Summary :
The first decade of the 21st Century has brought upon all of us an array of very perplexed issues and problems which are, by their own nature, very difficult to manage and resolve to any level of satisfaction: continuing world financial crises, new technical developments, starvation of over one billion people, increased terrorism, new corporate insider and cyber threats, organised crime operations across many countries, parallel and informal economies, ecological disasters, along with deforestation and pollution, increasing regional wars and upheavals, new corporate governance, compliance, accountability and reporting regimes, etc. As Richard Chandler has said1 ‘Societies are not static. They change over time. The most obvious changes result from economic and social processes that are constantly in flux. Expanding trade, technological innovation, new fashions and new forms of entertainment, seem to transform the world before our very eyes. Habits, cultural traditions and values change more slowly. Yet changes in these more intimate areas of life are just as important for progress andprosperity as economic trends’. All these impact on our lifestyle and mode of operation. The new lifestyle (modus vivendi, in the sociological vernacular) enforces upon all of us a new set of operational factors and transactional characteristics in our societal and human interactions; a new socio-economic operating mode (modus operandi in the sociological vernacular). This set of social interactions is permeated and driven by several socio-technical factors and functional characteristics, such as: globalisation of markets; liberalisation of markets; services economy; lack of governance controls in international fiscal and financial markets, transactions and activities;2 very fast developments in the fields of information technology, communications, biology, medicine, management, etc; information plurality, diffusion and potential information over-loading, as well as the increased role of knowledge on a global scale;3 increase of the leverage and focus on the needs of customers, the so-called customer-focus approach in all dealings; new developments and trends,4 as well as new risks on a global scale;5 differentiation of the needs, and increase of the expectations, of better provision of services to citizens, the so-called citizen-based service approach in all public-sector exchanges and transactions

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