With the design of the pension system critically dependent on objectives and context, and many objectives and trade-offs to consider, real-world pension schemes are complex and rich in institutional detail. Ongoing demographic changes also challenge pension systems, including their performance and outcomes in terms of pension adequacy, poverty prevention, and financial viability. To breakdown all of this, Pension Economics provides an introduction to and overview of the economics ...

At a time when corporate scandals and major financial failures dominate newspaper headlines, the importance of good risk management practices has never been more obvious. The absence or mismanagement of such practices can have devastating effects on exposed organizations and the wider economy (Barings Bank, Enron, Lehmann Brothers, Northern Rock, to name but a few). Today's organizations and corporate leaders must learn the lessons of such failures by developing practices to deal effective...

The global business landscape is changing — rapidly. The past decade has seen major disruptions, including the pandemic, military conflict, and geopolitical tensions, with severe ramifications for multinational organizations that operate as part of the global economy. It is no longer viable to optimize international business activities in tightly coupled value chains too rigid and inflexible to deal with major, often unexpected, disruptions. Instead, rapidly changing environmental conditio...

Managing risk in and across organizations has always been of vital importance, both for individual firms and for the globalized economy more generally. With the global financial crisis, a dramatic lesson was learnt about what happens when risk is underestimated, misinterpreted, or even overlooked. Many possible solutions have been competing for international recognition, yet, there is little empirical evidence to support the purported effectiveness of these regulations and structured contr...

Multinational organizations are faced with ongoing shifts in socio-economic conditions and cultural demands in diverse market contexts. Adapting to these changing conditions will require a balance between hierarchical and networked structures that enable integration of autonomous and inclusive modes of local business activities. From this vantage point, we explore central aspects of empathy and mindfulness as the means to accommodate different assumptions between headquarter managers and e...

The need for pension reform is widely discussed against the backdrop of falling fertility rates and rising longevity. These developments challenge pension systems which in many countries already encounter problems with pension adequacy and financial sustainability. In the debate, reference is often made to Denmark as a model for pension system reform. This book offers the first coherent and in-depth description and analysis of the Danish pension system and its structure and performance. As...

Strategic Risk Management represents an organizational capacity to adapt business activities to match the evolving competitive environment.This updated edition reflects the increasingly disruptive global competitive landscape. Incorporating the latest scholarly developments, the authors advance the risk leadership model to introduce a strategic drift warning system that accounts for behavioral trends across organizational hierarchies. Across five concise chapters, the book...

Contemporary firms face complex dynamic environments notoriously difficult to predict, even impossible to foresee, where extraordinary events can inflict major disruptions. Interactive collaborative decision processes appear as better drivers of strategic adaptation. Yet, firms show vastly different ways of dealing with the challenges imposed by extreme exposures as environmental conditions change.The research presented here is developed from analyses of extensive European and Nort...

A number of truly disruptive events have occurred in recent times, from the financial crisis and the pandemic to political conflict with broad ramifications for international business conduct. National borders have been severely constrained with radical effects on global value-chains and supply conditions. We must respond to these unpredictable developments in ways that create resilience and advance sustainable solutions.The global business environment is highly uncertain, fracture...

We need to develop a better understanding of how to generate effective strategic adaptation in times of abrupt environmental changes. The global interdependencies across specialized economic functions and markets require that business activities co-evolve across interacting public-private relationships where organizations can engage around viable ecosystems forming a sustainable path for the future. The ability to develop sustainable solutions thrives on innovative behaviors across network...

The responsive global organization can adapt business operations across multinational markets in response to unpredictable changes in the turbulent global marketplace. This book deals with different aspects of the effective multinational corporation (MNC) pointing to new ways in which the MNC can enhance responsiveness faced with increasing market turbulence. Drawing on contemporary research in strategy and international business, the book considers relevant aspects including subsidiary au...

Modern risk management as practiced today faces significant obstacles—we argue—primarily due to the fundamental premise of the concept itself. It asserts that we are mainly dealing with measurable, quantifiable risks and that we can manage the uncontrollable by relying on formal control-based systems, which has produced a general view that (enterprise) risk management is a technical-scientific discipline. Strategic Risk Leadership offers a critique of the status quo, and encourage...