This title analyzes emerging practises such as empowerment, total quality management, re-engineering, entrepreneurship, innovation, information technologies, customer satisfaction, rapid product development and process-oriented work environments. It shows how many of these current trends started in small businesses and the importance of small business in developing new procedures and products for larger businesses.

This outstanding book provides you with a detailed look at family businesses, the most prevalent form of business in the world. Whether you are a business student, or a member of a family who owns a business, you will definitely benefit from this book, which leads with an introduction to the unique nature of family businesses. Inside, the author explores the many differences between a family-owned business and a nonfamily-owned business. He discusses the major family business theories and shows how family firms make business decisions. This book also defines the significant issues prevalent in family firms and explores the most problematic issue: the succession or the transfer of ownership to the next generation. If you are a professional advisor to family firms—such as accountants, attorneys, bankers, insurance providers, and financial services—you’ll undoubtedly develop a better understanding for your clients.

We, Sharda and Margot, feel very honored to be able to write and edit such a book. Our spiritual journey has led to the passion of bringing together and sharing the thoughts we ourselves have come across in our lives by meeting gurus, swamis, like-minded seekers, managers, teachers, entrepreneurs, academics, students, and by reading books and practicing spiritual techniques. We also have gained much spiritual inspiration from the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother to whom we are grateful. The thoughts presented in this book already exist in the East and West. Integrating them into the way we do business, can help us to regain trust and respect in business even in the current economic crisis. We aim to convince others of our deep belief that spiritual practices and a spiritual orientation help make life more enjoyable and makes us better human beings through helping us to live in line with our karma in every context of life, in our roles as employees, entrepreneurs, managers, leaders, mothers, or fathers, etc.

Presenting a broad literature review of scholarly work in the area of Business Model Innovation, this new book analyses 50 management theories in the context of BMI to yield valuable new insights. Research on BMI is still in its infancy and has so far proved to be more than just a sub-discipline of strategy or innovation research. Exploring the field of Business Innovation demonstrates the importance of the discipline as a more specialized management research field and offers new understandings of this important subject. It presents ‘grand theories’ that will help researchers approach BMI through a different angle and describes business models as phenomena, enabling readers to understand their patterns and mechanisms. Reviewing the most important academic work on the subject over the last 15 years, the authors aim to open up the debate and inspire researchers to look at this phenomenon from new and different angles.