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Since the global financial crisis of 2007-2009 academic research has paid considerable attention to understanding the nature of the crisis, its causes and consequences. This is not surprising given the scale and scope of the crisis. Much of this research has been undertaken within social science disciplines. At the same time, the crisis has also been the subject of fiction – novels, poetry and drama, and there is also a small body of academic scholarship on fiction relating to the crisis (and on finance in fiction more generally). The purpose of this paper is to suggest that fiction can offer a new perspective on the global financial crisis and thereby enhance our understanding of it.

This exploration draws upon three works of post-crisis fiction: the 2009 play by David Hare, The Power of Yes: A Dramatist Seeks to Understand the Financial Crisis (hereafter The Power of Yes); Other People’s Money, a novel by Justin Cartwright (2011); and Robert Harris’s novel The Fear Index also published in 2011. Its approach is based on close readings of the three texts in question.

Finance fiction stimulates a reconceptualization of the global financial crisis as a crisis of innovation and technological change.

This paper is a viewpoint article. The originality lies in the author’s interpretation of reading the global financial crisis through fiction.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of standard‐setting bodies and rating agencies which compete for authority in Islamic finance. It does so through a consideration of a recent debate over the permissibility of sukuk financing.

The methods used are a combination of archival and bibliographic research, coupled with the author's previous research on Islamic banking and finance.

While the debate over sukuk hinged on whether the structures are shari'a compliant in form only, not in substance, the role of sukuk in neoliberal reform and the privatization of state resources reveal a deeper potential conflict between Islamic standard‐setting bodies and global neoliberal projects more broadly.

The implications are significant for other Islamic finance contractual forms and modes of finance. They are also significant in light of the global financial crisis, and the recent debt crisis in Dubai. The research limitations have to do with the fact that this is a fast‐moving field and the global financial crisis has destabilized many institutions – both conventional and Islamic – in structured finance.

Few scholars have considered sukuk's legitimacy, or the competition between Islamic standard‐setting bodies and non‐Islamic global rating agencies.

The purpose of this paper is to share personal reflections on impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on corporate governance and assurance, international finance and economics and non-fiction book publishing. The paper is intended both as a time capsule and as input for future governance and assurance reform and crisis response planning and related research.

This paper is an informal capturing and distillation of some personal experiences and insights relating to corporate governance and assurance, international finance and economics and non-fiction publishing in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A key insight from the essay is that the pandemic has had diverse and wide-ranging impacts, many of which are likely to persist beyond the immediate response and recovery periods. The impacts have been felt across the public and private sectors, the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors and different industries.

The author, based in Melbourne, Australia, had an unusually diverse and multi-faceted experience of the pandemic. The essay concludes with directions for further research.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze common emplotments of interpretations of the financial crisis of 2007‐2010.

The paper presents a text analysis.

The paper finds that the same “strong plots” are commonly used to explain financial crises to the general public.

The paper provides useful information on interpretations of financial crises.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how “manias” in global health governance lead to health inequalities even before, during and in the aftermath of acute health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. “Manias” as used here refer to obsessive ir/rational behaviors, misguided policy/strategic choices and the exercise of power that benefit the major global health actors at the expense of stakeholders.

From post-colonial and historical perspectives, this study delineates how the major global health actors influence outcomes in global health governance and international business when they interact at the national–global level using an illustration from an emerging economy.

Power asymmetry in global health governance is constructed around the centralization of economic influence, medico-techno-scientific innovation and the geopolitical hegemony of a conglomerate of super-rich/powerful actors. They cluster these powers and resources in the core region (industrialized economies) and use them to influence the periphery (developing economies) through international NGOs, hybrid organizations, MNCs and multilateral/bilateral agreements. The power of actors to maintain manias lies in not only how they influence the periphery but also the consequences of the periphery’s “passivity” and “voluntary” renunciation of sovereignty in medical innovations and global health policies/politics.

As a quintessential feature of manias, power asymmetry makes it harder for weaker actors to actually change the institutional conditions that produce structural inequalities in global health.

This timely and multidisciplinary study calls for a novel architecture of global health governance. Thus, democratizing global health governance with sufficiently foresighted investments that prioritize equitable access by and the inclusiveness of vulnerable stakeholders will help dismantle institutionalized manias while decreasing health inequalities.

This paper aims to present an analysis of the role of financial incentives, moral hazard and conflicts of interests leading up to the 2008 financial crisis.

The study’s analysis has identified common structural flaws throughout the securitization food chain. These structural flaws include inappropriate incentives, the absence of punishment, moral hazard and conflicts of interest. This research sees the full impact of these structural flaws when considering their co-occurrence throughout the financial system. The authors address systemic defects in the securitization food chain and examine the inter-relationships among homeowners, mortgage originators, investment banks and investors. The authors also address the role of exogenous factors, including the SEC, AIG, the credit rating agencies, Congress, business academia and the business media.

The study argues that the lack of criminal prosecutions of key financial executives has been a key factor in creating moral hazard. Eight years after the Great Recession ended in the USA, the financial services industry continues to suffer from a crisis of trust with society.

An overwhelming majority of Americans, 89 per cent, believe that the federal government does a poor job of regulating the financial services industry (Puzzanghera, 2014). A study argues that the current corporate lobbying framework undermines societal expectations of political equality and consent (Alzola, 2013). The authors believe the Singapore model may be a useful starting point to restructure regulatory agencies so that they are more responsive to societal concerns and less responsive to special interests. Finally, the widespread perception is that the financial services sector, in particular, is ethically challenged (Ferguson, 2012); perhaps there would be some benefit from the implementation of ethical climate monitoring in firms that have been subject to deferred prosecution agreements for serious ethical violations (Arnaud, 2010).

The authors believe the paper makes a truly original contribution. They provide new insights via their analysis of the role of financial incentives, moral hazard and conflicts of interests leading up to the 2008 financial crisis.

This paper aims at explaining why “Globally Responsible Humanism (GRH)” is presented here as the pivot for a re-foundation of European Business Schools’ culture. Explaining the concept and its difference with traditional European Humanism, the related argumentation is organized around two main parts: the first one explains why the European Union and its business schools do not make sense in a globalization process driven by the financialized economy; the second one shows how a sustainable exposition of European management students to a transcultural approach, a postcolonial perspective, and critical thinking, can lead to their training as future globally responsible leaders in New Business Schools for Societal Studies.

An international political sociology perspective, applied to the interpretation of globalization trends, and a critical thinking approach to education allow for a questioning of the values and contents of mainstream business learning.

The new proposed transversal, postcolonial and interdisciplinary pedagogical approach regarding business education is conducive to closely related operational tracks: on the one hand, how to improve the skills and systemic understanding of students’ global environment; on the other hand, how to lead, organize and manage the coherent “GRH”-driven business school.

The originality of this paper stems from the combination of critical works issued from the social and human sciences realms to revisit business education.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the usefulness to business education of aesthetics, literature and the ancient ideal of the rule of law in an increasingly complex global environment. Recent financial scandals have exposed a range of vulnerabilities in the management decision‐making process and, increasingly, big business is searching for ethical answers. It is suggested that there is a need to develop the necessary critical, analytical and empathic qualities of, in particular, the business student in order that future global corporate leaders might also be moral managers.

The abstract yet foundational concept of the rule of law is reworked in order to widen its application to business activities and ensure greater accountability. It is argued that the intellectual sensibilities need to be stimulated beyond the traditional business studies format, looking to various examples from the liberal arts. The paper proposes greater attention to, for example, the classics, as the lessons we can learn from fiction are highly pertinent to modern leadership and corporate conduct in general.

There is a relatively new literary genre of business books which is inspired by classic and popular works of literature, for example Power Plays: Shakespeare's Lessons in Leadership; however, such books are yet to appear regularly on business school recommended reading lists.

There are compelling reasons for a radical change in management style, one being that the single‐minded pursuit of profit has recently produced an unprecedented global economic crisis. The paper proposes that, by placing a greater emphasis on developing the intellectual and empathic sensibilities, future managers may be able to adopt a more conscionable approach to environmental and wider societal concerns.

Against the backdrop of an alarmingly amoral and inept set of global management practices, the paper urges a radical return to a classical or liberal arts education for the business student. A re‐imaging of the traditional rule of law also provides the basis for deciding the right course of action; tailored to meet the specific needs of the modern business community.

The purpose of this paper is to seek to apply Polanyi's theory of the double movement as a response to the effects of economic liberalization and globalization to the pre‐2007 American economy. In so doing, it seeks to ascertain the reasons why this assumed double movement did not materialize until after the post‐2007 global economic crisis.

This paper is structured as a theoretical and historical analysis, building upon Polanyi's nineteenth century observations and applying them to contemporary policy economic and social experience in the USA in the late twentieth century. The argument proposes a correlation between the missing and/or delayed movement and the role of access to debt and participation in equity markets.

This paper argues that Polanyi's concept of a societal countermovement has been absent from the post‐1970 period of economic liberalism and globalization until just recently due to an explicit attempt by the forces of capital to circumvent its role in lessening the harmful effects of American capitalism. In particular, the double movement that should have sought to lessen income inequality, unemployment and wage stagnation was instead replaced by access to cheap credit and the democratization of market investments that spurred consumer purchases and a false belief that what was good for the markets was good for working class Americans.

This paper highlights the need for ongoing research into the sociotropic nature of trade and of economic policy, and its evolution throughout the contemporary period of economic uncertainty and economic transition.

The paper proposes several policy implications arising from the contemporary application of Polanyi's double movement, notably related to international trade and public and political support for ongoing trade liberalization.

This paper highlights important connections in the relationship between economic policy and the day‐to‐day lives of those who are governed by it. Building on “everyday political economy”, it provides a foundation for arguments that a new balance must be found between economic globalization and transnational capital interests and domestic stability.

This paper promotes a novel approach to understanding the political economy of pre‐2007 America, in particular the reflexive nature of economic policy and societal perceptions.