Books in the SpringerBriefs in Business series

In this Springer Brief, the author introduces how Chinese firms are successfully using their own variants of the 'Silicon Valley Approach' to management. If true, this could have profound implications for managers everywhere. The author acknowledges that no management model fails (or succeeds) every time.

This book offers a concise summary of cutting-edge research and practical implications about employee engagement.

To do so, it analyzes productivity at a Japanese car component plant and its three offshoot plants located in the United States, Thailand, and China and how productivity evolved at these plants from the mid-1990s to the early 2010s.

The authors present a sustainable social accounting approach that considers both the social and economic value - Blended Value - generated by an organization for all of its stakeholders.

This book provides a critical review of the internationalization process among higher education institutions (HEIs), taking a closer look at the case of business schools. The first part offers a novel definition of this phenomenon and examines the forces that drive international initiatives. It then examines and explains the "internationalization paradox": the observation that despite evidence that many international initiatives fail to deliver what they promise, for the heads of HEIs they nevertheless remain at the top of the agenda. In turn, the second part of the book develops a unifying framework that identifies alternative models of internationalization and explains how they relate to one another. Based on this framework, the book presents a model of the truly global HEI, whose mission is to learn from the world rather than teach the world what it knows. The book's central thesis is that it is unlikely that HEIs will be able to transform themselves into truly global HEIs because of historical and organizational barriers rather than a shortage of resources or a lack of visionary leadership. The book concludes that most HEIs should refrain from claiming that their aim is to become global institutions, and should instead focus on the successful implementation of an import-export model of internationalization that calls for initiatives such as the internationalization of the curriculum, the creation of student and faculty exchange programs, and the participation in international academic and research partnerships. Any attempt to transform themselves into truly global institutions is unlikely to succeed and may distract them from their fundamental mission: to educate their home-based students and help them become effective global citizens.

This book provides a brief overview of the fundamental presumptions underlying the idea of management. It is argued that managers and others must endorse these presumptions - the teachings of management - even though they are well aware that their applicability to managerial practice is limited.

This book introduces readers to co-creation --- a complex, value-based, context-driven and collaborative effort to develop new paradigms, products and services to satisfy human wants.

This book attempts to address, explore, and conceptualize the epistemological paradigms of SMS as an alternative marketing channel or in combination with other existing traditional channels.

This book aims to identify, analyze, and systematize the available research on counterfeiting and piracy published over a thirty-five year time span (1980-2015) in order to highlight the main trends in the illicit trade literature, propose suggestions for managers battling against illicit trade, and provide a starting point for future research.

With this Springer Brief, business professionals get a quick and useful overview of the leading networks such as the German Asia-Pacific Business Association, the German-Chinese Business Association, and the Asian Social Business Community.

This book is mainly about an innovative and fundamental method called "intelligent knowledge" to bridge the gap between data mining and knowledge management, two important fields recognized by the information technology (IT) community and business analytics (BA) community respectively.

This book explores the way in which QR codes (Quick Response codes) can help the wine industry facilitate distribution and more effectively market and sell their product. It then goes on to examine how to integrate QR codes with wine media, including marketing the bottle and using QR codes to build new wine regions.

The first four stages are dubbed CSR 1.0 and characterise most current CSR practice, while the fifth stage is named CSR 2.0 (also transformative or systemic CSR) and describes emergent and future CSR practices.

The CSR report has become a very important tool which can help corporations to set up strategies and build their core competencies. By analyzing the management framework and formulation process of the CSR report, this book provides businesses with guiding principles for preparing the CSR report.

The valuation of Heritage Assets (HA), which are a vital resource for the non-profit public or private organizations operating in the heritage sector is on the one hand sometimes difficult to do, and on the other, can be excessively costly with respect to the correlated disclosure benefits.

The authors utilize social network analysis to determine how entrepreneurs in emerging economies identify their most beneficial social contacts and use those contacts to leverage the resources needed for their enterprises, revealing new insights on the process of business creation and economic development in the networked age.

How to effectively design and deliver virtual advisory services can be a mystery to many public and private organisations. Based on a thorough analysis of abundant typical applications in various business and government sectors, this book discusses the current status and future trends of virtual advisory services in digital environments.

Competition law regulates anti-competitive conduct by companies in order to maintain market competition. It provides a new interdisciplinary approach to the topic that emphasizes the empirically observable marketing perspective, but draws conclusions from competition theory.

China's trade surplus is an essential question, but there are many popular misconceptions about it, a fact that prompted the creation of this book, On China's Trade Surplus. It will help readers to understand the manner in which China's foreign trade and China's role in global trade have developed, and to how to benefit from trade with China.

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.

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.

This book focuses on the notion of "vintage innovation" and its application in various old technology-based communities of practice. Some communities of practice resist and react to technological change by adopting new technological products ("vintage products") that extend the lifetime of their old, favored products and practices.

The term sustainable development (SD) has now become a ubiquitous idea, philosophy, and guiding principle in our society. enlightened needs (manifested desires of the self and species beyond basic survival and procreation), and human development principles (with fair development as the ideal principle for the present).

This book explores the diversity of Social Impact Assessment (SIA) models and outlines a self-assessment on models to support social entrepreneurs. The chapters trace the concept and origins of social entrepreneurship and elicits current implementation of SIA models by social enterprises.

Furthermore, it proposes a comprehensive and operational framework for the assessment of the financial feasibility of strategy, through the measurement of the impact of the planned strategic moves on financial needs and the evaluation of their financial sustainability.

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.