This book contains a selection of peer-reviewed papers presented at the International Conference on Operations Research (OR 2024), held at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, from September 3 to 6, 2024. Over 650 scientists from all over the world attended the OR 2024 in Munich. Three plenaries and nine semi-plenaries covered theoretical aspects of Operations Research, applications, and real-world practices. In addition, more than 500 presentations were held over three days in up to 23 parallel sessions.
Covering a wide range of topics, the book highlights cutting-edge research and practical applications across various domains of modern operations research. It places a special emphasis on the theme "Data, Learning, and Optimization", exploring how data-driven approaches, machine learning techniques, and optimization strategies are shaping decision-making processes and operational efficiency. The contributions in this book reflect the diversity and innovation in the field, making it a valuable resource for researchers, practitioners, and academics alike.

EQUIPS THE NEXT GENERATION OF MARKETERS WITH THE CRITICAL SKILLS AND ETHICAL MINDSET TO LEAD IN A TIME OF UNPRECEDENTED CHANGE

Since its first publication in 2009, Sustainability Marketing has set the standard for how marketers can respond to global environmental and social challenges. Now in its third edition, this award-winning text remains a definitive resource in the field-blending rigorous theory, diverse global examples, and actionable strategy.

Sustainability Marketing offers a comprehensive, structured, and deeply insightful guide to integrating social, environmental, and ethical concerns into modern marketing strategies, delivering both theoretical depth and practical tools to help students and practitioners alike navigate the evolving sustainability landscape. With a fresh emphasis on global challenges, digital transformation, and circular economy principles, the third edition reflects the latest research, real-world case studies, and pressing debates in the field.

Covering a wide range of key topics, from rethinking the sustainability marketing mix to navigating the ethical tensions of brand activism, the authors provide a compelling blueprint for building marketing strategies that drive innovation, strengthen brand trust, and contribute meaningfully to sustainable development.

Sustainability Marketing: A Global Perspective, Third Edition, is essential reading for advanced students exploring the future of responsible business, educators integrating sustainability into their curriculum, and marketing professionals looking to align strategy with purpose and contribute to a more sustainable and equitable world.

While territories have always faced multiple challenges, the addition of ecological transition to economic, cultural and social issues complicates matters considerably. Transition calls for new perspectives.

The reinvention of territories through solidarity appears to be a particularly relevant approach as it allows us to draw on the many innovations brought about by players in the social and solidarity economy (SSE). To illustrate this point, the book brings together case studies that bear witness to their astonishing ability to link the economy and local democracy to ensure the sustainability of their activities. These case studies illustrate a renewed vision of territorial development based on cooperation between the SSE, local authorities, entrepreneurs and citizens. Subsequently, they usher in a new way of thinking about public action, in which solidarity players undertake an important role, in co-constructing with local public players, systems capable of meeting the major challenges of our time.

A transformative perspective on animal afterlife bridging theological reflection and moral action

What happens to our beloved companion animals after death? Do they and other animals have a place in the divine plan?

A Heaven for Animals offers a groundbreaking theological rationale for the inclusion of animals in heaven, challenging conventional thinking about the role animals have in God's plan. Based on Biblical evidence and the doctrine of the Catholic Church, Christopher Steck reveals a radical vision of divine grace that extends far beyond human-centric perspectives, demonstrating how animals are intrinsically part of Christ's redemptive work.

Accessible to both theological scholars and thoughtful readers seeking deeper spiritual insights, this book provides a rigorous and compassionate framework for understanding the sacredness of all creation and the creatures within it. A Heaven for Animals invites readers to reimagine their ethical responsibilities, suggesting that our treatment of animals should strive to reflect an anticipatory vision of God's inclusive kingdom-a transformative perspective that bridges theological reflection and moral action.

A groundbreaking collection showcasing women's voices in Christian theology across time and tradition

The Women's Christian Theology Reader offers a transformative approach to theological study by centering the voices of women from across the centuries and around the world. Featuring primary sources from the second century to the present, this singular collection brings together writings from Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox traditions-presenting theology through poetry, sermons, hymns, and visual art as well as traditional theological prose.

Organized around core theological topics, the Reader introduces key doctrines while allowing women's perspectives to shape the discussion. Each chapter includes introductory reflections, commentary on selected excerpts, and discussion questions that encourage deeper engagement. Newly commissioned essays from contemporary women theologians provide insight into how these historical writings continue to shape and challenge Christian thought today.

The only theological reader that presents core Christian doctrines exclusively through the writings of women, The Women's Christian Theology Reader:

• Features writings from Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox traditions, highlighting the broad range of women's theological perspectives.
• Concludes each chapter with contemporary essays that connect historical voices to modern theological discourse.
• Incorporates perspectives from feminist, womanist, and other theological frameworks while respecting historical contexts.
• Expands the theological canon by including lesser-known but significant women theologians.

Thoughtfully designed as both a standalone textbook and a supplementary resource, the Women's Christian Theology Reader is ideal for undergraduate and graduate courses in Christian theology, church history, or women in the Christian tradition within degree programs in theology, religious studies, and divinity. It is also a must-have for general readers seeking to understand theology through a wider and more generous lens-one that acknowledges the contributions of women as integral to the Christian tradition.

This handbook offers a comprehensive overview of the theories, methods and practices in evaluating health services. Written by international experts and practitioners in the field, it is an essential resource for anyone who plans or conducts evaluations of health care organisations, as well as for those who want to learn more about the strengths and limitations of specific evaluation techniques and methods.

The individual chapters summarise the latest evidence and good practice of established, tried and tested evaluation approaches as well as novel and innovative evaluation techniques in clinical and health organisational settings. The handbook comprises chapters on a wide range of topics such as digital technologies, leadership in health services, trauma-informed evaluation, harm reduction in evaluation, learning health systems and collective impact design. Each chapter provides a state-of-the-art summary of the current evaluation practice together with up-to-date references to existing published research.

"This is a ground-breaking and highly significant book, providing unique and comprehensive insights into the theory and practice of health services evaluation. It is a vital resource for all those who commission, undertake, and use evaluation to produce reliable and high-quality evidence of the efficacy and impact of health services."
Professor Judith Smith, Co-Director, National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) BRACE Rapid Evaluation Centre, University of Birmingham, UK

Moving averages of prices serve as the primary tool for tracking trends in financial markets, filtering out noise, and highlighting trend directions. With a plethora of moving averages and trend-following rules at their disposal, traders often find themselves overwhelmed by the sheer variety of choices. Moreover, traders persistently devise new forms of exotic moving averages, each purportedly offering improved responsiveness and smoothness compared to its predecessors. While it is relatively straightforward to visually compare the responsiveness of two different moving averages, assessing their smoothing properties proves to be more challenging. Comparisons made through visual inspection are inherently subjective and prone to biases. A pressing need exists for quantitative metrics to objectively assess the properties of moving averages and their associated trend-following rules.

In this book, the authors propose a quantitative assessment of the properties of trend-following rules based on moving averages. They argue that there are three primary properties of trend-following rules: responsiveness, smoothness, and accuracy. Given the prevalent claims that each exotic moving average offers superior responsiveness and smoothness compared to prior versions, the book provides a means to verify the accuracy of these assertions. It offers systematic and comprehensive coverage of various types of moving averages and the trend-following rules based on moving averages, and focuses on identifying the most crucial properties of trend-following rules and proposing quantitative metrics for their evaluation.

Despite the plethora of books and academic publications, contemporary trend-following with moving averages remains more of an art than a science. This book injects scientific principles into the practice of trend-following, offering invaluable, distinct, and objective insights tailored for traders and investment professionals involved in trend-following investing alongside academics and students within economic and finance departments.

This book highlights how AI agents and Large Language Models (LLMs) are set to revolutionize the finance and trading sectors in unprecedented ways. These technologies bring a new level of sophistication to data analysis and decision-making, enabling real-time processing of vast and complex datasets with unparalleled accuracy and speed. AI agents, equipped with advanced machine learning algorithms, can identify patterns and predict market trends with a level of precision that may soon surpass human capabilities. LLMs, on the other hand, facilitate the interpretation and synthesis of unstructured data, such as financial news, reports, and social media sentiments, providing deeper insights and more informed trading strategies. This convergence of AI and LLM technology not only enhances the efficiency and profitability of trading operations but also introduces a paradigm shift in risk management, compliance, and personalized financial services. As these technologies continue to evolve, they promise to democratize access to sophisticated trading tools and insights, leveling the playing field for individual traders and smaller financial institutions while driving innovation and growth across the entire financial ecosystem.

Many of the major international and intrastate crises and conflicts, but also the threat to democratic principles, are driven by belief systems and ideologies. They fuel political polarization, which is particularly evident in the battleground of social media. Nevertheless, we hardly pay attention to ideologies, their narratives, functions and organizations in economic theory today. Ideologies as "non-rational beliefs" seem incompatible with rationality in economic models.

Therefore, the book examines the role of ideologies and belief systems in individual decision-making behavior from an economic and rational perspective. Due to the fact that people have incomplete information, belief systems and ideologies fulfill a number of important functions. While ideologies themselves serve psychological needs, they are used as a cognitive framework for rational decision-making once they have been adopted through a Bayesian learning process. They influence decisions in a wide range of areas, from consumption and work to politics. This is where the role of ideological organizations becomes important, because they determine the ideological direction of the narratives and their dissemination.

Thus, ideologies give a normative direction, for better or for worse. The "quality" of ideological leadership can be evaluated normatively on the basis of principles such as individual sovereignty and human dignity. A democratic discourse requires an information and communication system that enables an evaluation of precisely these ideologies, free from resource and information power.

FinTech companies digitize financial products by leveraging data from existing offerings, reinterpreting financial products, and collaborating with banks, financial institutions, and stakeholders. This book examines the lifecycle of FinTech companies and discusses business models and pricing strategies. This book explores how FinTech is reshaping the finance industry by combining finance, technology, and regulation. It discusses, through case studies, payment services, payment card schemes, digital wallets, digital banks, challenger banks, neobanks, BNPL, SuperApps, neobrokers, EMI, RTO and A2A. By understanding these models and implementing effective strategies, FinTech companies can thrive in a rapidly evolving industry landscape.

Recent decades have witnessed protests that are unlike many of the social movements of previous centuries. They are not led by any party, union or leader, but by ordinary people. Their deep roots are existential rather than material.

These protests are not driven by class consciousness or ideology but by the sense that people have been abandoned, stripped of their rights and shunted out to the peripheries of social and economic life. This is the movement of the dispossessed - of a mass of ordinary people who have gained a will of their own and are no longer content to comply with the directives of elites who want to tell them how to live and behave. The high-profile political events of recent years - Brexit, the election of Trump, the rise of right-wing parties - are merely surface tremors of a much deeper tectonic shift caused by the slow displacement of a forgotten continent.

In this book Christophe Guilluy uncovers this forgotten continent of the dispossessed and shows how ordinary people are rising up and responding to their programmed disappearance by forging an alternative to a doomed model.

Youth workers are essential to the fabric of society. Schools, families, and many of our social institutions rely heavily on their work, yet their contributions often go unrecognized. Laboring in the Shadows explores the critical role of Black youth workers, especially in the lives of vulnerable youth, and the challenges they face in their unstable, underappreciated position.

Bianca J. Baldridge situates the experiences of Black youth workers within the broader context of anti-Blackness and historical inequities. Drawing on rich interview data from across the United States, Baldridge offers a nuanced analysis of how the precarity of this work-marked by high turnover rates, low wages, and housing insecurity-compounds the challenges these workers face. She highlights how Black youth workers resist these structural harms by adopting and implementing innovative pedagogical practices alongside practices of "freedom dreaming" and joy as forms of resistance and pathways to agency for youth despite their precarious roles.

Positioning Black youth workers within a broader network of informal care workers in the United States, Baldridge underscores the significance, fragility, precarity, and power of these dedicated professionals, their essential work, and the possibilities they create for youth.

A radical reframing of the current global food system to address injustices and existential threats

The global food system stands at a critical juncture. Food production is among the largest causes of global environmental change and accelerating climate change. The resulting loss of biodiversity and the harmful effects on water and land use have put human life at risk. To date, proposed solutions have downplayed the stakes and ignored the complex social justice and ecological dimensions of these challenges.

Feeding the Future offers a radical reframing of how humanity can address the harmful effects and injustices of the current global food system. Rather than pursuing an impossible transformation of the entire system, Nicole Negowetti reveals how communities worldwide are transcending it through innovative, place-based solutions. Through vivid storytelling and rigorous analysis, she challenges conventional approaches to solving food system problems that are being advanced by agribusiness, the food industry, policymakers, and many nongovernmental organizations. She shares the stories of visionary changemakers and communities around the world that are applying innovative, unique strategies to bring depleted agricultural lands back to life, revitalize urban neighborhoods, establish new economic models, and create thriving regional food systems.

For policymakers, activists, scholars, and anyone concerned about the connections between food systems, people's health, and the planet's fate, Feeding the Future offers practical pathways forward. By showing how local communities are already building successful alternatives to industrial agriculture, Negowetti offers a compelling blueprint for transforming the existing global food system.

Making Down Syndrome: Motherhood and Kinship Futures in Urban Jordan draws on ethnographic research conducted primarily in Jordan's capital city of Amman to explore how the label and identity of Down syndrome is gaining increasing cohesiveness. Focused on the experiences of mothers, who serve as an entry point for understanding broader family dynamics and choices, the book argues that practices and ideologies of care play a central role in making Down syndrome's embodied and political realities. They do so through the momentum of kinship futures, or futures imagined through the prism of kinship roles and relations, which shape how families organize and distribute care between and beyond kinship networks and under conditions of economic and political uncertainty. By approaching everyday life in Jordan through the lens of disability, Making Down Syndrome offers new insights into how people navigate structures of family, gender, power, inequality, and precarity, all while trying to maintain hope for and cultivate better futures.

This book provides a comprehensive exploration of inclusive, sustainable development, emphasizing the critical need to integrate the perspectives and needs of people with disabilities and marginalized communities into the global sustainability transition to a sustainable future. Through highlighting the intersectionality of identity and the unique challenges faced by these groups, the book addresses a pressing issue: the often-overlooked barriers that hinder their full participation in sustainable transitions. Organized into three parts, the book first contextualizes the relationship between sustainability and inclusion. It delves into the historical and theoretical frameworks that shape our understanding of marginalization, exploring how disability intersects with various social identities. This foundation sets the stage for an in-depth analysis of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the ways in which they can be made more inclusive, ensuring that no one is left behind. The second part identifies and examines the myriad barriers to inclusion within sustainable practices. It addresses structural, socioeconomic, and cultural obstacles that perpetuate exclusion while also critiquing existing policy frameworks for their limitations in addressing the needs of marginalized populations. Through case studies, the book highlights successful initiatives and innovative practices that promote accessibility and equity, mainly through the use of assistive technologies and community engagement. In the final section, the book outlines actionable strategies for fostering inclusive, sustainable development. It emphasizes the importance of community engagement, participatory decision-making, and the empowerment of marginalized voices. Additionally, it discusses metrics for monitoring and evaluating the impact of sustainability initiatives on people with disabilities, providing a framework for accountability and continuous improvement.

This book aims to bridge the gap between sustainability and social justice, offering a roadmap for stakeholders, policymakers, and practitioners committed to creating a more inclusive world. This book targets academics, policymakers, non-profit societies, and activists working at the intersection of sustainability and social equity and serves as a vital resource for those seeking to understand and promote inclusive practices in the global sustainable transition.