The proposed book is intended to provide a conceptual framework of ‘Organisational Flexibility and Competitiveness’ supported by research studies in various types of flexibilities exhibited by an organisation. The need for enterprise flexibility in an era of rapidly advancing technology, increasing competition, and globalization, is apparent. Flexibility can be thought of as an ability of the enterprise to quickly and efficiently respond to market changes and to bring new products and services quickly to the market place. Beyond this definition, a truly flexible enterprise should proactively change the market through its ability to create truly new and innovative products and services. The book applies the concept of flexibility to various functional areas: strategy and competitiveness, organization and HR management, information systems, finance and risk management, operations and supply chain management.

How do firms cope with changing environments? Is flexibility really the solution? Based on an Igor Ansoff Award winning study, Building the Flexible Firm shows how flexibility has become the new strategic challenge for contemporary firms. Offering a wealth of insights and based on extensive interviews with practitioners, Henk Volberda provides a strategic framework which explains what types of flexibility are effective under different organizational conditions and environmental characteristics. He also demonstrates an integrated method for diagnosing a firm's flexibility and for guiding the transition to greater flexibility and responsiveness.

Agile Business Leadership Methods for Industry 4.0 is a collection of innovative research on new leadership styles that will develop agile managers and business leaders who can improve company success in the fast-paced environments created by Industry 4.0.

Due to the adverse outcomes of the recent global recession and the public deficit crisis in the USA and Europe, Western companies can expect flattening or declining sales in their domestic markets. They will also face growing competition as Chinese firms seek to block the activities of foreign companies in their domestic market and expand their own operations in overseas markets. Survival and growth for Western companies is unlikely to come from sustaining current business practices based upon utilization of conventional approaches to strategic management; success will depend on exploiting new knowledge to stay ahead of competition. This book examines the strategic issues associated with the entrepreneurial utilization of new knowledge to create innovative products and services, accompanied by the development of leading edge, highly productive internal organizational processes. Through the use of appropriate theories and illustrative case examples, the text is designed to assist managers in Western organizations and business school students understand how to counter the increasing threats that are posed by the globalization of companies from emerging countries such as the BRIC nations.

In this comprehensive Encyclopedia, Matthijs Bal brings together over 190 international experts to present fresh perspectives on key concepts, theories and research in organizational psychology. Entries cover central topics in the field, such as performance and work family balance, as well as upcoming and underrepresented areas such as decolonization, authenticity and playful work. This title contains one or more Open Access entries.

Knowledge and information are the two most powerful competitive weapons of this era. Knowledge is power. Knowledge is money. Stock markets regularly value companies at five or ten times the book value of their physical assets solely because of their intellectual capital. This book shows how the increased importance of effective knowledge management gives rise to a new set of business principles and practices that must be adopted in order to achieve competitive advantage.

The 2008 global financial crisis and the subsequent Eurozone crisis triggered dramatic changes in European labour relations. Unemployment and precariousness increased considerably. This was further exacerbated by austerity measures, leading to declining minimum wages and layoffs in the public sector. These structural changes varied considerably by country but collectively pose challenges to organized labour as they confront neoliberal restructuring. Concurrently, recent social struggles continue to develop with unemployed and precarious workers playing a major role as protest actors. Focusing on the triangular relationship of precariousness, trade unions and social movements, this book draws on a range of exciting cases, both comparative and country case studies, in order to understand how the shadow of the crisis still haunts organized labour in Europe. The chapters in this collection each offer a unique perspective on how the results of the crisis, in Western, Southern and Eastern Europe, are leading to a variety of new social movements as a consequence of increased precariousness and also how trade unions are attempting to respond.

This book is based on the work of a European partnership, whose members came together from Belgium England Finland Germany Portugal and Greece with the support of funding from the EU Socrates Programme. Our goal was to work collaboratively to generate new ways of thinking about the situation of people aged between 14 and 25 who are at risk of (or experiencing) social exclusion, set in the context of a unique international analysis of policies, contexts and perspectives on the problems of social exclusion in Europe and the challenges of promoting lifelong learning among those who have rejected it early in life. We set out to examine programmes which help people to RE-ENTER pathways of education and training, but ended with approaches which are better characterised by their ability to RECONNECT people, not only to opportunities in the social structures but also to each other and to their communities We have developed new models and guidelines based on analysis of the best of European practice using the distinctive approaches of 'situated learning'. By an iterative and collaborative method of working, we have arrived at the concept and approaches of Learning Communities Centred on Practice (LCPs), which lie at the heart of this volume.

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.