Innovative Business Practices

Prevailing a Turbulent Era

Edited By Demetris Vrontis and Alkis Thrassou

This second decade of the millennium finds the world changing at a once unimaginable pace. Businesses, tangled in the interwoven threads of galloping globalization, technological advances, cultural diversity, economic recession and deep-rooted human social evolution, struggle to keep up with incessant changes; consequently and inexorably experiencing severe difficulties and disorientation. Executives, much bewildered, habitually turn to conventional, timehonoured strategies and practices, which increasingly fail to offer the much-sought answers and means to survival, competitiveness and growth. We are currently experiencing a business era of turbulence and dynamic change – an era that inherently rejects conventionality and orthodox business theory to reward businesses embracing agility, reflex-style adaptability, innovation and creativity. This turbulence is, however, not a parenthesis or even a pattern, but the new reality in which each business must reinvent and redefine itself. This is a new reality of stakeholders that shift focus from the external to the internal, from the tangible to the intangible, and from fact to perception. Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2013 ISBN(10): 1-4438-4604-X This book presents research and paradigms that transcend classical theory in order to examine how business practice is positively affected by these conditions. Across a multitude of sectors and organisational types, scholars of different business specialisations set the theoretical foundations of contemporary thinking and present their practical implementations.