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This study aims to explore ways to enhance competitiveness of commercial lighting industry because of the growing digitally connected stakeholder community. Positive responses from stakeholders to recurring business interactions help build trust and formation of a community; value chains being one form of such trusted community. Because of the increasing trust, the effort to search right value chain partners diminishes, business interactions become less formal and transaction costs are reduced, thus increasing the competitiveness.

In this research, a cross-sectional study of commercial lighting industry domain in Australia was carried out, focusing on two states: New South Wales and Victoria. Based on the findings, an approach and a supporting platform to enhance competitiveness of commercial lighting industry were synthesized.

Based on the findings from the study, formation of such value chains, namely, “Entrusted Circles” and its two types of formations, fully and partial, were observed. Their further growth was hindered by high transaction costs. To reduce this transaction cost, this paper proposes a platform to create dynamic value chains, among stakeholders of commercial lighting industry, making use of growing digital connectivity leading toward agile formation of Entrusted Circles to enhance competitiveness.

This study focuses on the commercial lighting industry in Australia, which is not tested in any other domain to investigate its wider applicability. However, it is conceptually applicable to be used in industries with compliance and standard procedures.

This paper shows how to identify Entrusted Circles and build, support and sustain such relationships among value chain partners to successfully conduct business transactions in a dynamic value chain.

The purpose of this monograph is to present the first English translation of a unique French colonial report on women living under colonial rule in West Africa.

The issue begins with a discussion of the contribution this report makes to the history of social development policy in Africa, and how it serves the on‐going critique of colonisation. This is followed by the English translation of the original report held in the National Archives of Senegal. The translation is accompanied by explanatory notes, translator’s comments, a glossary of African and technical terms, and a bibliography.

The discussion highlights contemporary social development policies and practices which featured in identical or similar forms in French colonial social policy.

As the report demonstrates, access to basic education and improving maternal/infant health care have dominated the social development agenda for women in sub‐Saharan Africa for over a century, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future in the Millennium Development Goals which define the international community’s agenda for social development to 2015. The parallels between colonial and post‐colonial social policies in Africa raise questions about the philosophical and cultural foundations of contemporary social development policy in Africa and the direction policy is following in the 21st century.

Though the discussion adopts a consciously postcolonial perspective, the report that follows presents a consciously colonial view of the “Other”. Given the parallels identified here between contemporary and colonial policy‐making, this can only add to the value of the document in exploring the values that underpin contemporary social development practice.

Large companies are the dominant forms of wealth creation in society today. As well as providing jobs and export income, they are key influences on social cohesion. We ignore how companies are run at a peril to us all. However, today investors are increasingly concerned about the ethical behaviour of those who run companies. Regular disclosures that directors and executives have behaved unethically reflect badly on the corporate sector as a vehicle for investor funds. By comparison, Australian company directors are increasingly stating that there is already too much concentration on the mechanisms of corporate governance, indicating that they will happily tick the boxes, but do little more.

In the latter part of the 20th century, companies discovered mission. The key elements of any mission must include the major corporate participants – investors, suppliers, customers, employees and society. The role of management is to develop a structure that can operationalise the mission. Such an approach puts ethics – how we treat other people – at the core of a company's activities. Trust is a critical element in how the interests of these stakeholders are taken up in decision-making and embedded in strategy, plans and action on the ground.

In the aftermath of significant corporate collapses in the 1980s and then again at the start of this century, companies also discovered corporate governance. According to the much referenced Cadbury Committee in the U.K., corporate governance is the system by which companies are directed and controlled, i.e., a the system of checks and balances for effective resolution of conflicts and control over the exercise of managerial power.

This paper suggests that an alternative “professional” approach to governance is likely to be more effective. Today, the role of management is to “add value” and contribute to the “good” of society. This good is the collective set of stakeholder interests entrusted to the governing board to look after. A governance model that integrates the human good with the operations of ‘mind’ in terms of learning and leadership highlights eight distinctive “products,” the eighth being valued products and by-products delivered to each stakeholder. The model is structured around the person's capacity to ask four categories of questions, including those that provide orientation and direction.

The model is used to examine a contemporary governance issue experienced by the board of directors at the National Australia Bank Limited.

The equation of unified knowledge says that S = f (A,P) which means that the practical solution to a given problem is a function of the existing, empirical, actual realities and the future, potential, best possible conditions of general stable equilibrium which both pure and practical reason, exhaustive in the Kantian sense, show as being within the realm of potential realities beyond any doubt. The first classical revolution in economic thinking, included in factor “P” of the equation, conceived the economic and financial problems in terms of a model of ideal conditions of stable equilibrium but neglected the full consideration of the existing, actual conditions. That is the main reason why, in the end, it failed. The second modern revolution, included in factor “A” of the equation, conceived the economic and financial problems in terms of the existing, actual conditions, usually in disequilibrium or unstable equilibrium (in case of stagnation) and neglected the sense of right direction expressed in factor “P” or the realization of general, stable equilibrium. That is the main reason why the modern revolution failed in the past and is failing in front of our eyes in the present. The equation of unified knowledge, perceived as a sui generis synthesis between classical and modern thinking has been applied rigorously and systematically in writing the enclosed American‐British economic, monetary, financial and social stabilization plans. In the final analysis, a new economic philosophy, based on a synthesis between classical and modern thinking, called here the new economics of unified knowledge, is applied to solve the malaise of the twentieth century which resulted from a confusion between thinking in terms of stable equilibrium on the one hand and disequilibrium or unstable equilibrium on the other.

This study aims to explore the evolution of corporate governance through a 100-year-old Italian Barilla pasta family business from its founding to 1971. The study builds on prior research which has applied the three-circle model of family business systems in a historic context.

Using legal records, five phases in the history of Barilla are noted. Annual reports and other sources have allowed for some more insights into business events and developments. Then, drawing on the three-circle model of family business, the corporate governance regime is mapped to the model and the family actors.

The findings here support extant literature in that the systems in the three-circle model are found to overlap more in a historic setting. Challenges with the three-circle model are also noted, specifically, when corporate governance is considered across a century of an organisation’s history.

This study supports prior use of three-circle model of a family business in an historic context, providing further evidence the model is not static over time. Contrary to the original three-circle model, this study suggests that family actors can potentially occupy more than one location in the model if the non-human actor of corporate governance and its effect on human actors is also considered.

Alain Bouchard was born in 1949. He bought his first convenience store in 1978, when he was almost 30 years old. By then, he already had nearly 10 years of experience in the sector. He had already been involved in the start-up of more than 200 convenience stores. He understood that if he was to transform his newly acquired store into a chain and build something big, he needed to set up a team of people with complementary skills to help him make acquisitions.

In 2023, there are roughly 15,000 convenience stores operating under the Circle K/Ingo/Couche-Tard banners, employing 130,000 people in more than 30 countries. Annual sales are more than US$60 billion. Alain Bouchard officially retired from his position as President and CEO in 2014 and became Founder and Executive Chairman of the Board. He continues to be a major shareholder. He is still actively involved in strategic orientations and in identifying potential acquisitions. He has become a ‘Chief Culture Officer’ involved in executive leadership mentoring. He has never stopped communicating the importance of innovative, creative and intrapreneurial behaviour at all levels of the enterprise.

This case study presents Alain Bouchard, the man and the entrepreneur. It shows how he learned and mastered the craft of starting, acquiring, managing and developing convenience stores. It looks at how he encouraged the people around him to act as facilitators and intrapreneurs. It describes his values, how he works and learned to live with risk.

Nobody concerned with political economy can neglect the history of economic doctrines. Structural changes in the economy and society influence economic thinking and, conversely, innovative thought structures and attitudes have almost always forced economic institutions and modes of behaviour to adjust. We learn from the history of economic doctrines how a particular theory emerged and whether, and in which environment, it could take root. We can see how a school evolves out of a common methodological perception and similar techniques of analysis, and how it has to establish itself. The interaction between unresolved problems on the one hand, and the search for better solutions or explanations on the other, leads to a change in paradigma and to the formation of new lines of reasoning. As long as the real world is subject to progress and change scientific search for explanation must out of necessity continue.

Internet + and Electronic Business in China is a comprehensive resource that provides insight and analysis into E-commerce in China and how it has revolutionized and continues to revolutionize business and society. Split into four distinct sections, the book first lays out the theoretical foundations and fundamental concepts of E-Business before moving on to look at internet+ innovation models and their applications in different industries such as agriculture, finance and commerce. The book then provides a comprehensive analysis of E-business platforms and their applications in China before finishing with four comprehensive case studies of major E-business projects, providing readers with successful examples of implementing E-Business entrepreneurship projects.

Internet + and Electronic Business in China is a comprehensive resource that provides insights and analysis into how E-commerce has revolutionized and continues to revolutionize business and society in China.