Extreme weather and climate events, interacting with exposed and vulnerable human and natural systems, can lead to disasters. This Special Report explores the social as well as physical dimensions of weather- and climate-related disasters, considering opportunities for managing risks at local to international scales. SREX was approved and accepted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on 18 November 2011 in Kampala, Uganda.

We are pleased to introduce our 17th and latest volume from our regular conference: Business and Non-profit Organizations Facing Increased Competitions and Growing Customers’ Demands, which contains articles highlighting the problems of contemporary for-profit and non-profit organizations. The added value is the inclusion of multifaceted aspects of an organization’s functioning, including the sectoral and industrial view. The diversity of the approach to the problems of organization, management, business and economy becomes a valuable interdisciplinary view of the economic reality that surrounds us. The monograph is divided into four sections. In the first section: Business and non-profit organizations as the objects of research, articles are exposing the area of strategic management, including a museum as a research object, surgical workflow, the performance of cultural organizations, and organizational forms of housing resource management. In addition, this section covers a process-oriented view of management, including process maturity of the organization and process approach to the analysis of creative capital; and mixed project-management methodology. In a separate thread, there are articles related to public university mergers based on an example of two academic case studies; the analysis of scientific excellence as a factor influencing academic involvement; and the nature of competition for non-profit and for-profit organizations. The second section, entitled Modern tools for business and non-profit organization management, opens with an article on design thinking and the TransistorsHead tool used to analyze teams through organizational terms. Other tools used in eye tracking, such as enova365 and Soneta, are presented in an article on the optimization of an IT system. In the context of profiling scientific research, not only in the area of academic entrepreneurship but also in the search for research gaps, bibliometrics is undoubtedly a useful tool discussed in a further article. In another article, an attractive tool for competence analysis is the business model and the construction of the competence assessment method, which could prove to be helpful in assessing the effectiveness of professional careers. Other articles in this section feature the concept of innovation and knowledge management; medical data management based on a precise legal basis; external financing and its impact on the flexibility of enterprises; and a systemic, process and resource approach to port modularity. In the next section: Business and non-profit organizations in a market economy, the primary thematic topic is corporate social responsibility, client capital creation, and social entrepreneurship. We note the greater emphasis on the social aspects of the organization’s functioning and on the social economy. The human thread and the so-called ecosystem in business are becoming more and more desirable, and the perspective of business is changing: from a profit-oriented one towards a more societal one. In the last section, entitled Business and non-profit organizations - sectoral and industrial aspects, there are articles discussing the issues of organization in macroeconomic terms. This section opens with an article presenting the structural characteristics of industrial clusters and research streams in this area. Subsequently, we have articles that present: the municipality, from the point of view of the configuration of the network of relations between stakeholders, and their involvement in the creation of smart specialization strategies; the determinants of employment change in the Polish services sector; consumer awareness of the credit market; the transparency of public finances; local food and regional products; consumer behaviour in Ukraine; as well as, trade credit, profitability and leverage in Polish companies. Every year, this monograph is built on articles that present an up-to-date view of the business and geo-economic reality that surrounds us, whose organizations form the backbone of the economy and its sectors. The dynamics of changes are so significant that such studies bring readers closer to current trends and draw the interest of researchers.

Nearly twenty years after the collapse of socialism, the countries of post-socialist Eastern Europe have experienced divergent trajectories of political development. This book looks at why this is the case, based on the assumption that societies, or social orders, can be distinguished by the extent to which competitive tendencies contained within them – economic, political, social and cultural – are resolved according to open, rule-based processes. The book explores which economic conditions allow for increased levels of political competition, and it tests the hypothesis that the nature of a country’s ties with the international economy, and the level of competition within a country’s economic system, will shape the trajectory of political competition within that society. The book goes on to argue that after several decades of relative ‘bloc autarky’ during the socialist period, the ongoing process of reintegration with the international economy across the post-socialist region has resulted in distinct patterns of structural economic development, and that that these patterns are of crucial importance in explaining the variation in social order type across the post-socialist region. By offering a more precise analysis of the causal mechanisms that link economic and political competition, the book makes a useful contribution to research on the different patterns of political behaviour that have been observed across the post-socialist region since the collapse of the socialist regimes.

This volume showcases the impact of the work of Douglass North, winner of the Nobel Prize and father of the field of new institutional economics. Leading scholars contribute to a substantive discussion that best illustrates the broad reach and depth of Professor North's work. The volume speaks concisely about his legacy across multiple social sciences disciplines, specifically on scholarship pertaining to the understanding of property rights, the institutions that support the system of property rights, and economic growth.

This book provides the perspectives of a group of noted China experts on how China’s economic expansion and internal reforms are impacting its neighbors in the Pacific region as well as the United States and the rest of the world. It will serve as a source for anticipating and understanding the political and economic developments occurring in China for years to come. Contributors include Murray Scot Tanner, Barry J. Naughton, Wing Thye Woo, Mary E. Lovely and Yang Liang, Guanzhong James Wen, and Xiaodong Zhu.