White Gold : The Commercialisation of Rice : Farming in the Lower Mekong Basin
About understanding the processes involved in the transformation of smallholder rice farming in the Lower Mekong Basin from a low-yielding subsistence activity to one producing the surpluses needed for national self-sufficiency and a high-value export industry.
Vertical Markets and Cooperative Hierarchies : The Role of Cooperatives in the Agri-Food Industry
Agricultural cooperatives have strong market positions in agri-food industries, in many countries. In recent decades we have witnessed significant changes in competition, distribution of market power and governance structures of agri-food chains. Between vertical market structures, cooperative principles, and hierarchical governance structures, cooperatives have been continuously adjusting in their strive for competitiveness, innovation, and survival. They have implemented alternative governance structures, employed new financial instruments, and invented novel organizational set-ups. Consequently, some members feel that the traditional cooperative traits are fading.
Value Chain Management in the Chemical Industry : Global Value Chain Planning of Commodities
Supply chain management helped companies to manage volumes, fulfil customer demand and optimize costs in production and distribution. Specifically, chemical industry companies with high complexity in production and distribution used supply chain management to steer their operations. Confronted with globalization and increasing raw material and sales price volatility, optimizing supply chain costs is no longer sufficient to ensure the overall profitability of the business. Value chain management takes supply chain management to the next level by integrating all volume and value decisions from sales to procurement. The book presents the value chain management concept and demonstrates how it is applied in a global value chain planning model for commodities in the chemical industry. A comprehensive industry case study illustrates the effects of decision making integration, e.g. the influence of raw material prices or exchange rates on optimal sales, production, distribution and procurement plans as well as overall company profitability.
Transnational Legal Activism in Global Value Chains : The Ali Enterprises Factory Fire and the Struggle for Justice
This book documents and analyses the various interventions – legal, political, and even artistic – that followed the Ali Enterprises factory fire in Karachi, Pakistan, in 2012. It illuminates the different substantive and procedural aspects of the legal proceedings and negotiations between the various local and transnational actors implicated in the Ali Enterprises fire, as well as the legal and policy reforms sparked by the incident. This endeavour serves to embed these legal cases and reform efforts in the larger context of human and labour rights protection and global value chain governance. It also offers a concrete case study relevant for ongoing debates around the role of transnational approaches in making human rights litigation, advocacy, and law reform more effective. In this regard, the book interrogates and critically reflects on such legal campaigns and local and transnational reform work with a view to future transformative legal and social activism.
The Value Chain of Foreign Aid : Development, Poverty Reduction, and Regional Conditions
Despite an improved analytical knowledge of poverty, a complex multilateral transfer system of official development assistance (ODA), and a list of clearly defined objectives (Millennium Development Goals), poverty reduction in low-income countries remains a great challenge for researchers and practitioners alike. After an era of pessimism, recent empirical studies indicate that foreign aid leads to economic growth under certain conditions, for example a sound policy environment. However, whether or not aid also alleviates poverty is a highly debated issue.Against this background, the book assesses the prospects of ODA for poverty reduction. The author analyzes the entire value chain of ODA, including the provision, allocation and utilization. Within each of these components, scope and limits of aid are critically examined.
The Climate-Smart Agriculture Papers : Investigating the Business of a Productive, Resilient and Low Emission Future
Shares new data relating to Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA), with emphasis on experiences in Eastern and Southern Africa. The material is assembled to answer key questions on the following five topic areas: Climate impacts: What are the most significant current and near future climate risks undermining smallholder livelihoods?, Varieties: How can climate-smart varieties be delivered quickly and cost-effectively to smallholders?, Farm management: What are key lessons on the contributions from soil and water management to climate risk reduction and how should interventions be prioritized?, Value chains: How can climate risks to supply and value chains be reduced? and Scaling up: How can most promising climate risks reduction strategies be quickly scaled up and what are critical success factors?
Strategies and Tactics in Supply Chain Event Management
This book gives unique insights into the Supply Chain Event Management (SCEM) of world-leading companies. Aims, methods, instruments as well as resources and budgets in Supply Chain Event Management are discussed. The reader will gain a strong understanding of the way to deal with problems along the supply chain and how to avoid them. Supply Chain Event Management is a transparent view of the company and all value chain partners and allows to meet timelines with decreased cost and risks.
Sowing Legume Seeds, Reaping Cash : A Renaissance within Communities in Sub-Saharan Africa
Shares impact stories – testimonies from various value chain actors who have been part of the Tropical Legumes (TL) projects, over the past twelve years.
Socio-technical innovation bundles for agri-food systems transformation
This book is the result of an expert panel convened by the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability and Nature Sustainability. The panel tackled the seventeen UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030 head-on, with respect to the global systems that produce and distribute food. The panel’s rigorous synthesis and analysis of existing research leads compellingly to multiple actionable recommendations that, if adopted, would simultaneously lead to healthy and nutritious diets, equitable and inclusive value chains, resilience to shocks and stressors, and climate and environmental sustainability.
Product-Focused Software Process Improvement ; 9th International Conference, PROFES 2008 Monte Porzio Catone, Italy, June 23-25, 2008 Proceedings
The papers address different development modes, roles in the value chain, stakeholders’ viewpoints, collaborative development, as well as economic and quality aspects. The papers are organized in topical sections on quality and measurement, cost estimation, capability and maturity models, systems and software quality, software process improvement, lessons learned and best practices, and agile software development.
Operations management : Recent advances and new perspectives ; Vol 5 : Industrial engineering and management
Focuses on the administration of business processes to improve availability, flexibility, efficiency, sustainability and transparency. operation management integrates the business processes of production, services, and logistics, and it is important not only on the operational level of value chains but can also significantly influence the strategic and tactical level of production and service processes. this book offers a selection of chapters that explain the impact of operation management on value-making chains.
New horizons for a data-driven economy : A roadmap for usage and exploitation of big data in Europe
The book is structured in four parts: Part I “The Big Data Opportunity” explores the value potential of big data with a particular focus on the European context. It also describes the legal, business and social dimensions that need to be addressed, and briefly introduces the European Commission’s BIG project. Part II “The Big Data Value Chain” details the complete big data lifecycle from a technical point of view, ranging from data acquisition, analysis, curation and storage, to data usage and exploitation. Next, Part III “Usage and Exploitation of Big Data” illustrates the value creation possibilities of big data applications in various sectors, including industry, healthcare, finance, energy, media and public services. Finally, Part IV “A Roadmap for Big Data Research” identifies and prioritizes the cross-sectorial requirements for big data research, and outlines the most urgent and challenging technological, economic, political and societal issues for big data in Europe.
Model-Driven Development and Operation of Multi-Cloud Applications : The MODAClouds Approach
In this book readers will find technological discussions on the existing and emerging technologies across the different stages of the big data value chain. They will learn about legal aspects of big data, the social impact, and about education needs and requirements. And they will discover the business perspective and how big data technology can be exploited to deliver value within different sectors of the economy. The book is structured in four parts: Part I "The Big Data Opportunity" explores the value potential of big data with a particular focus on the European context. It also describes the legal, business and social dimensions that need to be addressed, and briefly introduces the European Commission's BIG project.
International business
Provides thorough coverage, delving into fundamental concepts and theory; the cultural, political, and economic environment; international business strategies; and even functional management areas. More comprehensive than competing books, this new edition of International Business includes: New chapter on the digitalization of the global economy and its implications for firm strategy and organizations New examinations of the forces of de-globalization, implications of rising trade protectionism, challenges of geopolitical conflicts, and a friction framework for understanding the effects of cultural differences Enriched and expanded discussions about potential reconfigurations of global value chains following the Covid-19 pandemic, changing perspectives on the role of the government with renewed attention to industrial policy, shifts in regional integration with the emergence of such new trade blocks as CPTPP and RCEP, and fresh insights on factors influencing a country's balance of payments Strengthened, expanded global cases, examples, and "industry" and "country" mini-cases that give students practical insight into the ways companies actually behave within a competitive, global environment.
Handbook Utility Management
As the deregulation of European utility markets has progressed, the dynamics of and the competitive pressure in the utility industries have steadily intensified over recent years. These changes in the regulatory framework have caused a shift in the direction of an integrated market environment, resulting in new challenges for the management of power and gas companies and a substantial need for strategic reorientation. The Handbook Utility Management is concerned with these changes and challenges in the utility industries and emerging managerial issues of high practical relevance. Inclusion of the latest insights into the economic, technological, and legal drivers of the diverse value chain activities makes the Handbook a valuable asset for both professionals and researchers.
Grid economics and business models ; 5th International workshop, GECON 2008, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, August 26, 2008. Proceedings
This volume constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Grid Economics and Business Models, GECON 2008, held in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, August 2008.The 10 full papers included in this volume were carefully selected from 27 submission. They aim at presenting current results and innovative research in the area of grid economics. The papers are organized in topical sections on grid business modeling, market mechanisms for the grid, grid markets, and grid architectures.The proceedings are rounded off by 9 project reports that give an overview of the current and ongoing research in grid economics.
Green Consensus and High Quality Development : CCICED Annual Policy Report 2020
This book is based on the research outputs of China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development (CCICED) in 2020. It covers major topics of Chinese and international attention regarding green development, such as climate, biodiversity, ocean, BRI, urbanization, sustainable production and consumption, technology, finance, value chain, and so on. It also looks at the progress of China’s environmental and development policies,and the impacts from CCICED.
Finance for Food : Towards New Agricultural and Rural Finance
Reflects the current state of discussion about agricultural and rural finance in developing and transition countries. It provides insight into specific themes, such as commodity value chains, farm banking, risk management in agricultural banking, structured finance, crop insurance, mobile banking, and how to increase effectiveness in rural finance. Case studies illustrate various aspects of agricultural and rural finance in developing economies. The book is based on one of the yearly financial Sector Development Symposia held by the KfW Development Bank.
E-Services : Opportunities and Threats
This volume presents the best papers of the special issue ‘E-Services’ of the Journal of Value Chain Management. It provides a thorough introduction and systematic overview of the new and emerging field ‘E-Services’.
Enhancing Smallholder Farmers' Access to Seed of Improved Legume Varieties Through Multi-stakeholder Platforms : Learning from the TLIII project Experiences in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia
This book shares the experiences of Tropical Legumes III (TLIII) project in facilitating access to seed of improved legume varieties to smallholder farmers through innovation platforms. It highlights practices and guiding principles implemented in eight developing countries of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. This book details key processes that respective teams employed to create an innovation space that delivers seed, other inputs, knowledge and financial services to agricultural communities and most importantly, the underserved farmers in remote areas of the drylands



















