With a chapter devoted to each of the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), this edited book explores the evidence that corruption is a strong impediment to achieving the SDGs and that strong anti-corruption policy is essential if any are to be achieved. For some of the goals, there is much existing theory and evidence which will be summarized and made accessible to an interdisciplinary audience. For example, studies strongly suggest that corruption is associated with greater poverty (SDG 1) and lower growth rates (SDG 8). Furthermore, there is considerable research on the effects of corruption on the scope for decent work and growth (SDG 8) and an established connection between corruption and industry, innovation, and infrastructure (SDG 9). In other areas, the research is more scant. For example, there is limited work on how corruption can be a contributing factor to food insecurity and famine (SDG 2). There has been little work specifically on corruption and sustainable cities and communities (SDG 11) and responsible consumption and production (SDG 12). Similarly, more work is needed on the effects of corruption on climate action (SDG 13), life below water (SDG 14), and life on land (SDG15). In these areas the chapter surveys the research that does exist and motivates further study.

This book will be an essential research and reference guide to readers interested in political economy, sustainable development, social issues, politics and development studies.

This book analyzes transparency as a primary requirement for successful corporate governance and emphasizes its importance in all activities. It also examines how transparency finds expression in communication processes in external relationships.

The volume demonstrates how external communication can be executed in a transparent and reliable way; for instance, a disclosure should enhance the stakeholders' trust in the firm's ability to satisfy their needs and improve their assent to the firm's mission. The book discusses the aims of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) toward contributing to a sustainable global economy through "integrating thinking," thereby acquainting resource providers with the connections among the most significant components of the firm and external stakeholders. It showcases the value of integrated reporting in the relationships between financial and nonfinancial performance, which is sometimes underestimated by directors and managers. It also provides guidelines on carrying out an integrated reporting process that breaks down long-term value-creation strategies into day-to-day operational activities, with potential impacts-positive or negative-on stakeholders.

The book will be an important resource for academics and practitioners interested in the contents, modification, and dissemination of corporate communication. It will also be useful to students, researchers, and teachers in the fields of business administration, journalism and mass communication, public administration and governance, digital and online media, and communication technology. Additionally, the volume will appeal to professionals in the fields of marketing, advertising, corporate communication, media and public relations agencies, event management, and promotion.

Derivatives: Mathematical Foundations for Finance Students is written for students of finance and actuarial science who want to understand derivatives not just as formulas but as ideas that make sense. The goal is to build the mathematical foundations up step by step - starting from the familiar territory of first-year undergraduate probability and statistics and moving all the way to stochastic calculus and the principles of risk-neutral pricing, which form the heart of modern financial mathematics.

This text will enable the reader to:

* understand models of asset price behavior and apply stochastic calculus
* use stochastic simulations in R to investigate processes and price options
* price options with the binomial model
* derive solutions to the Black-Scholes equation using risk-neutral pricing
* price interest-rate derivatives using Black's model, short-rate models and the Heath-Jarrow-Morton (HJM) framework
* tackle quantitative finance exam questions.

It incorporates a range of learning features to aid student understanding, including boxed examples, end-of-chapter summaries, selected questions from Society of Actuaries (US) Quantitative Finance examinations and further reading suggestions. The book is also supported by a suite of digital learning resources, including PowerPoint slides, multiple choice questions, instructor manual/advice document for lecturers and a test bank.

This book will appeal to both undergraduate and postgraduate students who wish to understand the principles of stochastic calculus and option pricing.

Kierkegaard's Visions for Christian Life challenges traditional views of Soren Kierkegaard's Christian thought as anthropocentric, androcentric, and individualistic. Drawing on Kierkegaard's religious reflections on the lily and the bird, his maternal metaphors for God and Christ, and his generative readings of three women from the Bible, it offers a constructive feminist theology that attends to the centrality of joy and flourishing, openness to the divine and others, and communion with specific beloved individuals for Christian life.

This book reconfigures the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love, as well as the joy that it produces, in ways uniquely conceived by Kierkegaard that enable us to navigate our current world of suffering and uncertainty more productively and powerfully.

Kierkegaard's Visions for Christian Life will appeal to graduate students and academic readers interested in Kierkegaard, human flourishing, the theological virtues, the concept of joy, the idea of love, feminist theology, and philosophy of religion.

This book examines the role of cooperatives in the sustainable management and governance of natural resources, drawing on a range of case studies from across Africa.

Cooperatives play a pivotal role in natural resource management, especially in the face of a changing climate. Their collaborative nature and focus on sustainability make them effective vehicles for adapting to and mitigating the increasing pressure on natural resources. This role is particularly important in Africa, where millions of livelihoods are dependent on a healthy, functioning natural resources. The proper governance of these valuable natural resources is critical in building resilience. This volume evaluates the potential cooperatives hold in the sustainable management and governance of natural resources, bringing together both theoretical contributions and real-world examples and providing practical guidance and policy recommendations. Drawing on detailed case studies from Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and South Africa, chapters examine the roles played by cooperatives involved in the management and governance of water, energy, forests, fisheries and agricultural resources. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, integrating insights from economics, sociology and development studies, the volume showcases how cooperative models can be leveraged to effectively manage natural resources. It situates the African case studies within the wider, global context of the sustainable management and governance of natural resources, addressing key themes of conflict, depletion, and environmental conservation.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of natural resource management, sustainable development, and African studies.

The last two decades have been marked by economic and social turmoil - from the global financial crash and the austerity turn to the Covid-19 pandemic, followed by cost-of-living crises, geopolitical conflicts and heightened political divisions. This succession of crises has destabilised economic and political systems and risks undermining the hard-won, albeit slow, progress towards gender equality in contemporary societies. At the same time, the way we live and work is being challenged by rapidly developing AI and digital technologies, the imperative to accelerate the transition to net zero emissions, and unresolved pressures to transform care systems to support women's sustained participation in waged work. Against this backdrop, this volume offers a long-term perspective on turbulence, grounded on comparative and country evidence from Europe, the USA, Australia, and the Global South. The chapters trace how acute shocks, chronic crises and systemic transformations reverberate through labour markets, households and state policies, reshaping gender inequalities and vulnerabilities and their intersections. The concluding discussion argues that turmoil is evolving into a polycrisis - an entanglement of economic, social, and ecological disruptions - while exposing a critical but neglected dimension of turbulence: the crisis of social reproduction and women's pivotal role in managing the tensions between production and the social reproduction spheres. By introducing a gender perspective into the polycrisis debate, this volume speaks to scholars in socioeconomics and gender studies; policy experts and advisors on gender equality; and activists, educators and the general public seeking to understand and address the challenges to gender equality in turbulent times.

In an era where medical technology advances rapidly yet faces mounting regulatory hurdles, this book explores the critical interplay between patent law and regulatory frameworks that shapes the future of healthcare. It examines a fundamental problem in European medical technology innovation: the disconnect between patent protection periods and increasingly lengthy regulatory approval processes, demonstrating that Europe's current system forces companies to abandon breakthrough innovations in favor of incremental improvements. It compares the European Union's Medical Device Regulation with the United States' integrated patent-regulatory system, revealing how temporal misalignment between approval and protection discourages investment in complex medical devices. The book develops the first quantitative model linking patent-regulatory interaction and innovation effort in medical devices and demonstrates empirically, through Monte Carlo simulations and elasticity analysis, a significant improvement in development effort and increase in innovation value. It provides actionable policy guidance for aligning European patent law with regulatory timelines while maintaining high safety standards and offers cross-sectoral insights from renewable energy and biotechnology as benchmarks for successful regulatory-innovation alignment. Further, it addresses an urgent policy debate in the European Union concerning innovation incentives in the health-technology sector. By combining legal analysis, mathematical modelling, and policy evaluation, the book bridges law, economics, and health-technology governance. It provides a policy blueprint for balancing innovation incentives, regulatory efficiency, and patient safety, addressing a structural weakness at the heart of Europe's medtech competitiveness. With its quantitative rigour and policy relevance, the book targets a multidisciplinary readership of academics in law, economics, and innovation policy, policymakers, regulators at European Union institutions, and industry professionals.

This book presents the first comprehensive introduction to Korean Buddhism through twenty-five key primary texts spanning the seventh to twenty-first centuries. All have been expertly translated by leading scholars in the field.

The volume introduction provides an overview of major themes that illuminates the diverse sources that follow. The texts, each prefaced by a brief introduction and list of recommended reading, delve into core Buddhist teachings, meditation practice, pilgrimage, intercultural exchanges, and interreligious conflict. Several touch on contemporary concerns, such as social engagement, colonialism, moral psychology, conflict resolution, and Buddhism's contribution to women's liberation and engagement with marginalized communities. Others present insights into the ways in which Buddhism becomes distinctly Korean and the effects of modernity and colonialism on Korean Buddhism, in addition to overarching concerns like the nature of reality and embodying truth in our lives.

Accessible and wide-ranging, Korean Buddhism: Selected Readings from Primary Texts serves not only students and those relatively new to the subject, but also scholars interested in the intersection of Korean religious thought and global philosophy. It is an essential resource for Korean religious studies, Buddhist studies, and spiritual exploration alike.

Philosophical Perspectives: Essays on Reality, Knowledge, and Morality is a collection of essays on foundational questions that shape our lives as rational creatures and moral agents. Promising a fresh alternative to the academic specialization and consequent fragmentation dominating current scholarship, the essays here offer philosophical breadth without sacrificing analytical depth. The result is a scholarly initiative demonstrating the richness of philosophy with the clarity of an analyst, the depth of a specialist, and the range of a generalist.

The collection has three integrated objectives: (1) to carve out a flexible yet structured pathway through interconnected domains of philosophical exploration, thereby providing a practical resource for researchers, instructors, and students; (2) to expose the unitary coherence of a philosophical trajectory spanning years of inquiry, with each essay contributing distinctive insights of its own while stitching together defining moments in the author's evolving thought; and (3) to consolidate a body of work that has until now been scattered across specialized journals and edited volumes, thus making it accessible even beyond well-resourced academic institutions.

This book will appeal to scholars and students alike interested in philosophy and the history of philosophy.

Observances, Feasts, and Scripts is the first monograph written in English to offer a comprehensive analysis of the varieties of zhai, a multifaceted term with deep historical and religious significance in Chinese Buddhism. Drawing on a wide array of sources-including canonical texts, apocryphal writings, hagiographies, and ritual documents-this book unveils zhai as a ritual complex encompassing temporary observances, communal feasts, and modes of interaction between the seen and unseen realms. These practices, rooted in both lay and monastic traditions, illustrate the intricate interplay between food, community, and ritual in Indian and Chinese Buddhism.

Part I traces how Indian Buddhist temporary observances were adapted, debated, and reimagined in the Chinese context. Part II explains the sponsored feast as a mechanism for lay-monastic interaction and merit-making. It also examines how Buddhists engaged with deities and spirit saints through remote invitations and ritual offerings. Part III focuses on "scripts" used for receiving the Eightfold Observance and conducting sponsored feasts, thus revealing their evolution from simple master-disciple interactions to complex communal events.

Observances, Feasts, and Scripts is an essential resource for scholars interested in food-related religious practices and the history of Buddhism. Through its meticulous examination of Chinese, Pali, Sanskrit, and Tibetan materials, the book offers a fresh perspective on Chinese Buddhism as an intercultural endeavor. It sheds light on relevant scholastic debates, the creation of apocrypha, translation strategies, and ritual innovations in medieval China. By moving beyond teleological frameworks such as Sinicization, it emphasizes the agency of cultural, doctrinal, and social factors in shaping these practices. Additionally, it engages with the cognitive dimensions of ritual and highlights ritual logic as a cross-cultural analytical lens.

The emergence of ChatGPT (a publicly available tool developed by Open AI), along with its underlying technology, generative pretrained transformer (GPT), is leading to a significant expansion of generative AI and is unleashing the possibilities for unimaginable transformations across different business domains. This new volume looks at how AI, and ChatGPT in particular, is revolutionizing the business of business, finance, economics, and marketing, exploring its transformative impact and considering its hands-on practical implications.

The chapters look at the broad implications in the different domains and provide illustrations and hands-on practice examples that help to evaluate the merits and demerits of ChatGPT, its inherent constraints, its distinctive traits, and its potential utility for researchers and scholars.

In finance, the book offers empirical insight into how an investor can employ ChatGPT and make money with AI and ChatGPT-themed equity investments. The authors also look at AI-enabled detection fraud tools that are revolutionizing security and resource protection of financial institutions, contributing to their integrity and overall financial stability. The book also shows how ChatGPT can provide enhanced information analysis for business startup valuation and profitability.

In the economic realm, ChatGPT can offer real-time insights into economic trends, such as forecasting crude oil prices, etc. The volume also looks at the ethical and legal concerns of ChatGPT in marketing communication, how ChatGPT can augment consumer behavior analysis, the use of chatbots and virtual assistants, and more. The book also explores public sentiment of Chat-GPT on platforms such as Twitter, how ChatGPT is changing management education, and more.

In business practices, the volume looks at AI integration for firms seeking to remain competitive in the ever-changing corporate world. It explores the applications of AI in human resources and how it is automating and augmenting workplace practices by streamlining many business aspects, including recruitment processes and employee engagement, to name two areas. Also considered is ChatGPT role in shaping AI policies and the regulatory landscape that underscores the importance of ethical and responsible use.

The applications and value of ChatGPT in marketing is also looked at, such as the ethical and legal concerns of Chat-GPT in marketing communication, using Chat-GPT to analyze customer behavior, using chatbots and virtual assistants for customer service and support services, and more.

Highlighting the excellent performance and summary analysis capabilities of ChatGPT, this book presents a compelling synthesis of theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence along with actual examples of successful integration of ChatGPT in marketing, economics, business, and finance.

The Persian Sufi Tradition and Shams al-Din Lahiji: Sufi Metamorphosis offers a groundbreaking study of the intellectual and spiritual transformations that reshaped Persian Sufism during the late medieval period in Iran.

Focusing on the pivotal era of the Timurid and Aq Qoyunlu dynasties (1447-1501), this book provides the first comprehensive analysis of Mafati? al-i?jaz fi Shar? Gulshan-i Raz, the masterful Sufi commentary by Shams al-Din Mu?ammad Lahiji. Through detailed textual and historical study, the work uncovers overlooked patterns of Sufi thought, revealing how Lahiji's synthesis of Ibn al-?Arabi's metaphysics within Persian literary traditions marked a significant metamorphosis in the development of theoretical Sufism. The book also situates Lahiji's life and teachings within their broader cultural and political context, showing how his contribution helped shape the trajectory of Persian Sufi literature and philosophy at a time of profound change.

This volume will appeal to scholars and students of Islamic mysticism, Persian literature, and medieval Islamic intellectual history, as well as readers interested in the evolution of Sufi thought and its philosophical underpinnings.

Qur'anic Abrogation After Muhammad: The Eternal Flux presents a bold new interpretive framework for reconciling classical Qur'anic injunctions with the ethical imperatives of the modern world.

Challenging the notion of Islamic legal rigidity, this book introduces the paradigm of "Contemporary Abrogation" - a reformist approach that emerges not in opposition to Islamic tradition, but from within its foundational hermeneutics. Drawing on Sunni and Shi?i jurisprudential sources, the study reveals how the classical understanding of the Qur?an's legal audience was historically limited to the Prophet's contemporaries, making modern application conditional and situational. By tracing the evolution of this legal reasoning and demonstrating its limitations in the contemporary era, the book argues for the ethical and juridical legitimacy of suspending certain scriptural rulings - particularly in areas such as criminal law, gender norms, and interfaith relations - without abandoning the classical tradition. The result is a powerful case for internal reform grounded in centuries of Islamic linguistic and legal scholarship.

This book will appeal to scholars and students of Islamic studies, Qur'anic interpretation, legal theory, and ethics, as well as to readers engaged in contemporary debates on religious reform, tradition, and modernity in the Muslim world.

Ali Altaf Mian demonstrates how attention to genre and embodiment illuminates the concepts and practices of the Islamic tradition-and how theologians, Sufi mystics, and ordinary Muslims respond to the incapacitating tribulations of creaturely existence in modernity.

Islamic Ethics and Spiritual Sovereignty is grounded in the vast textual archive of one of modern South Asia's foremost Muslim theologians and Sufis: Maulana Ashraf ?Ali Thanavi (1863-1943). Through a close examination of Maulana Thanavi's corpus of writings, Ali Altaf Mian offers new insights into tradition as a discursive and affective crucible of ethical transformation and spiritual sovereignty.

Philologically attuned and philosophically oriented, Islamic Ethics and Spiritual Sovereignty elucidates connections between traditions' forms of life and forms of language. Mian shows how intended and unconscious movements between genres in the life of tradition attend to the felt and perceived needs of the ensouled body at the dual scales of singularity and collectivity. Through a novel attention to textuality and psychic life, Mian elaborates a trans-genre reading practice to appreciate ritual law and ethical agency in the modern world. Insofar as modernity has been about individualism, the rise of literalism, and the disciplining of desire, religious traditions' capacity to respond to these hardships depends on renewing community, engaging textuality and the play of genres, and bracing the unknowability of desire.

Institutional or Ideological Pathways to Muslim Democracy? Comparative Evidence from Indonesia and Pakistan examines how religious actors within Muslim societies might become allies in democratization, offering a novel perspective on the dynamic interaction among religious institutions, political authority, and democratic ideals, through a comparison of Indonesia and Pakistan.

This book focuses on the interplay of ideological and institutional forces that influence the development of democratic political theology in the Muslim world, with a specific emphasis on how religious education and state policies shape these processes. Through an in-depth comparative analysis of Indonesia and Pakistan, it explores the impact of religious education institutions on the political thought of ulama and their engagement with democratic principles. It demonstrates that the transformation of religious thought and democratization prospects in Muslim societies are closely tied to reforms within both religious and national education systems. By addressing critical questions about the evolution of Sunni religious thought, the role of religious scholars, and the influence of state-religion dynamics, the book sheds light on how Islamic learning institutions both construct and reform hegemonic religious ideologies that can support or derail democratization. Combining theoretical insights from democratization and religious studies with empirical research, the book presents a nuanced argument: democratization in Muslim societies emerges not only from isolated ideological shifts, political conditions, or institutional changes but also through the continuous, complex interaction between them.

Offering insights into how Islamic education, political structures, and religious thought converge to impact the democratization pathways of Muslim-majority societies that have profound implications for policymakers and scholars, this multidisciplinary book will be of great interest to students and scholars of religion and politics, Islam, democratization, and comparative politics.

This book provides an overview of the role of cognition in L2 writing in order to equip educators with the knowledge and tools necessary to nurture more robust learning experiences in L2 writing instruction.

The book explores the current multifaceted terrain of cognition in L2 writing, tackling various dimensions, including the potential for learning during the writing and revision stages, the influence of cognitive processes and strategies during these stages, and the application of cognition-based research in instructed second language acquisition contexts. It offers educators theoretically driven and empirically supported insights to enrich writing instruction across diverse educational levels, contexts, proficiency levels, genres, and writing conditions.

This edited collection is a valuable resource for graduate students, scholars, and researchers seeking to deepen their understanding of cognition and its impact on second language writing.

This book is a recollection of McCartney's journey across 'Sanskritland,' which is the term coined to refer to the utopian landscape within which the 'Language of the Gods' is thought to be spoken.

There are three destinations on the author's journey. The first includes understanding how Sanskrit narratives are woven into yoga-inflected 'lifestyles,' forming biographies operationalised toward soft-power purposes. Next, the historical sociolinguistic contexts that have shaped Sanskritland are discussed, framed by application in sustainable development narratives. Finally, comprehensive demographic and linguistic analyses of Sanskrit across all of India's census enumerations (from 1872 to 2011) shows the 'shifting sands' of Sanskrit's 'speakers' and how the 'Sanskrit-speaking' village data show that most people who identify as speakers of Sanskrit live in urban areas and 'speak' Sanskrit as a third language. All of these together shed light on how, why, and where Sanskrit is spoken in the twenty-first century, the complex and dynamic historical and contemporary that have allowed this, and how both yoga and Sanskrit are instruments for development and soft-power projects.

This book is an essential read for scholars and students of linguistic anthropology, Indology and sustainable development.