Leonidas Efthymiou – författare

This book examines the nature of retail financial transaction infrastructures. Contributions assume a long-term outlook in their exploration of the key financial processes and systems that support a global transition to a cashless economy. The volume offers both modern and historic accounts that demonstrate the constantly changing role of payment instruments. It brings together different theoretical approaches to the study, re-examining and forecasting changes in retail payment systems. Chapters explore a global transition to a cashless society and contemplate future alternatives to cash, cheques and plastic, featuring the perspectives of academics from different disciplines in conversation and industry participants from six continents. Readers are invited to discover the innovation in payment systems and how it co-evolves with changes in society and organisations through personal, corporate and governmental processes.

This book examines businesses under crisis conditions through a composition of contextual accounts. The Editors argue that crises are transformative, evolutionary and even revolutionary in the development of organizations, industries and markets. Moreover, crises reform the context in which organizations operate, including customers and their behaviour. As such, they need to be viewed as conduits to change, accelerators of evolution and catalysts of innovation in organizations. Emphasising the importance of ‘context’ and its complexities, the book argues that for crisis, as a concept and notion, context is crucial to any understanding of the meaning that should or could be attached to it. 

Drawing on different types of changes and crises that substantially affect business, including economic, technological, political, and environmental, chapters Bringing together scientific research and case studies on contextual transformations, the book provides a balanced selection ofworks across business disciplines, including management, strategy, marketing and finance as well as geographic regions, market types and industries. The book examines the context of crises, its indicators and triggers, and encompasses topics such as Artificial Intelligence, e-mobility, changes in consumption patterns, militancy and the impact of pandemics. 

From recurring episodes of great depression, oil crises, political crises, wars, debt crises, to the ongoing climate change, there is a constant pressure on businesses to cope with critical events. However, throughout history, crises have been pivotal in advancing businesses and societies. This contributed volume approaches crisis not simply as a source of problems, but also as a set of choices. It seeks to explore critical events as possible opportunities for sustainability, through process improvement, creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship.

Chapters reveal that times of crisis provide opportunities for new start-ups, creativity, resilience, organisational change, and revitalisation. This book also emphasises the importance of sustainability, driven either by the market or as a response to critical events. Within the wider attempt to explore avenues for Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Sustainability at times of crisis, the book is loosely organised in three thematic sections: organisational responses to crisis; digitisation, and how technology facilitates or hinders sustainability under conditions of crisis; and SMEs, Family Firms (FF), Entrepreneurship, which explores how critical events offer opportunities for innovation.

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.

Part of a two-volume work, this book explores how businesses shape, and are shaped by, sustainability forces and phenomena. These evolutionary transformations have driven scholars, practitioners and decision makers to pay increased attention to sustainability as an integral part of business development. Consequently, and congruently, companies, organisations and governments are modifying their philosophy, processes, activities, and communications, at both the micro- and macro-foundational levels, to comply and adapt to the new realities.

This two-volume edited work explores how businesses shape, and are shaped by, sustainability forces and phenomena. Major global developments are inexorably being led by a sustainability agenda, which, in itself constitutes an integral part of business evolution. And as context shapes content, shifts in society have gradually given rise to new regulations, new types of markets, environmental-excellence criteria for businesses, new economic standards, and a wide range of green technologies.

This four-volume book examines, through multiple and cross-discipline perspectives, the science and practice of not-for-profit organisations. These organisations have drawn considerable attention and witnessed extensive growth as they engage in delivering public services to society. And are increasingly pressured to balance business with social goals, inherent idiosyncratic features with management creativity, structural limitations with operational flexibility, and ethical boundaries with pragmatism; all with scarce resources but abundant determination.

The first volume explores the opportunities and challenges of non-profit organisations in the contemporary environment, elucidating current and future issues in the field, setting strategic directions, and presenting sector-wide examples and best practices. The second volume explores contextual aspects relating to the economy and industries. The third volume presents social and ethical aspects, as well as matters of sustainability, accountability and the overall wellbeing of society. The fourth and final volume examines structures and models, with an emphasis on technology.