innovative perspective, asking not just how me might do better what we already do, but also how we can engage in activities beyond the economic sphere, and help to usher in the dawn of a new renaissance age that acts on the principles of human knowledge as well as the economy. In doing so, Econaissance highlights the figure of the 'Ideator', the polymath of the twenty-first century, set to become the ultimate athlete of social progress fuelled by sustainable and environmentally friendly economic development. This book will equip educators, scientists, innovators, entrepreneurs, and more to play a part in this imagined future.

Doctorates awarded based on artefact and exegeses are a minority enrolment which suffer from wildly diverse examination expectations and assumptions about quality. Widening the disciplinary parameters and currency of this kind of doctorate The Creative PhD is the first book that challenges the standards, structure and value of this research.

Entrepreneurs' creative responses to institutional challenges in sub-Saharan Africa examines institutional constraints and enablers of Tanzanian and Zambian entrepreneurs in sustainability practices. Exploring how entrepreneurs contribute to societal and environmental well-being despite the challenging institutional context in which they operate.

In The Heroic Leadership Imperative, Scott T. Allison and George R. Goethals identify leaders who have succeeded in meeting all three categories of needs and they discuss such leaders' appeal by way of a unique integration classic and contemporary psychology relevant to understanding all facets of heroism and heroic leadership.

Leading Local Government: The Role of Directly Elected Mayors is a timely and critical book that examines the erratic rise and uncertain future of the directly elected mayor in the context of English local governance. Written principally for local government practitioners as well as for those with an academic interest in public leadership, the book asks whether elected mayors offer a new and reinvigorated form of local leadership, whether for individual towns and cities or for wider groups of combined authorities at the regional level. Built on original primary research conducted with mayors, elected representatives and a range of public sector managers, the book offers a fresh perspective that recognises mayoral achievements in some areas - including economic development - but finds that mayors do not enjoy widespread public endorsement and do not represent devolution of power in any meaningful sense. Above all, the book argues that elected mayors do not represent democratic renewal in a country which remains highly centralized. Using an historical account of early local government leaders together with international comparisons from the United States and Europe, the authors present the argument that, twenty years into the mayoral experiment, the mayoral initiative has so far failed to match the aspirations of central government for a new and effective form of local leadership.

The World Economic Forum and Transnational Networking presents an informative investigation of the WEF as a political actor and important part of transnational civil society. Drawing upon extensive original research, Frisen analyzes the surprising role the WEF has played in international processes.

This book argues that knowledge management and HRM systems should be integrated. This integration provides the foundation for designing knowledge-oriented high-performance HR practices.

Inspired by a 2019 conference, Moana Water of Life, and including real-life insights from a diverse range of participants, this book showcases the potential fruits of open dialogue between stakeholders to navigate the critical challenges to planetary health caused by the climate crisis.

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access, thanks to Knowledge Unlatched funding, freely available to read online. Drawing on the emerging deviant literature perspective, this book explores a range of culturally embedded harms and other activities to offer new insight on the idea that video games are intertwined with forms of deviancy.

Legal Protection for Traditional Knowledge calls attention to the vital contributions thataboriginal knowledge makes to global development and how the legal systems inplace, particularly in India, must change to protect this knowledge.This book is a must-read for researchers ineconomics, development studies, and international law.

In a world characterised by rapid urbanisation it is increasingly difficult to devise urban governance models which are resilient, safe and inclusive, and that also preserve the environment. This book takes Singapore, a leader in this field, as a case study, looking at its successes in urban governance and smart city planning. Through the lens of environmental sustainability, the author examines Singapore's recent adoption of technological tools, which have led to increased efficiency and performance, and have also supported its economic ambitions. The book unveils a unique and critical insight into Singapore's approach. Considering the historical, political and technological context, the author shares the techniques and key projects that have contributed to the all-important improvement of liveability levels in the city state.

Transhumanism is an international cultural movement which seeks to fundamentally transform the human condition through radical technological enhancement. Transhumanists claim that we are already in transition to a new phase of humanity where the limitations of mortality, ignorance, and suffering will soon be altered or even completely erased. The Philosophy of Transhumanism: A Critical Analysis presents the central ideas of transhumanist philosophy and offers a lens through which to reflect on the meaning of being human in anticipation of radical technology. The radical technologies in question variously include greater-than-human machine intelligence, mind-computer interfaces, gene-editing, and nanotechnology. The continued funding and interest generated by those associated with these projects suggest transhumanism is continued migration from a fringe concern to a central way of conceiving the future. Though a variety of positions exist within transhumanism, the unifying theme is a belief that the techno-engineering of a new type of upgraded human is both beneficial and inevitable. These ambitions raise serious questions about the appearance of a transhuman or even posthuman being, and warrants a critical analysis from alternative philosophical and religious perspectives. This book seeks to present the philosophy of transhumanism in a way that is both timely and accessible, and to challenge what will be seen as the core argument of transhumanist philosophy: that there is nothing about human beings that cannot be reconceived as a technical problem.

This study investigates barriers to developing enterprise in deprived communities, highlights trade-offs local authorities face and offers guidance that contributes to a model for developing a community-centered enterprise culture that is critical for reinvigorating disadvantaged groups. Alex Avramenko and Nikolai Mouraviev focus on deprived communities where entrepreneurship traditionally was extremely difficult to conceive and offer insights on under-researched issues, such as enablers of entrepreneurship by local government's integrated approach that blends opportunity generation with capacity and skill building, complemented by support services. They also focus on the formation of an enterprise culture that should become a foundation of policy, enablers and tools for revitalizing deprived communities.Chapters explore range of issues and examples, including rethinking the dynamics of micro enterprise, rural entrepreneurship, senior entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship in a cosmopolitan city, civic/community-centered entrepreneurship and lifestyle entrepreneurship.

Drawing on a combination of interviews and auto-ethnographic data, Education, Retirement and Career Transitions for 'Black' Ex-Professional Footballers provides a case-study of 16 'black' British male professional footballers' preparedness and experiences of retirement and transition from careers as professional athletes to mainstream work. The author examines these men's sporting experiences during three life phases: As professional schoolboy footballers; as professionals; and during retirement and career transition to mainstream careers. In doing so, this book expands on how these men's experiences of and preparedness for retirement and career transition are influenced and often complicated by the cultures, practices, and expectations that shaped the professional game when they were players. It also offers an account of the ways these experiences were complicated by issues of race. Researchers, students, sports enthusiasts and anyone interested in questions of race, masculinity, employment, retirement, mental health, and professional sport in late modern Britain will find Education, Retirement and Career Transitions for 'Black' Ex-Professional Footballers useful, informative and engaging.

This work represents the first attempt to position digital capital as cumulative and transferable, independent from, and intertwined with the other five forms of capitals. The book aims to propose a theoretical toolkit and empirical model that can be used by policy makers to tackle social inequalities created by the digital exclusion of citizens.

Leading within Digital Worlds explores the challenges for data scientists in leading technical R&D groups, both private sector companies and in public R&D, and also for non-specialists in leading roles in data science groups.

With the establishment of the innovation economy, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is becoming a reality. As this occurs, new forms of leadership arise, generated by the interaction between leadership functions and neurology. This innovative book asks the question: what are the key value creation processes in the innovation economy?

The book examines the new arrangements for organizing policy, delivery and public accountability in Fire and Rescue Services. Contributors of this invaluable text assess the effectiveness of government responses to new legislation that came as a result of inadequacies identified in governmental reviews, namely the Policing and Crime Act of 2017.

Following the liberalization of EU energy markets, more than three hundred gas and electricity companies entered the market to substitute state-run monopolies. A sizeable shift has taken place within the European energy sector, one that remains only partially understood at best. Focusing on the financial performance of retail energy firms between 2008 and 2017, and taking the Italian market as its exemplar-a market that has arguably undergone the most significant transformation in Europe-Changes in European Energy Markets provides a critical and up-to-date analysis of this major development. Based on a comprehensive literature review and a wealth of data, the authors provide a compelling and much-needed account of the intensity and pace of change in the sector, which has been far from uniform.Changes in European Energy Markets is a must-read for students, researchers, practitioners and policymakers concerned with the seismic changes that have occurred within EU energy markets over the past decade.

In this ethnographic study of the rural idyll, Broadlands explores rurality and the pace of rural life. In sharp contrast to the urban analytical emphasis upon speed, it gives careful thought to stasis, as rural places offer everyday opportunities for very different social situations and behavioural interactions. Based on new and extensive RCUK-funded primary research, Sam Hillyard generates an original, rigorous and thoughtful understanding of everyday rural life in the 21st century. Taking the principles of dramaturgy and rural studies scholarship, Broadlands provides a toolkit to make sense of rural change. It uses ethnography to enhance interactionist dramaturgy via cross-references with new theoretical orientations that emphasise the temporal dynamics of space in a 'knowing capitalism'. Where early dramaturgy stressed formal organisations in shaping roles and identity, Broadlands expands these concepts to include informal and transient organisations and associations.Ultimately, the book advances a new model for grasping the complexity of the rural. For researchers and students ofrural and urban sociology, this is an engaging text that reframes our understanding of rurality.

Knowledge Management is an important part of all business, and yet the discipline lacks a philosophy based on systemic thinking. Exploring this gap, expert author Jon-Arild Johannessen continues his research on knowledge management with the groundwork for a new philosophy. Across the four chapters in this book, Johannessen tackles the issues that have stopped a cohesive philosophy from being formed. Tackling the large questions first, he asks: what constitutes a philosophy for knowledge management? What quality criteria are relevant in a knowledge management philosophy? Johannessen also looks at how the emergence of the fourth industrial revolution has eroded and atomized the cohesion of social systems, and explores how knowledge management works in social systems, as well as whether social laws can be used to explain knowledge management systems.For students and researchers of information and knowledge management, Johannessen offers a new perspective on our current philosophies, bringing systemic thinking to the front of knowledge management philosophy.

In the aftermath of the economic crisis, left-wing parties and leaders began to consider themselves populists or were labelled as such in media and public discourse. This trend can be witnessed in instances such as Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, France Insoumise in France, DiEM25 at the European level and even Corbyinism in the UK. However, the problem still remains as to how we define left-wing populism in contemporary Europe as well as the main characteristics. This book conceptualizes left-wing populism as a combination of the populist impetus of expanding representation, through the appeal to "e;the people"e; against "e;the elites"e; and the agenda of the left to promote equality and social justice. This study undertakes an in-depth exploration into the concepts of sovereignty, class identity and "e;the people"e;.Moreover, this book also discusses the institutional dimension of left-wing populism, in dialogue with republicanism and the international sphere, reflected in the debate between sovereignism and transnationalism. The result is an open conceptualization of left-wing populism in which populist parties acquire a hybrid form and incorporate different traditions and influences such as socialism, populism and republicanism in order to reach a social majority and expand democracy. This recent phenomenon of left-wing populism has showed potential to re-define the left-project, but also demonstrates its shortcomings regarding the scope of the political change and its capacity to make politics in a different manner, by and for the people. This invaluable text will prove an essential read for those in the fields of political theory and contemporary political studies.

Does the Black Middle Class Exist And Are We Members makes two contributions into the research of the black middle class. First, it explores how Black South Africans conceptualize middle classness. Second, it demonstrates how this conceptualization informs researchers' social identity within the Black middle class.

By providing an in-depth analysis of contemporary urbanization, an understanding of the dimension of the phenomena and its cause-effect mechanism, this book maps how ecologically-compatible planning in the contemporary city may successfully design a healthier environment.

This book offers a deep historical and theoretical investigation into how this authoritarian, populist regime has evolved. Backlash from globalization in the 21st century, dissatisfaction with the European Union and international fiscal institutions have created a situation in which Orban's regime is able to thrive.

The Arab Spring uprisings were not about gender; these were uprisings demanding rights for all. Yet, they presented a rare opportunity for women to let themselves be heard. And, from being some of the most memorable and lasting leaders of these revolutionary protests, female activists were particularly targeted by many regimes.

Through art-based instructional processes that stimulate students' affective awareness, it encourages facilitation of compassionate environments founded on principles of selflessness and will prove invaluable for researchers, leaders and practitioners in the field of social education.

Focusing on Malaysia's shifting economic profile and position, this book offers new insights and perspectives to scholars and researchers on a range of new developments impacting on growth, such as the effects of the digital economy on job creation and the threats of environmental degradation and trade protectionism.

Blockchain has the potential to disrupt and transform the social media business space. Nitin Upadhyay in this book delves into an insightful discussion of the pertinent and potential implications of blockchain technology on the social media business model in a uniquely accessible way.