In honor of Small Business Month, several branches across UBC Library will be having curated displays related to small business, from October 21 to Nov 12. Irving K. Barber Learning Centre has a display on Aboriginal entrepreneurship. You are invited to visit their book display over the next few weeks. Be sure to also check out their blog posts found on the Small Business Accelerator (SBA) website.
At David Lam Library, our display this year is focusing on the impacts of COVID-19 on business. During the COVID-19 pandemic, small businesses have faced more challenges than ever. They have also used this opportunity to create new, creative, strategies and products. Come check out our book display to learn about their struggles, resiliency and innovations. The following books and e-book covers are on display at the David Lam Library and Canaccord Learning Commons:
Coronavirus and Business: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review: What should you and your organization be doing to address today’s unprecedented challenges brought on by COVID-19 while simultaneously laying the foundation needed for your organization to emerge stronger? As the pandemic exacts its toll on the global economy, you must understand your role in keeping your employees (and yourself) healthy, productive, and on board, while preparing your business for supply chain disruptions and remote work challenges. It’s time to lead through the crisis and prepare for recovery, and your business must continue innovating and reinventing itself to keep ahead of the pack. “Coronavirus: Leadership and Recovery” provides you with essential thinking about managing your business, your employees, and your crisis communication to position your organization to leap ahead when the worst is over. Business is changing. Will you adapt or be left behind?
The COVID-19 epidemic in China / Lawrence Lau, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Yanyan Xiong, Zhejiang University, China: Lawrence Lau, Professor of Economics at Stanford, was able to accurately predict the end of the SARS epidemic in 2003. In mid-February 2020, he once again predicted the end to an epidemic – COVID-19 would no longer be a problem by March 2020. He was right again – by that time, COVID-19 was essentially gone from mainland China. How was China able to control a virus that would go on to ravage the globe? How did the actions taken by the government impact the economy in Wuhan, outside of Wuhan, and in the rest of the mainland? How did the data tell him when the epidemic would end? Through an in-depth quantitative analysis of data from December 2019 to early April 2020, including adjustments of the official cumulative data by removing any inconsistencies and smoothing the surges not attributable directly to the COVID-19 virus itself, this book explains through the numbers the human and economic costs of the epidemic.
The rules of contagion: why things spread – and why they stop: How are sexually transmitted infections related to a financial crisis? How can the analysis of reproduction numbers of viruses help us understand the successes of Buzzfeed and the deaths of memes? To understand the factors behind creating the perfect viral marketing campaign and preventing the cascading failures of financial institutions, we must look behind the veil to examine how things spread, starting from the origin of contagion studies – disease. Adam Kucharski, associate professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, explores topics such as social media engagement, online manipulation, and of course, outbreaks such as SARS, Ebola, and COVID-19 to show how much we get wrong about contagion and how astonishing the real science is. By uncovering the crucial factors driving outbreaks, we can see how things really spread – and how we can harness the rules of contagion to work for us.
Ten lessons for a post-pandemic world / Fareed Zakaria: The nature of a post-pandemic world is rooted in political, social, technological, and economic consequences that may take years to unfold. Zakaria delves into the significance of the digital economy, the resilience of cities (see the success of Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taipei in suppressing the virus), the deepening of economic inequality around the world, how the pandemic has exacerbated the rift between China and the U.S. (and will continue to do so), and why “people should listen to the experts—and experts should listen to the people.” “Markets are not enough,” the CNN host and best-selling author writes. Throwing money at the problem cannot fix the situation that we are now in, and once the consequences begin to unfold, Zarkaria foresees a swing towards more socialist-friendly policies. The key takeaway? “This ugly pandemic has opened up a path to a new world.”
Post-Pandemic: 12 Lessons in Crisis Management: The pandemic swept across Ireland in 2020 as quickly as confidence in the country’s banks had vanished in 2008. In the earlier crisis, only the tough decisions of a small group of regulators and officials kept Ireland from collapse, though the price of salvation was a huge national debt and years of lost opportunities. Jonathon McMahon draws parallels between one national crisis to another – from the financial impacts of 1970s OPEC oil embargo to today’s COVID-19 pandemic, there are lessons to be learned from history. The problem, he argues, is that successful management of a pandemic within national borders does not count for much in a globalised world economy. In fact, disease control and economic freedom make for uneasy bedfellows. Who is going to point out that the monstrous COVID-induced debts will have to be repaid? Who will observe that printing more money has only ever led to asset bubbles and inflation? Just how bad will the economic crisis be? And who, especially after so many deaths in care homes, is going to advocate a properly funded social care system? Jonathan does not have all the answers, but he does have strong and informed views on the actions governments and business leaders must take to make the world safer, fairer, and better prepared for future crises.
Shadow impact of COVID-19 on economies: A greater depression?: As hospitality and tourism industry has been recognized as a key source of employment, revenue and opportunities for hotels, restaurants, shared-accommodation facilities, outdoor recreation, festivals and other related businesses, efficient and effective management of crises such the COVID-19 pandemic requires a thorough understanding of the crises on customers, employees, businesses and destinations. Thus, this edited book aims to examine the effects and impact levels of COVID-19 pandemic on customers, employees, businesses and destinations from both local and global perspectives. This book covers deep researches from different perspectives and disciplines upon COVID-19 pandemic impacts on social, legal, economic, cultural issues by successful and expert researchers in their field. In this book, different and rigorous analyses of all areas influenced by COVID-19 researches were made in order to be one of the emerging reliable sources about the COVID-19 literature with various dimensions.
The Pandemic Information Gap: The Brutal Economics of COVID-19 / Joshua Gans: Everything is awful. The virus is awful. The immediate choices are awful. The future may be even more awful. We should have been more prepared.” COVID-19 may have been caused by a virus, but the COVID-19 pandemic is caused by a lack of good information. A pandemic is essentially an information problem, argues economist Joshua Gans, and if we solve the information problem we can defeat the virus. From the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gans identifies the four phases of the pandemic economy – containment, reset, recovery, and prepare. He argues that we should insulate businesses from failure and workers from job loss, and describes economic policy approaches that would help achieve this. He discusses failures in pandemic communication strategies, privacy and public health information, and methods for handling potential vaccine shortages. Finally, he shows how we must innovate our way out of this crisis, think creatively, and take the long view. Pandemics may be unpredictable, but they can be planned for, and perhaps worse outcomes can be prevented in the future.
The Business of Pandemics: The COVID-19 Story / Edited By Jay Liebowitz: Nations and businesses across the globe have been working through the difficulties of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. From a business standpoint, there have been dramatic effects on logistics and supply chains, economic downfalls, bailouts of major industries and small businesses, and far-reaching social impacts around the world. Even though the COVID-19 story is still in its making, this book focuses on the business of pandemics as applied to COVID-19, bringing together a global panel of experts across industries and NGOs to help guide business executives and managers through the complex array of issues affecting business in the time of a pandemic. Solutions are offered to the struggles of work from home, virtual business, crisis decision-making and communication, and the eventual re-opening, providing high-level guidance and insight for business leaders dealing with the complexities and challenges presented by this unprecedented crisis.
Pandemic Economics / Peter A.G. van Bergeijk: Highlighting how economic theory can anticipate a pandemic’s impact despite the uncertainty and unreliability of traditional statistics, Peter van Bergeijk assesses the lack of preparation by international economic institutions and the ability for humanity to deeply hurt the economy by its response to infectious disease. Chapters offer an overview and critical analysis of global non-pharmaceutical interventions and economic policies in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Looking forward, the book investigates the economic impact, policy (in)effectiveness and resilience in different social contexts, illustrating a pandemic trilemma of health, freedom and the economy. It suggests how to prepare for the next pandemic at the individual level, in city planning, nationally, internationally and globally, with a focus on analyzing the impact of pandemics from a global perspective.