In the aftermath of the 2008-09 global financial and economic crisis, businesses and firms today face a totally different landscape than their counterparts in the past decade or so. In addition to a global marketplace where competition is stiff, domestic and international businesses need to deal with the rise of China as the economic powerhouse, liberalizations of real and financial markets in the developing world including the transition economies, lingering fiscal problems amongst the high-income countries, the emergence of Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa as global market players, and the surge in the virtual communications across the globe
