Bücher veröffentlicht von Palgrave MacMillan

This book explores the issues around small business and entrepreneurial activities in Africa within the context of frequent collapse of businesses, seizures by governments, lack of access to capital and raw materials as well as the reliance on the informal sector. All these issues, the Editors argue, have been exacerbated by the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, entrepreneurship must be at the heart of efforts to transform Africa's economic prospects to ensure sustained economic growth and decent work for all. In looking at the development of entrepreneurship for Africa's growth, contributors to this edited collection take an evolutionary approach by focusing on entrepreneurial intentions (where entrepreneurial ideas are formed), customer management (which is central to all entrepreneurial business success) and by also focusing on local and entrepreneurial business development. The book then ends with a discussion around technological innovations in small business development in Africa. Covering topics such as social entrepreneurship, international joint ventures and the impact of digital platforms, this conceptual path provides rich contemporary insights for students, researchers, and policy makers and contributes to the achievement of SDG 8 targets.

This book brings together leading scholars and practitioners from around the globe to examine the current roles of and future trends in local government structures and mechanisms in 16 different federal and federal-type countries. In doing so, this volume explores pressing topics such as the institutions of local government, constitutional recognition, financial management, intergovernmental relations, political culture, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the role of local government in federal systems. Contributors to this volume provide a timely and comprehensive account of the integral role local governments play in federal countries and offer fascinating perspectives on how these roles may change as individual federal systems evolve. These individual analyses are contextualized in a comparative perspective in order to gain a holistic understanding of the challenges and opportunities of various local government dynamics in different regions around the world.This is an open access book.

SMEs represent more than 95% of businesses operating in global markets. These businesses are the fabric of any economic system both in developed and emerging countries, and are the main constituents of any global supply chain throughout the world. However, research on new 4.0 marketing strategies for this kind of businesses has been largely neglected. Extant literature mostly neglects, or fails to articulate the importance of emerging technology such as Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and VR/AR for SMEs. Building on that, this book reviews existing literature on innovation and new technology in marketing for SMEs, what they could do and should avoid. Then, presenting multiple case study from SMEs operating in diverse industries (fashion and design, food and wine, financial services), it develops a practical strategic framework that could be used by SMEs wishing to effectively innovate their marketing strategies in our contemporary digital era. It will be an essential resource for students and researchers of marketing, innovation and industry 4.0.

This book is an exploration of the intellectual resources offered by the hybridisation of sociology and cinema: practicing sociology, or other human sciences, through images and sound. In the age of the image, the book invites sociological research, not only through the discipline's approach, but also through the joint learning of techniques (shooting and sound recording, derushing, editing, etc.) and film writing. Using concrete examples, the authors analyse what it means to think through the image, explain the different phases of making a sociological documentary, and question, through sociological film, the representations of reality and, more specifically, what remains invisible in the social world. The result is a reflective look at the theories and practices presented, to better equip the sociologist-filmmaker. Illustrated with numerous photographs that mark the history of documentary photography and film, the book is intended for both teachers-researchers and students in all disciplines of the humanities and social sciences who practice video and photography or wish to discover their uses. Students in documentary and film schools, as well as students on information and communication programs will also benefit from the book.

This book explores how two generations of relatively privileged Australian men have navigated the complex terrain of same-gender friendship across their lives, to offer both empirically unique and theoretically significant insights into the mechanics of social change in masculinities. Applying a feminist poststructuralist lens to data from in-depth interviews with 14 pairs of fathers and sons, it details how masculinist discourses of emotion and intimacy have governed the participants' friendship practices at three chronological timepoints: fathers' early lives and later lives, and sons' early lives. A clear but complicated shift emerges, such that the commitment to stoicism and self-reliance dominant in the fathers' early lives has given way to a growing embrace of intimacy and emotional expression within their and their son's contemporary same-gender friendships. Engaging with key debates in the field of critical studies on men and masculinities (CSMM), this book offers an alternative to the conceptualisation of this positive change as either representative of a holistic disintegration of hegemonic structures, or a superficial behavioural shift that is largely inconsequential to the gender order. Rather, it illustrates that the increasing influence of feminist, queer-inclusion and therapeutic discourse has destabilised masculinism in the context of men's friendships, offering men an alternative subject position that allows care, expressiveness and intimacy. This book will be of interest to scholars in Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Masculinity Studies.

This book examines systems and practices of public service education and training in an international context. Focusing especially on Europe, but also with chapters on Australia, the United States and Canada, it provides a comparative analysis of the implementation, functioning and impact of public service training and education from the nineteenth century to the present. In doing so, the book highlights two key influential factors: national political-administrative traditions and administrative tasks imposed by social, political, and economic change. It furthers our knowledge of the role of the state, both as an employer and as the implementer of public policy, and demonstrates how historical analysis can be utilised to inform present debates about public service training, government reform and good governance. This book will appeal to practitioners, as well as all those interested in public administration and its history, governance, public management, bureaucracy, and civil service reform.

The book provides a comprehensive and updated introduction to concept of territory in the study of democratic politics. Territory plays a rather marginal role in the traditional conceptions of democracy that in many ways still prevail today. Democratic politics is often analysed from the point of view of its institutions, citizens and voters, while little is said about the territory through which it is expressed - at most it provides a broader perimeter or context of political and institutional action. The book offers, instead, an introductory theoretically-oriented discussion of crucial issues such as the genesis of state-nation, the transformation of democratic citizenship, the current borders' policies, the rising of territorial populism and the experience of 19-covid pandemic.This is an open access book.

In his book, Andreas Urs Sommer reflects on the question of what it really means when everybody's appealing to values, all the time - the question, fundamentally, of what values actually are. Values explores both of these points, arriving at two intriguing suggestions: Maybe what we call values are just a set of elaborate fictions. And maybe those fictions serve some very important purposes.

This book explores the intersections between wearable objects and human health, with particular emphasis on how artists and designers are creatively responding to and rethinking these relations. Addressing a rich range of wearable artefacts, from mobility aids and prosthetics to clothing and accessories to digital health tracking devices, its themes include care and cure; wellness culture and the commoditization of health; and the complex interactions between (human) bodies and (non-human) objects. With a theoretical framework inspired by the work of materialist thinkers including Sherry Turkle, Bruno Latour and Jane Bennett, and bringing the disciplinary fields of fashion studies, art and design practice, and medical and health humanities into dialogue for the first time, this volume draws attention to the complex agencies entangled in the things we wear, and situates fashion and art in relation to broader cultural and historical contexts of health, illness and disability.

Traditionally, philosophers have argued that epistemology is a normative discipline and therefore occupied with an a priori analysis of the necessary and sufficient conditions that a belief must fulfill to be acceptable as knowledge. But such an approach makes sense only if human knowledge has some normative features, which conceptual analysis is able to disclose. As it turns out, philosophers have not been able to find such features unless they are very selective in their choice of examples of knowledge. Much of what we intuitively think functions as knowledge, both in human and non-human animals, does not share these normative features.The purpose of this book is to demonstrate that natural selection has adapted human sense impressions to deliver reliable information without meeting the traditional commitments for having knowledge. In connection with memory, sensory and bodily information provides an animal with experiential knowledge. Experiential knowledge helps an animal to navigate its environment. Moreover, experiential knowledge has different functions depending on whether the deliverance of information stems from the organism's external or internal senses.

This book explores the challenges that multilateralism faces today and questions the idea of a 'crisis' of multilateral cooperation and international organizations. It accounts for the pressures on and power shifts in multilateralism in recent years - such as the war in Syria, the Covid-19 pandemic, challenges for NATO, the erosion of multilateral norms, the transition from Trump to Biden, the rise of China, the post-Brexit European Union, and the mobilization of countries from the South. The authors illustrate the resilience of multilateralism and lessons learned from the WTO, UN Women, International Organizations' Secretariats and global environmental governance. Written in part by members of the Research Group on Multilateral Action (GRAM), this volume argues that 'crisis' should not be considered a pathology but the 'matrix' of multilateralism, which is more resilient than commonly thought. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of International Relations, globalgovernance, and international organizations.

Artificial intelligence has driven strategic management and strategic thinking into new directions and uncharted waters. Many of our previous concepts and theories have run out of steam and they have failed at accommodating and reflecting the realities of new technologies, particularly artificial intelligence. This book responds to these serious disruptions and goes beyond the familiar boundaries of strategic management and presents a dramatic overhaul of traditional strategic thinking.This book is unusual within the management literature arena as it draws upon concepts and tools belonging to other sciences as neurology, psychology and even physics. Yet this will mark future developments in the area and a sound understanding of that is essential for future conduct and performance of the strategic thinking function within the business environment. The analysis relies heavily on recent research, as well as the authors' own work on AI, strategic thinking and data sciences. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of strategic management, technology research and organization behaviour.

This book proposes a radical reorganization of political and electoral power to address the current political imbalance between urban and rural populations in the United States. Hogan argues that, despite being smaller in population, a "financialist-ruralist coalition" has effectively used the Constitution--especially equal representation in the Senate--to create an anti-urban "vetocracy." This political imbalance protects the interests of the financial elite and rural cultural conservatives, while effectively blocking urban interests, particularly regarding the adoption of a broad range of structural reforms and progressive policy preferences. By re-dividing many of the largest federated states into smaller city-states, the book posits, the United States would reduce the ability of non-urban interests to control the Senate. This would allow an empowered urbanite alliance to pass the forward-looking legislation the nation needs to remain internationally competitive in the coming decades.

Green bond issuance has surged in recent years in response to growing investor appetite and borrowers' needs as they embark on the sustainability transition. The EU leads the way, with over 40% of all sustainable bond issuances denominated in euro. The EU's 'Regulation on European Green Bonds and optional disclosures for bonds marketed as environmentally sustainable and sustainability-linked bonds' is the first comprehensive legislative text covering such issuance, and a cornerstone of EU's Sustainable Finance strategy. This book explores in an interdisciplinary way the challenges and opportunities of green bonds and sustainable finance from a legal, regulatory and economic perspectives. First, it analyses green bonds as a new financial instrument in the context of the existing capital markets law. Second, it studies green bond impact on the market and on investor protection. Third, it assesses green bonds' relevance for prudential supervision and central banking. The variety of viewpoints ensures a highly comprehensive analysis of green bonds' impact in a European and global context.

How does the dominant understanding(s) of the demo(i)cratic subject in the EU, and of democracy more broadly, shape the EU's democratic innovations on 'citizen participation'? What are the politically and normatively preferable alternatives, both in terms of the conceptualisation of the democratic subject in the EU and in the ensuing political practices? The book addresses these questions combining a political theory with a political sociology perspective, contrasting the 'democracy without politics' approach of the EU in the context of the Conference on the Future of Europe with that of ongoing transnational activist processes. In doing so, it develops an agonistic alternative to 'the people(s)' as the political imaginary of democracy in the EU, which is based on the idea of the 'decolonial multitude'. Thus, the book puts forward a diagnosis of current debates on EU democratic legitimacy as well as proposing an alternative.

Engineering Reality offers unprecedented insights into the power of environmental impact assessments in engineering a reality favourable to any investment, focusing on the highly contested environmental study of a large hydroelectric dam project in southern Colombia, El Quimbo. The inclusion of environmental impact assessments to project proposals of environmental influence has been an undeniably important step to environmental governance in many countries around the world. Regarding the science behind these studies as objective and their results as the closest in representing reality, however, is misleading. Many activists and scholars made it their mission to uncover the limitations and work towards filling the gaps. Participation processes are considered key to any successful evaluation, but local knowledges and alternative perspectives are still often disqualified through more widely accepted scientific methods. Engineering Reality systematically walks through andaccounts for the shortcomings and injustices associated with environmental monitoring. It compares the reality as presented in the dam's environmental impact study with first-hand accounts from the local and affected populations and observations gathered through two periods of fieldwork in 2012 (before) and 2016-17 (after the dam started operating). It explores how the knowledge of the study was used politically and to what end. Bringing the findings in conversation with the wider environmental impact assessment literature, the book proposes a new framework to assess energy projects -Energy Data Justice- that regards the environmental impact assessment a strictly political tool aimed at reaching the just energy transition in Colombia and worldwide.

This book will provide empirical engagements of African women in the private and public spaces and their adaptations, alterations and and integration of the private and public spaces. This approach is contrary to most existing studies which may not necessarily provide contextual and empirical evidences of the debates about the spaces of women or interrogate both the private and public spaces in a single volume. This book will offer a novel insight into gender and power dynamics, especially as it relates to the cultural spaces, private spaces and public spaces which African women occupy and subjugate. The fourteen papers in this book critically examine the African women in different positions within the private and public spaces, the strong inhibiting presence of patriarchy, and the resistance women display to empower themselves.

This book examines the history of the French welfare state from the mid-twentieth century to the present day. The French social security system has changed profoundly over the last few decades. The Bismarkian model of governance and social protection inherited from the Second World War has progressively faded away in favor of a reinforcement of the state's capacity to intervene on policies and the implementation of national health insurance coverage. In order to understand this major transformation, this book draws on rich original sources to offer a historical and sociological perspective on elite policymakers and policy change. In doing so, it identifies correlations between the changing social backgrounds and career paths of elites in charge of social insurance policies since the 1940s, and the development of health policy programs. It will appeal to all those interested in public policy, health policy, social studies and French history and politics.

The Palgrave Handbook of Power, Gender, and Psychology takes an intersectional feminist approach to the exploration of psychology and gender through a lens of power. The invisibility of power in psychological research and theorizing has been critiqued by scholars from many perspectives both within and outside the discipline. This volume addresses that gap. The handbook centers power in the analysis of gender, but does so specifically in relation to psychological theory, research, and praxis. Gathering the work of sixty authors from different geographies, career stages, psychological sub-disciplines, methodologies, and experiences, the handbook showcases creativity in approach, and diversity of perspective. The result is a work featuring a chorus of different voices, including diverse understandings of feminisms and power. Ultimately, the handbook presents a case for the importance of intersectionality and power for any feminist psychological endeavor.

This book, Multidisciplinary Knowledge Production and Research Methods in Sub-Saharan Africa: Language, Literature and Religion, contributes to the polemical conversations about existing architectures of knowledge and research practices in postcolonial sub-Saharan Africa. It creates an academic platform for multi-interdisciplinary research that brings to the fore inspiring efforts to break away from long-standing disciplinary bordering thinking and practices in modern-day sub-Saharan Africa. This distinctive edited collection is a valuable resource for scholars, researchers and students of multi-interdisciplinary research across the globe. The volume also promotes wide-ranging research focused on how to address complexities which hamper the promise of multi-interdisciplinary research in contemporary sub-Saharan African contexts. It provides thought-provoking perspectives on academic conversations about the uniqueness of embracing multidisciplinary research. The traditional methods of interpretation are challenged by the radical emerging demand to shift from a mono-disciplinary thinking to a cross-disciplinary epistemic endeavour in order to successfully address unfolding problematic realities that demand the pursuit of novel heuristic terrains.

This book explores how our temperamental proclivities interact with our political leanings, shedding light on why people perceive the world differently. Focusing on the Five Factor Model of personality, currently the most popular framework in psychology research, the text unpacks the literature on the association between political orientations and personality traits. While only part of the puzzle, growing evidence suggests personality traits have a significant impact on our political convictions and voting patterns. In some instances, certain traits may even make individuals more prone to holding authoritarian and prejudicial views. Understanding these dynamics can help people better navigate political differences and conflicts, and will be of interest to students of personality psychology and students of political ideologies.

This book discusses state-periphery relations from the view-point of a reindeer husbandry community in the Russian Far North (Murmansk Region). The time is the current period of Putin-led Russia. The analysis is based on the premise that the mode of current top-power governance can be described as selective de-centralization. Below a certain level of state power interests, conflicts get resolved in favour of local communities. That gains support for the supreme leadership, and reproduces a Soviet-like reality. Termed sovkhoism, the latter holds the Soviet state-farm (sovkhoz) as creating an ideal socio-economic environment. When issues are of significant interest to superior power, selection favours cavalier bypassing of people-friendly concerns. At this level, power acts in an authoritarian mode, favouring the interests of state power structures in conjunction with the upper tiers of the loyal oligarchate. It is shown how this governing mode contains significant potential for escalating centre vs. periphery tensions.

This book explores the increasing role of private providers in early childhood education and care (ECEC) as they become a core part of the Nordic welfare model--one that once rejected for-profit involvement in public welfare. Within this context, ECEC has become the key battleground over private providers' role in the welfare system. Chapters compare five Nordic countries: Iceland, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, to discuss possible benefits from having different types of providers--public, nonprofit, and for-profit--in the welfare mix. To conclude, the authors also provide a comparative perspective on governance of the ECEC sector and on the development and functions of the Nordic welfare model.

Digital transformation involves the union of technological change and innovative technologies and is about constant innovation, evolution and acceleration. While it is true that technology is an enabler of digital transformation, transformation often involves people, process, and technology. This collected volume addresses organizational challenges and pitfalls experienced during the implementation of, and experimentation with, digital transformation. The collection reveals examples, experiences, and best practices in the business sector where the grounds of digital transformation were set. The contributors provide taxonomies as well as historical points of digital transformation in the business sector, along with their impact on selected corporate entities, as well as including cases and best practices from industry leaders. The interrelation among people, technology needs, and organizational structures are the major themes of this edited book. It will be of great value to students and scholars of digital business, innovation, strategic management and sustainability.

This book reports the outcomes of a research project which involved developing and implementing a research-informed curriculum for low-attaining further education students. Key aims of the curriculum were to ameliorate some of the social and educational disadvantages faced by the students, and to support secure and sustainable transitions to employment or further education. The book begins by outlining the characteristics of the lowest-attaining young people and considering the challenges they face. Subsequent chapters describe the educational and geographic contexts, the curriculum, and the pedagogical approaches adopted. It moves on to describe the outcomes of the project, drawing on narratives of individual students and staff to illustrate the benefits of a broader curriculum which acknowledges earlier disadvantage. The book concludes with a discussion of how the curriculum could be adapted in different contexts and considers the implications of such change in terms of policy, practice, future research and social justice.

This book discusses Egyptian Muslim women's dress as the social, political and ideological signifier of the changing attitudes towards Western modernity. It employs women's clothing styles as a feminist act that provides rich insights into the power and limits of legal regulations and hegemonic discourses in constructing gendered and cultural borders in the modern Egyptian public sphere. Furthermore, through highlighting marginalized but significant models and historical moments of cultural exchange between Muslim and Western cultures through female dress, the book tells a third story beyond the binary model of an assumed modest oppressed traditional Muslim woman vis-à-vis consumer emancipated modern Western woman in mainstream Western discourse and literary representation.

Without respecting and nurturing 'place' we cannot achieve a state of ecological sustainability. Place-based organizations are not run on a purely materialistic basis. The non-materialistic features of a place, its aesthetics, cultural heritage, community feelings, transcendence, should be integrated into sustainability management. This far-reaching two-volume work breaks with the economic logic of efficiency and profit maximization, and suggests that organizations should inform their sustainability by encompassing feelings of identity with and attachment to place.According to this vision, the editors have compiled scholarly contributions aimed to support the ecological transformation of humankind by exploring both theoretical and practical models that integrate the sense of the place, ethics and spirituality in new ways of organizing of economic and social life. This second volume takes the theoretical direction, established in the first model, and puts it into practice withcases from business and society. It will be of interest to scholars, practitioners and students of sustainability, business ethics and spirituality.

The ecological, social and technological challenges of the Anthropocene require developing and implementing new economic, business, and financial models to create sustainable value for a wide range of stakeholders including nature, society, and future generations. This book defines 'sustainable value creation' as bringing forth products, services, organizational forms, processes, actions, and policies which satisfy real social needs and contribute to the ecological regeneration of nature. The book collects and analyzes innovative economic, business, and social models of sustainable value creation globally. It critically examines the existing mainstream models of business and financial value creation. In reviewing both traditional and sustainability-oriented models, it focuses on both the challenges and opportunities inherent in a possible shift from models based on single-stakeholder wealth creation to models that propagate multidimensional value creation. Part of the Palgrave Studies in Sustainable Business in Association with Future Earth series, this book aims to engage academics, and business and civil society practitioners to discuss innovative value creation models for a sustainable world. Interdisciplinary and intercultural exchange will be facilitated to inspire and cross-fertilize different knowledge and action fields as well as to promote intergenerational dialogue about the prospects of the human-earth system.

This edited collection explores the intersections of populist communication, performative leadership and international politics. It investigates the mechanisms and dynamics connecting these core conceptual fields and offers empirical examples. Together, the contributors to the volume argue that populist communication, i.e. the language, deliberation and discursive performance of populist ideas, has a profound and lasting impact not only on domestic politics, but in terms of foreign policies as well as the conduct of international politics writ large. First, populist communication shapes how global, regional and transborder issues are debated and strategically used for political purposes domestically. Second, populist communication changes when and how states and other actors in turn formulate responses and policies vis-a-vis, for example, migration, global health, climate change, trade, or war. Finally, populist communication affects the nature of international politics. It influenceshow actors conduct themselves internationally, and how we may conceive of core concepts and practices such as diplomacy, security, cooperation, and order. To illustrate these mechanisms, the contributors explore cases from around the world, demonstrating the relevance of populist communication for international politics in both the Global South and the Global North.

The transformative role of culture, its ability to create value for the benefit of current and future generations, is widely recognized by academics of many disciplines, professionals and policymakers. Notwithstanding, how culture can be a driving force for economic growth, a source of welfare and tools for social inclusion, still deserves to be investigated at various levels, starting with local communities. This book attempts to explain the relevance of accounting knowledge for managing cultural heritage by sustainable, resilient, accountable organizations, regardless of their public or private institutional form. This book aims at understanding the role of cultural heritage in the economy, in society and in facing the new challenges deriving from the enactment of the UN Sustainable Development agenda, as well as the pandemic emergency from COVID-19. It adopts a managerial accounting studies approach to provide answers that can be applied in any organizational context. The results achieved from the field research are critically discussed under the theoretical frameworks referring to the theory of value and its creation. From the findings and their discussion, a conceptual model based on empiricism is proposed for managing cultural heritage of communities under sustainable perspective, even in times of crisis. It will be essential reading for academics and students of cultural heritage management, sustainability and crisis management in organisations.