Colin Williams – författare

Reassess your leadership style, discover how to connect with people, and become a leader who can make things happen in the real world.

Built on a unique four-year experiment working alongside real leaders in real businesses, Living Leadership explodes the myth of the charismatic, transformational leader, to show that real progress comes from the dramatically ordinary aspects of leadership.

From building relationships, to working with the grain of the organisation rather than against it, and to knowing our limitations as much as pushing every boundary, the new edition of this book will challenge you to push your leadership skills to a new level.

“Living Leadership shows how, when you take away the myths and misconceptions, leading can genuinely be made easier.” Hans Straberg, CEO, Electrolux

“A ‘how to’ book that redefines leadership in terms of the realities and choices facing people in organisations today.” Professor Michael Osbaldeston, Director of Cranfield School of Management

This thought-provoking and engaging book is for you, whatever your seniority, in the private or public sector – if you are curious about the role and purpose of leadership in a turbulent world. It will help you become a more agile leader through understanding and integrating your ego, eco and intuitive intelligence. You will gain a deeper understanding of your unique leadership blend through a short diagnostic inventory, bringing insight about your strengths and what may be tripping you up. The book offers tips, ideas and practical suggestions on how to develop your ability to use the three intelligences in order to expand your leadership repertoire. It will help you enable the teams you lead to be more flexible, responsive and autonomous. The authors have drawn on their vast experience from the boardroom to the shop floor, the classroom and research around the world, to write an easy-to-digest yet ground-breaking book that deals with the root causes of today’s twenty-first-century leadership challenges. Its contents are straightforward and widely applicable.

This thought-provoking and engaging book is for you, whatever your seniority, in the private or public sector – if you are curious about the role and purpose of leadership in a turbulent world. It will help you become a more agile leader through understanding and integrating your ego, eco and intuitive intelligence. You will gain a deeper understanding of your unique leadership blend through a short diagnostic inventory, bringing insight about your strengths and what may be tripping you up. The book offers tips, ideas and practical suggestions on how to develop your ability to use the three intelligences in order to expand your leadership repertoire. It will help you enable the teams you lead to be more flexible, responsive and autonomous. The authors have drawn on their vast experience from the boardroom to the shop floor, the classroom and research around the world, to write an easy-to-digest yet ground-breaking book that deals with the root causes of today’s twenty-first-century leadership challenges. Its contents are straightforward and widely applicable.

How many businesses start-ups conduct some or all of their trade ‘off-the-books’? And how many enterprises continue to do some of their work off-the-books once they are more established? What should be done about them? Should governments adopt ever more punitive measures to eradicate them? Or should we recognise this hidden enterprise culture and attempt to harness it? If so, how can this be done? What measures can be taken to ensure that businesses start-up in a proper manner? And what can be done to help those enterprises and entrepreneurs currently working off-the-books to legitimise their businesses? The aim of this book is to advance a new way of answering these questions. Drawing inspiration from institutional theory, informal sector entrepreneurship is explained as resulting from the asymmetry between the codified laws and regulations of a society’s formal institutions and the norms, values and beliefs that comprise a society’s informal institutions. The argument is that if the norms, values and beliefs of entrepreneurs (i.e., their individual morality) were wholly aligned with the codified laws and regulations (i.e., state morality), there would be no informal sector entrepreneurship. However, because the individual morality of entrepreneurs differs from state morality, such as due to their lack of trust in government and the rule of law, the result is the prevalence of informal sector entrepreneurship. The greater the degree of institutional asymmetry, the higher is the propensity to engage in informal sector entrepreneurship. This book provides evidence to show that this is the case both at the individual- and country-level and then discusses how this can be overcome. .

During much of the twentieth century, informal employment and entrepreneurship was commonly depicted as a residue from a previous era. Its continuing presence was seen to be a sign of "backwardness" whilst the formal economy represented "progress". In recent decades, however, numerous studies have revealed not only that informal employment is extensive and persistent but also that it is growing relative to formal employment in many populations. Whilst in the developing world, the informal economy is often found to be the mainstream economy, nevertheless, in the developed world too, informality is currently still estimated to account for notable per cent of GDP.The Informal Economy: Exploring Drivers and Practices intends to engage with these issues, providing a much-need ‘contextualised’ approach to explain the persistence and growth of forms of informal economic practices and entrepreneurial activities in the twenty-first century. Using a diverse range of empirical case studies from Europe, Africa, North Africa and Asia, this book unpacks the different varieties of forms of informal work and entrepreneurship and provides a critical analysis of existing theorisations used to explain such phenomena. This book’s aim is to examine the nature and persistence of informal work and entrepreneurship, across a variety of empirical settings, from within the developed world, the developing world and within transformation economies within post-socialist spaces. Given its worldwide, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach and recent interest in the informal economies by a number of disciplines and organisations, this book will be of vital reading to those operating in the fields of: Economics, political economy and management, Human and economic geography and Economic anthropology and sociology as well as development studies

During much of the twentieth century, informal employment and entrepreneurship was commonly depicted as a residue from a previous era. Its continuing presence was seen to be a sign of "backwardness" whilst the formal economy represented "progress". In recent decades, however, numerous studies have revealed not only that informal employment is extensive and persistent but also that it is growing relative to formal employment in many populations. Whilst in the developing world, the informal economy is often found to be the mainstream economy, nevertheless, in the developed world too, informality is currently still estimated to account for notable per cent of GDP.The Informal Economy: Exploring Drivers and Practices intends to engage with these issues, providing a much-need ‘contextualised’ approach to explain the persistence and growth of forms of informal economic practices and entrepreneurial activities in the twenty-first century. Using a diverse range of empirical case studies from Europe, Africa, North Africa and Asia, this book unpacks the different varieties of forms of informal work and entrepreneurship and provides a critical analysis of existing theorisations used to explain such phenomena. This book’s aim is to examine the nature and persistence of informal work and entrepreneurship, across a variety of empirical settings, from within the developed world, the developing world and within transformation economies within post-socialist spaces. Given its worldwide, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach and recent interest in the informal economies by a number of disciplines and organisations, this book will be of vital reading to those operating in the fields of: Economics, political economy and management, Human and economic geography and Economic anthropology and sociology as well as development studies

How many businesses start-ups conduct some or all of their trade ‘off-the-books’? And how many enterprises continue to do some of their work off-the-books once they are more established? What should be done about them? Should governments adopt ever more punitive measures to eradicate them? Or should we recognise this hidden enterprise culture and attempt to harness it? If so, how can this be done? What measures can be taken to ensure that businesses start-up in a proper manner? And what can be done to help those enterprises and entrepreneurs currently working off-the-books to legitimise their businesses? The aim of this book is to advance a new way of answering these questions. Drawing inspiration from institutional theory, informal sector entrepreneurship is explained as resulting from the asymmetry between the codified laws and regulations of a society’s formal institutions and the norms, values and beliefs that comprise a society’s informal institutions. The argument is that if the norms, values and beliefs of entrepreneurs (i.e., their individual morality) were wholly aligned with the codified laws and regulations (i.e., state morality), there would be no informal sector entrepreneurship. However, because the individual morality of entrepreneurs differs from state morality, such as due to their lack of trust in government and the rule of law, the result is the prevalence of informal sector entrepreneurship. The greater the degree of institutional asymmetry, the higher is the propensity to engage in informal sector entrepreneurship. This book provides evidence to show that this is the case both at the individual- and country-level and then discusses how this can be overcome. .

Entrepreneurship does not occur in a vacuum. The institutions which provide the framework for economic activity matter. As countries around the world strive for economic growth, this book examines how institutional arrangements are critical in fostering entrepreneurship. Through 12 case studies drawn from Asia, Europe and America the book demonstrates how different institutional arrangements impact the nature, scope and scale of entrepreneurial activity. Each chapter highlights how the prevailing formal and informal institutional arrangements interact, and how this has consequences for the development of more entrepreneurial economies. By synthesizing empirical and theoretical insights the book explores how fostering more entrepreneurial economies is as much a question of institutional alignment as it is the creation of more supportive formal and informal institutions.

Entrepreneurship does not occur in a vacuum. The institutions which provide the framework for economic activity matter. As countries around the world strive for economic growth, this book examines how institutional arrangements are critical in fostering entrepreneurship. Through 12 case studies drawn from Asia, Europe and America the book demonstrates how different institutional arrangements impact the nature, scope and scale of entrepreneurial activity. Each chapter highlights how the prevailing formal and informal institutional arrangements interact, and how this has consequences for the development of more entrepreneurial economies. By synthesizing empirical and theoretical insights the book explores how fostering more entrepreneurial economies is as much a question of institutional alignment as it is the creation of more supportive formal and informal institutions.

This volume represents an inter-disciplinary discussion of some fundamental categories of convergence and divergence, focusing in particular on issues of both social integration and devolution related to ethnos as the space of identity, and demos as the space of polity. The aims of the book are to assess past developments within crucial parts of Central Europe where both conflict and coexistence potentials seem to best represent the actual “unity in diversity” managing dilemma in the continent; to provide an analysis of current approaches to minority protection, language planning, spatial and social cross-border and inter-cultural policies; and to develop an evaluation of the future trends and opportunities for co-operation and re-integration within a local and broader operational context.

The book examines the status of public service in developing countries, in the sectors of health, infrastructure, labour and marginalized populations, rural economy and public administration.

The book examines the status of public service in developing countries, in the sectors of health, infrastructure, labour and marginalized populations, rural economy and public administration.