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Few industries may be better suited to study the effects of financial distress on managerial decision making than the airline industry. Economic recessions, natural catastrophes, and terrorist attacks are just some of the factors that frequently take a particularly heavy toll on the airline industry. Thus, coping with and overcoming financial distress is a critical aspect of airline management.

Research analyzing competition and individual carriers' financial condition's influence on pricing behavior in the airline industry are presented in the first part of the book. The initial chapter by Manuel Hernandez, Anirban Sengupta, and Steven Wiggins directly tests whether competition creates a challenge for legacy carriers practicing nonlinear pricing such that passengers are charged different prices for the same flight without cost justification. The authors use transactions level data, which has the advantage of allowing an empirical examination of the effect of Southwest and other LCCs on both the level and structure of fares of legacy carriers. The analysis is performed by defining a menu of airline fare types according to restrictive ticket characteristics to then evaluate the competitive effects of both Southwest and other LCCs, including adjacent and potential competition from Southwest, on the relative pricing behavior of major carriers. Findings suggest that competition from Southwest has an important effect on both the level and fare structure of legacy carriers. In particular, direct and potential competition from Southwest both lower the fare per mile and compress the fare structure by decreasing the premia of the highest fares, including first-class tickets, over the lowest fares. Adjacent competition from Southwest and direct competition from other LCCs only seem to significantly affect the fare level.

The concept of entrepreneurship is not new. As a concept, it remains elusive, diverse and multi-faceted. Although there is an extensive body of research within the field, there is little consensus on what underpins entrepreneurship, and whether it should remain a distinct domain of study.

This chapter contributes to the literature on entrepreneurship in developing economies. The study seeks to uncover the challenges facing entrepreneurs in a developing economy using the formal retail sector in Nigeria as a case.

Entrepreneurship in the retail sector of a developing economy has not been given significant attention by researchers despite its uniqueness and dynamism. By adopting a qualitative approach involving semi-structured interviews of 51 respondents, the lived experiences of these entrepreneurs were understood. Given the challenges such entrepreneurs face in a developing economy, this study makes a contribution, as the challenges such retail entrepreneurs face namely, challenges within the industry, government policy inconsistencies and corruption, infrastructural deficit and technology deficit were identified. In practice, the findings of this study serve as a useful reference for practitioners and policy-makers of the challenges that need to be addressed for entrepreneurship to flourish in Nigeria.

Entrepreneurship is a prominent area of inquiry which is enriched by an ample literature base and challenged by definitional deficiencies. Over the years, multiple perspectives of entrepreneurship have emerged and a holistic approach to entrepreneurship has been proposed. This can facilitate the continued enlargement of the entrepreneurship field and allow for interdisciplinary research within the African region. This chapter contributes to the literature on entrepreneurship in developing economies by providing an extensive review of the various approaches that entrepreneurship has been conceptualised. Nine themes are explored: the great person, economic perspective, psychological perspective, sociological perspective, behavioural perspective, management, intrapreneurship, cognitive perspective and leadership perspective. This is followed by an examination of entrepreneurship as a process, as a new venture creation and as an art of opportunity recognition and exploitation. In the last section of this chapter, a clarion call is made for more African scholarship and research in the field of entrepreneurship.

In the past six months Jerry has been practicing a form of meditation called Centering Prayer. His original decision to attend a workshop on meditation was to deal with his increased sense of work overload, stress and burnout associated with the demands of his position as CEO of Healthcare. However, he learned that meditation can also be prayer, and he has found his practice very helpful. Although during Centering Prayer he is often aware of the distractions of his busy “business mind,” nonetheless he has noticed that during the day he is able to focus more effectively at work, is less irritable, and more willing to listen to others as a result of incorporating contemplative practice as part of each day. Even his wife and children have remarked he “seems more mellow these days.”

Films focusing on girls and women with anorexia have not found major producers and distributors in Hollywood, yet movies on subjects such as suicidality and bipolar disorder have been showcased. Eating disorders affect approximately 30 million people in the United States alone, and it has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, so this invisibility seems incongruous. The authors theorize that Hollywood avoids this subject because of ontological anxiety. Movie plots are schemas and young females are inextricably associated with fertility and futurity. An anorexic’s appearance contradicts and nullifies this symbolic role because anorexia often leads to infertility and death. Psychological studies and philosophical arguments claim that a belief in an afterlife and the regeneration of humankind create coherence and meaning for individuals. An anorexic’s appearance and behavior represent images of self-destruction – images that inflame the viewer’s unconscious and primordial fears about the annihilation of the species. By avoiding the topic of anorexia, Hollywood defends against its symbolic fears of mortality but diminishes the importance of the subject through its absence; it ignores its place in women’s social history and erases its place in American history. Because of Hollywood’s social reach and because greater visibility is correlated with a reduction in stigma, the authors conjecture that a film on this subject would inspire necessary attention to women’s roles, public mores, public policies, and the social good.