This book addresses the twin goals of “Build Back Better” than before the pandemic and the Great Reset called for by the World Economic Forum. Can we use this crisis to re-vision capitalism as a life-preserving, livelihood-enriching phenomenon? All businesses now face the challenge of prospering while serving and saving lives. This should have been their mission all along! The pandemic is killing disproportionately those whom we have neglected. Deaths in Europe and the Americas are between ten and one hundred times more frequent than deaths in China and the region influenced by Chinese civilization for two thousand years. This is all despite the weeks of warning we had and wasted. Since Western governments must massively stimulate their economies in any case, spending trillions, this is a priceless opportunity to usher in certain kinds of world-saving businesses, and show out those kinds of business that wreck our eco-system. We have a priceless opportunity to create an economy that serves all its stakeholders, customers, employees, suppliers and those who physically create wealth, not just those who trade in shares. This virus has sniffed out our selfishness, our toxic levels of individualism and self-indulgence. We should never waste a crisis on recriminations. It is an opportunity to reset our moral compass to re-discover that the true mission of business enterprise is to serve humanity with higher goals. Leadership must be dedicated to service, not self-aggrandizement.

This book studies the evolution in human thought, action, and behavior as a result of the 2008 fi nancial crisis and the Covid-19 crisis. Through the presentation and analysis of data, as recorded for at least a decade, and using the Greek economy as a case study, the authors examine the changes in social and human capital, increasingly risk-averse behavior, and changes in people’s general psyche and economic action in Greek society and economy.

This book studies the evolution in human thought, action, and behavior as a result of the 2008 fi nancial crisis and the Covid-19 crisis. Through the presentation and analysis of data, as recorded for at least a decade, and using the Greek economy as a case study, the authors examine the changes in social and human capital, increasingly risk-averse behavior, and changes in people’s general psyche and economic action in Greek society and economy.

Already dealing with disruptive market forces, the Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs) faced fundamental challenges resulting from the global health crisis, wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic. With catastrophic changes to cultural consumption, cultural organizations are dealing with short-, medium-, and long-term threats to livelihoods under lockdown. This book aims at filling the literature gap about the consequences of one of the hardest crises – COVID-19 – severely impacting all the fields of the CCIs. With a focus on European countries and taking into account the evolving and unstable context caused by the pandemic still in progress, this book investigates the first reactions and actual strategies of CCIs’ actors, government bodies, and cultural institutions facing the COVID-19 crisis and the potential consequences of these emergency strategies for the future of the CCIs. Solutions adopted during the repeated lockdowns by CCIs’ actors could originate new forms of cultural consumption and/or new innovative market strategies. This book brings together a constellation of contributors to analyze the cultural sector as it seeks to emerge from this existential challenge. The global perspectives presented in this book provide research-based evidence to understand and reflect on an unprecedented period, allowing reflective practitioners to learn and develop from a range of real-world cases. The book will also be of interest to researchers, academics, and students with a particular interest in the management of cultural and creative organizations and crisis management.

This book analyses some of the many upheavals brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of the COVID-19–communication–culture interface, with a particular focus on the new global, virtual workplace. It brings together a pluridisciplinary and multinational team of researchers from the fields of sociology and organisational studies, discourse analysis, linguistics, communication and cultural studies, and includes testimonials from actors within the professional sector such as international managers, consultants and foreign trade advisors. The collection examines a wide range of phenomena including communication on the pandemic by public authorities, the pandemic as a discursive construct, the digital turn and its impact on communication, the role of social media, as well as national diplomacy and questions of surveillance, (bio)power and trust. Issues pertaining specifically to the workplace focus on the impact of remote work, including the challenge of building cohesive work relations and managing cultural difference, distance recruitment, the new forms of professional online communication, the future of the remote work model and questions of identity that are underpinned by the culture of professions. It aims to theoretically inform some of the enormous changes which have been brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic at multiple levels of our professional and social lives. It concludes with a virtual round-table discussion on the question of cultural difference with respect to both the pandemic itself and work practice. COVID-19, Communication and Culture: Beyond the Global Workplace will be of great interest to academics and professionals interested in the communication and discourse and the cultural impact of COVID-19.

As an unprecedented global pandemic sweeps the planet, who better than the supercharged Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek to uncover its deeper meanings, marvel at its mind-boggling paradoxes and speculate on the profundity of its consequences? We live in a moment when the greatest act of love is to stay distant from the object of your affection. When governments renowned for ruthless cuts in public spending can suddenly conjure up trillions. When toilet paper becomes a commodity as precious as diamonds. And when, according to Žižek, a new form of communism – the outlines of which can already be seen in the very heartlands of neoliberalism – may be the only way of averting a descent into global barbarism. Written with his customary brio and love of analogies in popular culture (Quentin Tarantino and H. G. Wells sit next to Hegel and Marx), Žižek provides a concise and provocative snapshot of the crisis as it widens, engulfing us all.