A Guide to Mao's China explores how personnel within China's state tourism bureaucracy during the Mao era struggled to balance inbound foreign tourism as a form of political, historical, and cultural representation with demands for developing a revenue-generating service industry in a socialist economy. The People's Republic crafted its national narrative through tightly managed tours, and foreign visitors were led through model communes and factories by officials, guides, and service workers still negotiating what tourism meant within a socialist state.

Drawing on government archives, service worker manuals, firsthand tourist reports, and rare ephemera, Gavin Healy offers a human face to people-to-people diplomacy and shows how tourism workers shaped foreign impressions of Chinese socialism, while grappling with its meaning themselves. A Guide to Mao's China offers a fresh view of Mao-era China as more globally engaged and performative than often remembered.

In Violence in the Shadows, Jonathan Kishen Gamu challenges the supposedly progressive nature of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a catalyst for more accountable and humane forms of corporate capitalism. He shows that within the global mining industry, human rights abuse, environmental destruction, marginalization, and violent social conflict persist despite widespread CSR uptake among major companies. Using critical political economy as a theoretical framework, Gamu analyzes the Janus-faced phenomenon of CSR. He uses Peru as an illustrative case because it is one of the deadliest countries on earth for grassroots actors who oppose industrial mining operations. Violence in the Shadows reveals how the global mining industry's engagement with CSR discourses, institutions, and practices constitutes a strategic attempt to shape and manage a variety of social movements and the regulatory and operational threats they pose. Contrary to the seemingly benevolent corporate portrayals of their activities, CSR programming initiatives within this industry have palpably violent shadows at the local level, where companies have routinely used them to execute crafty modes of divide-and-rule and, when necessary, grease the wheels of state repression.

This book examines the evolving landscape of payment and settlement systems amid rapid technological advancements and new market entrants, emphasising the critical role of robust legal frameworks in fostering stability, efficiency, and financial inclusion.

The concept of secure, efficient, and accessible payment and settlement systems supported by robust legal frameworks and processes as the foundation of a stable financial system is not new. However, rapid technological developments and the entrance of new players have transformed, perhaps even disrupted, the payment ecosystem. This book explores the design, oversight, and enforcement of regulatory environments, offering a critical analysis of current policy and legislative initiatives to address risks and enhance system resilience. Integrating insights from regulatory theory, corporate governance, economics, and central banking, the book navigates tensions between public and private oversight, innovation, and legal clarity, particularly in costly cross-border payments. It debates whether regulators should merely mitigate risks or actively reshape financial infrastructures to harness the transformative potential of payment systems for global economic and societal benefit.

This book will be of interest to researchers in the law of emerging technologies, financial and banking law and economics.

This groundbreaking research monograph offers a comprehensive analysis of workforce transformation in the emerging Industry 5.0 paradigm, examining how human-centric values, sustainability, and organizational resilience reshape competency development in modern industrial settings. Through interdisciplinary perspectives, the authors explore the complex interplay between technological advancement and human capabilities in creating adaptive, sustainable organizations. This book delivers critical insights into the evolving nature of workplace competencies, featuring in-depth analysis of human-AI collaboration, organizational learning frameworks, and policy implications. Readers will discover practical approaches to competency auditing, strategic workforce development, and the integration of technical and soft skills in Industry 5.0 environments. The work stands out for its balanced examination of human-centric values, offering both theoretical foundations and real-world applications while critically engaging with emerging challenges in hybrid human-AI workspaces.

This essential resource is ideal for academics, advanced students, researchers, and policymakers in organizational development, human resource management, and industrial innovation. It will particularly appeal to strategic planners, workforce development professionals, and scholars interested in the intersection of technology, human capital, and sustainable organizational design. Graduate students in business, engineering management, and public policy will find valuable frameworks for understanding future workforce requirements.

Digital transformation, anchored in data and powered by frontier technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), Generative AI (GenAI), and emerging agentic systems, is arguably the most widely pursued initiative among companies of all sizes worldwide. Digital natives and traditional incumbents alike are struggling to cope with the relentless pace of technological change.

While successful incumbents may have mastered value creation and extraction within their established core businesses, they often continue to treat digital as peripheral to their core strategy. Yet recurring flashes of potential reveal digital as a credible source of sustainable advantage, creating ambiguity about its true scope and impact. Many organisations struggle to find a clear starting point or design a roadmap, and even when initiatives begin, return on investment (ROI) and change management remain major barriers.

The second edition of this book offers theories and frameworks to understand and develop these elements, while updating and refining practical models for technology taxonomy, digital literacy, digital transformation, and paths to value. Incorporating lessons on competing in the digital era, it features real-world cases in consulting and strategy, accessible to students, instructors, and professionals without prior expertise. Designed to support teaching and learning, it remains a valuable resource for students of Business, Management and Marketing; Organisational Change; Production, Operations and Information; Management e-Business; Information / Knowledge Management; Innovation Management; Organisational Studies; and Management of Technology and Innovation.

A global creative freelance movement is happening - do you want to be part of it? Here is the playbook of freelance work practices to embrace the promise of self-employment and succeed within the growing creative sector.

The global creative economy is booming, generating over $2 trillion in annual revenue according to the UN. Post-pandemic, freelancing is on the rise, as principal income or a side hustle. This book will show you how you can take your talents, join the freelance movement, and thrive within the creative economy. From choosing a niche and launching a freelance practice, to working with clients, managing the money, and looking after yourself as a freelancer, this book focuses on developing resilient freelancers and sustainable freelance practices. This holistic approach lifts creatives to succeed in the creative industries on their own terms.

Surviving and thriving as a creative freelancer isn't easy, but mastering the skills in this book will improve the odds for recent graduates, career changers, students, and anyone aspiring to use their creative skills but unsure where to start.

Legal Risks in the Software Development Lifecycle addresses the growing complexity of software development as both a technical and legal discipline. As the digital economy expands, software has become a core infrastructure asset whose lifecycle demands rigorous and enforceable contractual governance. This book analyses how legal risks arise and evolve across the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), providing a systematic account of the planning, delivery, and long-term maintenance of software projects.

The book takes readers through the entire SDLC, explaining each phase's technical purpose, the role and obligations of the parties involved, and the contractual documentation required to secure compliance and accountability. At every stage, it identifies the principal legal risks and demonstrates how they can be prevented through careful planning, well-defined deliverables, and tailored contractual provisions. Rather than focusing on litigation outcomes, the book emphasizes preventive strategies, providing readers with a structured roadmap to anticipate disputes before they arise. Sample clauses and checklists are included to highlight practical solutions, but the core value lies in its systematic explanation of processes, responsibilities, and risk-management mechanisms. Covering major contractual models such as Fixed-Price, Time & Material, Agile, Hybrid, and Milestone-based agreements, it highlights their advantages, limitations, and common points of dispute, while offering strategies to structure payments, allocate intellectual property rights, and manage scope changes effectively.

The book's approach is multidisciplinary. It is written for lawyers and legal advisors seeking to understand technical processes and draft precise, enforceable agreements; for project managers and clients who need to anticipate and manage contractual obligations; for software developers and vendors who want to align deliverables with contract terms and regulatory requirements; for judges, arbitrators, and mediators resolving IT-related disputes; and for students and researchers in law, technology and business, seeking a bridge between theory and practice.

This book considers the prospects for the legal recognition of same-sex marriage in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Legal recognition of same-sex relationships continues to spread across the globe, with several countries extending the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples. Meanwhile, in sub-Saharan Africa, most countries criminalise consensual same-sex acts. Despite a rapidly changing landscape with respect to LGBT rights, South Africa is the first and only African country to have legalised same-sex marriage, while a few others have decriminalised consensual same-sex acts. Deeply embedded religious, societal, and cultural norms, along with political controversies, impact the recognition of same-sex relationships, such that one of the recurring arguments against increasing legal protections for LGBT people is that this represents Western liberal values, and is a radical departure from African culture and African norms. In this context, this book provides a comparative analysis of the legal position of same-sex relationships in South Africa as well as in Botswana, Kenya, and Nigeria. Thematically, it explores the role of colonialism and how the introduction of Christianity and sodomy laws has shaped African sexuality and marriage, as well as the role played by religious and political leaders in shaping both the law and public opinion of same-sex relationships.

Based on this analysis and drawing on Kees Waaldijk's three-stage theory of the road to marriage equality, the book then offers an alternative framework for achieving wider recognition of same-sex marriage in sub-Saharan Africa. This book will be of interest to scholars with relevant interests in socio-legal and gender studies, as well as individuals or organisations engaged in LGBT rights advocacy in Africa.

This edited collection shows the tangible and positive impacts neuroscience is having in specific jurisdictions for individuals involved in the criminal justice system as witnesses, victims, defendants, and legal practitioners. Over the last 30 years, neuroscience has significantly informed legal, philosophical, and doctrinal discussions by deepening our understanding of the relationships between the brain, mind, and criminality. By embracing a practical and realist approach, this book explores the fundamental question of what and how neuroscience has been concretely contributing to criminal justice, with a specific focus on international systems. Notably, the volume brings together perspectives to discuss neuroscience's positive impact on the global criminal justice process. It provides an overview of different legal dimensions that have been thus far positively impacted by neuroscience, as well as some discussion on its future applications to improve the treatment of system-impacted people. To this aim, the book covers two key areas: (1) criminal trials; and (2) punishment, treatment, and reform. This work will appeal to academics, criminal lawyers, judges, policymakers, and reformers interested in how neuroscience contributes to meaningful changes in the criminal justice system. The reader will gain significant insights into neuroscience's present and immediate future contributions to different dimensions of the criminal justice process through original exploration by legal academics and practitioners.

Juvenile Justice: An Introduction, Eleventh Edition, presents a comprehensive picture of juvenile offending, delinquency theories, and the ways juvenile justice actors and agencies react to delinquency. Whitehead, Lab, and Rocheleau offer evidence-based suggestions for successful interventions and treatment and examine the prospects for rebalancing the model of juvenile court. This new edition includes insightful analysis and the latest available statistics on juvenile crime and victimization, drug use, court processing, and corrections. Special attention is given to female involvement, disproportionate minority contact, and diversity issues. Each chapter enhances student understanding with Key Terms, a "What You Need to Know" section, and Discussion Questions. Links at key points in the text show students where to get the latest information.

This book examines what it identifies as an increasing juridification of politics. This term refers to the use of law by both state and non-state social actors to advance their political demands and strategies.

Juridification is often portrayed as a depoliticising, even democratising, process; it is frequently attributed to the logics of neoliberal governance. In this view, a small number of litigants appealing to a few unelected judges for political change seems to bypass representative institutions and, with them, the democratic will. This book challenges that narrative. By tracing the genealogy of juridification and examining its performative role in present-day democratic practices, it offers a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between juridification and democracy. Combining theoretical inquiry with case studies of human rights adjudication, it reveals how courts have become arenas of political struggle where the supralegal values of democracy are named, claimed, and contested, and how this process reverberates far beyond the courtroom, supplementing rather than supplanting democratic decision-making.

The Juridification of Democracy will appeal to scholars and postgraduate students in the fields of political theory, law, critical theory, continental philosophy, socio-legal studies, and social and juridical anthropology.

This book offers a critical reconsideration of the theatrical nature of jurisdiction, as it examines how legal proceedings are regularly framed by or turned into a public spectacle.

In legal cases, all those involved must play their parts, according to the rules, on a stage that is open to public scrutiny. As this book demonstrates, however, the affordances offered by new media, in a society spellbound by spectacle and embroiled in the polarization that accompanies it, can easily disrupt the theatrical nature of the court case. The book is divided into two parts. In Part 1, cases - from the Netherlands, the United States, Italy, Brazil, India, Germany, and Russia - show how populists, insurgents, corporations, and states play the judiciary by probing its limits or the rules of the game, often by twisting the proper intent of legal regulation or by formally making a farce of jurisdiction. In Part 2, the chapters deal with weaknesses in the theatrical nature of the judiciary in a time of spectacle. Here, the central issue is how the judiciary is threatened by dramatic forms of excess: forms that exceed the frame and stage of jurisdiction's own theatricality. Bringing cultural analysis and play studies in conversation with legal analysis and legal philosophy, the book shows how the theatrical nature of the judiciary is more and more challenged by the force of the spectacular, and with it a strategic and tactically malevolent play of powerful actors that fragments collective feelings for justice, and instrumentalizes the law in the service of particular interests.

Law, Spectacle, and the Play of Jurisdiction will appeal to scholars and students in legal theory, law and literature, and others with relevant interests in politics, media, theatre and cultural studies.

This book uncovers the controversies around the suspended prison sentence, its main aims and features, and the role that it occupies within the wider criminal justice context. Suspended prison sentences were introduced in Central and Eastern European (CEE) states as alternatives to short prison sentences: although they were initially generally conceived of as exceptional penal tools, over time, they became the most imposed and dominant penal sanctions and, in that sense, a defining feature of criminal justice systems in the region.

The book provides a rich source of information about the development and features of suspended sentences in eight CEE countries, a topic that, although of great importance due to their frequency, has received only scant academic attention. Employing a legal, socio-legal, and criminological approach, it achieves this goal through individual chapters on eight countries (Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, the Russian Federation, Serbia, and Slovenia), and also through three general chapters, which outline the main specificity of the region as a whole but also present nuances between different countries.

The book will be of interest to a wide variety of academic researchers who study crime, punishment, and the penal system, and especially to those interested in sentencing. Given the huge discrepancy in the frequency of use of this sanction in CEE countries and the frequency of use of parole in contemporary practice, the work provides unique insights into the potential and desirability of its wider use, particularly due to the minimal supervision that it requires in examined countries. The book therefore seeks to critically inform current thinking on the value and appropriateness of particular forms of sanctions in responding to crime.

The book examines South Korea's evolving role in the global economic legal framework by analyzing how this developed nation navigates complex trade relationships, shapes international norms, and addresses emerging challenges in a rapidly changing world order.

Through detailed case studies of South Korea's economic diplomacy with major partners, it traces the country's strategic transition from adhering to GATT rules to becoming a leader in regional free trade agreements. It also explores South Korea's innovative methods of integrating sustainability and digitalization into its trade policy. The book provides a clear understanding of how a developed Asian economy balances domestic priorities with international obligations. By investigating the causal mechanisms behind its policy choices, the book assesses the strengths and weaknesses of South Korea's strategies as an influential middle power, and their global impact.

This book will be of interest to scholars and policymakers in international economic law, comparative law, international trade and investment law, particularly those interested in Asian perspectives on global economic governance.

Chinese Insurance Contracts: Law and Practice was the first systematic text written in English, offering a critical analysis of the major principles, doctrines and concepts of insurance contract law in China. Thoroughly revised and updated to reflect the many developments within both professional and research environments since its original publication, this second edition also features two new chapters for understanding the law relating to insurance intermediaries and the mechanisms of insurance dispute resolution. The book provides a comprehensive picture of Chinese insurance contract law, to facilitate a wider understanding of the relevant rules of law. Elements of insurance contract law are critically examined, and it presents rules of law on some special types of insurance contract, such as life insurance, property insurance, liability insurance, motor vehicle insurance, reinsurance, and marine insurance. The deficiencies and shortcomings of the law and practice are identified and analysed; suggestions and recommendations on how to reform the law are presented. Chinese Insurance Contracts also offers legal and practical advice to insurance professionals on how to draft clauses to avoid contractual pitfalls. Pertinent cases are used to illustrate the difficulties which can arise in applying the principles in practice. This book is essential reading for insurance companies and legal practitioners looking to do business in China, as well as a vital reference for Chinese lawyers practising insurance law. It will also be a useful resource for students and academics studying Chinese law.

A plethora of empirical studies on corporate finance do not yield clear results, making it difficult to draw consistent conclusions. Meta-analysis is a method that integrates the results of primary studies, identifies and eliminates the influence of publication bias, and allows for the examination of factors affecting the heterogeneity of these results. This book aims to disseminate knowledge about meta-analysis as a research methodology in the field of corporate finance. It highlights the additional benefits offered by meta-analysis compared to the results of primary research while discussing the limitations of this method. It presents the research procedures used in meta-analysis, but its originality lies in the fact that the starting point is not a write-up of the method but an outline of contemporary research issues in corporate finance. A significant part of this book is devoted to illustrating the meta-analytical approach to these issues, preceded by examples of meta-analysis in other fields of science for comparison. In addition, this book addresses the question of whether and how meta-analysis integrating the results of primary research can contribute to the development of corporate finance theory.

This book is intended for researchers specializing in finance, especially corporate finance, conducting empirical research; doctoral and master's students in finance; and analyst-practitioners conducting research for use by government institutions or large corporations.

Corporate Short-Term Financing in Europe offers a thorough analysis of how European companies manage liquidity, with a particular focus on trade credit and bank credit as key instruments. Drawing on rich cross-country data, this book examines the relationship between trade credit and short-term bank loans, analysing when firms substitute one for the other or use them together to optimise cash flow. With Europe's financial systems ranging from bank-based systems to market-driven economies, this study uncovers how firm size, industry, and national context shape short-term financing strategies. The book also addresses how financial crises and regulatory shifts affect corporate short-term funding decisions. Combining theoretical frameworks with empirical evidence, the book provides fresh insights for academics, policymakers, financial managers and business leaders concerned with corporate liquidity, SME support and financial resilience, and practitioners involved in credit risk assessment and working capital management. Essential reading for anyone managing short-term corporate finance in today's fast-changing environment.

Smart Freight Logistics explains how digital and data-driven tools are reshaping freight logistics from urban deliveries to regional and national supply chains.

Readers will gain comprehensive understanding of digital freight transformation through structured analysis of real-world ITS applications, case studies, and analytical frameworks. The book delivers practical insights by examining technology integration challenges, showcasing successful implementations across global logistics environments, and providing decision-making tools for optimizing freight operations. Key topics include last-mile delivery optimization, urban freight management, autonomous vehicles, blockchain for supply chain transparency, and sustainable logistics strategies. Through these elements, readers will develop skills to reduce operational costs, enhance supply chain visibility, improve resilience against disruptions, implement data-driven logistics management, and design more sustainable freight systems adaptable to rapidly changing market conditions.

This book serves postgraduate students in Transport Planning, Logistics, and Supply Chain Management programmes, along with researchers and industry professionals seeking evidence-based solutions for modern freight logistics challenges.