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Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Marketing - value proposition and value delivery, switching cost, customer acquisition and retention, positioning, pricing, distribution and retailing, role of trust and transparency to build sustainable relationship in B2B context, and efficient service delivery.

Undergraduate and graduate students in marketing, business administration, strategy, retailing, B2B marketing, services marketing and general management courses. Also, it can be used for executive management/training programmes.

The case focuses on an existing scenario of a natural gas business in Gujarat, India, in order to provide understanding of marketing challenges, especially in the B2B context, faced by organisations in this evolving business environment. The case examines the strategies and policies implemented by the company and their impact on the customer. The case presents reactions and responses from the concerned customers. The case illustrates the criticalness of understanding customer expectations and designing and delivering customer centric strategies to sustain market leadership in an evolving and competitive market.

The case study enables the students to understand and analyse: the current business environment; the important factors impacting natural gas business; economic analysis of energy; opportunity and challenges for doing cleaner and greener business; role of cleaner fuel to reduce carbon footprint; and carbon credit impacting top line and bottom line of a customer. The case provides students the opportunity to understand and analyse the importance of switching costs to acquire a new customer; and devising and implementing marketing strategies to expand customer base and enter into new territories.

Teaching notes.

The technological revolution is fundamentally changing our lifestyle, work, and communication. There is still no accurate information about the future of this great transformation, but one thing is quite clear: the speed of the transformations in terms of scale and complexity, like a storm, will go through all aspects of a society's life and change all the current paradigms. One of the expectations from the fourth industrial revolution will be the expansion of smart cities in accordance with sustainable development criteria. In order for a city to be truly smart and innovative, city officials must pay attention to elements such as renewable and clean energy such as the internet of things, smart networks, smart parking, and smart transportation. In another sense, there must be a balance between economy, environment, and society in order to build a strong, sustainable, and flexible smart city that will survive the test of time. Of course, based on the 7PS model, the dimensions of culture and education are very important and fundamental for high sustainability. Researchers and those involved in the implementation of smart cities have explained the main indicators to identify these cities, which include some of the following items: For example, smart building, environmental protection, smart garbage collection, digitization of all government affairs and administrative work, widespread use of smartphones and electronic devices, complete, convenient, and universal access to the internet, car sharing service and online taxi. Other important indicators include the intelligentization of the traffic system and urban planning, citizen participation, economic ecosystem, optimization in electricity, water and energy consumption, development of electric and electric public transportation fleet, quality control and management, and reduction of air pollution. In this chapter, the theory of i-Sustainability Plus and i-Comprehensive Strategic Urban Plan is introduced as the beating heart of the ubiquitous blue-green smart city design. In such urban areas, it is all about the combination of real life, virtual reality, and in addition the future of clean technologies. In general, it can be said that sustainable smart cities are a solution to combat the challenges of urbanization.

The future scenario presented in this article offers a view of true facilities‐based competition in 2010. By this date, the continued investment in infrastructure development had ensured an increased rate in bandwidth provision and gradual extension of broadband service to the home across the USA, while end point technologies and conduits to the desktop proliferated. This scenario envisions two types of entrants: new forward‐thinking green‐field entrepreneurs and facilities owners who had previously not been involved in the communications provision (eg gas, water, electrical utilities). The main conclusion of the article is a recognition that competition requires open standards and interoperability. Facilities‐based competition requires clearly defined interface points where new competitors can connect customers. In this scenario two physical points of interconnection (at the curb and at the IXC/IAP) are envisioned. A policy prediction which is embedded in the scenario as an enabler of open interconnection is that economic necessity spurs democratic leaders to shorten the extension of copyright, and declare overly broad software patents void. An understated assumption is that political and economic leaders address the conflicts between information as property, as privacy (private information), and as speech (political information) in a timely and balanced manner. Luckily only the provision of interconnection is necessary for the scenario to be feasible. The well‐noted reality that the information industry will not approach its potential until issues of security, reliability and privacy are adequately addressed underlies this scenario. Some battles will remain in 2010: concepts of ownership and autonomy with respect to information adequate to the information revolution are being challenged by the genetics revolution.

National Olympic Committees (NOCs) in small states operate in a unique market (e.g. small population, confined market and limited private sector) that brings challenges in securing sponsors and funding athletes. Whereas more than a quarter of International Olympic Committee (IOC)-recognized NOCs represent small states, not much is known about the sponsorship landscape in the market. This study explores the importance and challenges of NOC sponsorship in small states, with a focus on the Caribbean region.

Interviews were conducted with representatives from NOCs in Caribbean small states. Textual analyses were conducted with Leximancer to identify key themes on the importance and challenges of NOC sponsorship.

Athletes, funding and community were identified as key themes for the importance of NOC sponsorship. Olympic Movement, time, priority, resources and overcome were themes for sponsorship challenges. Compared to existing sponsorship knowledge driven from developed economies, known determinants for the sponsor's decision-making (e.g. interest in sport, competitor) were found to affect NOC sponsorship in Caribbean small states, but in distinctive ways. Particularly, the lacking appreciation of Olympic values and sport within society, resource constraints (e.g. volunteer-based and operating “within reality”) and competition against member federations and government were highlighted as unique situations/challenges faced in the market.

This study is one of the first to explore NOC sponsorship in the important, yet overlooked, market of Caribbean small states. Theoretical insights on how existing sponsorship knowledge applies to and practical implications for securing NOC sponsorship in the marginalized market are provided.

Capacity building in fragile and post‐conflict situations is specially challenging for policy makers in that it represents a situation that needs to be carefully managed. Understanding the dynamic link between capacity building and conflict requires understanding the nature and determinants of conflicts, their duration, intensity and the modalities for their cessation and post‐conflict reconstruction. This study attempted to do that from systemic or theoretical perspective. A major common theme that runs across the literature is that post‐conflict recovery and sustainable development and the associated capacity building exercise in Africa need to have the following four feature: (1) first a broad development planning framework with a fairly long‐time horizon and an overarching objective of poverty reduction; (2) second, social policy‐making in such countries is expected to be distinct from non‐conflict countries. This signals the need to articulate country specific policies and (3) third, intervention in such states requires a high volume of aid flows and (4) forth it need to be preceded by deeper understanding of African societies by donors. This study by outlining such basic issues from theoretical perspective resorted to an outline of three core areas of capacity building that are needed in post‐conflict and fragile states: capacity building to address immediate needs of post‐conflict states, capacity building to address the core economic and political causes of conflict, as well as, capacity building to address issues of finance and financial sector reconstruction. Each of these aspects is discussed in detail in the study. The study underscores the need to view and understand capacity building exercise as part and parcel of a broad developmental problem which requires broader developmental solutions.

In recent years, sustainability considerations in the real estate sector have moved from being a niche market phenomenon to a mainstream trend. The movement has been accompanied by a shift in the industry’s perception of sustainable buildings. Traditional cost-saving goals are now complemented by a growing interest in the potential for sustainable buildings to tackle broader economic and social sustainability challenges as well as issues related to health and well-being. The real estate industry is increasingly expected to adapt its strategies to incorporate new and more stringent environmental and urban development requirements, to cater to shifting demographics, and to utilize new advancements in construction processes and materials. This chapter explores recent research on sustainable real estate and highlights some of the newest trends in the market. The chapter then examines how policy and technological advancements can enable real estate developers to tackle environmental, social, and economic sustainability challenges. This will be exemplified through a focus on carbon taxation and timber construction. Based on these case studies, the chapter illustrates how today’s sustainable real estate sector – marked by its move beyond a focus on cost savings – requires for building practices to be strongly rooted in global, sustainable development policies.

This study aims to review and analyze sustainable business practices prevailing in different emerging countries in Asia. It also identifies the challenges faced by these countries in the implementation of sustainable practices.

To achieve the objectives of the study and answer the key research questions, systematic literature review method was chosen. A total of 75 papers were chosen and reviewed for this study.

Organizations in many emerging Asian countries are concerned about environmental aspects and have started investing in sustainable business practices. Yet they face many challenges during the implementation, which vary across countries.

This study helps in understanding the sustainable practices that are currently being used in Asia and this understanding would help organizations and policy makers formulate new practices or improve upon existing ones for better outcomes. As the study was limited to a few representative countries in Asia, and a limited number of sectors, future research may build upon it by including more countries and sectors and perform empirical tests for comprehensive understanding of the topic under discussion.

With an idea of what works in various Asian countries, as garnered from this paper, organizations can adopt sustainable practices suited to them, while also training employees and all stakeholders on the implementation of these practices.

A knowledge of the challenges in each country to sustainable practice implementation, identified from this paper, can help policymakers frame and implement policies that can overcome the shortcomings of the existing systems.

This paper is a pioneer in the area of sustainable business practices in Asia and is a one-stop source to understand current trends and challenges in the Asian context.

Libraries in Greece are mostly financed by public sources, with private funding covering only a very small proportion of their budget. The deteriorating, slowly growing economic environment in Greece places additional pressure on the already understaffed and underfinanced public libraries. This paper aims at demonstrating that the tough economic conditions may provide a setting for innovation and quality enhancement which may lead in turn to a corresponding growth in the library sector.

A qualitative analysis is conducted in order to identify the potential of a novel management response model as a pathway for library survival within the fierce economic crisis.

Specific suggestions are made for the management of public libraries, future policies and trends in the lines of learning/education/training services; social/economic development services; electronic government and citizen participation in public affairs services; cultural identity and social cohesion services; and social inclusion services.

It is ascertained that public libraries in Greece may have an opportunity for change and innovation as a result of the current economic situation. Furthermore, it is believed that active involvement, quality, innovation and self‐finance can serve as important tools for the development of public libraries and their positive contribution and productive role into the Greek socioeconomic environment.

This is the only available work providing an overall management approach for public libraries within a current economic crisis such as the one in Greece.

Due to high demand for international talents and skilful workforces, many countries around the world, especially the ageing populations are now looking for new ways and strategies to attract more international talent. Drawing on push-pull factor theory, integrated with theory of reasoned action (TRA), this research examines international students' intention to stay or to leave the host country after completion of the students' studies.

A conceptual model has been proposed and evaluated aimed at understanding the factors that influence the decision-making of international students studying in Finland. Data were collected from a sample of 292 international students in Finland and structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to analyse the data and examine the relationships between various constructs in the model.

The SEM results show that several factors influence students' decision to stay or leave the host country after graduation. Aspects related to host country, institutional and economic factors and social influence (norms) directly impact students' attitude towards staying. In addition, attitude towards staying not only has a direct impact on the intention to stay, but also mediates the relationship between different pulling factors and students' intention to stay in the host country. Moreover, challenges and barriers (such as local language, challenge of finding employment and challenge of assimilating into the community or making friends) have a negative impact on the decision to stay in the host country.

This study uses push-pull theory in the Finnish context, contributing to the growing body of literature on international education policies and practices. The findings highlight the need for a more holistic approach to supporting international students, one that considers the students' unique needs and experiences in the host country and provides the students with the necessary resources and support to succeed.