SpringerBriefs in Business – serie

For over 2,000 years, banks have served to facilitate the exchange of money and to provide a variety of economic and financial services. During the most recent financial collapse and subsequent recession, beginning in 2008, banks have been vilified as perpetrators of the crisis, the public distrust compounded by massive public bailouts. Nevertheless, another form of banking has also emerged, with a focus on promoting economic sustainability, investing in community, providing opportunity for the disadvantaged, and supporting social, environmental, and ethical agendas. Social Banking and Social Finance traces the emergence of the “bank with a conscience” and proposes a new approach to banking in the wake of the economic crisis. Featuring innovations and initiatives in banking from Europe, Canada, and the United States, Roland Benedikter presents an alternative to traditional banking practices that are focused exclusively on profit maximization. He argues that social banking is not about changing the system, but about improving some of its core features by putting into use the "triple bottom line" principle of profit-people-planet. Important lessons can be learned by the success of social banks that may be useful for the greater task of improving the global financial system and avoiding economic crises in the future.

Family-owned and managed firms are often beset by a variety of crises that can impact the firm’s very survival. These may include changes in technology, deaths of critical family members, competition within an industrial sector, shifts in market dynamics and product mixes, economic turmoil, political upheaval and revolution, firm growth, succession, and selecting new firm leadership.  Such crises may be internal to the firm or a function of the external environment, and several may occur simultaneously; all of them contribute to a context of uncertainty, risk, and change, presenting particular challenges that are unique to family-owned businesses.This volume presents eight in-depth case studies of family-owned firms that represent a variety of industries and situations.  Each case explores the dynamics of managing in chaotic environments and how family leadership responded to crises.  Lessons learned from these experiences will help readers understand how to solve problems under conditions of uncertainty and how to avoid failure, when the survival of the firm is at stake.  Featuring questions and learning notes designed to engage the reader directly, this volume will be a valuable resources for students and members of entrepreneurial and family-owned firms, as well as consultants, investors, and other professional advisors.

Many of the challenges faced by family-owned businesses develop after the firm has reached a stage of maturity, when the first generation is faced with issues concerning the role of their children in the business and the long-term future of the enterprise.  This collection of case studies from around the world demonstrates  how governance of both the business and the family (or lack thereof)  impacts succession of leadership in the firm and the inheritance of ownership and wealth.It is the role of governance and how it impacts both family and firm that link these family business cases together with succession and inheritance.  These topics have been clustered together because the social systems of the family and the management system of the firm have significant impacts on the success, or failure, of succession plans.  All the planning in the world for succession and inheritance will not succeed if the firm does not have a well established and functional governance system.  Likewise, if the family does not understand its role in the governance of the firm and the mechanisms for making sound decisions, succession choices may not be accepted by family members.  Most family firms fail because of succession issues, not economic ones.This volume features nine in-depth cases of family-owned business from a variety of industries to illuminate the dynamics of governance, succession, and inheritance.  Each case illustrates the complexity of issues and, through interactive exercises and questions, offers readers approaches to solutions, which may include less-than-optimal compromises or even selling the business as the only viable option.    The examples and insights will prove valuable for students and members of entrepreneurial and family-ownedfirms, as well as consultants, investors, and other professional advisors.

The causal relationship between growth and inequality is complex, and there have been many scholarly works to study this relationship since the seminal work of Kuznets in the 1950s. Few recent studies in this field have shown that the nature of relationship is multifaceted and non-linear. In addition to the intrinsic non-linear nature of the relationship, government and institutions play pivotal role in distributing the benefits of growth to reduce inequality. The responsiveness greatly depends upon a country’s initial conditions in terms of inequality and the nature of democracy prevailing in the country. This volume highlights the role of institutions in explaining the gulf between inequality and growth, by applying a dynamic general equilibrium framework and by utilizing econometric techniques. Econometrically two important hypotheses are tested.  First, assuming there is no difference in institutions, the growth rate increases as inequality decreases.  Second, assuming inequality remains unchanged, improvement in the integrity of fiscal institutions results in higher economic growth.Integrating theoretical and empirical approaches, this volume links crucial economic concepts in a novel way, and goes beyond academic analysis to suggest policy implications, and will serve as a valuable resource for scholars and policymakers alike in the fields of economic growth and development, public policy, and economic modeling.

“Born global” (BG) firms have attracted many researchers throughout the last decade. The emergence of this phenomenon initially posed a serious challenge to the validity and applicability of the traditional “stage” theory of internationalization; however, scholars have more recently been able to reconcile traditional and new theories into a single framework for studying the process of internationalization.  This volume applies both network theory and knowledge-based theory to analyze export assistance in the context of internationalization of low-tech BG firms in developing countries (with an in-depth study of the apparel industry in Bangladesh).   The findings that non-governmental network partners provide more useful advice than government agencies is one that may resonate through other countries, including developed economies.  Government’s more useful role is confined to the financial support and incentives that are provided to such firms.  It is, however, the commitment to exporting that emerges as critical for performance, more so than export strategy, suggesting that enhanced export performance is to attract, reassure and motivate entrepreneurs in ways that strengthen their commitment to international expansion.

For almost three decades, the European Union (EU) has adopted measures to regulate consumer transactions within the internal market created by the EU Treaties.  Existing legislation is largely based on directives harmonizing aspects of national consumer laws.  This Brief argues that a more appropriate approach for EU consumer law would be legislation in the form of a regulation which is applicable to cross-border transactions only. The author considers the constitutional constraints of the EU Treaties, before examining the case for a cross-border-only measure.  He argues that the cross-border approach is preferable, because it would provide clearer benefits for consumers seeking to buy goods and services across borders, while not upsetting domestic law unnecessarily—in particular in the context of e-commerce, with implications for industry, policymaking, and regional development.  The Brief concludes by suggesting that a successful EU measure on cross-border consumer transactions could create a template for global initiatives for transnational consumer law.

​“The trend is your friend”is a practical principle often used by business managers, who seek to forecast future sales, expenditures, and profitability in order to make production and other operational decisions.  The problem is how best to identify and discover business trends and utilize trend information for attaining objectives of firms.This book contains an Excel-based solution to this problem, applying principles of the authors’ “profit system model” of the firm that enables forecasts of trends in sales, expenditures, profits and other business variables.  The program, called FIRM, which runs on Windows with Microsoft Excel 2010, useshistorical time series of total sales, total costs, and total assets of the firm from its financial statements (income statements and balance sheets), estimates relationships among these variables, and then employs the estimated relationships to forecasts trends in these vital business variables.  Featuring step-by-step case examples, the goalis to equip business managers and students with easy-to-use tools for understanding and forecasting trends in important business variables, thereby empowering them to make better business decisions.

Developed and developing economies alike face increased resource scarcity and competitive rivalry. In this context, science and technology appear as an essential source of competitive and sustainable advantage at national and regional levels. However, the key determinant of their efficacy is the quality and quantity of entrepreneurship-enabled innovation that unlocks and captures the benefits of the science enterprise in the form of private, public or hybrid goods.  Linking basic and applied research with the market, via technology transfer and commercialization mechanisms, including government-university-industry partnerships and capital investments, constitutes the essential trigger mechanism and driving force of sustainable competitive advantage and prosperity.  In this volume, the authors define the terms and principles of knowledge creation, diffusion, and use, and establish a theoretical framework for their study.  In particular, they focus on the “Quadruple Helix” model, through which government, academia, industry, and civil society are seen as key actors promoting a democratic approach to innovation through which strategy development and decision making are exposed to feedback from key stakeholders, resulting in socially accountable policies and practices.

​​​​​​Now more than ever, marketing is assuming a key boundary-spanning role—a role that also redefined the composition of the marketing organization. In this Brief, the marketing organization’s integrative and mutually reinforcing components of marketing activities, customer value-creating processes, networks, and stakeholders are delineated within their boundary-spanning roles. Expanding upon his article published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science in 2011, Tomas Hult draws thematic marketing insights from the integration of thirty-one organization theories to advance knowledge on the boundary-spanning marketing organization within four areas: strategic marketing resources, marketing leadership and decision making, network alliances and collaborations, and the domestic and global marketplace.

​​​​​​Major societal challenges of a global nature include climate change, efficient energy supply, environmental sustainability, and health care. Science & Technology Policy (S&T) policy is an essential contributor to dealing with these challenges; moreover, international cooperation and collaboration in S&T is vital to tackling these issues, since no single nation or even region is able to respond adequately by itself. Within this context, this book addresses recent developments in transatlantic S&T cooperation between the European Union and the United States. The EU-U.S. relationship dates back to the 1950s, with regular EU-U.S. Summits to assess and develop transatlantic cooperation. In the area of S&T, the EU and U.S. concluded an S&T Cooperation Agreement in 1998, renewed it in 2004, and extended it for another five years in July 2009.The research underlying this study is based on interviews with key stakeholders in the field, with an emphasis on:•potential new opportunities and new mechanisms for increased transatlantic EU – U.S. S&T cooperation under current conditions•examples of coordinated “science diplomacy” efforts•options for the development of effective joint efforts.While the project is focused on European-U.S. relationships, it also addresses issues of international S&T cooperation involving other regions, including Africa and Asia. The author highlights the urgency of S&T cooperation to address global issues, and the evolving roles of government, universities and research centers, and industry, in promoting successful strategies and programs.

“Epistemic governance” refers to the cognitive and knowledge-related paradigms that underlie a social system. In this volume, the authors apply the concept to higher education. In a comprehensive review of recent literature, they define key terms and concepts, arguing that a good, effective and sustainable governance of higher education is not possible unless the epistemic structure and knowledge paradigms of higher education are addressed directly. Effective governance of academic institutions is particularly important, given their essential role in generating and disseminating knowledge. The authors consider the practical and policy implications of the epistemic approach for promoting quality assurance, quality enhancement, and quality management of higher education, and their impact on university administration and academic career development.

This book seeks to answer “why, when and how are real options used in strategic technology venturing?” This work tests for the role of real options in decision making involving three types of firms in decreasing order of technology-dependence – technology-driven (TD) (where the profit is fully dependent on new technology creation and leveraging), technology-based (TB) (where the profit is enabled and supported by technology) and technology-neutral (TN) (where the profit is almost independent of technology). It also deals with strategic and non-strategic types of decisions driven by real options.This analysis shows that an environment presenting co-opetitive (simultaneous competition and collaboration) conditions triggers the use of real options (why), that serve to transform the position, posture and propensity of businesses to innovate and thus they co-evolve (when) into more effective and efficient forms of businesses (co-specialization) (how). The  authors demonstrate that embracing risk and uncertainty can increase levels and probability of new venture formation. However, their simulation also shows that it should be adapted to the risk profile of the firm and that timing is also a factor to be considered.  Although engaging the concepts of real options, this analysis does not focus on a specific investment valuation methodology, but highlights the relationship between knowledge and risk and rather addresses the management of mindsets, as moving towards a systematic conceptualization of real options represents a different paradigm in decision making.

We are in an era where developments in both technology and musical style have coalesced to produce the greatest period of change in the music industry since the invention of recorded sound.  Globalization, the Internet, and digital technology are now opening up possibilities for more artists to be innovative and financially successful. But new music requires new ways of doing business. For more artists to be better off requires new business models to replace those that dominated the 20th century. Integrating insights from economics, management, and intellectual property law, the author explores the dynamics of entrepreneurship and innovation in the music industry, and offers such provocative assessments as these:·         The Beatles might never have broken up if they had the kind of two-tier contracts – as band members and as solo artists – that are common in the music industry today.·         Buddy Holly would likely have avoided his tragic death in a plane crash at age 22 if his 1959 tour had been sponsored by a company like Coca Cola because today’s corporatized tours are vastly better financed and organized than the haphazard efforts of the 1950s. ·         The economic value of albums by the likes of Elvis and Michael Jackson has risen significantly since their deaths – the ironic byproduct of the way their behavior tarnished their own brands while they were alive.·         Diana Ross might never have quit The Supremes if she had known that one-third of the artists in the  1960s who quit the group had charting careers ofonly one year.·         Thomas Edison’s invention of the phonograph led to the modern record industry, but he is really the godfather of computer programs like Garageband which have created home recording studios.The collapse of the Soviet Union threatened the sound of rock and roll but an American entrepreneur saved the day.

​This is the third in a series of casebooks on issues faced by families owning and managing a business. This volume focuses on the management of growth, decline, and transition in such firms. These cases are clustered together because family firms grow, decline, and grow again, often transforming themselves several times in the course of their existence, as they face succession issues, financial constraints, and changes in market demand. Managing change also has significant impact on the firm-owning families and their individual members, especially when making decisions under conditions of uncertainty.  The eight cases presented in this volume, as those in the previous two casebooks, were developed as a response to the lack of a diversity and selection of cases on family business. The cases emerged by engaging students to help develop them as a part of the curriculum for teaching family business to both graduate and undergraduate business school students in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Finland.  However, their utility goes beyond the classroom and should be informative to consultants to family firms and family business owners and members as well.  ​

In this volume, the authors challenge some long held assumptions about entrepreneurial firms held by academics, public policy makers, investors and even entrepreneurs themselves. The first is assumption is that growth is what really differentiates an entrepreneurial firm from a small business. The second is that growth is always good. Third, if growth is rapid, and/or high growth, it is even better.Drawing from a fresh review of the literature, their own primary research and experience in entrepreneurial ventures, the authors argue that the relationship between growth and firm performance is, in fact, inconclusive. Despite the strength of contemporary bias, there is strong evidence that the growth-profitability relationship is problematic. For example, rapid growth may lead to considerable organizational challenges that can seriously constrain a firm’s ability to generate sustainable profits. Also, it is not uncommon that a growth firm becomes a victim of its own success.Using examples from industries as diverse as airlines, accounting, biotechnology, information technology, personal products, wineries, and food establishments, the authors highlight limitations to research due to variations in the choice of growth indicators, the calculation of growth measures, the measurement periods, and whether objective or subjective measures have been used. Moreover, researchers have equated growth with high growth and almost automatically assumed that this also means high technology, while policy makers appear to have interpreted this as high employment.Armed with more precise definitions and understandings of key concepts and the nature of their causality, the authors consider the implications of restoring profitability to the core of entrepreneurship for future research, firm strategy, financing, organizational structure, resource allocation, and public policy.

This book analyzes the impacts that family control of firms has on capital structure choices, leverage and the risk of financial distress, earnings management practices, and the relation between accounting choices and firm market value. For these purposes, longitudinal data on Italian family and non-family non-financial firms are closely analyzed. The Italian setting is of special interest in this context because family businesses account for 94% of GDP, families are particularly committed to maintaining control of firms, and the economy is bank based rather than market based. The analyses draw on the socioemotional wealth approach, which emphasizes the importance of the stock of emotional value in family firms, in combination with financial theories such as Pecking Order Theory, Trade-off Theory, and Agency Theory. The findings cast significant new light on differences between family and non-family firms and the effects of different forms of family influence. The book will have broadappeal for academics, managers, practitioners, and policymakers.

This volume examines the relationships among social ecology, innovation, sustainable development and economic growth. The Quintuple Helix innovation model focuses on the interactions among five key elements of society: academia, industry, government, culture, and the environment--with particular respect to harnessing knowledge to promote social, political, and economic development.   The Quintuple Helix is a powerful theoretical and practical lens for analyzing and understanding such critical and complex ecological and socioeconomic issues as global warming and climate change and their implications for sustainability.  The authors provide policy approaches and strategies to help create a balance among the often competing forces of environmental protection, innovation, entrepreneurship, and social and economic growth that will successfully benefit society and protect democratic values.

This book explores new ways for companies to sustain their success, by means of viable business models and a values-driven culture. The point of departure is a value proposition designed to last, and grounded in the values espoused and actively practiced by the organization. These values are in turn the product of a values creation process, which is essential to  any business trying to ensure its viability in the long run. A concise step-by-step process explains how this process can be introduced to keep companies competitive for and in the future.In subsequent chapters, the book describes key challenges for modern management, introduces a paradigm of sustainable management, and presents roadmaps to future viability and axioms of viable business management. Active practitioners in executive and operational management roles, research and development, innovation management, human resources, sustainability, or process management will benefit from thisvolume. Given its scope of coverage, the book offers a valuable resource for lecturers and students in business management, economics, law, and sustainability-related degree courses.

This book offers deep insights into the functioning of humanitarian organizations (HOs) from a managerial perspective. Presenting an in-depth case study on the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), it demonstrates how HOs can professionalize the management of their operations by adapting the institutional logic of private corporations and applying their tools and frameworks in the context of a non-profit-organization. The authors discuss the advantages of effective stakeholder and change management for HOs, as well as the tensions caused by conflicting institutional logics and ethical conflicts that arise as a result of a violation of the principles of an HO. The book appeals to anyone interested in managing non-governmental organizations more effectively.

This book highlights essential concepts, models, and processes that help those responsible for making pricing decisions – whether professionally or privately – to effectively engage in product pricing activities. Novel, straightforward and clearly structured, the Blackblot Market-Value Pricing™ Model (MVP Model), introduced in this book, employs a market-value-centric pricing process that offers step-by-step guidance on the managerial decisions that help determine a product’s price. This intentionally succinct, highly readable, and practical book provides practitioners with the knowledge and tools they need in order to approach pricing activities in an organized and efficient manner.

This book examines performance evaluation in the context of assessing the non-financial outcomes of human activities. The topic is particularly relevant when economic, environmental or social performance has to be evaluated, e.g. the efficiency of actions and the lifecycles of products. The authors combine multi-criteria decision-making and production theories to develop a theoretical and methodological foundation for performance evaluation. They also demonstrate the typical pitfalls that are hindering the implementation of contemporary methods in practice. Special emphasis is placed on efficiency measurement with data envelopment analysis (DEA), and on data aggregation in life cycle assessment (LCA).

This book presents the findings of a comparative study on office work culture in Germany and China. Focusing on behavioural and work practices, it explains the cultural influences on local staff’s personal behaviour.  The book also offers solutions for improving overall productivity, and examines digital work environments in manufacturing and sales organisations. Documenting business practices and cultural traits, as well as typical approaches to conflict situations, it lays the foundations for better global teamwork.

Combining best practices, empirical studies and the authors’ own research on technology transfer offices (TTOs), technology transfer, ecosystems and scientists in the principal investigator role, this book presents a business model framework for TTOs. From a practitioner’s perspective the business model framework captures key elements of TTOs’ strategic and operational activities that are needed for effective management and leadership. Moreover, the frameworkaddresses central issues including strategy, organisational structure, staff and resources, activities, mechanisms, policy and procedures, and evaluation and outcomes, while also consideringcontextual factors that directly and indirectly affectTTOs, namely thecommercialisation culture and ethos,as well as researchers’ commitment, awareness and motivation. For each element of the framework, the book outlines the key success factors and facilitating factors that enable effectivetechnology transfer.

This book analyses the impact of web design parameters on user experience and the behaviour of website users. Website design is considered one of the key parameters of a company's Internet presentation, affecting consumer attitudes and buying behaviour. The authors examine the concept of website quality based on the identification of patterns of user behaviour in the online environment, particularly focusing on the functional and aesthetic parameters of web design and causal relationships between them. Using website traffic analysis and best practices from professionals, they describe a methodical procedure for measuring the quality of web pages and developing optimised websites.

This book provides a rare historical analysis on the development and importance of marketing channels to Supply Chain Management (SCM) in Northern America. In particular, the book looks at the period 1850 to the present, to understand the evolution, the trends and the current status. It aims to bring back this forgotten area of research, to the mainstream marketing thought process. A general overview of developments in marketing channels will help the reader understand what changes occurred and how some of these changes impacted marketing education and practice. First, the book provides an overview of the historical background of how manufacturing and distribution evolved in the 19th century. Next, the marketing channels and supply chain networks are defined. Then the three time periods within 1850- present are covered. The book explains how supply chain has become prominent in organizations, the movement to non-store retailing and the omnichannel is discussed to focus onrecent developments in distribution. Finally, developments that relate to the academic discipline and implications for the future are examined. The book concludes by describing the relationship between marketing channels and supply chain today, based on historical analysis.

This open access book revisits common notions on how to select and recruit the right employees. It reveals that the secret of successful individuals and teams lies in a combination of talent and four important performance indicators, offering an innovative approach that companies can fruitfully adopt. Bas Kodden has studied key performance indicators among over 1,100 executives, senior staff and professionals, including 50 CEOs from leading Dutch companies. His findings put the present recruitment and selection procedures used by many prominent companies in a new light. Moreover, the book not only addresses theory; it also offers a practically applicable model for recruitment, selection and professional development. In closing, the book includes a variety of questionnaires and checklists for HR professionals and executives whose goal is to build sustainable and successful teams and organizations.

This book examines the role of intangible assets (IA) in companies and countries for achieving sustainable economic growth. The authors particularly focus on Sweden and other Nordic countries to analyse the IA gap using a systematized “IA metrics” approach. They also discuss the incentives needed for strategic investments into useful IA to gain national competitiveness from an economic, social and environmental policy perspective. The authors contend that despite the increasing importance of IA and intellectual capital (IC) in the economy, the current discussion has only been centered on intellectual property, which is one of the more prominent forms of intangibles. As this book demonstrates, IC and IA encompass wider dimensions of human, process, market, and renewal capital, among others. Featuring real case examples from Spotify, Minecraft and Izettle, this book offers a strategy for the resurrection of competitive advantage in the globalized economy and the advancement of some key United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

A common charge leveled against the autopoietic perspective is that it does not explain change or, consequently, knowledge creation. This book demonstrates that knowledge creation is not always an ongoing process, as is claimed in many process philosophy and autopoietic research works. The author introduces the idea of recursivity, which represents the explanatory potential for uninterrupted knowledge creation and paves the way for interaction between process (e.g. production) and stability (e.g. structure). The book describes the nature and role of recursivity in detail, especially in terms of how a system’s structure and production become media for one another. The book also acknowledges the value of the systems perspective on organizations in management studies, but suggests a different approach to defining systems, one that includes autopoietic elements.

​This book examines the current body of knowledge on sustainable entrepreneurship. Using network and content analysis, the author maps the structure of the research field and provides a systematic review. In this regard, network analysis is used to find evidence of thematically related clusters of publications and polarizing differences across the subfields of inquiry. In contrast, content analysis is employed to identify and address emerging gaps in the literature. In particular, after discussing mainstream contributions, the author focuses on pioneering research and predicts possible paths that might challenge researchers in the future. The author contributes to the ongoing debate on the definition and boundaries of the flourishing field of sustainable entrepreneurship, by offering critical insights and possible future development pathways derived from both quantitative and qualitative analyses.