The metaverse is sweeping the global thanks to its fundamentally innovative concepts of physical-virtual blended reality and years of industrial efforts on relevant hardware development. It is yet unclear what the metaverse is, what technologies it relies on, and what concern the society should care about since it is such a huge ecosystem with nearly unlimited possibilities. The book aims to provide a comprehensive study on the meta...

This book is an empirical study on the relationship between private enterprises, entrepreneurs and the government in P. R. China. The two authors conducted a detailed survey of enterprises and entrepreneurs in Liuzhou, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China. Although it was only conducted in a medium sized city, the survey provides a rare source of information on matched entrepreneur-enterprise pairs. It provides detailed information on management, performance, enterprise-government relat...

Shanghai, like the other big cities along China’s coastline, has witnessed extraordinary growth in its economy and population with industrial development and rural-to-urban migration generating extensive urban expansion. Shanghai’s GDP growth rate has been over 10 per cent for more than 15 years. Its population in 2013 was estimated at 23.47 million, which is double its size in 1979. The urban area enlarged by four times from 644 to 2,860 km2 between 1977 and 2010. Such demanding growth an...

The Sage Course Companion on International Business is an easy-to-navigate support guide to the International Business curriculum. It will allow readers to extend their understanding of key concepts and enhance their thinking skills in line with course requirements. This book also provides guidance on essential study skills and advice on developing critical thinking about international business.Designed to compliment existing textbooks for the course, the Companion...

This book dispels these myths and shows that people rely on the relation-based system not owing to specific cultural factors, but because of the stage of development in these countries. When the market is limited in scale and informal networks are thick, the relation-based system can be quite effective and efficient.

Energy efficiency is an important factor in an economy, since it helps meet energy needs, decrease costs, and lower environmental impacts. A review of the evolution of energy intensity in European and Former Soviet Union countries indicates a positive trend: high-energy-intensity countries have now reached the level of medium-energy-intensity economies 15 years earlier, and in the same period, medium-energy-intensity ones had similarly evolved to levels of low-energy-intensity. At the same...

This book examines the theory and practice of performance budgeting, which aims to link the funding of government agencies to the results they deliver to improve the efficiency of public spending. In a combination of thematic studies and case studies, it clearly presents the diverse range of contemporary performance budgeting models and examines their effectiveness. Its coverage is truly international, spanning developed, developing, and middle-income countries. Reflecting this, its case s...

The publication of the Digital Services Act in the Official Journal marks the end of a years-long drafting and negotiation process, and opens a new chapter: that of its enforcement, practicable access to justice, and potential to set global precedents. The Act has been portrayed as Europe's new 'Digital Constitution', which affirms the primacy of democratic rulemaking over the private transnational ordering mechanisms of Big Tech. With it, the European Union aims once again to set a global...

Since its opening up and economic reforms in 1979, China has undergone tremendous economic growth and social development, with a ten percent real gross domestic product growth per year on average through 2013. In spite of such an accomplishment, the current economic growth model in China, which is mainly triggered by the export-led policy and the huge government investment, has been challenged by potential external and internal risks, which do not support sustainable economic growth in the...

This book presents applications and solutions of Big Data in the GovTech system and recommendations for regulating the institutions of the digital economy and information society for the wide application of Big Data with the use of the institutional approach. In this book, a systematic scientific understanding of GovTech is formed, the central place of Big Data in this system is substantiated, and modern experience in the functioning and development of this system is considered in detail. ...

The object of this study, originally published in 1972, consists in developing, against the background of Yugoslav theory and practice, a general theory of the behaviour of economic productive units (the enterprises), managed by those who work therein (the workers or producers) whose reward for work in their share in the group’s net income. This title will be of interest to students of employee ownership and economic democracy.

With stagnated demand in many home economies, the need to internationalize and exploit foreign market opportunities has never been more paramount for businesses to succeed at a global level. However, this process raises a number of questions, such as: can firms use their knowledge of one market in the next? Can firms pursue internationalization on several fronts at the same time? How should firms handle cultural and institutional differences between markets?This textbook provides s...