Business

Climate change is increasingly contested on financial terms. Different actors are advancing competing climate visions and interests by adopting financial positions. International institutions urge action by identifying financing gaps needed to meet climate targets. The finance sector claims it holds the key to unlocking money needed for climate investment. Activists expose greenwashing while using financial tactics to undermine fossil fuels. Vulnerable countries demand wealthy governments repay historical climate debts. This book offers an accessible and critical guide to the political economy and economic geography of climate finance. It identifies six competing "positions" of climate finance to make sense of the array of financial instruments, institutions and ideas that are remaking the relationship between capitalism and climate change. Using a wide range of case studies, from green bonds, to divestment, carbon offsetting, climate tech, central banks, and international climate funds, the authors show how climate finance is shaping our collective climate futures.

This open access volume discusses the core values and decision-making for sustainable business in general, and includes research findings and country cases on addressing challenges. It emphasizes the importance of adapting products or services to local needs, considering cultural differences and sustainability. Some of the chapters address questions related to improving sustainability in micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), and cover circular economy and responsible consumption. Others look at the normative framework conditions for business development; sustainability in supply chains; the involvement of stakeholders and their influence on market presence; entrepreneurial decision-making for sustainability; and approaches to teaching international and sustainability-oriented entrepreneurship. The volume sheds light on the pivotal role MSMEs play in shaping a sustainable future and is written for researchers, practitioners, and students working on related topics. 

Lerong Lu examines the biggest change in modern financial industry - the Fintech (financial technology) revolution - that denotes the close interaction between the financial services industry and latest information technologies such as big data, cloud computing, blockchain, and artificial intelligence. The three areas of banking institutions, online lending marketplaces, and money and payment systems are explored to assess how financial innovations affect the traditional financial industry, what kinds of regulatory challenges arise, and how global policymakers react to such challenges. With in-depth and international case studies on Fintech, including app-based banking services, mobile payments, P2P lending, and cryptocurrencies, the global Fintech hubs in six continents are assessed. The complex, dynamic, and multidimensional Fintech ecosystem is also investigated including its key players (such as regulatory strategy, regulatory sandbox, and RegTech) and Fintech corporations (including financial holding companies, Fintech unicorns, BigTech firms, and Metaverse platforms). Lu highlights the enormous benefits for financial institutions and their consumers and argues that Fintech contributes to a more equal, democratic, inclusive, and sustainable financial system. However, he also considers the risks and multiple legal, ethical, and regulatory challenges for policy-makers and financial authorities that Fintech has posed.

Managing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Public Service Organizations is a textbook designed to facilitate critical, courageous conversations that recognize our differences, including privileged and marginalized social identities, and engage readers in the principles and practice of solidarity to transform systems of oppression.

It is widely presumed that digitalisation, automation and artificial intelligence (AI) shape the future of work; yet, gender is rarely considered in those debates. This ground-breaking book, written by a leading thinker on gender, inclusion and organisations, is based on in-depth research to show which patterns of gender and digitalisation emerge. By weaving these different patterns together, is it possible to understand the dynamic and complex ways gender and digitalisation intertwine in the work context? The book highlights how futures of work are imagined between automation and augmentation: it shows which tasks are expected to be done by machines, and where humans are expected to have a competitive advantage. The book showcases how algorithmic bias is constructed as ultimately fixable, and analyses in/visibilities in AI production processes. Above all, the book shows how patterns relating to gender and inclusion are shaped and could be re-shaped. This innovative book provides a stimulating and provocative read for those who are interested in how automation and AI shape the future of work in regard to gender and what this means for inclusion.

This open access book investigates how digitalization and service infusion are changing service provision and the customer experience. It highlights the central role of service management and service innovation in making these changes not only appear in theory but also implementing them in business practice. At the beginning of the 21st century, many manufacturing firms struggled to exploit the financial potential of service businesses, a phenomenon described as the service paradox. While many manufacturing firms are still struggling with this paradox, several firms (both service and manufacturing firms) are simultaneously struggling with digitalization. This phenomenon can be viewed as the digitalization paradox, i.e., as a situation in which companies invest in digitalization but struggle to reach the expected revenue growth. By applying the lens of service innovation to digitalization and service infusion, the book showcases how firms can overcome the service and digitalization paradoxes, transform service provision, and improve the customer experience. It offers comprehensive coverage, blending literature reviews, conceptualizations, empirical illustrations, and case studies to offer a multifaceted perspective on corporate strategies, illuminating pathways to address the challenges posed by the service and digitalization paradoxes.  Built on the latest research from the CTF - Service Research Center at Karlstad University, Sweden, this book offers a valuable resource for managers seeking practical strategies and approaches to enhance their understanding and implementation of service management and marketing principles. It will also appeal to academics with an interest in service management and marketing.