Risk management is a domain of management which comes to the fore in crisis. This book looks at risk management under crisis conditions in the COVID-19 pandemic context. The book synthesizes existing concepts, strategies, approaches and methods of risk management and provides the results of empirical research on risk and risk management during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research outcome was based on the authors’ study on 42 enterprises of different sizes in various sectors, and these firms have either been negatively affected by COVID-19 or have thrived successfully under the new conditions of conducting business activities. The analysis looks at both the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the selected enterprises and the risk management measures these enterprises had taken in response to the emerging global trends. The book puts together key factors which could have determined the enterprises’ failures and successes. The final part of the book reflects on how firms can build resilience in challenging times and suggests a model for business resilience. The comparative analysis will provide useful insights into key strategic approaches of risk management. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9781003131366/ has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Plasticizers Derived from Post-Consumer PET: Research Trends and Potential Applications presents a roadmap to the successful use of post-consumer PET to obtain plasticizers for later use, a proposal which presents both economic and sustainability advantages. Based on the results of the latest research into the development of chemical recycling techniques of PET waste, this book describes techniques where the plasticizer obtained can be utilized for value addition in PVC and other polymers. In addition, the book provides basic introductory information on the role of plasticizers in the modification of polymers, basic quality requirements, and the latest trends in the synthesis and use of plasticizers in industry, also presenting the available methods of PET recycling, with particular emphasis on chemical recycling, analysis of the PET market, the availability of post-consumer PET, and its value as a raw material for other products. Based on the authors' research, the book discusses the use of post-consumer PET in the synthesis of monomeric and oligomeric plasticizers. Synthesis conditions are shown in detail, and the influence of the structure of synthesized softeners on their basic quality parameters are assessed and compared with selected commercially available products. In the final sections, the book covers the economic challenges and benefits of this process and its application to newly developed products. Presents a step-by-step introduction to the methods of recycling PET into usable plasticizers Provides a viable, actionable alternative to landfills for post-consumer PET, enabling the recycling of more waste polymer and reducing the carbon footprint of PET Analyzes the economic benefits and challenges of this process Compares the quality of the output to commercially available products
This book provides a detailed introduction to maintenance policies and the current and future research in these fields, highlighting mathematical formulation and optimization techniques. It comprehensively describes the state of art in maintenance modelling and optimization for single- and multi-unit technical systems, and also investigates the problem of the estimation process of delay-time parameters and how this affects system performance. The book discusses delay-time modelling for multi-unit technical systems in various reliability structures, examining the optimum maintenance policies both analytically and practically, focusing on a delay-time modelling technique that has been employed by researchers in the field of maintenance engineering to model inspection intervals. It organizes the existing work into several fields, based mainly on the classification of single- and multi-unit models and assesses the applicability of the reviewed works and maintenance models. Lastly, it identifies potential future research directions and suggests research agendas. This book is a valuable resource for maintenance engineers, reliability specialists, and researchers, as it demonstrates the latest developments in maintenance, inspection and delay-time-based maintenance modelling issues. It is also of interest to graduate and senior undergraduate students, as it introduces current theory and practice in maintenance modelling issues, especially in the field of delay-time modelling.
This is the first book presenting the relation between coffee producers and consumers of coffee beverages, at marketing management level. Many books offer advice on how to write effective marketing strategies, but only few indicate how to implement them successfully. This book belongs to the second group. The proposed solutions can be applied by coffee producers, but can also be adapted to suit the needs of enterprises operating on other markets. The actual needs of the clients are presented, and the authors show how to implement and control the adopted marketing strategies to satisfy those needs. Valuable assets this book offers are the control system for the execution of the marketing strategy proposed by the authors (based on the Balanced Scorecard), and the aggregate of 38 indicators enabling you to determine the degree of implementation of the marketing strategy adopted by the enterprise. 'The main idea of the monograph is the effort to improve the activities of coffee producers by analysing and eliminating the discrepancy between the marketing strategies used and the real needs and preferences of consumers. The monograph is based on primary and secondary data obtained as a result of surveys of consumers and participants of the supply side of the coffee market. The conclusions presented in the monograph are drawn from the analysis of documents of twenty-six coffee producers, individual in-depth interviews with managers, a case study of the company MOKATE sp. z o.o. - the leader of the Polish instant cappuccino market, and from direct interviews with 800 coffee consumers. The Polish coffee market is one of the largest markets of this kind in Europe and it has great potential for growth. Therefore, this publication is not only a valuable contribution to research on behaviour of market entities, but also an important source of inspiration for managers responsible for everyday marketing in FMCG markets, in particular, in coffee markets.' Prof. Roman E. Niestrój Professor of Marketing, WSB University, Poland 'This book describes possible marketing strategies with focus on the coffee sector. The history of 'marketing' is presented, from the first attempts at a scientific approach in 1926, up to the establishment of this term in science in the 1950s. The authors refer to various definitions of marketing and describe its strategy variants (defensive/active). The main element (and advantage) of the book is the presentation of various methods of implementation and (equally important) their control. This content is supplemented by tables and figures concerning production, consumption and prices in the coffee market. In general, the book has a significant practical value, as it shows enterprises (not only from the coffee sector) how to effectively implement marketing strategies.' Dr. Joachim Schwanitz Managing Director, Huth's Kaffee & Feinkost, Germany
In an era marked by increasing globalization, international competition, digitalization, and social and cultural changes, higher education institutions (HEIs) play a pivotal role in establishing the knowledge-based economy of each country, which is perceived as its soft power. The need to explore and highlight the specificity of human resource management (HRM) practices in higher education institutions has become urgent and evident. This book provides new theoretical and practical insights into HRM in HEIs. A profound analysis of the global literature clearly exposes that human resource practices are often applied in academia as single solutions rather than as a systematic approach to planning, attracting, motivating, developing, and retaining scientists. The global trends in academia, such as the need for branding and positioning in higher education ranking systems, growing retention and brain circulation between academia and business, diversity in academia, and the digitalization of teaching, have resulted in challenges such as de-recruitment, academic burnout and ill-being, and technostress, which are also addressed in this book.
Literature on Trial traces the rise of modern literary criticism in Central and Eastern Europe during the eighteenth century. S.D. Chrostowska juxtaposes the discourse's written forms in three linguistic-cultural regions Germany, Poland, and Russia to show how fluid the relationship once was between the genres of criticism and those of literature. An alternative history of literary criticism, Literature on Trial marks a shift from earlier studies' focus on aesthetic principles to an emphasis on the development of literary-critical forms. Chrostowska relates cultural and institutional changes in these areas to the formation of literary-critical knowledge. She accounts for the ways in which critical discourse organized itself formally and deemed some genres 'proper' while eliminating others. Analysing works by Lessing, Goethe, and Karamzin, among others, Literature on Trial brings a fresh theoretical perspective to the links between genre as a discursive strategy and socio-political life.
Today's universities are confronted with questions about the increasing scale of corporatisation and commercialisation, as well as their decreasing activity in the field of the social mission, i.e., engagement in the real problems of ordinary people, local communities and society at large. As a remedy for this problem, this book proposes using action research as a means of shaping collaboration between universities and their stakeholders, taking into account related benefits, opportunities and challenges. In this context, we understand action research somewhat more broadly, as universities’ conducting useful research that becomes a domain of their social mission. The core message of this volume is the development of a cooperation process in which the university leaves its "ivory tower," builds relationships with its stakeholders and, as a result, engages more effectively in social life. In this book, readers will find an original perspective on action research, the application of which enables mutual benefits for universities and their stakeholders. It presents the authors’ original model of cooperation based on the AR approach and concrete examples of successful cooperation between universities and their stakeholders. Step by step, it illustrates how to initiate cooperation, conduct useful scientific research and together with stakeholders bring about changes in social life. This book will be of value to university managers, academics, students of social, management and economic sciences, as well as managers and specialists employed in organisations from various sectors that may be interested in cooperation with universities. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Crises like the COVID-19 pandemic are wake-up calls for enterprises to review their current risk management models. This book suggests a more robust risk management maturity model and illustrates the application in crisis situations. The book surveys existing risk management maturity models and proposes a new model appropriate for assessing the risk management processes in enterprises during times of crisis. Its key advantages include the correlation of its attributes with crisis situations and an innovative methodological approach to model development. The authors use the model to examine 107 enterprises from the financial services, construction and IT sector, showing how it allows the user to identify risk management maturity changes in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. The book will interest entrepreneurs, managers and risk management professionals, who can use the model in their management processes, as well as enterprise stakeholders and academics. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution- Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
This book addresses one of the most important research activities in empirical macroeconomics. It provides a course of advanced but intuitive methods and tools enabling the spatial and temporal disaggregation of basic macroeconomic variables and the assessment of the statistical uncertainty of the outcomes of disaggregation. The empirical analysis focuses mainly on GDP and its growth in the context of Poland. However, all of the methods discussed can be easily applied to other countries. The approach used in the book views spatial and temporal disaggregation as a special case of the estimation of missing observations (a topic on missing data analysis). The book presents an econometric course of models of Seemingly Unrelated Regression Equations (SURE). The main advantage of using the SURE specification is to tackle the presented research problem so that it allows for the heterogeneity of the parameters describing relations between macroeconomic indicators. The book contains model specification, as well as descriptions of stochastic assumptions and resulting procedures of estimation and testing. The method also addresses uncertainty in the estimates produced. All of the necessary tests and assumptions are presented in detail. The results are designed to serve as a source of invaluable information making regional analyses more convenient and – more importantly – comparable. It will create a solid basis for making conclusions and recommendations concerning regional economic policy in Poland, particularly regarding the assessment of the economic situation. This is essential reading for academics, researchers, and economists with regional analysis as their field of expertise, as well as central bankers and policymakers.
The book explains managerial intervention and its effects on the strategic adaptation mode. It introduces the concept of primary selection (inside an organization) with endogenous mechanisms and explains the strategic process via selecting organizational routines. The book goes beyond the classical selection exposing its multilevel character.
The book is concerned with one of the most important issues in Persian culture, that is to say a broadly conceived idea of sacrifice and martyrdom. At present, it is contained in the concept of shahadat, which arouses much controversy in the Western world today. In successive chapters, the author discusses the origin and evolution of this concept in Persian culture, the process of shaping attitudes conducive to the attainment of readiness for shahadat and the role of this concept in propaganda, as well as presenting its modern-day interpretation. The basic research material was provided by political and religious publications of contemporary Iranian authors, including Ali Shari‘ati, Morteza Motahhari, Ruhollah Khomeini and Abdolkarim Soroush, who have exerted a significant influence on the formation of the Iranian consciousness. The book is an interdisciplinary publication. The author refers to philology, literary studies, cultural anthropology, social psychology, and, interestingly, to the psychology of emotions in order to explicate the traditional Persian system of upbringing and shaping the readiness for martyrdom and sacrifice. The book shows the idea of shahadat as part of the Persian cultural paradigm, which, due to religious and literary tradition, has influenced the shaping of Iranian identity over the centuries and, as a result, it has affected social and political attitudes of the Iranian people. The book is mainly directed to Iranologists. Nevertheless, it will also be of interest to anthropologists, psychologists of culture, sociologists and philosophers due to its interdisciplinary character.
This book provides a set of proposals for the new conceptual network required in order to establish civil law rules for a world permeated by Artificial Intelligence. These proposals are intended by their authors to push the debate on the new civil law forward. In spite of the natural conservatism of jurists, some innovative or even futuristic ideas are called for, also because the future, even this not-so-distant one, is difficult to foresee. Paradoxically, and unlike in the past, this lack of knowledge must not stop us from planning. If it does, humankind may, as some pessimists already claim, lose its chance to win the battle for control of the world. The rise and expansion of Artificial Intelligence and robotics in recent years has highlighted a pressing need to create a suitable legal framework for this new phenomenon. The debate on the subject, although wide-ranging and involving many new legal documents, is still quite general and preliminary in nature, although these preparatory works illustrate the very real need to develop appropriate new civil law arrangements. It is exactly the branch of private law where the necessity of these new rules appears to be the most imperative. Autonomous vehicles, medical robots, and expertise software raise fundamental questions on aspects of civil liability such as culpability; whereas the growth in popularity of automated, intelligent software systems for concluding contracts requires a new approach to many fundamental and deeply rooted elements of contract law, e.g. consciousness, intent, error, deception, interpretation of contracts and good faith. Ruling on these specific matters demands the identification and clarification of certain key points, which shall become the foundation for constructing AI/robot civil law.
We find that Credit Rating Agencies (CRA)'s opinions have an impact in the cost of funding of sovereign issuers and consequently ratings are a concern for financial stability. While ratings produced by the major CRAs perform reasonably well when it comes to rank ordering default risk among sovereigns, there is evidence of rating stability failure during the recent global financial crisis. These failures suggest that ratings should incorporate the obligor's resilience to stress scenarios. The empirical evidence also supports: (i) reform initiatives to reduce the impact of CRAs' certification services; (ii) more stringent validation requirements for ratings if they are to be used in capital regulations; and (iii) more transparency with regard to the quantitative parameters used in the rating process.
This research project investigates the concepts of absence across the disciplines of theatre, visual art, and performance. Absence in the centre of an ideology frees the reader from the dominant meaning. The book encourages active engagement with theatre theory and performances. Reconsideration of theories and experiences changes the way we engage with performances, as well as social relations and traditions outside of theatre. Sylwia Dobkowska examines and theorises absence and presence through theatre, performance, and visual arts practices. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of theatre, visual art, and philosophy.
Wages have been rising faster than productivity in many European countries for the past few years, yet signs of underlying consumer price pressures remain limited. To shed light on this puzzle, this paper examines the historical link between wage growth and inflation in Europe and factors that influence the strength of the passthrough from labor costs to prices. Historically, wage growth has led to higher inflation, but the impact has weakened since 2009. Empirical analysis suggests that the passthrough from wage growth to inflation is significantly lower in periods of subdued inflation and inflation expectations, greater competitive pressures, and robust corporate profitability. Thus the recent pickup in wage growth is likely to have a more muted impact on inflation than in the past.
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