The late Honourable Michael Wilson was a Canadian politician and business professional. As Minister of Finance under Brian Mulroney, Wilson was one of the key negotiators of the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement - one of Canada's most important economic agreements in the last 50 years, later superseded by NAFTA. In addition, Wilson was responsible for implementing the controversial Goods and Services Tax (GST), which remains key to the federal government today. After his life in Parliament, Wilson served as Ambassador to the United States and Chancellor of the University of Toronto. Outside of politics, Wilson was active in raising awareness of mental health issues following the traumatic loss of his son, Cameron, to suicide. Devoting considerable time to advocacy, he established the Cameron Parker Holcombe Wilson Chair in Depression Studies at the University of Toronto and served as Board Chair for the Mental Health Commission of Canada. Something within Me highlights how Wilson's personal life blended with his political life and accomplishments, detailing his advocacy for mental health awareness as well his involvement in important pieces of legislation that made significant impacts in Canadian political and economic history. These deeply personal stories, particularly those of a father grappling with his son's illness and death, remind us of the lives behind the political personas that shape our world.

Business firms around the world are experimenting with new organizational designs, changing their formal architectures, their routines and processes, and their corporate cultures as they seek to improve their current performance and their growth prospects. In the process they are changing the scope of their business operations, redrawing their organization charts, redefining the allocation of decision-making authority and responsibility, revamping the mechanisms for motivating and rewarding people, reconsidering which activities to conduct in-house and which to out-source, redesigning their information systems, and seeking to alter the shared beliefs, values and norms that their people hold.
In this book, John Roberts argues that there are predictable, necessary relationships among these changes that will improve performance and growth. The organizations that are successful will establish patterns of fit among the elements of their organizational designs, their competitive strategies and the external environment in which they operate and will go about this in a holistic manner.
The Modern Firm develops powerful conceptual frameworks for analyzing the interrelations between organizational design features, competitive strategy and the business environment. Written in a non-technical language, the book is nevertheless based on rigorous modeling and draws on numerous examples from eighteenth century fur trading companies to such modern firms such as BP and Nokia. Finally the book explores why these developments are happening now, pointing to the increase in global competition and changes in technology.
Written by one of the world's leading economists and experts that willimprove performance and growth. The organizations that are successful will establish patterns of fit among the elements of their organizational designs, their competitive strategies and the external environment in which they operate and will go about this in a holistic manner.