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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relation of spirituality and creativity in business context.

The paper presents practical examples of spiritual-based creative business models in different faith traditions (Hinduism, Christianity and Anthroposophy).

Spirituality and a deep sense of connectedness are essential to enhance creativity and care in business. Spirituality creates free space and openness to allow the future to emerge organically. It creates a distance between the self and the pressures of the market and the routines of business and daily life. This distance is a necessary condition for developing creative, ethical and responsible solutions to the complex challenges around us.

Spiritually inspired creative business models overcome the instrumental rationality and materialistic orientation of today’s business management which produces large scale ecological, social and ethical “ills.” The paper shows that alternative business management practices need a spiritual foundation to be more creative and caring.

In this chapter the authors portray the situation of the Roma population in Portugal as a changing picture. They present a description of the social situation and living conditions of the Roma people of Portugal through the systematisation of the main results obtained from research conducted recently as part of the ‘Strategy for the integration of Roma communities 2013–2020’ and give a detailed analysis of the educational dimension in various levels of education, highlighting a public policy created in 2016, the Operational Program for the Promotion of Education. This programme, inspired by a civil society project and converted into a public policy due to its innovative character, supports Roma students in higher education and is funded by the Office of the High Commissioner for Migration. The authors describe the Roma Communities in Portugal with special regard to their social situation, their culture and language. Then the authors present an analysis about the educational attainment of the Roma in Portugal and the most important policies and support programmes for Roma education, which are considered as the key to the social integration of Roma communities. Finally, they describe some successful programmes: the OPRE, RESCUR and Dreams Teens Programs.

The international women's movement has always focused on discrimination against women, but only in the past few decades have activists been focusing on violence against women, and within this framework, domestic violence. Global feminist activism found common ground in protecting women from physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. This framework traveled to Eastern Europe with the advent of regime changes there. In post-communist Europe, it took only a decade and a half for the Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, and Slovene governments to react to domestic and global pressures and establish new definitions and policies regarding domestic violence. However, the feminist NGOs’ definitions and policy recommendations met with limited success. Feminist-inspired norms, such as specific domestic violence courts and distancing ordinances, diffused to a mediocre level of half-hearted official responses in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). This middle-of-the-road approach attempted to de-gender and thus to de-politicize feminists’ fundamental gender-sensitive claims. A norm diffusion to reach the middle ground took place through a complex set of interactions that involved various types of political actors ranging from international governmental organizations, such as the UN and the EU, governments, international and local NGOs. Analyzing the process of these multiple-level and manifold interactions sheds light on the partially deterritorialized nature of globalization. The development of norms and their difffnousion regarding domestic violence policy also inform us about how democratic processes, efforts to achieve gender equality, and the global context interact in CEE.

The case is set in the emerging markets of Central Europe, shortly after the fall of communism. IQSOFT Ltd Hungary is a small information technology firm spun off from a centralized government agency. With very little capital, IQSOFT Ltd found itself competing in the same market with large multinational companies. The situation presents the delicate balance between traditional beliefs and values and the need to survive. As an organizational change problem there is an interrelationship between the strategy of the firm, the organizations capabilities, and the capacity to change. These interrelationships must then be meshed within the human context. The biases, opinions, agendas, and experiences of the key decision makers all have an impact on the feasibility of any change recommendation. Balint Domolki, Managing director of IQSoft, realized that the organization had evolved to meet the firm's survival needs, but was it positioned correctly for the future?