This book is the first of its kind – a global overview of extant research on ethics in small and medium sized enterprises. While vast amounts of corporate money, government policy and media time are directed at the social and ethical activities of large corporations, small businesses don’t generally attract the spotlight. This is wildly inappropriate, however, since upward of 90% of private businesses are small or medium sized. This book goes some way to helping us understand the social and ethical contribution of this majority organizational form. The first section of the book is a global round-up of research on ethics in small and medium sized enterprises from major regions of the world. In the second section smaller scale research projects from a variety of countries present both empirical and theoretical advances in the area. Anyone with an interest in ethics and small and medium sized enterprises should find this an inspiring book which paves the way for future research.

This Open Access book, Responsible innovation provides benefits for society, for instance more sustainable products, more engagement with consumers and less anxiety about emerging technologies. As a governance tool it is mostly driven by research funders, including the European Commission, under the term “responsible research and innovation” (RRI). To achieve uptake in private industry is a challenge. This book provides successful case studies for the implementation of responsible innovation in businesses. The importance of social innovations is emphasized as a link between benefits for society and profits for businesses, especially SMEs. For corporate industry it is shown how responsible innovation can offer a competitive advantage to adopters. The book is based on the latest insights from theory and practice and combines conceptual work with first-hand experience. It is of interest to innovation managers, entrepreneurs and academics. For academics, the book will provide a combination of analysis and discussion, and present recent learnings from first-hand interaction with entrepreneurs. For innovation managers and entrepreneurs, it will provide inspiration and better ideas about what responsible innovation can look like in practice, why others have “done it” and what the potential benefits might be. The book will thus serve the purposes of spreading the word about the responsible innovation concept among different audiences whilst making it more accessible to innovation managers and entrepreneurs.

Industrialisation has brought great benefits to humankind but now, after 200 years of fossil fuel use, land clearance and pollution, the planet’s boundaries are being stretched to their limits. Going beyond these confines would have severe consequences for humankind. To prevent this from happening, government, corporate and community initiatives must focus on reducing the environmental impact of approximately 400 million small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), given that they produce approximately 70% of the world’s pollution, 60% of carbon emissions and have a significant impact on land. To date, research shows that SMEs have been environmental laggards and more needs to be understood to improve sustainability in the SME sector. Broadening the researcher’s methodological focus, beyond traditional singular approaches, improves knowledge generation and better informs policy and practice. This book paves the way by showing the reader that a mixed method research design is able to provide a deep, diverse and holistic understanding of sustainability and SMEs. Importantly, the book also provides an in-depth mapping of mixed method sustainability and SME research at a regional level. As this book is about environmental sustainability framed in a business context, it will be of interest to researchers, academics, students and those in industry who are enquiring about the environmental sustainability of SMEs.

A customer-centric culture provides focus and direction for the organization, ensuring that exceptional value will be offered to customers — this, in turn, results in enhanced market performance. Unfortunately, caught up in the daily economic and competitive pressures of running complex and fast-changing businesses, managers may lose sight of customers’ desires. And, consequently, customer experiences often fall far short of expectations. Written by an expert with more than fifteen years of experience, Superior Customer Value: Strategies for Winning and Retaining Customers, Third Edition benchmarks the best companies and shows you what it truly means to create world-class value for customers. The book is a state-of-the-art guide to designing, implementing, and evaluating a customer value strategy in service, technology, and information-based organizations. It explores key marketing planning issues that emphasize relationship management strategies to keep customers happy. See What’s New in the Third Edition: New topics include: Business models Co-creation of value Corporate entrepreneurship Customer experience management Customer value metrics Net promoter score Image Innovation Social media Expanded coverage of: Customer relationship management E-business opportunities Written as an academic textbook for use in MBA programs, the book is highly readable, practical, and action-oriented, giving managers at all levels of experience guidance on how to improve marketing operations and create customer-centric organizations. It explains valuable tools such as customer value funnel, customer value assessment, service-quality-image-price (SQIP) analysis, and CRM models. Each chapter has a customer value insight checklist, action items, and informative figures and tables. This revised edition addresses current trends in value-adding business practice, from understanding how to drive a market and find new ventures to the rise in customer importance of the online arena and new models and metrics for customer loyalty and retention. Great companies amaze and delight customers — Superior Customer Value offers a strategic blueprint to learn from the market leaders and apply those lessons to your organization. Art Weinstein discusses the book in several videos on the CRC Press YouTube Channel.

A valuable interdisciplinary resource examining the concept and effectiveness of CSR as a tool for sustainable development in emerging markets.

Why do people behave in moral ways in some circumstances, but not in others? In order to account fully for morality, Dennis Krebs departs from traditional approaches to morality that suggest that children acquire morals through socialization, cultural indoctrination, and moral reasoning. He suggests that such approaches can be subsumed, refined, and revised gainfully within an evolutionary framework. Relying on evolutionary theory, Krebs offers an account of how notions of morality originated in the human species. He updates Darwin's early ideas about how dispositions to obey authority, to control antisocial urges, and to behave in altruistic and cooperative ways originated and evolved, then goes on to update Darwin's account of how humans acquired a moral sense.Krebs explains why the theory of evolution does not dictate that all animals are selfish and immoral by nature. On the contrary, he argues that moral behaviors and moral judgments evolved to serve certain functions. Krebs examines theory and research on the evolution of primitive forms of prosocial conduct displayed by humans and other animals, then discusses the evolution of uniquely human prosocial behaviors. He describes how a sense of morality originated during the course of human evolution through strategic social interactions among members of small groups, and how it was expanded and refined in modern societies, explaining how this sense gives rise to culturally universal and culturally relative moral norms. Krebs argues that although humans' unique cognitive abilities endow them with the capacity to engage in sophisticated forms of moral reasoning, people rarely live up their potential in their everyday lives. Four conceptions of what it means to be a moral person are identified, with the conclusion that people are naturally inclined to meet the standards of each conception under certain conditions. The key to making the world a more moral place lies in creating environments in which good guys finish first and cheaters fail to prosper.

Every business on the planet is trying to maximize the value created by its customers Learn how to do it, step by step, in this newly revised Fourth Edition of Managing Customer Experience and Relationships: A Strategic Framework. Written by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D., recognized for decades as two of the world's leading experts on customer experience issues, the book combines theory, case studies, and strategic analyses to guide a company on its own quest to position its customers at the very center of its business model, and to "treat different customers differently." This latest edition adds new material including: How to manage the mass-customization principles that drive digital interactions How to understand and manage data-driven marketing analytics issues, without having to do the math How to implement and monitor customer success management, the new discipline that has arisen alongside software-as-a-service businesses How to deal with the increasing threat to privacy, autonomy, and competition posed by the big tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google Teaching slide decks to accompany the book, author-written test banks for all chapters, a complete glossary for the field, and full indexing Ideal not just for students, but for managers, executives, and other business leaders, Managing Customer Experience and Relationships should prove an indispensable resource for marketing, sales, or customer service professionals in both the B2C and B2B world.

In his ground-breaking new textbook, Mick Fryer offers students of Business Ethics clear explanations of a range of theoretical perspectives, along with examples of how these perspectives might be used to illuminate the ethical challenges presented by business practice. The book includes: Realistic scenarios which gently introduce a theory and demonstrate how it can be applied to a real-life ethical dilemma that everyone can relate to, such as borrowing money from a friend Real organisational case studies in each chapter which illustrate how each theory can be applied to real business situations. Cases include Nike, Coca Cola, BMW, Shell, Starbucks and GSK ‘Pause for Reflection’ boxes and ‘Discussion Questions’ which encourage you to challenge the established notions of right and wrong, and empower you to develop your own moral code Video Activities in each chapter with accompanying QR codes which link to documentaries, films, debates and news items to get you thinking about real-life ethical dilemmas Visit the book’s companion website for self-test questions, additional web links and more at: study.sagepub.com/fryer

Smaller companies are abundant in the business realm and outnumber large companies by a wide margin. Understanding the inner workings of small businesses offers benefits to the consumers and the economy. The Handbook of Research on Small and Medium Enterprises in Developing Countries is an essential handbook for the latest research on the intentions, performance, and application models of independent firms. Featuring exhaustive coverage on a broad range of topics such as green IT, entrepreneurial ventures, and social capital, this publication is ideally designed for researchers, academicians, and practitioners seeking current research on the different opportunities and challenges in relation to this specific sector of business around the globe.

Master's Thesis from the year 2009 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 17/20 (1,3), Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management, course: International Master in Management Science, language: English, abstract: This study derives a model of stakeholder management in small and medium-sized enterprises which describes the process from the owner-managers' personal ethics to the firm's eventual engagement with its stakeholders. Following a thorough review of literature published on stakeholder theory, ethical behaviour in organizations, and small and medium-sized companies, five hypotheses are put forward on which the model is based. The results of three case studies on owner-managed micro-enterprises from the Belgian beer producing industry are used to test the validity of the model and the hypotheses. The results of the case studies on Belgian micro-breweries support the major part of the proposed SME stakeholder management model and the hypotheses it is based on. The perception of legitimate stakeholders is based on the personal ethics of the owner-manager. These are determined by the owner-manager's preference for a certain normative core and his stage of cognitive moral development. Perceived stakeholders will possess power over the company and/or have a legitimate moral or legal claim on the firm. Individual and situational moderators exist which can influence the transition from the owner-manager's personal ethic to his perception of important stakeholders. Relevant individual factors are the owner-manager's type and length of education and employment, family background, culture and nationality, as well as his locus of control. Situational influences found to be important are the views of relevant peers, (psychological) sanctions and rewards, moral intensity, and moral framing. The company's actual stakeholder management depends on whom the owner-manager perceives to be legitimate stakeholders. It may be instrumentally driven or normatively and can occur in a cooperative or competitive manner. The transition from stakeholder perception to actual stakeholder management can be affected by internal characteristics of the firm and by external environmental circumstances. Capital constraints and the need for the owner-manager to engage into 'fire-fighting' activities are discovered as influential internal characteristics. External environmental circumstances that exert an influence on the process are the specific characteristics of the brewing industry, power balances between the firms and their stakeholders, and social legislation as part of the PESTEL factors.