Bringing the Jobless into Work? : Experiences with Activation Schemes in Europe and the US
Over the last decade, many industrialized countries shifted from passive unemployment and welfare benefit regimes and traditional active labor market and social policies to activation strategies by making benefit receipt conditional upon accepting job offers or participation in active labor market schemes. But countries differ with regard to the design of activation instruments and their implementation, the definition of target groups and the effects of activation in the national labor market setting. This volume provides an up-to-date overview of activation strategies in unemployment benefit systems and social assistance in selected European countries and the US. A particular focus lies on the development of activation schemes, governance and implementation as well as on the outcomes of activation in terms of labor market and social integration. The volume is the first to address these issues both from a socio-economic and a legal perspective.
Bright modernity : Color, commerce, and consumer culture
Color is a visible technology that invisibly connects so many puzzling aspects of modern Western consumer societies research and development, making and selling, predicting fashion trends, and more. Building on Regina Lee Blaszczyk’s go-to history of the “color revolution” in the United States, This book explores further transatlantic and multidisciplinary dimensions of the topic. Covering history from the mid nineteenth century into the immediate past, it examines the relationship between color, commerce, and consumer societies in unfamiliar settings and in the company of new kinds of experts. Readers will learn about the early dye industry, the dynamic nomenclature for color, and efforts to standardize, understand, and educate the public about color.
Brand hate : Navigating consumer negativity in the digital world, 2nd
Focuses on the concept of “brand hate” and consumer negativity in today’s digital markets. It explores the emotional detachment consumers generate against valued brands and how negative experiences affect their and other consumers' loyalty. The book defines consumer brand hate and discusses its dimensions, antecedents, and consequences as well as the semiotics and legality of such brand hate activities based on current brand dilution arguments. It describes the situations which lead to anti-branding and how consumers choose to express their dissatisfaction with a company on individual and social levels. This newly updated edition discusses recent research findings from brand hate literature with new cases and extended managerial analysis.
Boss It : Control Your Time, Your Income and Your Life
In this invigorating and highly practical book, serial entrepreneur Carl Reader provides exactly the fire and guidance you need to get started. Designed to cut through the business jargon, this handy guide will take you through everything you need to establish and run your own business - from the mindset it takes to turn a dream into a plan, to the need-to-know practical stuff for running and growing a business.
Bond Portfolio Optimization
1 The tools of modern portfolio theory are in general use in the equity markets, either in the form of portfolio optimization software or as an accepted frame- 2 work in which the asset managers think about stock selection. In the ?xed income market on the other hand, these tools seem irrelevant or inapplicable. Bond portfolios are nowadays mainly managed by a comparison of portfolio 3 4 risk measures vis ¶a vis a benchmark. The portfolio manager’s views about the future evolution of the term structure of interest rates translate th- selves directly into a positioning relative to his benchmark, taking the risks of these deviations from the benchmark into account only in a very crude 5 fashion, i.e. without really quantifying them probabilistically. This is quite surprising since sophisticated models for the evolution of interest rates are commonly used for interest rate derivatives pricing and the derivation of ?xed 6 income risk measures.
Blockchain and Other Emerging Technologies for Digital Business Strategies
Aims to explore the aspects of strategic leadership in a digital context together with the cyber-physical relationships whilst performing business activities. Furthermore, this book looks to investigate the interactions from both the organization strategy including the cross-functional actors/stakeholders whom are operating within the organization and the various characteristics of operating in a cyber secure ecosystem.
Bio-inspired credit risk analysis : Computational intelligence with support vector machines
Credit risk analysis is one of the most important topics in the field of financial risk management. Due to recent financial crises and regulatory concern of Basel II, credit risk analysis has been the major focus of financial and banking industry. Especially for some credit-granting institutions such as commercial banks and credit companies, the ability to discriminate good customers from bad ones is crucial. The need for reliable quantitative models that predict defaults accurately is imperative so that the interested parties can take either preventive or corrective action. Hence credit risk analysis becomes very important for sustainability and profit of enterprises. In such backgrounds, this book tries to integrate recent emerging support vector machines and other computational intelligence techniques that replicate the principles of bio-inspired information processing to create some innovative methodologies for credit risk analysis and to provide decision support information for interested parties.
Beyond Safety Training : Embedding Safety in Professional Skills
Investigates why, despite more and more resources devoted to safety training, expectations are not entirely met, particularly in the industrial sectors that have already achieved a high safety level. It not only reflects the most precious viewpoints of experts from different disciplines, different countries, with experiences in various industrial fields at the cutting edge of theories and practices in terms of safety, professionalization and their relationships. It also consolidates the positioning of the Foundation for an Industrial Safety Culture, highlighting what is currently considered at stake in terms of safety training, taking into account the system of constraints the different stakeholders are submitted to. It reports some success stories as well as elements which could explain the observed plateau in terms of outcome. It identifies some levers for evolution for at-risk industry and outlines a possible research agenda to go further with experimental solutions.
Becoming virtual : Knowledge management and transformation of the distributed organization
This book examines the capabilities needed to transform a globally distributed organization into a virtual organization (an organization that exists and operates across time and distance with the support of global communications technologies such as the Internet). It introduces techniques for definition of goals for virtualization, for monitoring progress toward virtualization and for studying the impact of virtualization on social uncertainty, knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer, organizational memory, transactive memory, communities of practice and organizational commitment, power and control. These techniques are applied in an extended case study of a development aid organization's attempts to use knowledge management for virtualization over a two year period. The multidisciplinary team of authors examines virtualization from points of view ranging from the organizational to the technological to the sociological and psychological.
Banking on (artificial) intelligence : Navigating the realities of ai in financial services
Provides a tailored overview of what AI specifically means for financial services, a highly regulated yet also disrupted industry. it investigates the current state of AI applications in financial services today along with the state of funding and partnerships between tech and banking industries. it also examines the key pillars of responsible AI and the importance of keeping humans in the loop. the book takes a deep dive into the use cases in the financial services industry, the challenges and opportunities, and the fragmented regulatory landscape. how can we effectively assess risks, and balance innovation and customer centricity with trust in AI in financial services? can smaller organizations reap the benefits of the technology? how can institutions deploy AI responsibly and securely, and promote a fairer and more equitable future for more people?
Automotive production systems and standardisation : From Ford to the case of Mercedes-Benz
The introduction of the Mercedes-Benz Production System (MPS) is exemplary of a trend within the automotive industry: the creation and introduction of company-specific standardised production systems. This book contributes to the debate about production systems by examining the social and economic implications of the role of standardisation in production systems. In this context it addresses three core issues: First, the driving forces behind the changing forms and functions of standardisation and the role of institutions therein. Second, the impact of standardisation on the evolution of automotive production systems. Third, based on the author's own empirical research conducted over a three year period at the Mercedes-Benz plant Stuttgart-Untertürkheim/Germany, the book examines the influence of standardisation on the work of actors on the shop floor in terms of organisational learning processes and the regulation of work.
Assetization : Turning Things into Assets in Technoscientific Capitalism
In this book, scholars from a range of disciplines argue that the asset—meaning anything that can be controlled, traded, and capitalized as a revenue stream—has become the primary basis of technoscientific capitalism. An asset can be an object or an experience, a sum of money or a life form, a patent or a bodily function. A process of assetization prevails, imposing investment and return as the key rationale, and overtaking commodification and its speculative logic. Although assets can be bought and sold, the point is to get a durable economic rent from them rather than make a killing on the market. Assetization examines how assets are constructed and how a variety of things can be turned into assets, analyzing the interests, activities, skills, organizations, and relations entangled in this process.
Asset prices, booms and recessions : Financial economics from a dynamic perspective
Studies the interaction of the financial market, economic activity and the macroeconomy from a dynamic perspective. The financial market to be studied here encompasses the money and bond market, credit market, stock market and foreign exchange market. Economic activity is described by the activity of firms, banks, households, governments and countries. The book shows how economic activity affects asset prices and the financial market and how asset prices and financial market volatility feed back to economic activity. The focus in this book is on theories, dynamic models and empirical evidence.
Asias New Institutional Architecture : Evolving Structures for Managing Trade, Financial, and Security Relations
This book investigates the origins and evolution of Asia’s new institutional architecture in trade, finance, and security from both a theoretical and empirical perspective. The traditional institutional equilibrium in Asia has come under heavy strain in the "post triple shocks period" - the post-Cold War, the post-financial crisis of 1997-98, and the post-9-11 attacks. The new dynamics of rivalry and cooperation among states at both the intraregional and transregional levels is now shaping a new institutional architecture. Political and business leaders from Northeast and Southeast Asia interact with each other more frequently. South Asia’s participation in the rest of Asia in recent years is truly impressive. As we show, the future institutional trajectory of Asia is still open, but we believe that the book provides a timely examination of key shifts in the region. In doing so, our hope is to provide policymakers and analysts with an institutional road map for the future.
Artificial markets modeling : Methods and applications
Agent-based computational modeling with its intrinsic multidisciplinary approach is gaining increasing recognition in the social sciences, particularly in economics, business and finance. This volume is devoted to recent contributions to the field from both the social sciences and computer sciences.
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Civilization : Our Fate Made in Machines
Looks at what exactly artificial intelligence is, how it can be classified, how it differentiates from other concepts such as machine learning, big data, blockchain, or the Internet-of-Things, and how it has evolved and might evolve over time.
ARIS design platform : Getting started with BPM
Containing tips, techniques and short cuts gained from practical experience, this book show how to use ARIS in an easy way, supporting smart methods and smart models, and displays how ARIS can be used as a powerful tool for BPM.
ARIS design platform : Advanced process modelling and administration
ARIS is ranked as the leading Business Process Modelling tool in the Gartner Quadrant for Business Process Analysis and Optimization. The ARIS Design Platform is being used as a business process management (BPM) tool for projects in BPM, quality management, business analysis and design, software development, implementation of service-oriented architectures and so forth. Following on from Rob Davis’ successful introductory text, ARIS Design Platform: Getting Started with BPM, this new book covers in detail some of the more advanced concepts of using ARIS Business Architect in the new ARIS 7 Design Platform. Written in a reader-friendly style, it contains detailed explanations of key concepts combined with numerous examples, hints and tips gained from many years of practical experience of using ARIS.
Approaching consumer culture : Global flows and local contexts
This collection analyzes the impact of Western consumer culture on local cultures and consumption in Southeast Europe and East Asia. Cultural, historical, economic and sociopolitical contexts are examined regarding buying behaviors, usage and customization practices and consumer activism, specifically in Bulgaria, Serbia, and Romania as cultures continue to evolve in the post-socialist era, and in China and Japan as a continuation of movements toward modernity and progress. Surprising and thought-provoking contrasts stand out as consumers balance the global with the local in terms of clothing, technology, luxury items, and food.
Applied Econometrics with R
This is the first book on applied econometrics using the R system for statistical computing and graphics. It presents hands-on examples for a wide range of econometric models, from classical linear regression models for cross-section, time series or panel data and the common non-linear models of microeconometrics such as logit, probit and tobit models, to recent semiparametric extensions. In addition, it provides a chapter on programming, including simulations, optimization, and an introduction to R tools enabling reproducible econometric research.



















