This book brings together papers from the Social Science International Research Conference (SSIRC) 2025, a global forum hosted by North-West University, South Africa, that brings together scholars, practitioners, and emerging researchers to explore the evolving landscape of social sciences in the age of artificial intelligence.Focusing on the theme "Social Sciences Research in the AI Era: Opportunities, Challenges and Threats," the papers explore contemporary issues across business management, finance, economics, law, human resource management, marketing, education, and emerging technologies.This volume offers valuable perspectives for academics, policymakers, and professionals navigating the intersection of social sciences and technological innovation.

This Palgrave Pivot aims to present a research-based, accessible analysis of the inner workings of the London stock exchange during the Georgian period.

Consolidating scattered archival sources and materials in one place, the book provides a solid historical basis for understanding the early modern stock market, ending with the formal creation of the Stock Exchange as an institution in 1801. Rather than going into detailed analysis of trading strategies and processes of the time, the book instead presents the 'what', 'where', 'who' and 'how' of the stock market operation, outlining the ways in which market participants negotiated trades, where these took place, and all the different types of securities that were traded. This engaging book will be of interest to financial and economic historians, as well as scholars in the humanities searching for a non-technical guide to the formation of the modern stock market.

This book presents a state-of-the-art picture of advances in social network research for economic, business, and financial historians. It showcases recent development in the methodology and application of social network analysis to historical research and draws out the unique benefits for economic history and related fields.

Social network analysis is increasingly understood to be an important part of historical research, allowing scholars to balance qualitative investigation with rigorous quantitative techniques. Through a global set of case studies spanning ancient, medieval, early modern and modern history, this edited volume demonstrates the interpretative potential of various SNA approaches to different sets of historical data. The chapters contribute to methodological understanding of SNA in economic history, as well as showing through the case studies how network analysis can decode complex social and economic interactions over time, making visible those relational patterns that were invisible to contemporary historical actors. This cutting-edge resource will be appeal widely to academics in economic, business and financial history, as well as statistics researchers and social scientists looking to strengthen their quantitative research skills.

This textbook is the second volume of "American Economic History" and introduces undergraduate and advanced undergraduate students to the economic foundations of America. It covers the period from World War I and the founding of the Federal Reserve to the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and explores major macroeconomic theories, policy shifts, and social transformations.

Topics include the Great Depression, World War II, urban change, the Cold War, stagflation, and the rise of the service economy. Students will also examine the evolving role of women, the Southern economic resurgence, and the causes and consequences of financial crises. Drawing on the author's lectures and previous works, the book provides an insightful foundation for understanding America's modern economic evolution.

This book contains a comprehensive exposition on the evolution and development of modern business enterprise in Nigeria, from the colonial period up to the present time. It highlights the challenges that top managers have faced within a rapidly changing business environment characteristic of such emerging economies. The book analyzes in detail how the mercantile trading houses that dominated the Nigerian economy during the colonial period transformed from import-export business into formidable conglomerates with business interests in manufacturing and modern service industries.

To survive in a rapidly changing environment such as Nigeria, top managers had to be adaptive and innovative in coping with emerging realities. The book contains a synthesis of how business enterprises adapted their strategies and organizational structures to cope with the demands of the ever-changing business environment in Nigeria. It also contains a summary of the author's research findings on the internal organization and management of large-scale business enterprises in Nigeria as well as the strengths and weaknesses of business enterprises in the country. In addition, the book presents the findings from a recent survey on emerging Nigerian-owned multinational corporations on the world stage. The growth and challenges facing indigenous management consulting firms are also examined in the book.

The book serves as a valuable read for senior and top managers, policy makers, researchers, teachers, and students of business administration and general management throughout Africa.

This volume showcases the vibrant and diverse landscape of phenomenological thinking in India. Critically engaging with the works of phenomenological thinkers like Edmund Husserl, Emmanuel Levinas, Franz Brentano, Hannah Arendt, Jitendra Nath Mohanty, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and R. Sundara Rajan, the contributors of this volume offer exciting insights and interdisciplinary examinations that help expand our understanding of phenomenology within a global context. Among this volume's rich contributions are new accounts that delve into the hitherto 'lost' reception history of phenomenology in India, the as-yet inadequately acknowledged extent of Edmund Husserl's engagement with Buddhist philosophy, R. Sundara Rajan's decolonizing thinking on geophilia, a cross-cultural dialogical exploration between phenomenology and yoga philosophy, a phenomenology of tribal identity formation in Northeast India, a critical phenomenology of caste, a feminist and anti-caste phenomenology of labor, and aesthetic phenomenology in the context of curatorial technologies as well as theatrical experiences. The volume also offers a novel phenomenological methodology for environmental ethics research in addition to timely interventions to the problem of referentiality in Husserl and decision in Heidegger. The varied contributions of this volume would serve as thought-provoking resources for graduate students and researchers in related fields.

This book presents selected chapters from the proceedings of the 15th Global Islamic Marketing Conference (October 2024), showcasing contemporary research that reflects the diversity, complexity, and dynamism of Islamic markets worldwide. Drawing on empirical studies from Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, South Asia, China, and India, the volume offers timely insights into how Muslim consumers, businesses, and institutions navigate rapidly changing economic, social, and technological landscapes.

The chapters cover a wide spectrum of themes central to Islamic marketing and business. These include halal food purchase decisions, collaborative relationships in halal beef value chains, consumer reactions to global crises such as the war in Gaza, and generational perspectives on boycotts among Muslim youth. Several studies investigate pressing market issues, from counterfeit mobile phone purchases in Malaysia to service quality perceptions shaped by gender in Saudi Arabia, and from branding dynamics among Moroccan football audiences to the broader socio-economic contributions of the Minangkabau community. A strong emphasis is placed on contemporary challenges and opportunities in digital transformation. Contributions examine online reviews and booking intentions in tourism, the adoption of digital marketing in SMEs, and the rise of digital home-based businesses, particularly among women entrepreneurs. Additional chapters explore the intersection of technology, well-being, and society, including mobile phone addiction moderated by mindfulness, and the implications of artificial intelligence for sustainability, entrepreneurship, and the food and beverage manufacturing sector.

This volume offers scholars, graduate students, policymakers, and consultants a rich and empirically grounded understanding of Islamic markets today. It provides both theoretical advancement and practical insights for those seeking to engage effectively with Muslim consumers, develop ethical and culturally aligned strategies, and better understand business practices across Islam-oriented regions.

Volume I of this two-volume series lays the foundational pillars of data science, combining statistical theory, mathematical essentials, and practical computing skills required for modern data analysis. Designed as a comprehensive entry point, this volume equips readers with the conceptual and computational tools needed to understand, explore, and model data before progressing to advanced machine learning and high-dimensional methods.

The volume begins with hands-on introductions to R and Python, enabling readers with no prior programming experience to immediately engage in data exploration and analysis. Core probabilistic and statistical concepts probability theory, probability distributions, sampling, and parametric inference are developed systematically, ensuring a strong analytical backbone for data-driven reasoning. Essential mathematical tools, particularly linear algebra, are presented in an intuitive manner tailored to data science applications.

Emphasis is placed on exploratory data analysis, regression modeling, causal inference, and business-oriented statistical modeling, supported throughout by real-world case studies and applied examples. Mathematical rigor is balanced with intuition, and every major concept is reinforced using executable R and Python code.

This volume is ideal for undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers, and practitioners seeking a structured and application-driven introduction to data science and business analytics. It serves as both a classroom-ready textbook and a self-study reference, preparing readers for advanced modeling techniques covered in Volume II.

This book showcases the significance of an integrated Green Lean Six Sigma (GLSS) approach as an emerging environmentally sustainable business practice that can be applied in both manufacturing and service organizations. The GLSS approach emphasizes achieving optimal environmental benefits while maintaining operational performance. The book comprehensively covers the drivers, tools, practices, barriers, and factors required for successful implementation of this approach to address environmental sustainability issues.

Featuring practical examples of GLSS implementation from developed and developing economies, the book provides a broad perspective of the application of this approach. It is an invaluable resource for practitioners, environmental and lean six sigma consultants, senior corporate executives, decision-makers, policymakers, managers, engineering students, and research scholars seeking to adopt sustainable business practices.

In summary, this book offers a wealth of insights and knowledge that can help organizations achieve their sustainability goals while remaining competitive and profitable.

In today's business environments, destructive leadership practices continue to cause significant harm to organizations, employees, and stakeholders. While extensive research has documented these detrimental effects, less attention has been given to proactive approaches for preventing such practices. Based on a systematic exploration of normative perspectives, this book examines kindness as a leadership strength to prevent destructive leadership behaviors. The research conceptualizes kindness through the principle of primum non nocere (first, do no harm), positioning it as a form of self-restraint essential for preventing illegitimate harm. Using the Practical Syllogism framework and the Ethical Compass tool, this book analyzes how kindness serves as a foundational leadership strength that promotes trust, cooperation, and sustainable organizational performance. The findings of this research contribute to the literature of leadership and business ethics by suggesting ways for leaders to manifest kindness and harm prevention in everyday decisions and behaviors, primarily by focusing on the development of moral awareness, willingness, and ability within leadership.

This book explores Wittgenstein's unsettling remark in the Tractatus that the only necessity that exists is logical necessity. It suggests that the notion of necessity is a primitive notion, and, as such, both a requirement for human cognition and constitutive of rational thought.

On this basis, the book then reexamines some of the perennial questions of philosophy including logic itself, beauty, law, truth and the concept of God. All of these topics are seen to be closely related to the notion of necessity. It is argued that if logical necessity is the only necessity that exists, then Kant's notion of the subjective necessity of aesthetic judgments must be reconsidered. Likewise, metaphysical, moral, and practical necessity must all be revised.

Finally, a new dimension is added to the analysis. It is shown that the notion of logical necessity is human in its origin, and yet also absolute. This insight reopens the possibility of logical absolutism, as opposed to the current, general consensus around logical relativism. Moreover, it becomes possible to entertain a notion of logical absolutism without the problematic baggage of metaphysical and/or divine considerations. This new sense of logical absolutism facilitates a reconsideration of certain epistemological claims directly related to logical truths, for example, so-called analytical propositions.

Logical Necessity and Rational Thought is essential reading for all scholars, researchers and advanced students of philosophical logic. It is also ideal for researchers of the thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein.

The climate crisis and the digital transformation of society have been accelerating in recent years and will continue to do so for the immediate future. So far technological breakthroughs and innovation have been unable to address or sufficiently mitigate the damage business has done to the environment, but there are new technologies and new business models that could spell a new beginning. This monograph presents a modern and original approach to the design and implementation of effective digital business models that provide positive services for addressing climate change. This includes artificial intelligence, digital platform solutions based on algorithms changing the functioning of technical organization, applied technological management supported by elements of automation and robotics and new mechanisms for implementing cybersecurity and safety principles. It will be of great interest to scholars and students of sustainability, business model innovation and digital business including artificial intelligence.

This book delves deeply into the evolution of service science and its application to Indonesia, a country characterized by its agrarian and maritime identities, rich cultural tapestry, and huge physical geography. It investigates how these elements influence customer behaviors, the decision-making processes, and service perceptions, presenting both difficulties and possibilities for business, academia, and government to create value in this diversified context.

The book is the first to investigate how service science might be implemented within Indonesia's unique cultural and geographical environment, incorporating the country's special idea of gotong-royong (mutual cooperation) into the value co-creation framework. Unlike other research, it combines global ideas with local practices, providing new insights into adapting service science and innovation to regional diversity.

By combining theory and practical case studies, this book provides a holistic understanding of the concept of service science as well as the development of scientific application. It highlights the significance of tailoring service to the local situation in Indonesia. Also, it reflects Indonesia's unique traits while providing ideas relevant outside its borders, with examples drawn from academia, business, and government sectors.

Designed as a guide for practitioners, academics, and policymakers, this book provides modeling approaches in both hard and soft systems thinking. It uses qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methodologies to show how service science may promote value co-creation and innovation. The book has two major parts; the first discusses the concept of service science from the systems science perspective, and the second deals with the application of the service science concept to real cases in Indonesia.

For decades, Israel ignored the Shiite community in Lebanon. That blind spot proved catastrophic. In this gripping account, drawing on 24 years of military intelligence experience, leaning on rare Arabic sources, a former senior Israeli intelligence officer takes you behind the scenes of decisions that shaped the Middle East for generations. From the early neglect of Lebanon's Shiites to the fateful 1992 strike that killed Abbas Musawi and propelled Hassan Nasrallah to power and his elimination 32 years later by Israel on September 2024.

Part memoir, part strategic analysis, this book offers lessons for policymakers, scholars, and anyone seeking to understand the cost of ignoring history. This reconstruction of the final days of Hassan Nasrallah also reveals how strategic miscalculations turned opportunity into enduring conflict and illuminates the hidden dynamics of Lebanon's transformation.

This book explores the intersection of sustainability and business practices in developing economies, focusing on innovative strategies that contribute to and critically engage with relevant Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It takes a critical stance toward mainstream sustainability narratives and the global SDG framework. Moving beyond conventional CSR rhetoric, tokenistic sustainability practices, and unchecked SDG optimism, it interrogates whether global initiatives truly align with local realities in developing economies.

Through a grounded critique, it explores how the SDG agenda may reinforce top-down, one-size-fits-all models that fail to capture the socio-political and economic diversity of the Global South. Rather than celebrating the SDGs uncritically, this book scrutinizes their operational feasibility, coherence, and inherent structural limitations, offering equity-driven and context-sensitive alternatives that challenge normative frameworks and conventional wisdom.

Drawing from decolonial theory to highlight how knowledge production, sustainability discourse, and implementation models are often shaped by colonial legacies and northern-centric paradigms, this work focuses on grassroots approaches, localized epistemologies, and pluriverse thinking to reimagine sustainability as a more inclusive and transformative endeavor, potentially leading to the articulation of new, decolonially informed sustainability concepts.

By bridging research and practice, this book combines scholarly analysis with grounded case studies, enabling readers to engage with both conceptual debates and real-world applications. Ultimately, it offers a roadmap for transitioning from ambition to action, advocating for sustainability practices that are both transformative and just.

In today's polarising world, businesses frequently face competing demands from across the political spectrum. Progressives are pushing companies to minimise environmental footprints and enhance diversity, equity and inclusion, while conservative activists are labelling those initiatives as "woke" and urging executives to focus solely on profit maximisation.

How should corporate leaders navigate this volatile landscape? Purposeful Capitalism charts a path forward, centred on the idea of profitable problem-solving. Drawing on lessons from fourteen well-known companies across industries and countries, this book argues that businesses must promote human progress by tackling societal challenges. This requires harnessing the best elements of capitalism, including the ability to attract investment and motivate people through financial rewards. Profit, when it stems from value-creating activities rather than a myopic obsession with financial engineering, should be celebrated, not vilified.

Engaging and insightful, the book introduces a new framework - the Sustainability Flywheel - which explores how strategy, business models, and sustainability factors interact to create financial value. It shows that good intentions don't guarantee commercial success. Instead, business leaders must focus on material issues aligned with their strategy and competitive advantage. The result is a more nuanced perspective that moves beyond dogmatic debates about sustainability and capitalism.

Offering practical guidance for business leaders and investors, Purposeful Capitalism is vital reading for anyone interested in improving our economic system and building a flourishing society.

This book provides a systematic and comprehensive analysis of corporate compliance as a central mechanism of modern corporate governance and legal regulation. It explains how compliance programs prevent corporate misconduct, manage legal risk, and function within administrative and criminal enforcement frameworks.

The book begins by defining the nature, values, and principles of corporate compliance, and examines risk-based compliance management and institutional models for compliance systems. It then analyzes compliance risk assessment and methods for evaluating the effectiveness of compliance programs, drawing on comparative practices from the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, and China. The later chapters explore administrative settlements, regulatory approaches to promoting compliance, and compliance-based incentives in criminal law, including deferred prosecution agreements and enterprise compliance reform in China. The book also discusses compliance incentives in international financial organizations and presents representative corporate compliance cases. This book is intended for scholars, legal practitioners, regulators, and students interested in corporate law, criminal law, and regulatory governance.

This book examines how Artificial Intelligence is transforming ethics, creativity, and responsibility in digital transformation and what this means for the future of innovation. Building on the previous two volumes, Leadership for Digital Transformation: Navigating the Journey and Digital Transformation in Knowledge Transfer: Shaping the Future, it explores how human values can guide human-centered technological progress across business, education, and society. Drawing on the practical experience of the Institute for Digital Transformation and Innovation (IDTI) at BSP Business and Law School, the book connects research with application. It offers frameworks and real-world examples for responsible AI, ethical governance, and sustainable innovation, with a focus on SMEs. Distinctive for its action-oriented approach, the volume moves ethics from theory to practice. Through interdisciplinary and international perspectives, it addresses algorithmic bias, AI literacy, sustainability, and digital democracy, showing how technology can serve humanity. Contributions from experts across Europe, Latin America, and beyond provide globally relevant insights and practical solutions for fostering responsibility in an AI-driven world.

This book investigates the social and economic behaviors exhibited by artificial intelligence, with a focus on trust, cooperation, and incentives. The first chapter examines the critical role of AI in decision-making and why understanding social and economic behavior is vital for improving AI interactions in both structured and dynamic environments. Subsequent chapters explore how AI systems such as deep reinforcement learning models simulate behaviors like trust and cooperation, and how large language models capture and reproduce patterns of social behaviors and economic incentives. By emphasizing behavioral analysis, the book aims to offer a scientific perspective on the mechanisms underlying AI's interactions with human-like elements in decision-making. This interdisciplinary approach bridges artificial intelligence, economics, and social psychology to provide a comprehensive understanding of AI's behavioral dynamics.