From recurring episodes of great depression, oil crises, political crises, wars, debt crises, to the ongoing climate change, there is a constant pressure on businesses to cope with critical events. However, throughout history, crises have been pivotal in advancing businesses and societies. This contributed volume approaches crisis not simply as a source of problems, but also as a set of choices. It seeks to explore critical events as possible opportunities for sustainability, through process improvement, creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. Chapters reveal that times of crisis provide opportunities for new start-ups, creativity, resilience, organisational change, and revitalisation. This book also emphasises the importance of sustainability, driven either by the market or as a response to critical events. Within the wider attempt to explore avenues for Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Sustainability at times of crisis, the book is loosely organised in three thematic sections: organisational responses to crisis; digitisation, and how technology facilitates or hinders sustainability under conditions of crisis; and SMEs, Family Firms (FF), Entrepreneurship, which explores how critical events offer opportunities for innovation.

This book examines businesses under crisis conditions through a composition of contextual accounts. The Editors argue that crises are transformative, evolutionary and even revolutionary in the development of organizations, industries and markets. Moreover, crises reform the context in which organizations operate, including customers and their behaviour. As such, they need to be viewed as conduits to change, accelerators of evolution and catalysts of innovation in organizations. Emphasising the importance of ‘context’ and its complexities, the book argues that for crisis, as a concept and notion, context is crucial to any understanding of the meaning that should or could be attached to it. Drawing on different types of changes and crises that substantially affect business, including economic, technological, political, and environmental, chapters Bringing together scientific research and case studies on contextual transformations, the book provides a balanced selection of works across business disciplines, including management, strategy, marketing and finance as well as geographic regions, market types and industries. The book examines the context of crises, its indicators and triggers, and encompasses topics such as Artificial Intelligence, e-mobility, changes in consumption patterns, militancy and the impact of pandemics.

From recurring episodes of great depression, oil crises, political crises, wars, debt crises, to the ongoing climate change, there is a constant pressure on businesses to cope with critical events. However, throughout history, crises have been pivotal in advancing businesses and societies. This contributed volume approaches crisis not simply as a source of problems, but also as a set of choices. It seeks to explore critical events as possible opportunities for sustainability, through process improvement, creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. Chapters reveal that times of crisis provide opportunities for new start-ups, creativity, resilience, organisational change, and revitalisation. This book also emphasises the importance of sustainability, driven either by the market or as a response to critical events. Within the wider attempt to explore avenues for Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Sustainability at times of crisis, the book is loosely organised in three thematic sections: organisational responses to crisis; digitisation, and how technology facilitates or hinders sustainability under conditions of crisis; and SMEs, Family Firms (FF), Entrepreneurship, which explores how critical events offer opportunities for innovation.

This book provides a clear, critical, and timely analysis of the state of corporate sustainability within the context of the climate crisis. It offers not only a substantive critique of the current efforts but also clarity about the changes needed and how to implement them. The book goes beyond the more common debate on shareholder capitalism vs. stakeholder capitalism to explain the shortcomings of the current approach to sustainability in business, which the author describes as sustainability-as-usual. Using strategic design lenses, the author proposes a new model of awakened sustainability, which offers a transformational shift in corporate sustainability to ensure companies fairly and effectively address the climate crisis. The book presents the numerous changes needed in the environment in which companies operate to enable awakened sustainability and how these changes can be realized. Grounded in the scientific community’s calls for urgent action on climate change, this groundbreaking text provides scholars with an evaluation of current and future trends in corporate sustainability. It connects the dots between the progress made in the last five decades and the opportunities entailed in the work on a regenerative and just vision for companies in this decade and beyond.

The recent global economic downturn has affected nearly everyone in every corner of the globe. Its vast reach and lingering effects have made it difficult to pinpoint its exact cause, and while some economists point to the risks inherent in the modern financial system, others blame long-term imbalances in the world economy. Into this debate steps Paul Mattick, who, in Business as Usual, explains the global economic downturn in relation to the development of the world economy since World War II, but also as a fundamental example of the cycle of crisis and recovery that has characterized capitalism since the early nineteenth century. Mattick explains that today’s recession is not the result of a singular financial event but instead is a manifestation of long-term processes within the world economy. Mattick argues that the economic downturn can best be understood within the context of business cycles, which are unavoidable in a free-market economy. He uses this explanation as a springboard for exploring the nature of our capitalist society and its prospects for the future. Although Business as Usual engages with many economic theories, both mainstream and left-wing, Mattick’s accessible writing opens the subject up in order for non-specialists to understand the current economic climate not as the effect of a financial crisis, but as a manifestation of a truth about the social and economic system in which we live. As a result the book is ideal for anyone who wants to gain a succinct and jargon-free understanding of recent economic events, and, just as important, the overall dynamics of the capitalist system itself.

Response to financial meltdown is entangled with basic challenges to global governance. Environment, global security and ethnicity and nationalism are all global issues today. Focusing on the political and social dimensions of the crisis, contributors examine changes in relationships between the world’s richer and poorer countries, efforts to strengthen global institutions, and difficulties facing states trying to create stability for their citizens.