Chains Trust is hard to find when you don't know who will turn their back on you. After going through some rough crap in life, I know the only ones who won't are my brothers. They have my back, and I have theirs.When all hell is about to break lose I knew I should've told my sister I couldn't do it. You see, my sister asked me to watch a woman, one of her friends' who had been through it recently. I wondered why she'd ask something like this of me. Hell, I didn't have time to babysit some woman. A stranger nonetheless. It'd be different if she was one of my brothers' ol' ladies. Then it happened, she walked through those doors at the club and I could see she was gonna be trouble. The look in her eyes made me realize she had been through some trauma, but there was also some fire too. It didn't make sense, considerin' she was scared of her own shadow and all. She refused to be around anyone else except me. I don't know what my sister told her, but she's stuck to me like glue now.How the hell can this woman trust me when she doesn't even know a damn thing about me?Tensions rise when the monsters come out of the shadows. To face the creatures, I'll have to jump through the flames. The only thing I'm not sure of is if this woman will be jumping by my side. To be in the Inferno's Clutch MC you gotta be able to handle the fire. Can she?

This research volume aims at outlining the substantial role of information asymmetry in agri-food chains and how building trust and mitigating this problem could enhance the performance of these chains. The supply chain covers a systemic sequence of linked companies with material and information exchange. Sharing information about capabilities, inventories, and needs is vital to streamline channels, reduce uncertainty, and enhance performance, but economic agents may be reluctant due to opportunism. Information asymmetry can cause problems in quality assurance and distort the supply chain's functioning. Building trust is crucial, and solutions include guarantees, standards, licensing, and hybrid governance. Trust and Supply Chains: Information Asymmetry in the Agri-Food Sector is based on real-world examples and case studies from the agri-food industry (cheese, apples, pasta and bakery, beef, organic products, and more), providing practical solutions to building trust and sharing information. It offers academics, practitioners, and advanced students a comprehensive overview of the various aspects of information asymmetry and trust in agri-food supply chains.

Several Earth women have disappeared, their trail leading to Xarta, a BDSM planet. Marina, Earth intergalactic investigator, knows that solving this case means a long-awaited promotion. But in order to find the missing women, she'll have to go undercover as a bondage slave on Xarta, something the strong, capable woman wants no part of. Kaden is a Dom and a native of Xarta. He's also an Intergalactic Marshall, sworn to break up the slave trading ring. His job is to take Marina as his submissive and train her while they're working undercover to expose the slavers and rescue the women. Reluctantly, Marina agrees to act as a submissive, vowing to both herself and to Kaden that her relationship with him is nothing but an act. Until Kaden shows her a side of life that calls to her in ways she didn't expect. Note: Bound To Trust contains light erotic scenes where females explore their sexuality with other females.

Understanding the capacity of food systems to undertake a transformation towards sustainability requires understanding how resources stream in and out of the systems. As complex socio-economic structures, food and agricultural value chains are important means for channeling resources, knowledge, and agency in and out of rural areas. Given their prominent role on the development agendas, there is mixed evidence as to what extent value chains and their actors can contribute to improving the livelihoods in poor rural and urban areas. In order to shape sustainable living places, transformative capacities and good governance are important mainstays. Transformative agri-food value chains are robust and often act as the sole transmission belt for returning capital, resources and identity back into vulnerable areas. Moreover, domestic or regional chains may provide urban consumers with fresh quality food that also contributes to regional identity.

The new field of cryptographic currencies and consensus ledgers, commonly referred to as blockchains, is receiving increasing interest from various different communities. These communities are very diverse and amongst others include: technical enthusiasts, activist groups, researchers from various disciplines, start ups, large enterprises, public authorities, banks, financial regulators, business men, investors, and also criminals. The scientific community adapted relatively slowly to this emerging and fast-moving field of cryptographic currencies and consensus ledgers. This was one reason that, for quite a while,the only resources available have been the Bitcoin source code, blog and forum posts, mailing lists, and other online publications. Also the original Bitcoin paper which initiated the hype was published online without any prior peer review. Following the original publication spirit of the Bitcoin paper, a lot of innovation in this field has repeatedly come from the community itself in the form of online publications and online conversations instead of established peer-reviewed scientific publishing. On the one side, this spirit of fast free software development, combined with the business aspects of cryptographic currencies, as well as the interests of today's time-to-market focused industry, produced a flood of publications, whitepapers, and prototypes. On the other side, this has led to deficits in systematization and a gap between practice and the theoretical understanding of this new field. This book aims to further close this gap and presentsa well-structured overview of this broad field from a technical viewpoint. The archetype for modern cryptographic currencies and consensus ledgers is Bitcoin and its underlying Nakamoto consensus. Therefore we describe the inner workings of this protocol in great detail and discuss its relations to other derived systems.

Blockchain Driven Supply Chains and Enterprise Information Systems examines initiatives for blockchain implementation in supply chain management and the integration of blockchain technology with existing enterprise management applications. The authors aim to establish common ground to provide solutions and best practices in the supply chain field, while tackling the challenges faced when integrating blockchain in supply chain policy. Chapters address both design and implementation aspects of supply chain platforms and enterprise information systems, and provide real-world use cases and examples from industry that address the impacts of using blockchain in the modern supply chain.

This Companion provides a review of global value chains (GVCs) and the megatrends that are shaping them and will continue to reshape them in deep-set trajectories of change over the next few decades. Megatrends herald both challenges and opportunities. With the growing interest among business leaders and researchers in GVCs, this is a reference work which fills a gap in current literature by focusing on the new features of GVCs, including the shift of global purchasing power towards developing economies, the significance of emerging technologies and data analytics, the increasing tensions between globalisation and de-globalisation, and the role of micro-multinationals, start-up entrepreneurs, the public sector and middle markets in a fast-changing global economy. The early chapters are essentially intradisciplinary in character, with the first seeking to explore some historical aspects of GVCs. Subsequent chapters cover the theory and practice of operations and supply chain management, emerging supply chain technologies, and the impact of inter-firm collaboration across sectors and economies. The final chapters take a more interdisciplinary approach and examine topics at the interface of GVCs with the economy, society, culture and politics. This comprehensive handbook provides a timely analysis of leading-edge global megatrends and practices in one volume.

The effective use of business intelligence, communication, and productivity applications for supply chain management are essential for the achievement and analysis of information sharing. Management Innovations for Intelligent Supply Chains provides comprehensive coverage in the latest research and developments of supply chain management. This reference collection provides research, methodologies, and frameworks of the incorporation of information systems to better support supply chain management.

Within global and rapidly changing environments, cooperation and networking offer possibilities for sharing costs and risks, as well as keeping up with constantly renewed information from outside the firms' boundaries. In line with this, an effective management control of supply chain processes seems to be relevant to compete against other supply chains and to get the required information. In this context, an implementation of a management control institution for inter-firm relations, like a supply chain management control (SCMC), that provides relevant qualitative and quantitative data to manage supply chains reflects an important issue. However, a comprehensive approach with regard to the management control of the entire supply chain and how it can be fulfilled has received scant attention in prior research. The aim of this thesis is therefore to analyze management control systems in global supply chains by means of a mixed methods design with special regard to functional, institutional and instrumental issues. In this context, qualitative data are combined with theoretical insights to develop an empirical model which is tested by means of a quantitative study. Following this, insights into management control aspects, organization of the supply chain management control, management control mechanisms, and the integration of suppliers are provided.

If an entire nation could seek its freedom, why not a girl? As the Revolutionary War begins, thirteen-year-old Isabel wages her own fight...for freedom. Promised freedom upon the death of their owner, she and her sister, Ruth, in a cruel twist of fate become the property of a malicious New York City couple, the Locktons, who have no sympathy for the American Revolution and even less for Ruth and Isabel. When Isabel meets Curzon, a slave with ties to the Patriots, he encourages her to spy on her owners, who know details of British plans for invasion. She is reluctant at first, but when the unthinkable happens to Ruth, Isabel realizes her loyalty is available to the bidder who can provide her with freedom. From acclaimed author Laurie Halse Anderson comes this compelling, impeccably researched novel that shows the lengths we can go to cast off our chains, both physical and spiritual.