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To compete more effectively with global challengers, U.S. companies must begin to develop corporate intelligence systems.

This paper seeks to explore the Greek National Business System (NBS) in terms of management practices, organizational culture and public administration. Moreover, the need for modernization is analyzed with focus on total quality management (TQM) as the major issue on this agenda.

This study utilizes a critical literature review approach to draw together and conceptualize the modernization agenda of the Greek NBS.

This paper supports the idea that there is a need to put promising management practices into the context of the Greek national business system and to study not only the market situation, the industrial relations history and the HR practices used, but also how these practices are understood and used by managers and employees who work in different employment sectors.

The findings of this study may have a broader impact as Greece attempts to redefine itself as a hub for South‐East Europe.

Since most academic studies concerning the application of promising management strategies like TQM have been conducted in Anglo‐Saxon countries, there is a need to remove the blinkers and explore these management initiatives in the context of other than Anglo‐Saxon NBSs.

With the exponential growth of the amount of data, the most sophisticated systems of traditional libraries are not able to fulfill the demands of modern business and user needs. The purpose of this paper is to present the possibility of creating a Big Data smart library as an integral and enhanced part of the educational system that will improve user service and increase motivation in the continuous learning process through content-aware recommendations.

This paper presents an approach to the design of a Big Data system for collecting, analyzing, processing and visualizing data from different sources to a smart library specifically suitable for application in educational institutions.

As an integrated recommender system of the educational institution, the practical application of Big Data smart library meets the user needs and assists in finding personalized content from several sources, resulting in economic benefits for the institution and user long-term satisfaction.

The need for continuous education alters business processes in libraries with requirements to adopt new technologies, business demands, and interactions with users. To be able to engage in a new era of business in the Big Data environment, librarians need to modernize their infrastructure for data collection, data analysis, and data visualization.

A unique value of this paper is its perspective of the implementation of a Big Data solution for smart libraries as a part of a continuous learning process, with the aim to improve the results of library operations by integrating traditional systems with Big Data technology. The paper presents a Big Data smart library system that has the potential to create new values and data-driven decisions by incorporating multiple sources of differential data.

This paper aims to analyze the benefits of the blockchain to the circular economy (CE), which is composed of both closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) systems and reverse omnichannel solutions. By ensuring transparency, traceability, visibility and security, the blockchain allows firms to acquire operational capabilities through a CLSC and service capabilities through a reverse omnichannel, which can boost business performance considerably. The related network of relationships can be reinforced by establishing incentives, which entail both smart contracts in the blockchain and active return approaches in CE.

After identifying the boundaries of the theoretical framework, several research hypotheses are developed according to the literature review and emerging gaps. These gaps link to the impact of the blockchain on CE systems (CLSC and reverse omnichannel), as well as the influence on business performance. The hypotheses are then tested using structural equation modeling and adopting a partial least squares-path modeling technique on a dataset composed of 157 firms. Finally, multigroup analysis is used to test the impact of incentives on the research hypotheses.

The blockchain facilitates a more efficient CE system, although reverse omnichannel solutions seldom bring any benefits to performance. The shift from a passive to an active return approach must be carefully evaluated. The CLSC network can benefit from an active return approach by developing appealing incentives for collectors and enhancing the positive effects of the blockchain. In contrast, consumer incentives can have detrimental effects on the blockchain. Various combinations of incentives can only bring a few business performance increases, while collector incentives are vital to reinforce the CE system's operational and service capabilities.

This paper takes a new approach toward the study of CE, which considers a dual circular system composed of a CLSC and a reverse omnichannel. The research explores whether the adoption of blockchain technology enables better return processes by improving the operations in CLSC and services in reverse omnichannel. Finally, this is the first empirical work to evaluate the benefits emerging from incentives, which can activate smart contracts in the blockchain and enable active return approaches in CE.

THE commercial world, as a rule, is not the most enthusiastic supporter of Public Libraries, the attitude of the average English business man towards them being one of tolerant contempt, based largely upon the conviction that there is no money in them. He is also misled as to their value for business purposes by the occasional outbursts of irresponsible journalists, who go daft on the fiction question, with no more authority behind their statements than the figures of a single lending department plus the Fleet Street imagination and the professional desire to turn out a sensational paragraph which will go the round of the newspapers. Largely for these reasons, and partly because no great endeavour is made to educate the business man in the commercial value of a good library, he is permitted to become indifferent to the value of institutions whose methods he adopts for his own business purposes without being aware of the fact. Yet, it is true, that practically all modern business methods of accounts, card indexing, vertical filing and general adjustability of office systems are derived from the actual practice of Public Libraries. This was shown most strikingly at the Business exhibitions held at Olympia, in London, and just recently at the “Premier Congrès International du Bureau Moderne,” held at Paris from June 23rd to 30th. At all these exhibitions librarians beheld their own methods of cataloguing, indexing and filing being exploited by stationers, furniture dealers and library furnishers as their own original inventions. Not a word as to the librarian pioneers who had made all this adjustability and expansion possible by their experiments and patient search after scientific flexibility of method. However, it is part of the nature of things that the ideas of the mere hermit‐librarian should be exploited by the shrewd man of business, and librarians should rejoice that, at last, an universal service has been rendered to the world of commerce, which, though not generally recognized, must be accepted as a benefit which a body of mere officials have unconsciously created for their commercial brethren.

This paper recognises the move towards making the disclosure of data concerning intangible resources a requirement. It sets down requirements for intellectual capital measurement systems that can be safely used by companies in disclosures and which are transparent and easily used by others. The paper argues that if rigour and safety comparable with ordinary financial disclosures is to be attained then only the rigour of measurement theory applied to intangible resources will suffice. Some existing methodologies are evaluated against the axioms of measurement theory. None evaluated so far are compliant.

This paper aims to present a general review of the circumstances of America and Japan's rapid corporate, economic and industrial development in the twentieth century.

The approach considered and evaluated how the circumstances of America and Japan's growth might apply to China and India, two of the fastest growing economies of the twenty‐first century.

The findings suggest that both America and Japan might be considered exceptional cases and, as such, neither one might be regarded as a good model for emulation. However, the circumstances of Japan's rapid growth appear closer to those of contemporary China and India and on that basis the authors suggest that Japan might be a better model for emulation.

The American model is too novel and unlikely to be imitated, replicated or repeated whereas Japan's high population density, agrarian origins, state assisted and administered development, adaptation and hybridization of local and imported methods and technologies, kinship, pseudo‐kinship and locality based business groupings, and rapid, come‐from‐behind charge toward industrialization, urbanization and international emergence, all suggest that Japan offers a more relevant and useful development model.

In a 1977 publication Alfred Chandler singled out the Springfield Armory as the site where single‐unit management was pioneered in the United States, crediting Superintendent Roswell Lee (1815‐1833) with establishing a first “managerial” approach to work discipline and labour accounting. However, as economic breakthrough came only in 1841/2, it has since been argued that Lee′s role has been overestimated. Re‐examines archival evidence to show that: the changes of 1842 at Springfield were not due to external economic pressures, but to pressure exerted by West Point graduates in the Ordnance Department; Lee, as the dominant arms manufacturer in the 1820s, was not “held back” by economic factors from implementing any changes he desired; and his system of work organization was never even potentially managerial, with his accounting system in particular having been fundamentally misinterpreted. The evidence reinforces the case for viewing the invention of modern business and managerialism as primarily a disciplinary breakthrough.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

The authors examine Cloud computing systems and their benefits and pitfalls, as well as the security priorities of consumers with these servers. It is essential for firms to have secure places to store information, as trust and transparency underlie a firm's reputation.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

At the 2009 Devos economic forum on the global financial crisis, David Cameron, then leader of the British Conservative Party and now Britain's Prime Minister, called for embracing a “moral capitalism.” The purpose of this paper is to consider the insights into a moral framework for the modern economic order that might be drawn from natural religions perceived by Adam Smith and Thorstein Veblen.

A review of the two perceptions of natural religions provide the basis for assessing their compatibilities with the type of competitive market economy that Smith observed in the eighteenth century, and with a modern market economy of large corporate enterprises and global financial markets. Particular attention is given to reforms that curb the practices that led to the global financial crisis.

Smith's “pure and rational” natural religion has been interpreted as being compatible with the type of competitive market economy that he analyzed in Wealth of Nations. Veblen's natural religion of “Christian morals” had a natural rights analogue in the ethics of a competitive market economy in which market relationships were heavily influenced by production resting heavily on personal skills of craftsmen and trade relying on the honesty of small merchants.

The primary focus is on reforms in those aspects of the financial sector of the modern market system that have been associated with the current global financial crisis. What the two natural religions might suggest in the nature of broader socio‐economic reforms, e.g. corporate governance issues, would require a much larger study.

While debates over a “moral capitalism” will be influenced doctrinal stances of institutional religions, sectarian differences may be bridged by considering natural religions that are rational and rest on the principle of fair play and mutual service.

Because of the attention that has been given to Smith's and Veblen's critical commentaries on institutional religions, the paper shows that their perceptions of natural religions and how those religions might relate to the economic order are easily overlooked.