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“First principles” of international business (IB) thinking should be applied systematically when assessing the functioning of internationally operating firms. The most important first principle is that entrepreneurially oriented firms seek to create, deliver and capture economic value through cross-border linkages. Such linkages invariably require complementary resources from a variety of parties with idiosyncratic vulnerabilities to be meshed. Starting from first principles allows bringing to light evidence-based insight. For instance, most companies are not global and even the world’s largest firms rarely change the location of key strategic functions. International new ventures (INVs), emerging economy multinational enterprises (MNEs) and family firms face unique vulnerabilities but also command resources that can be used to create value across borders. The quest for “optimal” international diversification appears to be a futile academic exercise, and in emerging economies with institutional voids, relational networks – and more broadly, informal institutions – are unlikely to function as scalable substitutes for formal institutions. In global value chains (GVCs), many lead firms and their partners have been able to craft governance mechanisms that reduce bounded rationality and bounded reliability challenges, and it is also critical for them to use governance as a tool to create entrepreneurial space. Finally, many of the world’s largest companies have been on successful trajectories toward reducing their climate change footprint for a few decades. But these firm-specific trajectories are fraught with challenges and cannot just be imposed via unilateral, macro-level targets decided upon by individuals and institutions lacking a clear understanding of innovation and capital expenditure processes in business.

This chapter investigates whether, and if so, how particular firms in a transition economy are involved in bribery. Built on pressure theories, we explain how the direct effects of firm characteristics and contextual characteristics determine firm bribery behavior. Entrepreneurs make choices based on perceptions of a specific pressure due to organizational characteristics (internal pressures) or due to context (external pressures). The relationship between firm characteristics, context, and bribery was estimated using unique data from a survey of 606 Vietnamese entrepreneurs. We controlled for various entrepreneurial, organizational, and industrial characteristics. The exploratory findings support firm attributes hypotheses, which is a negative relationship between firm size and bribery and a nonmonotonic U-shaped relationship between firm age and bribery. Besides, the effects of context on bribery are also found. Specifically, the result supports a positive relationship between competition and bribery and a negative relationship between the quality of the government and bribery.

In our studies of daily newspapers and news websites in small and medium-sized cities in Brazil, we view these enterprises as firms endowed with specific strengths and weaknesses reflecting the characteristics of the localities in which they operate. In addition, we use references from urban geography and the industrial economy to investigate their structure, conduct, and performance. This chapter presents our observations about the structure of these firms and the journalistic business in non-metropolitan cities of the State of Rio de Janeiro. The results point to greater consolidation of newspapers, despite their traditional way of operating; the low performance of news websites and their restricted source of revenue; and the existence of a potential regional market little explored by these media.

In today's advanced economy, there is a broader presence of information revolution, such as artificial intelligence (AI). AI primarily drives modern banking, leading to innovative banking channels, services and solutions disruptions. Thus, this chapter intends to determine AI's place in contemporary banking and stock market trading.

Stock market forecasting is hampered by the inherently noisy environments and significant volatility surrounding market trends. There needs to be more research on the mantle of AI in revolutionising banking and stock market trading. Attempting to bridge this gap, the present research study looks at the function of AI in banking and stock market trading.

The researchers have synthesised the literature pool. They undertook a systematic review and meta-synthesis method by identifying the major themes and a systematic literature review aided in the critical analysis, synthesis and mapping of the body of existing material.

The study's conclusions demonstrated the efficacy of AI, which has played a robust role in banking and finance by reducing risk and operational costs, enabling better customer experience, improving regulatory complaints and fraud detection and improving credit and loan decisions. AI has revolutionised stock market trading by forecasting future prices or trends in financial assets, optimising financial portfolios and analysing news or social media comments on the assets or firms.

AI's debut in banking and finance has brought sea changes in banking and stock market trading. AI in the banking industry and capital market can provide timely and apt information to its customers and customise the products as per their requirements.

This chapter of the book seeks to use famous mathematical functions (statistical distribution functions) in evaluating and analyzing supply chain network data related to supply chain management (SCM) elements in organizations. In other words, the main purpose of this chapter is to find the best-fitted statistical distribution functions for SCM data. Explaining how to best fit the statistical distribution function along with the explanation of all possible aspects of a function for selected components of SCM from this chapter will make a significant attraction for production and services experts who will lead their organization to the path of competitive excellence. The main core of the chapter is the reliability values related to the reliability function calculated by the relevant chart and extracting other information based on other aspects of statistical distribution functions such as probability density, cumulative distribution, and failure function. This chapter of the book will turn readers into professional users of statistical distribution functions in mathematics for analyzing supply chain element data.

This chapter is born out of concern about the perception of the physical and symbolic place of the live-in housekeeper, both in socioeconomic, and historical terms, as well as the architectural and social dynamics of the home. An intersectional and teleological analysis of the intrinsic devaluation of paid social reproduction work is carried out, based mainly on gender, race, and class inequalities. Ultimately, the chapter tries to locate the position in which the maid finds herself in the domestic environment, both in family relationships and in the symbolism inherent to the concept of the maid’s room. Based on sociological, philosophical, and anthropological analysis, the ambiguous place of domestic workers becomes clearer, promoting a reflection on the very concept of family and household. Thus, the chapter proposes to achieve a hermeneutic dive into the experience of this working class, revealing a hierarchical system beyond the socioeconomic, but above all, of their subjectivities.

The amount of current assets and the structure of their financing within working capital management define the level of risk, liquidity and profitability of any company. This chapter identifies the type of working capital investment and financing policies and reveals their influence on the financial performance of Czech firms.

The type of investment policy was defined, based on the structure of current assets and the working capital-to-sales ratio, followed by the share of different liabilities in assets, used to determine the financing policy. The Orbis database provided the chapter with indexes of manufacturing, agricultural, construction and trade companies for the period of 2012–2021.

The results obtained revealed the liquidity and financial independence of all selected industries. Flexible investment and conservative financing policies in agriculture were accompanied by low profitability. The decrease of the working capital-to-sales ratio and the attraction of the current debts for assets financing provided a higher return on assets in the manufacturing, agricultural and trade sectors.

International business research is showing an increasing interest in the link between international business and human rights. Despite extensive coverage of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability, the analysis and discussion of why multinational corporations include human rights in corporate reporting is still in its early stages. This chapter develops an analytical framework on corporate human rights reporting, with special emphasis on international business. The conceptual part of the framework draws on legitimacy theory, stakeholder theory and signalling theory. The analytical part distinguishes between factors inside the corporation and the external environment of business organisations operating internationally.