Understanding how business affects and is affected by the wider world is a challenge made more difficult by the disaggregation between various disciplines, from operations research to corporate governance. This series features concise books that break out from disciplinary silos to facilitate understanding by analysing key ideas that shape and influence business, organizations and management.
Each book focuses on a key idea, locating it in relation to other fields, facilitating deeper understanding of its applications and meanings, and providing critical discussion of the contribution of relevant authors and thinkers. The books provide students and scholars with thought-provoking insights that aid the study and research of business and management.
By Veronica Binda, Andrea Colli
March 15, 2024
Globalization: A Key Idea for Business and Society analyzes today’s process of global integration. Globalization is seen as a complex phenomenon, the drivers of which are of a technological, institutional, cultural and, not least, political nature. The book includes a historical analysis of the ...
By Mustafa F. Ozbilgin
August 29, 2023
Diversity: A Key Idea for Business and Society introduces an idea that proliferates business and society, having been incorporated into mainstream theory and practice. Beyond this multidisciplinary setting, how diversity is defined, framed, managed and regulated is also exposed to considerable ...
By Jamie Woodcock
May 23, 2023
Employment: A Key Idea for Business and Society introduces a topic that many of us take for granted yet is central to how we understand business and management. Most people work for the majority of their lives and, in recent years, employment has become a topic of popular debate, particularly ...
By Reinoud Bosch
December 27, 2021
Power plays a central role in business and management. But what is power exactly, and what are key elements of this concept? Defining power as relative ability, this book discusses structures of power, individual power, the exercise of power, strategy, and collective power. While discussing these ...
By Karin Buhmann
December 14, 2021
Human rights is an interdisciplinary subject as well as a foundational aspect of the law. The importance of human rights at the intersection of business and society is central, yet under-analyzed. This book provides an accessible understanding of what human rights are, how business enterprises may ...
By Chris Mowles
November 30, 2021
This book interprets insights from the complexity sciences to explore seven types of complexity better to understand the predictable unpredictability of social life. Drawing on the natural and social sciences, it describes how complexity models are helpful but insufficient for our understanding of ...
By Suzanne Benn, Melissa Edwards, Tim Williams
September 30, 2021
The heightening impact of ecological and societal crises makes sustainability an increasingly urgent imperative, requiring a fundamental shift in how we understand and practice management and business. In this book, the authors set out the key characteristics of sustainability such as its temporal...
By Graham Sewell
May 07, 2021
Being watched and watching others is a universal feature of all human societies. How does the phenomenon of surveillance affect, interact with, and change the world of business? This concise book unveils a key idea in the history and future of management. For centuries managers have claimed the ...
By Mike Saks
April 20, 2021
Professions and professionalism have played an integral part in business and society. In this book, Mike Saks provides a thorough overview of this field through an analysis of a range of professions, including, amongst others, accountants, doctors and lawyers. The book offers a critical ...
By Tom Vine
September 30, 2020
Bureaucracy is a curse – it seems we can’t live with it, we can’t live without it. It is without doubt one of the fundamental ideas which underpin the business world and society at large. In this book, Tom Vine observes, analyses and critiques the concept, placing it at the heart of our ...
By Chris Carr
March 03, 2020
The era of globalisation brought waves of consolidation in business ownership alongside Leviathon-like state actors. Digital disruption too can leave market power in a relatively small number of hands. In organisational and economic terms, global oligopoly is now a fundamental idea for ...
By Chengwei Liu
December 02, 2019
Shortlisted for the EGOS Book Award in 2021, this book moves beyond tired analyses of business success that bias leadership and strategy in order to focus on the critical role of good fortune. The author provides insights from economics, sociology, political science, philosophy, and psychology to ...