Books published by Palgrave MacMillan

This textbook offers an approachable guide to all key concepts within corporate finance. It also includes a guide to subjects such as capital budgeting decisions, the cost of financing for businesses, cash and working capital management, the process of business valuation, and how stock markets work.

Leadership can be learned: new evidence from neuroscience clearly points to ways that leaders can significantly improve how they engage with and motivate others. This book provides leaders and managers with an accessible guide to practical, effective actions, based on neuroscience.

This cutting-edge volume is the first to address the burgeoning interest in drugs and Africa among scholars, policymakers, and the general public. It brings together an interdisciplinary group of leading academics and practitioners to explore the use, trade, production, and control of mind-altering substances on the continent

A new up-to-date overview of coaching effectiveness with practical case studies to demonstrate how these techniques are applied in real businesses. Using well-known coaching approaches in business and devoting additional attention to internal coaching practices this is a distinct, rigorous yet accessible guide to coaching approaches and practice.

Through rap and hip hop, entertainers have provided a voice questioning and challenging the sanctioned view of society. Examining the moral and social implications of Kanye West's art in the context of Western civilization's preconceived ideas, the contributors consider how West both challenges religious and moral norms and propagates them.

What is posthumanism and why does it matter? This reader offers an introduction to the ways in which humanism's belief in the natural supremacy of the Family of Man has been called into question at different moments and from different theoretical positions. Can posthumanism have a politics - post-colonial or feminist?

The Art of Clowning is the first book on clowning technique and offers a step-by-step process for actors and other theatrical enthusiasts to discover their inner clown. This fun and accessible guide expands on theories and exercises to help students and beginners develop solo and group performances. Now with even more ways to find your inner clown!

Through sharing the research methodologies, and describing intervention and change techniques used in leadership development, this book, written by IGLC-INSEAD professors and leadership coaches, contributes to a better understanding of how organizations may go beyond coaching in order to create best places to work.

This book investigates the policy implications, discursive ethos and practical realities of plea-based case dispositions in the criminal justice system of four Chinese-speaking jurisdictions, including Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. It aims to provide fresh and cutting-edge insights into important legal, social and cultural issues found throughout plea-based case dispositions in Greater China, but in a geographically specific manner - providing an in-depth view of issues that can help forge connections and inspire creative solutions for scholars gaining understanding of common problems across the societies in question. The book includes an introduction and conclusion with 9 chapters. Based on a diverse range of first-hand data and secondary sources of information, topics covered in the chapters represent multiangle perspectives and analysis that help to construct a sophisticated, intricate and evidence-based portrait of locally informed approaches to case disposition through pleas in Chinese-speaking societies.

The Crusades and Nature: Natural and Supernatural Environments in the Middle Ages explores the intersection of crusader studies and studies of nature. The volume addresses encounters with, responses to and representations of a broad variety of phenomena: celestial objects and events; familiar and unfamiliar fauna and flora; seascapes and landscapes; the elements and the seasons; etc. It introduces readers to crusaders' actual, but also largely or entirely imaginary encounters with natural phenomena, as well as literary references to nature in crusader sources more generally (such as, for example, animal metaphors). Finally, this project investigates the relationships between the natural and the supernatural and between nature and human-made environments. The volume will define "crusades" broadly, to include not only crusades to the East, but also crusades to frontier regions such as the Baltic and Iberian peninsula and extends to representations of crusades and nature in later medieval and early modern sources.

This book argues that listening to constituents who reside outside organizational boundaries, but who are essential members of an organization's ecosystem, is a vital constitutive element of organizational communication. It also attempts to demonstrate that, by and large, the field of organizational communication has neglected such listening. The book goes on to introduce a conceptual and methodological framework organizations can use to assess listening practices and effectiveness. Through a combination of theory, research, and case illustrations, the book will be valuable to both scholars and practitioners in the fields of organizational communication, marketing, and public relations. It will provide insight and direction for theory-building, knowledge development, and implementation of best practices.

This book ​focuses on the experiences of international academic staff in higher education, particularly examining the influences of issues such as languages, cultures, and personalities. The qualitative approach taken by the authors provides vignettes of varied international contexts, which are then compared and analysed to highlight important considerations for practice in different settings. By exploring the experiences of staff teaching within a language that is not their first language, and in a different cultural context, the authors contribute to a burgeoning area of research, and scholars working on Applied Linguistics, Higher Education, English as a Medium of Instruction and other aspects of Internationalisation are likely to find the book relevant and useful.

This book analyzes the 'Five Eyes' nations' concerns and policies relating to national security threats through an interdisciplinary theoretical engagement with the Political, Information, Security and Economic (PISE) Model. Through the analysis of secondary data sources such as scholarly and government reports, policy documents, press releases and interviews, the author analyzes the five case studies--Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK, and the USA--to determine how and why nations use the PISE variables to shape favorable homeland security outcomes, to determine what the points of homeland intersectoral collaboration are among the 'Five Eyes' nations. In so doing, Weaver determines that although the 'Five Eyes' countries have concerns about homeland security and each, individually, identifies threats and hazards, they do also employ collaborative measures to build resilience and increase efforts to prepare for anticipated security breaches.

This book is about Russia. Yet, this book is not about Russia per se. To those, whose sole interest is a better understanding of the Kremlin's decision making and how it shapes Russia's present and future, we would refer to a rather long list of sources that we dutifully noted throughout the book. Instead, based on our expertise in Russian studies and the challenges that we experienced in the past 2 years, this book aims to offer a methodology to address questions when there is no 'right' or 'wrong' answer (due to lacking reliable information). Any attempt to answer this sort of questions using the commonly accepted deductive approach, based on scientific methods is bound to fail, because of the very nature of these questions. Therefore, using Russia as a case study, this book aims to advance a way of analysing (however limited, biased and uncertain) available information to advance a more critical understanding of the subject in question by using the methodology of dialectic inquiry.

This book investigates new insights into the factors influencing empathy in medical students examining how a study of Shakespeare's plays may enhance empathy in doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals. Addressing the widely perceived empathy gap in teaching and medical practice that emerged after the Covid-19 pandemic, the book presents a new study into the psychosocial elements of human interactions. It offers invaluable insight into how students and practitioners may be supported in dealing appropriately with their emotions as well as with those of their patients, thereby facilitating more humane medical care. Fostering an empathic patient-doctor relationship, the author explores the emotional, cognitive and moral dimensions of care and describes how Shakespeare studies can be realistically incorporated into the medical curriculum through group reflections, workshops and special study modules.

This book explores the nature, scope, merits and limits of international responses to Myanmar's February 2021 coup. The novelty of this book lies in its analysis of the coup in the digital age. While the literature on Myanmar addresses issues such as earlier periods of reform, Myanmar's political transition, the Saffron revolution, and human rights, there is still limited research that looks into the influence of digitalised Myanmar on the post-coup Civil Disobedience Movement and protestors. Myanmar opened and changed enormously in the past ten years. The use of technology and the Internet increased phenomenally, exposing Myanmar's citizenry to new ideas, experiences and ways of viewing the world. The impact of these developments on responses to the 2021 coup is the focus of this book.Myanmar's opening to the world and its digitalisation has made this coup different from the three previous coups. The book's starting point is that diplomacy is no longer (if it everwas) the preserve of governments and diplomats. International organisations, not-for-profit organisations, large corporations, academia, civil society, social media, and even individuals have all been engaged and sought to influence developments.Drawing extensively on primary sources (official statements by UN agencies, foreign governments, international corporations, NGOs and Burma campaign activists) and experiences as a senior diplomat and an academic working with Myanmar's government to build cyber capacity and cyber security awareness, this book takes a fresh look at all forms of international behaviour that seek to bring about change in a rogue or pariah state. The book will be the first to study the part played by Gen Z and their facility with smart phone technology to mobilise, inform and build opposition to the coup. To what extent did the youth of Myanmar learn from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand and the so-called "milk tea alliance"? How has dependenceon the internet affected the operations of the security forces and the Civil Disobedience Movement? How did both sides deploy misinformation and disinformation to achieve their respective goals?The book thus provides an informative guide for those seeking an understanding of what has happened and what, short of a military intervention, can be done about it. It examines international responses in the first year following the coup, candidly assessing their feasibility, efficacy and utility. Recent developments are situated within the context of Myanmar's modern history and the discourse on the effectiveness of sanctions compared with engagement.The book also critically examines ASEAN's role - how does ASEAN see its role, how does the National Unity Government regard ASEAN endeavours, and how does the rest of the world view ASEAN's capacity to address Myanmar's problems? We evaluate ASEAN's principle of non-interference in the internalaffairs of member states. Does this principle matter more to it than judgments about its weakness and inability to deal with breaches of the ASEAN Charter?

This textbook explores the histories of royal women in Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It argues that by dint of an unprecedented conjunction of historical shifts and powerful personalities, it was these women, and not men, who sat at the helm of global politics; moreover, it was they who in truth steered our world's transition from the Middle Ages to modernity. Organized into chapters devoted to each of the era's great states, the book sets out to challenge several historical premises. First, it shows that women were the actual, if not always formally crowned, sovereigns of these states, or at least played a decisive role in shaping their policies. Second, the book dissolves the conventional dichotomy between East and West, showing that in both Christian Europe and Islamdom, women achieved their high status by means of similar strategies and at similar periods in history. Third, by demonstrating that there was a precedent for female authority long before the first harbingers of the women's movement in the eighteenth century, the book calls into question received ideas about historical progress and the evolution of women's liberation.

Polarization in the United States has been on the rise for several decades. In this context, few observers expect politics today to stop "at the water's edge," as the old cliché goes. But key questions about the relationship between polarization and US foreign policy remain to be fully answered. To what extent are American ideas about foreign policy now polarized along partisan lines? How is polarization changing the foreign policy behavior of the US Congress and President? And how is polarization altering the effectiveness of US foreign policy and influencing America's role in the world? This edited volume explores these questions and more, bringing together existing knowledge as well as considering how the political dynamics and execution of US foreign policy may evolve in the years ahead.

This handbook takes a comprehensive approach to studying and understanding modern slavery, particularly forced labour and human trafficking. It considers the historical and cultural roots of modern slavery and suggests that analyzing the issue from humanities, social sciences, criminological, and business perspectives could lead to a better understanding of its emergence worldwide. The handbook also highlights the role of religions/spiritualities and multinational corporations in the expansion of modern slavery and argues that exploring their potential ethical responsibilities is essential. Furthermore, it combines theoretical frameworks of intersectionality and globalization to study the interconnectedness of various factors in shaping and understanding modern slavery. Finally, it contains an impressive range of geographic and conceptual approaches to the problems of combating modern slavery.

This book provides an authoritative overview of public administration, public management and public governance in Japan. Japan is one of the leading countries on the international stage, with a reputation for effective government and administration. The book covers a wide range of themes, including social welfare, public employment, the education system, public finance, and crisis management. Written by a team of expert scholars, it will appeal to international researchers and practitioners interested in Japan, as well as public administration and public management more broadly. It will be the definitive guide to public administration and governance in Japan for years to come.This is an open access book.

This Open Access edited volume presents twelve African case studies that systematically reconstruct, document and analyse how national governments and other stakeholders took equity into account in their initial policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the onset of the pandemic, many African governments acted quickly to suppress the virus through various public health measures, including lockdowns, mobilizing healthcare resources and designing responses to support the economy and the population. There were, however, significant variations in the severity and type of measures taken, as well as their accessibility and impacts. Equity was not a given and, therefore, important questions have been raised about who benefitted and who were left unprotected from the interventions, particularly those designed to protect income and basic services? The book, based on a variety of empirical data and disciplinary perspectives of research teams from across the continent, examines the inclusivity of mitigation and policy responses. It situates these findings on short-term interventions and impact in debates about the longer-term implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on the development of the African continent and proposes new directions for policy, research and practice in responses and interventions during crises.

Postcolonial African migration to the West is not only a spatial movement in search of material and physical security but also an expression of the mimetic desire for being by imitating the West or "whitening" oneself against the background of the dehumanizing historical legacies of slavery, colonialism, and Western dominance. It is a flight from oneself, from perceived inadequacies. To migrate to the West is an expression of the desire for being, not through detachment from the "fascinating" West but rather through adoration and imitation of its lifestyle, beauty ideals, and soft and hard power, and by living in the West. The model (the West) builds ubiquitous anti-migrant physical and virtual fences, which the imitator tries to overcome. The more the model re-strengthens these fences, the more the imitator tries to scale them. The anti-migrant fences are the meeting point of the model's perceived superiority, admirability, and desirability on the one hand, and on the other hand the imitator's inferiority complex and inner tension between the paradoxical desire for detachment from the model and its passionate imitation at the same time. This book argues that African migration to the West will continue even in the absence of poverty, conflicts, and climate change because it is also about the mimetic desire for being.

This book explores the formation of Catherine of Lancaster (1373-1418) and her arrival in Castile, linking that to the new interest in collecting and writing court poetry and the new production of religious lyric at her court. This book introduces a Castilian Queen of English extraction to contribute to the growing field of queenship and the influence of powerful women. Relatively little is known about Catherine from an English perspective. How she might have influenced court poetry and its production is only beginning to be explored, and this book marks an important contribution to that project in the way it enhances understanding of possible areas of influence from one country's religious production to another. It also addresses whether and in which ways Catherine might have influenced the development of a new court culture of poet-administrators, similar to the one she had left behind in England.

There has been a steady stream of articles written on the relations between ethics and the interpretation of literature, but there remains a need for a book that both introduces and significantly contributes to the field - particularly one that shows how we can think more openly and creatively about the multiform powers of ethical narrative by considering ethically significant literature. This volume offers an analytically acute and culturally rich way of understanding how it is that we can productively think philosophically about the narrative structures that describe our ethical lives and what kind of distinctive conceptual, and in some cases personal, progress we can make by doing so. Given the extremely widespread interest in ethical issues, this volume will strike resonant chords far and wide on arrival, while offering something new in bringing together the study of long-form narrative, the language of moral psychology, and detailed literary case studies. Given the vast expansion of narrative studies in recent years, the time for just such a volume is right.

This edited collection examines different facets of organizational communication in the context of current technological developments and disruptions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. AI is making inroads in organizational communication practice, influencing how organizations communicate and interact with their environments. It drives, augments and supplements organizational communication. Chatbots, for example, are becoming increasingly relied upon by organizations, using them to manage basic communication tasks that used to belong solidly to the realm of human. Similarly, developments such as ChatGPT have attracted scholarly attention due to their perceived implications on various aspects of communication. All of this has a profound effect on human interactions and relationships in organizational settings. Filling a gap in scholarship around organizational communication in light of ongoing digital transformation processes and COVID-19 induced transformations, chapters provide an up-to-date account of how new communication technologies, especially AI, are transforming organizational communication. The contributions reflect upon the most current theory and practice in the field in the post-COVID era. Combining theory, applied scholarship and fresh case studies, this is a valuable resource that reflects on the new realities of today's organizational environment.

This book is the first comprehensive history of the British Trade Corporation, which was constituted under a Royal Charter on 21st April 1917. Its charter was meant to last for sixty years, but in 1926, after a turbulent existence of only nine years, it was amalgamated with the Anglo-Austrian Bank, and absorbed into the Anglo-International Bank. The corporation together with its two main subsidiaries, the Levant Company and the National Bank of Turkey, conducted business not only in Britain but in Russia, Turkey, the Middle East and in Continental Europe. Although the corporation was not an agent of empire, it reflected Britain's imperialistic ambitions after the First World War. As a result, it invested in some of the most unstable regions of the world. It was also severely affected by British foreign policy, which was often misjudged and, at times, duplicitous, resulting in serious damage to British trade. Within five years of its launch, the British Trade Corporation needed to be refinanced. The economic downturn in the early 1920s and ongoing hostilities in Eastern Europe and the Near East meant that it struggled to survive. Its difficulties reflected many of those faced by Britain in general after the war and the need to come to terms with the new realities of the post-war world. Despite its innovative attempt to address the perceived deficiencies in Britain's financial system, especially in respect of industrial finance, the British Trade Corporation has been largely ignored by financial historians. Based on substantial archival research, this book rectifies this neglect and makes an important contribution to the financial history of interwar Britain.

This book, structured in two parts, gives a 360-degree view on integrated thinking, the foundation of integrated reporting, a rising trend in corporate reporting practice. This topic is particularly interesting in the context of new regulatory landscape, such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) in the EU (shaped by EFRAG's developments), alongside the IFRS Foundation's efforts towards global sustainability standards, both of which are shaping contemporary debates on sustainable value creation. The first part builds a framework for integrated thinking in a multidisciplinary perspective while the second part revises the framework in the light of practices, by bridging the gap with research findings in this field to date. The book concludes with the current shift of paradigm, and the need to address managerial questions in their complexity, building on knowledge across different specialized disciplines. The book will be of specific interest to accounting and finance teams and professional accounting bodies alongside those teaching or doing research within the fields of finance and accounting.

This edited book examines and analyses Heydar Aliyev, the architect and founder of modern, post-Soviet Azerbaijan. The editors of the volume discuss developments between 1993 and 2003 - a decade that saw the establishment of the institutional foundations of the current republic, the adoption of a new form of national identity, the redefinition of the concept of the Azerbaijani state, and the creation of a security establishment designed to gain control of territories Armenia had held since the 1988-1994 war over Karabakh. The book explains why this fateful period had far-reaching consequences for Azerbaijan as a fully formed state and society, as well as major implications for its political future and its geopolitical strategy.