FinTech, as we lay out in this book, is best understood as including four major elements: first, global wholesale markets where digitisation means speed, crucial for capitalising on information advantages; second, an explosion of financial technology (FinTech) start-ups particularly since 2008 in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) seeking regulatory lenience that was available to the small but not the large; third, the unprecedented digital financial transformation in retail finance in some countries, particularly China, India, and Kenya; and fourth, the increasing role of large technology companies moving into financial services and digital financial platforms.This long-term process of digitisation and datafication of finance has increasingly combined with the technologies commonly termed ‘ABCD’: Artificial Intelligence (A), Big Data (B), Cloud Computing (C), and Distributed Ledger Technology (D). The latter typically uses blockchains and makes possible the smart contracts that underpin cryptocurrencies and central bank digital currencies. These technologies have together, on the one hand, prompted the need for digital identification and, on the other hand, triggered the extraordinary growth we have seen: Regulatory Technologies (RegTech) and Supervisory Technologies (SupTech).We include all of these aspects of the revolution through which we are all living in the rubric, FinTech. Its ambit is broad and extends from innovations with disruptive effects on existing intermediaries, such as crowdfunding and crowdlending among many others, through to the entry into financial services of the BigTechs and the existential threats they pose to traditional banks.

Since the 2008 GFC, financial regulation has increased dramatically in scope and scale. Post-crisis regulation, plus rapid technological change, has spurred the development of FinTech and RegTech firms and data-driven financial service providers. Financial regulators increasingly seek to balance the traditional objectives of financial stability and consumer protection with promoting growth, innovation, and sustainability. This chapter analyses possible new regulatory approaches, ranging from doing nothing (which spans being permissive to highly restrictive, depending on context), cautious permissiveness (on a case-by-case basis, or through special charters), structured experimentalism (e.g., sandboxes or piloting), and development of specific new regulatory frameworks. We argue for a new balanced, risk-based, proportionate approach that incorporates these rebalanced objectives, and which we term ‘smart regulation’.

The ability to organize is our most valuable social technology. Organizing affects an enterprise’s efficiency, effectiveness, and ability to adapt. Modern organizations operate in increasingly complex, dynamic environments, which puts a premium on adaptation. Compared to traditional organizations, modern organizations are flatter and more open to their environment. Their processes are more generative and interactive – actors themselves generate and coordinate solutions rather than follow hierarchically devised plans and directives. Modern organizations search outside their boundaries for resources wherever they may exist. They coproduce products and services with suppliers, customers, and partners. They collaborate, both internally and externally, to learn and become more capable. In this book, leading voices in the field of organization design articulate and exemplify how a combination of agile processes, artificial intelligence, and digital platforms powers adaptive, sustainable, and healthy organizations.

An overview of testing and measurement in North America is provided, covering topics related to privacy laws and regulations, online proctoring, artificial intelligence, accommodations, accessibility, and the “opt out of testing” movement that are currently defining measurement in North America. This is not to say that these challenges are unique to North America; in fact, the challenges related to these topics are being faced all over the world in varying degrees and the same opportunities exist, but these topics are of particular importance when it comes to measurement and assessment in North America. Building on these observations, a discussion of how advances in technology and computing power provide an opportunity to challenge the status quo related to assessment; these advancements will allow assessment of skills in more authentic ways that will provide better insight into someone’s knowledge, skills, and abilities. The question we should be asking and attempting to answer is “How can assessment developers leverage the power of the cloud and technology to measure skills more accurately and create higher fidelity in the assessment process?”

Distributed ledger technology and the resulting crypto-assets have the potential to transform the financial and payments industry by leveraging features of flexibility, transparency, and rapid scalability. The constant evolution and increasing adoption of this innovation, despite cyclical turbulence, is here to stay, requiring greater stability and control in order to scale to levels unexpected just a few years ago. The opportunity in the payments industry is to bring innovation particularly in cross-border, micro- and conditional payments, to which current offerings struggle to respond due to rules, technologies, and business models that need to be evolved. To allow this innovation to fulfil its full potential, it is crucial to address the challenge related to the current high levels of risk and uncertainty and to define a clear and shared regulatory framework between national and cross-border regulators. A key role will be played by intermediaries, in particular qualified and reliable service providers, capable of meeting the needs and protecting all parties involved, private and public. They have the opportunity to be key players in the change, driving responsible, sustainable, and inclusive adoption of the innovation that DLT and crypto-assets are bringing. Nexi is at the forefront in supporting a secure and easy transition to a better society, aiming at distributed inclusion and safeguarding both the interests of all private and public stakeholders and regulatory clarity.

This chapter examines the poems of Juvencus, Prudentius, and Ausonius, not primarily as specimens of a late-antique aesthetics, but as instruments for the propagation of religious knowledge and the consolidation of Christian hegemony through the appropriation of pagan tools of art. The poems will be considered both as vehicles of acculturation and as objects of culture in their own right, expressing and fostering a new sense of moral and political ascendancy. It will be argued that where Juvencus appropriates the hexameter form and tropes and images from classical epic, Prudentius seems to invent new forms with the purpose of superseding classical culture and adapting its imagery to a Christian world-view. In Ausonius, Christian imagery is subliminal, betokening his own certitude that the victory of the church is unassailable; it will be argued that in his crucifixion of Cupid, subliminal use of Christian images hastens the dissolution of the pagan sensibility from within.

New technologies hold great promises of making crisis response better. These technologies may improve information positions and enable faster communication as well as produce more rapid and targeted responses in crises. As such, technological progress boosts effectiveness and efficiency, while reducing risks to frontline responders. Still, the reality does not always match these great expectations due to technical failures and implementation difficulties as well as persistent social problems that cannot be resolved by new tools or systems. There are often even undesirable side effects. The dilemma for frontline responders revolves around finding the right attitude toward new technologies. Technological progress is a historical inevitability, but new innovations should only be adopted if these match a recognized problem in the response and not just for their own sake. There are guiding principles, based on earlier experiences, that offer useful insights in how to best incorporate modern tools and systems. This requires a prudent approach that considers new technology with a mix of hesitation and curiosity.

Chapter 6 shows how false Stories help to perpetuate the economic imbalance described in Chapter 4. These Stories include those of economic growth, comparative advantage, creative destruction, and ceaseless innovation. Most of them originate in mainstream economics, including praise for shareholder interests and insistence on social choice theory. Karl Polanyi claimed that such Stories, which endorse a society roiled by constant change, ignore what he called community welfare.

Past decades have shown an increase in research into employee responses to organizational change (OC). However, little attention has been paid to the impact of the type of change. Different types of change are likely to affect change recipients’ learning and well-being in a different way. Our study aimed to identify OC types and investigate whether these are differentially associated with employee responses. Exploring OC types, two dimensions were distinguished and combined: a qualitative axis representing the prevalence of innovation; and a quantitative axis distinguishing between growth and decline. In a representative sample of private sector employees from a longitudinal survey, cluster analyses identified six OC types. We investigated whether these OC types are differentially associated with active workplace learning and emotional exhaustion. Results indicated that active learning is stimulated by OC types characterized by innovation/growth, while OC types characterized by decline and restructuring without innovation are associated with higher emotional exhaustion. In conclusion, various OC types revealed differential effects on employee personal development and well-being.

This chapter presents the importance of productivity in the growth of the cultural sector. We describe the concept of productivity lag, as explained by Baumol and Bowen, followed by a more formal algebraic analysis of the effects of productivity lag. In addition to a theoretical approach, we provide historical evidence on the productivity lag and its consequences. We also turn to a discussion of the forces that countervail productivity lag. Finally, we outline evidence that growth of the earnings gap has been forestalled by artistic innovation and an increasing artistic deficit.

Theoretical suppositions of business crisis in the literature are largely drawn from studies conducted in North America and Western Europe. Chapter 6, on the other hand, examines a Chinese approach to crisis. Based on the notion of paradoxical integration, this approach informs not only crisis management in China and East Asia, but potentially has general application. In this conceptualization, crisis is not necessarily treated as a consequence of discord or disruption, but rather is understood as an aspect or phase of an unfolding process, even in the most difficult circumstances. This approach, then, offers a course toward future business success even in the face of significant loss, without suffering desperation or self-destruction. Three strategies which entrepreneurs adopt to crisis are examined in the chapter, namely, the combination of the old with the new, or path dependence; second, seeking facilitating relationships with other members of a business community, or guanxi accommodation; and finally, reordering priorities and available resources, including familial and personal, or self-reflexivity.

Chapter 5 explores key aspects of the gendered dichotomy assumed to underlie entrepreneurial endeavour and achievement. Entrepreneurial success is predominantly understood in gendered terms as a consequence of qualities associated with masculinity while women are assumed to play supportive roles in business and enterprise. Even though successful female entrepreneurs are increasingly acknowledged, their ability to perform as business leaders is typically associated with masculine ideals of success, through an accomplishment of female imitations of masculinity. Chapter 4 challenges such persistent dichotomic approaches to gender in entrepreneurship. It is shown on the basis of data drawn from China’s new generation of entrepreneurs that women and men strategically display gender in the company and in the marketplace, in a manner that will maximize growth and profit for their firms. These women and men are not constrained by stereotyped gender ideals but rather utilize existing imagery and norms, and, when necessary, create new ones in doing business. In addition, the involvement of grandparents in supporting their daughters and daughters-in-law who are in business, wholly overlooked in consideration of female entrepreneurs, constitutes a hidden factor in the interplay of constructions of gender, family, and business experienced by female entrepreneurs in China.

Over the past twenty years, as W.G. Sebald’s influence and prestige has grown, the Sebaldian has grown beyond a descriptor for traits evocative of Sebald’s works to a bona fide genre, with dozens of representatives in several continents, including Carlos Fonseca, Daša Drndić, and Maria Setapnova. Aspects of the Sebaldian include embedded photography, spurious photographs, and incorporation of archival matter.

We rely on other people’s ideas because they often know more than we do about many aspects of the world. A negative consequence of shared beliefs occurs when people focus too much on information that originates from people who hold the same opinions. A group is particularly vulnerable to groupthink when its members have similar backgrounds, the group is insulated from outside opinions, and there are no clear rules for decision making. Shared beliefs can nonetheless contribute to group cohesion, coordination of ideas, and shared mental models. The flipside of shared beliefs are unshared beliefs that can cause conflicts. Advice for resolving conflicts includes engaging in persuasive listening, acknowledging common ground, and discussing reasons for a lack of progress. Considering alternative perspectives also broadens views. High levels of task discourse enable team members to resolve ambiguities, refine their ideas, and discuss the potential innovation of those ideas. Training should therefore emphasize a diversity of perspectives, the open exchanges of ideas, the reduction of biases, and an increased motivation for accuracy.

The focus on supply shocks may have obscured the importance of such other factors as institutions, ideas, culture, leaders, and human agency. Certainly these can lead to bad outcomes – bad leaders usually produce bad outcomes – but with rare exceptions they matter only at the margins. Elites will use established institutions to maintain their position against an adverse shock, but those institutions will yield to a big enough shock. Institutions, then, are endogenous, as are leaders (bad ones are overthrown or defeated) and human agency (although crowds, especially acting through markets, are usually wiser than individuals). The salient exceptions are culture and systemic ideas. We have convincing examples of how initially adaptive cultural traits – e.g., of male supremacy or interpersonal distrust – can persist over generations and affect how societies respond to shocks. And systemic ideas about how the world works can prescribe bad or good ways of responding to a crisis such as the Great Depression. Institutions, ideas, culture, leaders, or human agency clearly matter, but supply shocks almost always matter more.

A simple Cobb-Douglas production function illustrates how supply shocks affect relative returns and, thereby, a society’s degree of economic inequality, whether measured as the rental-wage ratio, the share of income going to the top few percentiles of the distribution, or the Gini coefficient. Illustrative examples of positive and negative shocks to the supply of labor, land, physical capital, and human capital are presented and their main causes adduced. Trade also matters. An unanticipated opening or closing of trade routes can effectively change a factor’s supply or the availability of external markets for products that use that factor intensively. Unforeseen innovations in transportation and communication, or the discovery of new trade routes, open new sources and markets; wartime blockades often close them. Both historically have given rise to extreme supply shocks.