Offering a multidisciplinary roadmap for the design, development, and implementation of a strategic cost system, this book shows how to design a cost system to become a more effective decision-making tool and a source of competitive advantage for the organisation. It describes how to structure a cost systems design project and discuss the issues that should be addressed upfront from a management, operations, and costing perspective. Includes a URL site containing key terms and helpful Excel templates. Highlights the logistics of putting together and managing the project team. Addresses the technical and political issues that may arise as the project unfolds.

Just as no man is an island, so no business can operate without being part of a network of businesses proactively collaborating and sharing information for mutual success. This book presents some of the latest thinking on collaborative systems by leading experts in the field.

With the rapid development and drastic change of the world economy, "Digital Finance", "Internet Finance", "Science and Technology Finance" have become new hotspots, which also represent the future trend of economy development in the era of big data. Enterprises are facing more uncertainty, opportunities coexist with challenges. There are more possibilities for economic development and enterprise management to accelerate the integration of cutting-edge research results, to deepen hot topics discussion and to promote opinion exchanges among academic and business circles. The Sixth International Conference on Economic and Business Management (FEBM2021) was successfully held online on October 16-17, 2021, and aimed to provide a platform for researchers, engineers, academics as well as industry professionals from all over the world to present their latest research findings and development activities in economic and business management. These proceedings include 51 accepted articles selected from 94 submissions.

This book provides an issue-driven introduction to industrial organization. Over the past twenty years, the study of industrial organization—the analysis of imperfectly competitive markets—has grown from a niche area of microeconomics to a key component of economics and of related disciplines such as finance, strategy, and marketing. This book provides an issue-driven introduction to industrial organization. It includes a vast array of examples, from both within and outside the United States. While formal in its approach, the book is written in a way that requires only basic mathematical training. Supplemental materials posted on the Web make more extensive use of algebra and calculus.

In today's complex, dynamic competitive landscape, management of technology can mean the difference between success and failure. Managers and researchers alike need effective ways to conceptualize and develop technology strategies. Richard Goodman and Michael Lawless provide tools needed to integrate firms' technology capabilities with their competitive direction. Technology and Strategy presents models that help put technology and its market impacts into perspective. It addresses the broad questions of how technology and markets evolve, how technology can re-order the "rules" of competition, and how it can shift the balance of individual firms' competitive advantage. It also blends topics currently capturing attention in business circles--such as Total Quality Management and the resource-based view of the firm--into a clear view of technology management programs. Technology and Strategy also describes methods to develop specific strategies to cope with challenges facing executives--like evaluating promising, but untried, new technologies. Using actual case studies from the electronics and bio-tech industries, Goodman and Lawless demonstrate the use of new techniques to formulate strategy, including Technology Mapping and the Innovation Audit. Both were created to help executives choose the approach to technology best suited to their firms' particular capabilities. Offering clear, practical guidance through a complex, fast-changing world of competition, this new analysis of technology and strategy is a valuable guide for general managers, R&D and manufacturing managers, strategic planners, and academics.

There is growing evidence that the current globalised agri-food system is neither sustainable nor resilient. It is responsible for around one third of the global GHG emissions and is a major driver of biodiversity loss. Furthermore, its structure and distribution mode do not provide food security for all and foster socio-economic inequalities between different parts of the planet. Consequently, an increasing number of scientists and members of the civil society are demanding a radical transformation of agri-food systems. The creation of alternative food networks (AFNs) represent a possible first step towards agri-food system transformation. AFNs can incorporate local, indigenous and innovative knowledge and bring together a diversity of actors to connect food production and consumption and create new practices and relationships around food. The creation of AFNs, and ultimately of Alternative Food Systems (AFS), should involve different actors, from farmers to social movements, from policymakers to scientists. AFNs have the potential to contribute to a transformation towards sustainable, just, resilient and productive food systems, but even though they have increased in numbers and organisational forms in recent years, they still remain in a niche. Consequently, scientific evidence of their performance is still limited. This research topic will contribute to a comprehensive, multi-scalar and critical (e.g. including potential counter-effects) understanding of the current state and future potential of AFNs. It will address multiple aspects, ranging from social, economic and environmental aspects to productivity, participation and justice. Moreover, it will highlight the role of governance, power relations and institutions, as well as barriers and ways forward to promote AFNs and their role in food system transformation.