This important book presents a new original study of the German and UK financial markets. It addresses the relationship between corporate governance, ownership and financial performance in German and UK firms floated during the 1980s. Marc Goergen uses detailed company micro-data to examine the ownership and performance of each firm from the time of its flotation to six years later. He finds that the evolution of ownership depends on certain corporate characteristics and that differences in financial performance cannot be explained simply by differences in the concentration of ownership. The book sheds new light on the important issue of whether corporate ownership influences or is influenced by financial performance. The main findings of the book have important implications for public policy and the current public debate on corporate governance and the globalisation of financial markets. They are important for established financial markets and the transitional economies of Eastern and Central Europe as well as for international scholars interested in issues of corporate governance and the performance of firms.

The main thrust of Part 1 is to give some understanding of the concept of 'global competition'. In doing so, the chapters rely heavily on industrial studies. Part 2 deals with two different aspects of this change viewed from two different perspectives. The one is economic and more macro: the other political and social and more micro, being concerned with the way in which companies have to utilize their various organisational units and integrate information on a fragmented environment into a strategic whole. Part 3 deals specifically with technology, as the particular segment of the environment which often has the largest impact on future strategies. In Part 4 the perspective of global competition is applied at industry, country and company levels and it is shown that this perspective adds new dimensions to old problems. The final parts address the problem of management in global competition.

The history of policymaking has been dominated by two rival assumptions about markets. Those who have advocated Keynesian-type policies have generally based their arguments on the claim that markets are imperfectly competitive. On the other hand laissez faire advocates have argued the opposite by claiming that in fact free market policies will eliminate "market imperfections" and reinvigorate perfect competition. The goal of this book is to enter into this important debate by raising critical questions about the nature of market competition in both the neoclassical and Kaleckian traditions By drawing on the insights of the classical political economists, Schumpeter, Hayek, the Oxford Economists' Research Group (OERG) and others, the authors in this book challenge this perfect versus imperfect competition dichotomy in both theoretical and empirical terms. There are important differences between the theoretical perspectives of several authors in the broad alternative theoretical tradition defined by this book; nevertheless, a unifying theme throughout this volume is that competition is conceptualized as a dynamic disequilibrium process rather than the static equilibrium state of conventional theory. For many of the authors the growth of the firm is consistent with a heightened degree of competitiveness, as the classical economists and Schumpeter emphasized, and not a lowered one as in the conventional 'monopoly capital' and imperfect competition perspectives. Contributions by Rania Antonopoulos, Serdal Bahce, Cyrus Bina, Scott Carter, Benan Eres, Jason Hecht, Jack High, William Lazonick, Andreis Lazzarini, Fred S. Lee, J. Stanley Metcalfe, Jamee Moudud, John Sarich, Anwar Shaikh, Persefoni Tsaliki, Lefteris Tsoulfidis, and John Weeks.

Merchants of Truth by Jill Abramson, former editor of The New York Times, is the gripping and definitive in-the-room account of the revolution that has swept the news industry over the last decade and reshaped our world. 'A cracking, essential read ... [Abramson] knows where most of the bodies are buried and is prepared to draw the reader a detailed map' Guardian 'A masterwork ... vastly useful' Financial Times Drawing on revelatory access, Abramson takes us behind the scenes at four media titans during the most volatile years in news history. Two are maverick upstarts: BuzzFeed, the brain-child of virtuoso clickbait scientist Jonah Perretti, and VICE, led by the booze-fuelled anarcho-hipster Shane Smith. Their viral technology and disregard for the long-established standards of news journalism allow them to build game-changing billion-dollar businesses out of the millennial taste for puppies and nudity. The two others are among the world's most venerable news institutions: The New York Times, owned and run for generations by the Sulzberger dynasty, and The Washington Post, also family-owned but soon to be bought by the world's richest merchant of all, Jeff Bezos. Here Abramson reveals first-hand the seismic clashes that take place in the boardrooms and newsrooms as they are forced to choose between their cherished principles - objectivity and impartiality - and survival in a world where online advertising via Facebook and Google seems the only life-raft. We are with the deal-making tycoons, thrusting reporters and hard-bitten editors, the egomaniacs, bullshitters, provocateurs and bullies, as some surf and others drown in the breaking wave of change. And we watch as the survivors confront the horrifying cost of their success: sexual scandal, fake news, the election of President Trump, the shaking of democracy. Exposing the people and decisions that brought us to now, Merchants of Truth is a major book that breaks the ultimate news story of our times.

This authoritative book, bringing together the reports of the Competitiveness Advisory Group, identifies actions to improve European competitiveness politically, economically and socially. The objective is to raise living standards and maintain social cohesion. The Competitiveness Advisory Group has the mission of advising the European Commission and the Heads of State and Government of the European Union. The members of this independent group, which includes leading industrialists, trade unionists, politicians and academics, have adopted a 'bottom-up' approach, seeking to draw lessons from the experience of countries, industries and firms: they rely on 'benchmarking' in order to identify best practice. In the context of increasing interdependence of world trade and consequent globalization of the international economy new policy prescriptions are required for growth and employment, greater efficiency and higher standards of living. In relation to this, the Group discusses the need to close the worldwide technology gap, for Europe to develop deeper relations with the fast growing Asia Pacific region and argues for greater European solidarity in international trade negotiations. Within the European Union itself, it emphasizes the need to achieve the internal market for the free flow of goods, services and people. In addition, it stresses that Europe needs to catch-up, construct and eventually lead the development of the information society in which workers are recognized as a major asset to be invested in. The Group concludes that, although unemployment remains high, European competitiveness now has a brighter future with the movement towards economic and monetary union, and the enlargement of the European Union eastwards. This book will be essential reading for policymakers, government advisers, industrialists and academics concerned with the future of European economies and societies.

The nineteenth century was a time of rapid change in forms of organization of economic activity. A central feature of such change was, inevitably, the development of new types of finance adapted to the radically new environment.
An appreciation of the history of these developments makes a substantial contribution to the understanding of the growth and development of the British economy in one of its most dramatic phases.
Philip Cottrell has written an impressively documented full-scale survey of this crucial period, discussing finance in the context of sweeping reforms of company law, unprecedented technological change and economic expansion, and the institutional effects of all of these. He is primarily concerned with English manufacturing industry but frequently refers, by way of comparison, to extractive industry, Scottish and Welsh developments and the economies of other West European countries. As well as providing a comprehensive overview, the book pays particular attention to coal, iron and textiles amongst the industries and, at the level of organization, to the emergence of the joint stock limited liability company and its gradual adoption by industrialists. The relationship between commercial banks and manufacturing receives detailed consideration and the role of internally accumulated funds and trade credit is discussed. this classic book was first published in 1980.

The key to retaining competitive advantage in a volatile business world is agility. The third edition of The Agile Organization shows how to develop capabilities across the organization to adapt. With helpful checklists, tips and advice, this is a practical blueprint to building both agility and resilience at individual, team and organizational levels. It covers how to design agile organizations as well as how to implement agile models into existing organizations and people practices. There is guidance on how agility can be applied to talent management, flexible working patterns and the importance of mobilizing and energizing employees for change. This edition contains new material on agile mindsets and enterprise agile planning, alongside how hybrid forms of working can enhance resilience. There is also extended material on how inclusion and wellbeing initiatives can support individual resilience and innovation to improve performance across the organization. Case studies include ING, the University of California, Berkeley, the UK National Health Service (NHS) and SNC-Lavalin's Atkins business. This book is an essential read for HR and OD specialists, senior leaders and managers who want transform their organization and build an agile business.

This comprehensive text provides a novel approach to business policy and strategic management for both undergraduate and advanced courses. While there are numerous theoretical and practical works on the design of a firm's strategy, sources of competitive strength, and the processes of strategic planning, this book focuses on the implementation of a firm's competitive strategy throughout all levels of the organization. William Forgang presents strategic analysis from the operations level of the firm, using a cohesive case study to highlight key themes throughout the book. He provides students with the tools to assess the choices that result in a unified implementation of a firm's strategy, and the realization of financial goals. Strategy-specific decision making is an essential tool for students who are engaged in case study analysis or managing a firm in computer-based simulation, and the text features an instructor's and student's simulation guide with sample questions and assignments as well as end-of-chapter and in-chapter exercises and discussion questions.

This book is a key example of the emergence of public choice theory by an economist who was to become one of its major exponents. It combines a detailed, critical study of the Monopolies Commission, with an analysis of the economic issues involved in monopoly supervision and control.

The union of Western Europe poses many complex and technical obstacles. Analysing the advantages as well as the difficulties, the book discusses competition and the nature and direction of the increased pressures it brings to bear upon entrepreneurial activity, through which the effects of economic union will mostly be felt.

Dealing with general economic theory, other than employment theory, the book discusses the theory of pure and monopolistic competition - with a special emphasis upon welfare aspects. Beginning with an analysis of the consumer and of the individual firm, the main stress is nevertheless placed on the analysis of the economic system as a whole.

This timely research review explores the main issues surrounding competition and regulation in electricity markets. The industry is experiencing irresistible forces for change driven by energy policy objectives; a reassessment of market regulation in the face of high energy prices and the response to consumer pressure to agree on what constitutes a fair price for energy. This research review identifies the key articles that underpin the debate across the industries supply chain (generation, supply and networks) and from a regulatory perspective (including market power and incentive regulation) followed by a consideration of the overall impact of liberalisation and future developments.

This book is the outgrowth of shared interests between the editors and the contributing authors to provide a multidisciplinary perspective in evaluating universal service policy and recommending policy changes to accommodate a more competitive telecommunications environment. The book is interdisciplinary in nature to reflect the extremely complex context in which universal service policy is formed. The chapter authors represent a broad cross-section of disciplinary training, professional positions, and relationships in the telecommunications industry. Academic disciplines represented include law, economics, anthropology, communication, and business.
This book's purpose is to significantly enhance the development of effective telecommunications universal service policy among policymakers, industry members, and stakeholders in the United States. Universal service policy has been, and will continue to be, both enabled and constrained by the simultaneous interaction of social, political, technological, and economic forces in the environment in which it is formed. A more effective process for policy design is to seek agreement on how entitlements embedded in universal service policy should be modified as circumstances invariably change over time. Therefore, the volume reflects recent significant developments in U.S. universal service policy--the implementation of which continues to unfold.

Exploring the thorny issues of industrial organisation, competition policy and liberalization in the Asia-Pacific region, this book examines the ways in which governments regulate business. Using case studies from China, the USA, New Zealand, Thailand, Malaysia and Japan, the authors take a comparative look at the evolution of policies and their implementation on the ground.
With a specific focus on the energy, transport and telecommuncations sectors, this book represents the most up-to-date analysis of the ways in which governments in the Asia-Pacific are coping with rapid industrial and economic change.

Discussing how and by what paths Japan and Korea have built competitive and innovative capital goods sectors, this text examines the role of user firms in shaping the innovation dynamics of capital goods. These firms are represented in this study by car makers in both countries - companies which have involved themselves in the technical and entrepreneurial entry into machine tools along with active investments. The suggested consequence of this is an increased competitive advantage and competence of their specialized suppliers.

The Wall Street Journal Top Ten Bestseller: The 10 strategies to sustainable growth, based on a purpose-led culture for all businesses.

'A worthy successor to Michael Porter, Bova's book is that rare gift: it opens doors for new ideas and new actions. No glib answers here, simply hard-won wisdom that will provoke big changes for organizations large and small.' - Seth Godin, author of Linchpin

Tiffani Bova, the Growth and Innovation Evangelist at Salesforce, draws on her expertise as a consultant and practitioner to devise a new framework for business leaders looking to pursue growth. We're witnessing an age of endless customization, and growth strategy is no exception. There's no one size fits all strategy; a winning strategy for one business may spell doom for another.

In Growth IQ, Bova determines that there are ten simple – but easily misunderstood – growth paths, and explains how companies can get a handle on their particular business context, and use it to determine the right combination and sequence of growth paths to take them into the future.

Bova breaks down the strategies deployed by a wide range of companies to show you how:

* GE and John Deere have lasted over a century and continue to thrive by combining their strategy of innovative product development with a renewed focus on R&D and customer experience.
* Marvel transformed from a struggling comic book publisher to a global entertainment behemoth by realigning their market penetration strategy to focus on comic book characters, instead of just comic books.
* Gateway's attempt at market expansion into brick-and-mortar retail led to its failure, while the same move by Apple has accelerated its growth.

Whether your company is on a growth spurt, in a worrying stall, or showing signs of decline, Growth IQ is your map to charting the course of your company's future.

Location is an important factor in the efficiency and profitability of industrial activity. This work provides an introduction to and critical review of this field of growing academic and business interest. In business, the right choices have to be made to produce profit. Industrial location is a fixed investment, crucial to the strategy and capital investment of any organization. Location also impacts upon non-investors, directly affecting employment, the environment and economic activity in the locale. Focusing chiefly on the United States, but drawing on an international range of cases, the authors explain the economic, social and political forces which have shaped contemporary patterns of industrialization and examine the changing nature of production and systems.

Providing an authoritative perspective on the best current research regarding telecommunication policy, this book is based on the 22nd Annual Telecommunications Policy Research Conference. The papers focus on the critical policy issues created by increasing competition in the industry. The book contains a careful analysis of local competition and interconnection, international competition, universal service issues, the Internet and emerging new methods of communication, and the first amendment problems created by changing telecommunication technology.
It brings together -- in a convenient form -- a wide range of important scholarship on telecommunication policy that otherwise would require extensive research into a variety of journals, government filings, and unpublished papers.

How can business leaders and organization development professionals enable their companies to succeed in a digital age? Use the second edition of Agile Transformation to improve business performance. Packed full of practical advice, this new edition features updates on data-driven decision-making and the importance of putting it at the centre of mindset change and transformation to empower teams to make decisions. As well as updates to case studies, there is extended material on agile structures, including team alignment, developing agile culture and leadership. Agile Transformation covers all aspects of business transformation needing to be considered: why new operating models are needed, how to apply agile principles at scale, leveraging digital-native processes and why change managers need to think big but start small. It also looks at how to build and engage high-performing teams for change, how to tackle employee mindsets that can hinder agile adoption and why developing an agile business is not a reason to fail to plan. Featuring case studies from organizations including Amazon, Netflix and Vodafone, this is crucial reading for businesses wanting to effectively compete in the new world of work.

Government policies to reduce environmental pollution and global warming are often criticized as damaging to the economy, particularly by reducing international competitiveness. This book addresses the issue by examining many of the policies concerned, and their effects on competitiveness. It demonstrates that well-designed, market-oriented environmental policies may be expected to improve both domestic and international competitiveness. The authors dismiss the fear that environmental policies will damage competitiveness by approaching the issue from four different perspectives: the economic analysis of competitiveness; a geo-economic approach to trade and foreign investment between Europe, NAFTA and Southeast Asia; studies of the effects of environmental policies on competitiveness; and the formal modelling of carbon taxation, international competitiveness and carbon leakage. The book also includes results from a global econometric model on the potential for carbon leakage, a detailed case study of German national policies, an examination of life cycle analysis and competitiveness, and an empirical study of green product development. This book will be of great interest to academics working in the field of environmental economics and researchers involved in environmental policy.

Here Calkins shows businesses how to create and maintain a defensive strategy including: how to understand and get competitive intelligence; how to determine if your brand or company is at risk; how to create a defensive strategy; limiting risk and preventing a trial; understanding your own IP as a weapon; and much more.

More than 15 million people in this country earn their livings by serving clients, and their numbers are growing every day. Unfortunately, far too few develop the skills and strategies needed to rise to the top in a world where clients have almost unlimited access to information and expertise. Supported by more than one hundred case studies and wisdom gleaned from interviews with dozens of leading CEOs and prominent business advisors, Clients for Life identifies what clients really want and lays out the core qualities that distinguish the client advisor -- an irreplaceable resource -- from the expert for hire -- a tradable commodity.

• Experts are specialists; advisors become deep generalists who have broad perspective.
  
• Experts are for hire; advisors have selfless independence, balancing client devotion with objectivity and detachment.
  
• Experts have professional credibility; advisors develop deep personal trust.
  
• Experts analyze; advisors synthesize and bring big-picture thinking to the table.
  
• Experts supply expertise and information; advisors are educators who provide insight and wisdom.
  

Portraits of history's most famously successful advisors, including Machiavelli, Sir Thomas More, and J. P. Morgan, underscore these timeless qualities that modern professionals need to develop to excel in today's competitive environment.

Classical location theory is extended from its least cost approach to a maximum profit framework in this outstanding collection of Melvin L. Greenhut's key essays. This extension of classical location theory changes the analysis used in location economics from that of pure competition to oligopolistic competition. Using the analysis which is developed in this volume, locational interdependencies and, in turn, industrial location are shown to be affected by, diverse factors, including among others, marginal cost curves, demand curves and the number of firms in the market. Employing empirical findings to relate theory to practice, the author establishes a general theory via which he investigates and resolves specific issues and problems. These essays make a major contribution by enabling the reader to appreciate the important developments that have taken place over recent years in location economics. Location Economics and its companion volume, Spatial Microeconomics, will be welcomed by students, teachers and practitioners of economics for improving access to Professor Greenhut's many important essays and papers.

Stop feeling overwhelmed by data and start using it to its full potential, to create an agile and forward-looking strategy that enables customer-centric marketing, builds your brand and develops product strategies. Many brands talk about creating a marketing strategy powered by data, analytics and metrics. Yet too often they're still overwhelmed by data, or unsure of how to use it to create a flexible and future-focused strategy that doesn't just validate what's happened in the past. Marketing Metrics takes readers through all the stages of implementing a data-first strategy, from early-stage adoption to more advanced customization. Featuring examples from a range of organizations including Coca-Cola and Mercedes-Benz, it shows how to create a strategy which leverages consumer data for customer-centric marketing, establishes the ROI of channels and campaigns, strengthens brands and creates data-driven product strategies. Covering the range of new global laws that impact consumer privacy and data collection and usage, Marketing Metrics shows how to use data in a non-invasive, secure and ethical way. Also showing how to communicate critical data to the right stakeholders and the skills of the data-savvy marketer, this is a clear and jargon-free guide to creating a future-focused and data-powered marketing strategy.

The essential complement to the pathbreaking book Competitive Strategy, Michael E. Porter's Competitive Advantage explores the underpinnings of competitive advantage in the individual firm. With over 30 printings in English and translated into thirteen languages, this second volume in Porter's landmark trilogy describes how a firm actually gains an advantage over its rivals. Competitive Advantage introduces a whole new way of understanding what a firm does. Porter's groundbreaking concept of the value chain disaggregates a company into "activities," or the discrete functions or processes that represent the elemental building blocks of competitive advantage.

Now an essential part of international business thinking, Competitive Advantage takes strategy from broad vision to an internally consistent configuration of activities. Its powerful framework provides the tools to understand the drivers of cost and a company's relative cost position. Porter's value chain enables managers to isolate the underlying sources of buyer value that will command a premium price, and the reasons why one product or service substitutes for another. He shows how competitive advantage lies not only in activities themselves but in the way activities relate to each other, to supplier activities, and to customer activities. Competitive Advantage also provides for the first time the tools to strategically segment an industry and rigorously assess the competitive logic of diversification.

That the phrases "competitive advantage" and "sustainable competitive advantage" have become commonplace is testimony to the power of Porter's ideas. Competitive Advantage has guided countless companies, business school students, and scholars in understanding the roots of competition. Porter's work captures the extraordinary complexity of competition in a way that makes strategy both concrete and actionable.