Reshaping the State in the Age of Fiasco meticulously analyses fifty years of structural innovation in UK public management reform. Rather than ascribing policymaking blunders to the ascendency of New Public Management, it focuses on how the rise of managerialism led to pathologies and contradictions arising from the traditions and culture of British government. In the post-war era, the myth prevailed that UK institutions, policies and solutions offered a model for the rest of the world, while there was little meaningful that could be learnt from elsewhere. Yet recent governing crises, notably fiscal austerity, Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic underlined that despite decades of reform, the performance of the British state and public services remained glaringly inadequate. There has been far less improvement in efficiency, economy and effectiveness than was promised. This book asks why that is so, and what can be done.

A necessary exploration into the mechanics of data privacy protections within empirical social science research.

The explosion of computational power and data availability has revolutionized empirical social science research, but it has also created unprecedented challenges for protecting the privacy of individuals and businesses. As computational tools make it increasingly possible to breach data anonymity in government surveys by combining the survey data with additional information from external sources, statistical agencies face mounting pressure to develop new privacy protection methods while maintaining data quality essential for research and policymaking. This volume explores how innovations in data privacy protection, including differential privacy and synthetic data methods, affect the conduct of empirical analysis in economics, computer science, and statistics. Contributors explore critical questions about the trade-offs between privacy and data usability: How do new protection methods impact statistical inference and parameter estimation? What standards should data providers adopt? The chapters examine frameworks for characterizing privacy protection, disclosure limitation challenges for survey data, methodological innovations for privacy-preserving statistical analysis, regulatory considerations in modern data governance, and strategies for balancing confidentiality with research access.

This volume provides researchers, statistical agencies, and policymakers with essential guidance for navigating the complex landscape where data protection meets scientific inquiry.

This book presents cutting-edge research and practical insights from the Smart Service Summit 2025, exploring how smart services, artificial intelligence, and digital platforms enable sustainable value creation across industries. As service-driven business models become increasingly relevant, modular and data-driven service systems are transforming sectors such as manufacturing, logistics, mobility, smart cities, and finance.

Contributions address topics including AI-enabled maintenance, digital twins, circular economy strategies, urban digital transformation, resilient supply chains, and ESG reporting. Special attention is given to the ethical implications of AI, the governance of digital ecosystems, and compliance with emerging regulatory frameworks such as the EU AI Act.

With a focus on co-creation, adaptability, and future-readiness, this volume connects academic rigor with real-world application. It offers actionable knowledge for researchers, professionals, and policymakers working at the intersection of digital innovation, service design, and sustainability.

International Relations and Feminisms: Latin American Voices in a Global Debate brings together the voices and experiences of scholars working in Latin American International Relations and offers a timely and critical intervention in a central debate shaping contemporary International Relations scholarship. From diverse feminist perspectives, the volume challenges the discipline's traditional assumptions and expands how global politics, power, and security are understood. Moving beyond Eurocentric and state-centric frameworks, the book foregrounds voices, experiences, and knowledges that have long been marginalised. Through theoretically informed and empirically grounded chapters, it demonstrates how feminist approaches reveal the gendered foundations of international politics and reshape core concepts such as sovereignty, diplomacy, security, and global governance. Engaging with intersectional, postcolonial, and decolonial debates, the volume speaks to scholars, students, and practitioners seeking inclusive and reflexive tools to analyse world politics, positioning Latin American feminism as a central lens for understanding and transforming International Relations.

This open access book aims to help readers make sense of our changing world by sharing the views of global thought leaders on the rise of China, from evolving geopolitics, world economy, US-China relations, and EU-China relations, to major global issues like climate change, global governance and the emerging of Global South in policy development.

The fifty-one dialogues contained in this book are transcripts from the "CCG Global Dialogues" of online discussions hosted by the CCG President Henry Huiyao Wang in conversation with Global opinion leaders from renowned scholars of international relations, economics, and history, to journalists, policymakers, and business leaders.

The speakers featured in this book are Graham Allison, Paige Alexander, Fred Bergsten, Kerry Brown, Neil Bush, Barry Buzan, Kent E. Calder, Ronnie Chan, Ray Dalio, Niall Ferguson, David Firestein, Arancha Gonzalez, Richard Haass, John Hamre, Wolfgang Ischinger, William Kirby, David Lampton, Pascal Lamy, Leslie Maasdorp, Liu Yawei, Kishore Mahbubani, Aaditya Mattoo, Joseph Nye, Lord Jim O'Neill, Douglas Paal, Henry Paulson, Noah Pickus, Stephen Roach, Anthony Saich, Lawrence H. Summers, Susan Thornton, Justin Vaisse, Martin Wolf and Wang Shi.

These wide-ranging discussions offer unique insights and perspectives on key trends shaping our world in the 21st century, China's relations with the world, the global challenges we face and ways in which we can salvage multilateralism and reform global governance, while also touching on new trends and tensions in geopolitics, as well as the evolving issues on China and globalization, the world economic outlook and transnational threats, and how the various actors to play a positive role in promoting peace and prosperity in the post-pandemic era.

Unrecorded capital outflows from African countries impact more than just individual countries in Africa. The unrecorded transfer of money, also known as capital flight, is a global economic problem. This contributes to broader illicit financial flows, which are enabled by deal makers that help private actors embezzle funds, evade taxation and exchange controls, and create shell corporations to disguise funds. The financial hemorrhage through capital flight makes it harder for African countries to finance basic services and achieve their economic development goals. Existing evidence indicates that developing countries that are highly dependent on natural resources tend to be exposed to capital flight and corporate tax evasion. This book focuses on the cases of Cameroon, Ghana, and Zambia and examines historical, economic, and institutional drivers as well as mechanisms of capital flight from both within each country and perverse connection with the rest of the world. The chapters investigate the implications of fiscal regimes governing natural resource extraction for the distribution of the gains, notably rent sharing, tax mobilization, and the generation and repatriation of foreign exchange earnings from natural resource exports. The chapters provide evidence of export misinvoicing and illustrate the role of commodity-trading hubs in perpetuating opacity in commodity trade transactions and the associated losses for African resource exporters. The book highlights differences and similarities across the three countries, thus offering a unique comparative analysis and providing pertinent policy recommendations.

In a rapidly evolving global economy, sustainability has become a central concern for businesses, policymakers, and educators. As organisations increasingly integrate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations into their strategies, accounting and finance education must evolve to prepare future professionals for this new landscape.

Sustainability in Accounting and Finance Education explores how sustainability principles can be embedded within accounting and finance teaching, research, and professional practice. Bringing together international contributions from scholars and researchers, the book examines key themes including curriculum innovation, environmental and social accounting, ESG performance, governance, digital transformation, artificial intelligence, FinTech, and sustainability-aware assurance.

Through diverse theoretical perspectives and practical insights, the chapters highlight how emerging technologies, responsible governance, and sustainability reporting are reshaping accounting and finance education worldwide. The volume offers valuable insights for educators seeking to modernise curricula, researchers exploring sustainability-related accounting topics, and professionals interested in the future direction of the discipline.

The Business Innovation Strategies Governance and Sustainability series is aligned with SDGs and rooted on multidisciplinary perspective. It focuses on research stream from various paradigms, theoretical lenses and mixed method approaches to offer insight from both scholars and practitioners towards a better understanding of the current trends of business innovation strategies and corporate transformation towards governance and sustainability.

This book establishes the scientific definition of M&A for the first time, that is, M&A is a transaction targeted at business control. Based on this, the book established a theoretical framework of mergers and acquisitions with its 8 core pillars, including motivation, capability, boundary, direction, matching, synergy, performance and market. The theories of mergers and acquisitions will well explain the strategy, valuation, integration and other activities of M&A.

An incisive account of how equality transformed from an abstract ideal into a concrete social and political vision, thanks to seventeenth-century English dissidents like the Levellers and the political philosophers they inspired.

Today, political theorists and philosophers treat as axiomatic the claim that all persons are equal. Dig deeper, however, and what we mean by equality-and what it demands from us, politically and otherwise-is far from obvious. Does it mean that we are all the same, and so the same standards should apply indifferently to everyone? Or does it mean that we are all different in ways similarly deserving of respect? These questions, and many more, reflect the profound ambiguities and contradictions that have riddled the history of the idea of equality.

First Among Equals examines a radical turning point in that history. Since antiquity, influential legal and philosophical traditions have held that all humans are fundamentally equal. Yet these claims proved surprisingly at home in a world defined by social hierarchy, political exclusion, and enslavement. In seventeenth-century England, the meaning-and practical circumstances-of equality began to change. Political philosopher Teresa Bejan traces this transformation, revealing how equality finally became a concrete and actionable political ideal.

Crucially, Bejan shows that influential early modern theorists of equality-chief among them Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and the early feminist Mary Astell-were responding to the increasingly radical visions proffered by contemporary social movements like the Levellers, Diggers, and Quakers. Inspired by the Leveller leader John Lilburne, these movements insisted that equality must be a basis on which ordinary men and women could demand to stand shoulder to shoulder with elites. These early modern activists and philosophers can still enchant us today, Bejan argues, while also helping us to restore the power of equality as a political ideal.

How independence works as an unquestioned ideal for aging in America-and why it is never quite realized

In twenty-first-century America, as people live longer than ever before, it's taken for granted that older adults should be active and self-reliant. News stories describe nonagenarians who run marathons, reality shows feature attractive older women competing for the love of a widowed bachelor, and policymakers encourage aging "in place" rather than in a nursing home. In Chasing Independence, Guillermina Altomonte turns a critical eye on these expectations and asks what happens when independence becomes the yardstick by which we measure the quality of old age. Drawing on ethnographic observations in a skilled nursing facility in New York City, interviews with older adults and healthcare workers, and historical materials, she shows how independence operates as an unquestioned standard for medical assessments, allocation of services, and even as a way to determine an older person's identity and self-worth.

Despite the elevation of independence as the dominant ideal of aging, Altomonte reports, it is always a moving target, redefined and pushed out of reach by individual, economic, and social constraints. She examines the immense effort that older people, their families, and healthcare workers invest as they chase independence-and what happens when those efforts fall short. Exploring the conundrums and dramas, the meanings and connections that older people experience in the relentless struggle to maintain independence, Altomonte shows that the American obsession with this cultural value often obscures real needs for support and care.

This book offers an in-depth exploration of the transformative changes necessary to adapt global food systems to the unparalleled challenges posed by climate change. Across 17 chapters, it moves from agroecology with smallholder cooperatives in Angola, to soil carbon sequestration through cover cropping, then to circular economy approaches such as food waste valorization and WASH infrastructure for rural development. A regional synthesis examines climate impacts on productivity, distribution, and consumption in Sub-Saharan Africa, followed by chapters on food system governance and gender and youth farmers' coping strategies. Later sections explore food waste reintegration in South Africa and the opportunities and risks of big data and artificial intelligence in agri-tech. The book also draws lessons from Colombia through community-supported agriculture networks and experiential learning.By integrating methodological innovation with real-world insights, the book serves as a vital resource for researchers and decision-makers committed to advancing sustainable and inclusive food system governance.

Disabled sexuality has too often been cast as taboo, as disabled people are routinely de-sexualized, infantilized, or positioned as objects of pity and (over)protection. Nevertheless, despite facing numerous obstacles to sexuality, sexual expression, and parenting, individuals with disabilities have consistently showcased resilience, agency, and creativity.

Disabilities, Pleasures, and Sexualities: Transforming Perceptions, Cultivating Desires, volume 17 of the Research in Social Science and Disability series, seeks to highlight and celebrate these qualities with contributions that challenge stereotypes, reimagine expressions of sexuality, illuminate aspects of reproduction and parenting, and explore different forms of intimate relationships. They recognize, affirm, and celebrate the reality that many disabled people already live full and fulfilling erotic lives. With contributions that foreground the lived experiences, representations, and self-understandings of disabled people as sexual beings, some contributions explore how disabled individuals and communities resist the social, cultural, and political forces that render their sexualities deviant, invisible, or dangerous. Other contributions turn to the urgent task of transforming sex education, critically examining how sex education for disabled people can be radically transformed. Finally, there are a number of pieces that highlight how disabled people navigate the affective, embodied, and increasingly digital landscapes of intimacy and connection.

In sum, this volume imagines sexuality as a site of access, interdependence, creativity, and joy, in hopes that it reshapes the broader sexual cultures in which we all participate.

This book provides a rigorous theoretical analysis of the evolution of non-state actors within the contemporary global security architecture. Utilising Securitisation Theory, the authors examine how national movements transition from revolutionary origins toward sophisticated diplomatic engagement and international advocacy. Focusing on the Palestinian National Movement as a primary case study, the book traces the shift in political strategy rooted in a hybrid warfare securitization approach and explores how this shapes its identity, goals, and actions. Drawing on extensive empirical research, the book investigates the ideological, political, and historical foundations of the PNM and introduces the Hybrid Warfare Securitization Theory (HWST). It offers an academic exploration of how modern movements navigate the 'security-diplomacy' nexus, thereby making an original contribution to the literature on securitisation and hybrid warfare. It is an essential resource for scholars interested in the intersection of soft power, narrative contestation, and international security, and, in so doing, it also enriches the broader scholarship on the modern Middle East. Providing valuable insights for policymakers, researchers, and readers interested in emerging forms of conflict, counter-terrorism, and the dynamics of conflict, this book deepens our understanding of one of the most enduring and complex political movements of our time.

Geopolitical realignment, climate disruption, demographic shifts, and technological transformation present risks with no historical precedent. Pension systems are breaking under the weight of aging populations. Semiconductor production concentrates in a single geopolitical flashpoint. AI is reshaping everything from energy demand to the future of work to the waging of war.

These are not future risks. They exist now. Yet our current approaches toward risk cannot see them, leaving institutions exposed when these transformations strike.

This open access book presents a fundamental reimagining of how we manage risk. It demonstrates that material risks cannot be reduced to statistics or confined to financial markets. They are rooted in the physical world: supply chains, demographic realities, geography, and human behavior.

The transformation occurs across five dimensions:

Financial to Physical

Material constraints drive markets, not the reverse.

Statistical to Structural

Dependencies matter more than correlations.

Static to Dynamic

Systems adapt as participants respond to them.

Mechanical to Human

Interpretation, reflexivity, and contingency shape outcomes.

Numbers to Narratives

Decisions happen in conversations, not spreadsheets.

Essential reading for chief risk officers, asset owners and allocators, policymakers and anyone responsible for navigating risks that are reshaping economies and societies.

This book tackles a critical question. Why has the world struggled so much to coordinate policy to address climate change, despite political and scientific consensus? Despite landmark agreements and expanding knowledge, emissions have fallen unevenly and progress has repeatedly stalled or reversed.

Democracy or Carbon Oligarchy? explains that failure by focusing on domestic politics: how institutions distribute power, how interest groups exploit "access points," and why countries with similar wealth and technology diverge. Moving beyond arguments about mere political will, it situates energy and climate outcomes within the institutional architectures of industrialized oil super-producers: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Norway. Shum advances a neopluralist theory of climate politics, arguing that policy is shaped by the strategic capture of institutional venues by carbon-intensive interests. He shows how separation of powers, federalism, party systems, and electoral rules configure opportunities for a de facto carbon oligarchy. By mapping where binding decisions are made and who can reach them, the book offers a generalizable framework for diagnosing blockages, explaining cross-national variation, and identifying leverage points for sustaining ambitious climate policy over time.

This volume provides an in-depth, qualitative analysis of volunteers and volunteerism in the U.S. National Parks Service (NPS). Over the course of the 50+-year history of the Volunteers-in-Parks (VIP) program, there has been no systematic research undertaken about the history or impact of volunteers serving in parks. This book corrects this deficiency, filling a large gap in the scholarly literature and advancing theory on volunteerism within a critical space in the nation's environmental, historical, and cultural infrastructure.

Using a combination of participant observation and interviews with more than 200 volunteers and park staff, the volume introduces new insights on the value and management of volunteers in support of broader societal goals while also delving deeply into the tensions that emerge when public institutions are reliant but cannot afford to be dependent on volunteers.

The book will be of use to scholars and students studying public administration, nonprofit management, and environmental conservation or cultural preservation as well as practitioners of volunteer management and community engagement across the spaces of public parks, museums, and other places of environmental, historical, or cultural significance.

This book articulates and defends a novel view about fundamental reality, an alternative to the traditional opposition between monism and pluralism. Collective allism is the view that what's metaphysically fundamental is neither the universe as a whole nor some fragments thereof, but the plurality of all entities, i.e. all entities taken collectively. Using resources from plural logic, the book systematically develops the view and argues that considerations about mereological infinitism, emergence, natural laws, and relations give it an edge over monism and pluralism. This book is therefore of great interest to both scientists and philosophers of science.

This book challenges the long-prevailing interpretation of China's legal tradition as "virtue given priority over penalty," arguing that this proposition is a projection of modern Western rule-of-law discourse and fails to accurately reveal the structure of traditional Chinese legal thought. The author introduces the concept of "virtue as foundation, penalty as function"-framing "virtue" as the bedrock of ruling legitimacy, moral education, and social self-governance, while "penalty" serves as a necessary tool for upholding order. It offers a novel theoretical framework for scholars and interested readers worldwide to re-examine China's legal heritage and its embedded governance wisdom.

A history of modern mindfulness meditation and a critique of it as a practice that deeply misunderstands human consciousness.

Mindfulness meditation is often presented as a simple practice of turning inward and quieting the world to discover an authentic "inner voice," but the very idea that consciousness contains such a voice depends on a slew of contradictory beliefs about Buddhism, neuroscience, and more. In Out of Mind, R. John Williams challenges the core (and misguided) assumptions about human nature that shaped the development of modern meditation, revealing how they were informed by nineteenth-century theosophy, German idealism, Buddhist modernism, Heideggerian mindfulness, Cold War brainwashing, and even phenomena like sensory deprivation tanks. Against the notion that truth lies hidden in our brains, Williams argues that we are never sealed off from the world. Our consciousness extends beyond our own minds-into the intricate web of language, literature, art, and other people to which we are intimately connected.

The Science of High-Performing Teams describes how leaders need to "be" to manage teams, what they need to understand about human behavior to create teams from groups of individuals, and how to think about some of the basic - and more advanced - types of leader behaviors and group dynamics that often result in successful teamwork. The book will help readers assess their surroundings and their team's environment to make good decisions in the moment. Everything in this book is grounded in decades of rigorous research on team success, drawing on insights from countless scholars across generations.

While "leadership" is all around us, most people in positions of authority or influence have little formal training or education in how to use that authority and influence to manage the teams for which they are responsible. The Science of High-Performing Teams explains and exemplifies the current state of research on team dynamics and leadership. It serves as a tool and training resource for aspiring leaders; new managers in professional settings; organizational consultants focusing on interpersonal dynamics; students enrolled in courses focused on those topics; and the secondary and post-secondary faculty who oversee those courses.

This book explores how leaders can master the paradox between autonomy and alignment to foster sustainable innovation. It introduces the InnoLEAD model, emphasizing the relational dynamics between leaders and teams as they navigate strategic, structural, and cultural challenges. Combining theory with practice, the text offers actionable tools, reflection exercises, and real-world case studies to strengthen existing capabilities while creating space for creativity and organizational learning. Updated with the latest research and examples, this pragmatic work is an essential resource for innovation managers, leadership professionals, and students seeking to understand and implement innovation-oriented leadership in rapidly changing environments.

An innovative examination of how talent, virtue and gendered expectations are negotiated in post-reform China

Under China's one-child policy, a generation of only daughters in the 1980s grew up with unprecedented access to university education and careers in high-paying fields. Often dubbed "little princesses", these brotherless girls had the benefit of parental ambition and family wealth that traditionally went to boys. And yet, as Ye Liu reveals in Only Daughters, this cohort of educated and privileged women did not go on to smash the patriarchy; instead, they were tripped up by cultural expectations. Liu shows that the one-child policy forced these women to grapple with the dual burden of achieving success usually reserved for men while upholding the traditional female virtues. Empowered as girls, as women they struggled to reconcile inherited ideals of filial piety and the state-imposed demographic duty to bear children with their own aspirations for autonomy and success.

Drawing on extensive interviews and observations, Liu traces the life-course transitions of siblingless daughters, aligning them with key phases of China's structural transformation. She shows that the momentum of their girlhood successes collided with a patriarchal backlash, which limited their choices in the labour market, marriage and motherhood. Liu finds that, having abandoned the ideology of meritocracy and acknowledged that the conditions of their empowerment were temporary, these women adopt strategies that blend neoliberal self-reliance with traditional cultural values. With this timely account, Liu sheds new light on the resilience and adaptability of women within patriarchal systems in China and beyond.

A leading philosopher explains how risk-taking can help us live authentic and flourishing lives

We take risks every day-perhaps not the extreme, dangling-off-the-side-of-a-mountain kind of risks, but risks nonetheless, in decisions about careers, marriage, children, moving house, and other matters. Tempting fate is simply what we have to do from time to time in life. But how we should go about tempting fate in a reasonable way? In this illuminating book, philosopher Duncan Pritchard explains why risk-taking, even extreme risk-taking, can sometimes be both reasonable and admirable, and how it can play a crucial role in living an authentic life.

Using Alex Honnold's famous free solo climb of El Capitan as a paradigm example of admirable risk-taking, Pritchard offers a completely new theory of risk, one that explains it in terms of fragility rather than probability. He shows how fragility can explain why skill and preparation are crucial to sensible risk-taking, even when the activity is unavoidably high risk. Fragility also makes clear that taking risks means riding one's luck and why both risk and luck are vital to living an authentic and meaningful existence. Pritchard shows that his fragility theory of risk has practical implications for making sense of risk in law, arts, sports, and other domains. Tempting fate, in other words, is not merely thrill-seeking but essential for human flourishing.

Digital platforms have garnered both apprehension and admiration for their disruptive influence on social systems, structures, and everyday lives. However, research insights on digital platforms and ecosystems, both in theory and practice, largely emerge from the Global North. Pivoting this focus to the Global South, An Introduction to Platform Economy in India explores the operational socio-technical framework of India's growing platform economy at the confluence of numerous platform ecosystems developed both globally and nationally.

Employing an economic sociology perspective, the authors examine the pivotal roles of individuals and collectives, alongside their embedded socio-economic and technical arrangements, to show the multifaceted dimensions of the rapid proliferation of platforms, burgeoning platform memberships, and the ensuing multidimensional social exchanges in India. The chapters respond to growing interest in India's platform economies by showing how the country figures prominently in visions of platform futures, whether as an emerging market, a critical node in global supply chains, or a catalyst for technological innovation.

Promising to be a timely intervention grounded in economic sociological analysis, this introductory text bridges the existing gap in the production of such scholarly literature from the Global South. By shedding light on the intricacies of platform dynamics, adoption, usage, and their impact on the social and economic lives of people in India, readers gain valuable insights that inform our understanding of the broader global dynamics of platform economies.

University research represents a $2 trillion untapped goldmine that most executives are missing. Generative AI is revolutionizing this landscape-leading universities report 40-60% efficiency gains in technology scouting and evaluation through AI integration. This book guides leaders, managers, and practitioners on how they can leverage AI-powered scouting and strategic university alliances to access breakthrough technologies. It synthesizes decades of pioneering research and practical experience in technology transfer and provides a data-driven blueprint for executives that combines analytical rigor with proven methodologies for successful university-industry collaborations. The authors provide actionable strategies for identifying, evaluating, and commercializing breakthrough academic discoveries that can redefine the industries and secure companies' competitive future. From leveraging AI-powered scouting to navigating complex IP landscapes and capitalizing on global talent pipelines, this book equips managers, leaders and executives with insights to transform academic potential into quantifiable market value.