Organizational Management Sustainability in VUCA Contexts is an insightful and comprehensive book that delves into the complex interplay between sustainability and the challenging landscapes of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity (VUCA). With a focus on bridging the gap between present and future generations, this book navigates the intricate web of economic success, social development, environmental health, and societal stability. Drawing upon a blend of theoretical foundations and practical examples, this book aims to unravel the phenomenon of sustainability in VUCA contexts by analyzing both exemplary and detrimental management practices across public and private sectors. Through a series of meticulously crafted chapters, the authors assess, treat, communicate, monitor, review, and discuss the methods, best practices, and requisite conditions for fostering sustainable organizations. Targeting a diverse audience of academics, policy makers, and entrepreneurs, this book serves as an invaluable resource for academic institutions, students specializing in business disciplines, and organizations in both public and private spheres. Moreover, anyone with a vested interest in contemporary business issues, prospective strategies, organizational sustainability, and economies in VUCA situations will find this book an indispensable guide.

This report draws on case studies to explore the relationship between environmentally-related taxation and innovation to see whether taxation can spur innovation and if so, what types.

This insightful book shows how small and medium enterprises (SMEs) from some of the traditionally less dynamic peripheral economies of the old EU namely Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain have responded to the twin challenges of globalisation and industrial restructuring. Through a series of unique case studies the contributing authors discuss how these economies, and in particular the SME sector, can be transformed. The book begins by examining the key drivers of the globally competitive SME sector in the EU, before moving on to explore the relationship between multinational enterprises (MNEs), SMEs and industrial development. The authors investigate important policy implications and provide lessons for SME development and growth. With empirical and theoretical contributions on SMEs in both the manufacturing and the services sectors, this essential book will be invaluable for researchers and policymakers in small business economics and management. Postgraduate students of entrepreneurship, business economics, industrial economics and European studies will appreciate this unique set of insights.

Since the 2008 economic crisis, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have faced serious financial problems and have been looking to financial institutions and governments for solutions and new proposals to address these issues. This book examines the new challenge in which firms receive sustainable funding that is in alignment with the company’s spending capacity. The purpose of this book is to examine the main theoretical issues and practices regarding entrepreneurship and finance and their impact on performance, innovation and economic growth. It analyzes the fundamental aspects of entrepreneurship and studies ways in which financial institutions can better fulfill their primary function of feeding capital to businesses and the economy as a whole. Entrepreneurship and finance are fundamental to achieving success in economic and social activities. SMEs’ existence and development depend on the initiatives of entrepreneurship and access to resources, especially those of a financial nature. During the recent economic crisis, several new financing instruments have appeared, especially with structures designed for helping SMEs make their way out of the recession. This book explores some of these tools in various global economies, such as France and Spain, providing an international, multidimensional perspective.

This book is a tribute to Professor Pedro Gil, who created the Department of Statistics, OR and TM at the University of Oviedo, and a former President of the Spanish Society of Statistics and OR (SEIO). In more than eighty original contributions, it illustrates the extent to which Mathematics can help manage uncertainty, a factor that is inherent to real life. Today it goes without saying that, in order to model experiments and systems and to analyze related outcomes and data, it is necessary to consider formal ideas and develop scientific approaches and techniques for dealing with uncertainty. Mathematics is crucial in this endeavor, as this book demonstrates. As Professor Pedro Gil highlighted twenty years ago, there are several well-known mathematical branches for this purpose, including Mathematics of chance (Probability and Statistics), Mathematics of communication (Information Theory), and Mathematics of imprecision (Fuzzy Sets Theory and others). These branches often intertwine, since different sources of uncertainty can coexist, and they are not exhaustive. While most of the papers presented here address the three aforementioned fields, some hail from other Mathematical disciplines such as Operations Research; others, in turn, put the spotlight on real-world studies and applications. The intended audience of this book is mainly statisticians, mathematicians and computer scientists, but practitioners in these areas will certainly also find the book a very interesting read.

This report monitors SME and entrepreneur access to finance in 37 countries.