Globalization has increased competitive pressures on firms. Together with rapid technological change, it has altered the environment in which firms operate. While globalization offers unprecedented opportunities for firms to act successfully, it simultaneously heightens the risks for firms lagging behind. In an open and liberalized world, increasing firm competitiveness has become a major challenge. This volume provides a thorough analysis of the competitiveness of firms in the Middle East and North Africa Region (MENA). It is organized into four parts which detail the different issues related to firm competitiveness from global rules for business, regional business environment, corporate governance, and the key economic sectors of small/medium size enterprises and tourism. This volume addresses key issues for the future of the region including the real challenges facing firms' operations and efficiency, the ability of MENA firms to compete in global markets, the impact of small and medium size enterprises on the stimulation of growth, and the economic potential of the tourism sector.

Imagine your main business competitor building a satellite-equipped "war room" to secretly monitor your new ventures. Imagine your classified product prototype mysteriously landing on the market under the brand name belonging to your archrival. Impossible? This isn't a story line from the latest spy thriller, it's modern-day corporate America. Spooked thrusts readers into a clandestine world-where business means war and information is worth stealing.Through narrative accounts of corporate spies within companies such as IBM, Microsoft, and Motorola, Spooked dramatically brings to life one of America's fastest-growing industries: Corporate Intelligence. In this page-burning expose, Adam Penenberg and Marc Barry uncover and describe in thrilling detail the alarming regularity of espionage in industry. They offer an unsettling portrait of America's publicly traded companies, and unravel the truth and hypocrisy behind the multi-billion dollar corporate intelligence industry.

Concerns about European prospects for competitiveness, jobs and growth are high on the European Union agenda and regulatory reform, both at national and EU levels, is widely recognised as a crucial tool for improving the performance of European companies. Despite the single market, selective sectoral regulatory reform and certain reforms at the national level, regulation in Europe still tends to discourage new entrants, impede new production methods and inhibit the exit of existing competitors. It often increases costs without providing compensatory benefits, reduces operational flexibility and distorts capital expenditure, creating obstacles to innovation. The authors in this book argue that regulatory reform can, more often than not, help improve the competitiveness of companies while generating net growth effects for the European Union as a whole.In this second volume, the authors discuss the vertical issues involved in regulatory reform. The authors describe in detail the regulatory reforms which are needed or have been initiated in nine major industrial sectors, including automobiles, textiles and clothing, retail trade, chemicals, banking, road transport, telecoms, electricity and (scheduled) air transport. In the companion volume, Regulatory Reform and Competitiveness in Europe, 1: Horizontal Issues, the authors address regulation and growth, and the regulatory burdens and failures in Europe. The book also deals with national competition policy, state aids, EU environmental policy, reforms in product markets, labour market reforms, the regulatory environment of small and new firms, and the current, insufficient, EU reforms to improve regulatory quality.

Why do some companies survive--or even thrive--amidst fierce competition and constant change? Hal Rosenbluth and Diane McFerrin Peters go behind the scenes at fifteen of the world's most resilient and innovative companies to reveal how they have met today's most pressing management challenges and how they prepare for tomorrow.

This important book focuses on the impact of home countries on the international competitiveness of transnational corporations (TNCs). It seeks to explain the geographic concentration of the most internationally competitive TNCs in a single or very few countries, and their uneven performance at these concentration points. The theoretical framework for this analysis is based on a link between the location advantages of countries and the ownership advantages of firms. The book focuses on professional service TNCs as the competitive advantages of these firms are based entirely on intangible, often mobile assets, and they thus provide a striking illustration for the ways in which such assets shape the competitiveness of firms. Analyses of TNCs in several professional service industries based in various countries reveal the dynamic balance between the home and the foreign countries in which the TNCs operate, as well as the combination of country- and firm-specific attributes in shaping the competitiveness of TNCs and the subsequent patterns of global competition. The Origins of the International Competitiveness of Firms extends our knowledge of the determinants of the international competitiveness of TNCs, and will be of interest to scholars and students of international business and business strategy, and to those working in the fields of international competition, trade and investment.

During the second half of the twentieth century, competition policy has been accorded an increasingly prominent role in the policy portfolios of industrialized nations. Since the late 1940s, when twenty-three nations ratified the first General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), tariff barriers have been progressively reduced throughout much of the industrialized world. The final Uruguay Round negotiations extended GATT's reach to agriculture, services, and intellectual property and clarified policies toward other aspects of trade. While great progress has been made, much remains to be done to integrate the world economy in the 21st century. In this book, part of the Brookings Integrating National Economies series, F. M. Scherer explores the three-way interaction among competition policy, national trading and investment strategies, and international trade policies. Focusing on four nations - the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan - he surveys the evolution over two centuries of national trading and competition policies and the points at which they come in conflict. Attempts to harmonize them through multilateral institutions, such as the European Union, are examined. The principal intersections between competition and trade policies are analyzed in depth. Scherer shows how export and import cartels have effects similar to traditional tariff barriers and how restraints implemented to settle trade disputes induce cartelization. Also investigated are the substantially different rules governing price discrimination under trade laws and competition policy, how vertical restraints such as exclusive dealing and resale price maintenance serve as import barriers, and theconflict between industrial policy and competition policy goals as nations choose whether to encourage or restrict mergers. Scherer offers recommendations for substantive and procedural improvements at the interface between trade and competition policies. He proposes a new set of international competition policy institutions that combat avoidable restraints while respecting the need for national sovereignty.

This text pinpoints the loss in economic efficiency from global budgeting and its likely distributive effects.

This is a book on business ethics based on what the author calls an `Aristotelian' approach to moral judgement.

Gripping and darkly comic, Breaking Twitter takes readers inside the battle between one of the most intriguing, polarizing, influential men of our time – Elon Musk – and the company that owns our world’s best hope for a shared global conversation.

From employee accounts within Twitter headquarters to the mission-driven team Musk surrounded himself with, this is the full story from all sides. Can Musk miraculously succeed or will he spectacularly fail? What will that mean for Twitter and Musk's other companies? What, really, is Elon’s end goal?

The whole world is watching.

Breaking Twitter will provide ringside seats.

The United States appears among the top entrepreneurial economies and ranks third on the GEDI. It performs very well on the aspirations sub-index but lags somewhat on the attitudes and activity sub-indexes. This book examines the performance of the United States on the Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index (GEDI), which captures the contextual features of entrepreneurship.

"Learning by Doing in Markets, Firms, and Countries" draws out the underlying economics in business history by focusing on learning processes and the development of competitively valuable asymmetries. The essays show that organizations, like people, learn that this process can be organized more or less effectively, which can have major implications for how competition works.
The first three essays in this volume explore techniques firms have used to both manage information to create valuable asymmetries and to otherwise suppress unwelcome competition. The next three focus on the ways in which firms have built special capabilities over time, capabilities that have been both sources of competitive advantage and resistance to new opportunities. The last two extend the notion of learning from the level of firms to that of nations. The collection as a whole builds on the previous two volumes to make the connection between information structure and product market outcomes in business history.

The electricity market has experienced enormous setbacks in delivering on the promise of deregulation. In theory, deregulating the electricity market would increase the efficiency of the industry by producing electricity at lower costs and passing those cost savings on to customers. However, deregulation poses substantial risks if the market is not designed properly, as the recent California crisis demonstrated. As "Electricity Deregulation "shows, successful deregulation is possible, although it is by no means a hands-off process--in fact, it requires a substantial amount of design and regulatory oversight.
This collection brings together leading experts from academia, government, and big business to discuss the lessons learned from experiences such as California's market meltdown as well as the ill-conceived policy choices that contribute to such failures. More importantly, the essays that comprise "Electricity Deregulation" offer a number of innovative prescriptions for the successful design of deregulated electricity markets. Written with economists and professionals associated with each of the network industries in mind, this comprehensive volume provides a timely and astute deliberation on the many risks and rewards of electricity deregulation.

In Integrated Strategic Change, Chris Worley, David Hitchin, and Walter Ross describe a process model of change that leads organizations through strategic analysis, strategy making, and the development and implementation of a strategic change plan. By integrating the process orientation of OD with the content orientation of strategy, an organizational capability is produced that helps organizations understand when and how to make fundamental strategic change. The book is written for human resource executives, strategic planners, and line managers interested in improving the quality of strategic implementation. It can also serve as a supplemental text for business strategy courses that wish to emphasize process approaches to strategy or strategic change.

401(k) plan sponsors have increasingly offered participants managed accountsservices under which providers manage participants' 401(k) savings over time by making investment and portfolio decisions for them. These services differ from investment options offered within 401(k) plans. This book examines how providers structure managed accounts; their advantages and disadvantages for participants; and challenges sponsors face in selecting and overseeing providers.

In 2008, the U.S. economy collided with two historic forces. The first force was the Great Recession, the most severe economic crisis in a generation. While the economy has recovered considerably over the last five years, there is little doubt that more work remains to address some of the challenges left in the wake of the Great Recession. This book analyses the evolution of the labour force participation rate since late 2007 and attempts to quantify the effects of these various forces.

The disparity between rich and poor countries is the most serious, intractable problem facing the world today. The chronic poverty of many nations affects more than the citizens and economies of those nations; it threatens global stability as the pressures of immigration become unsustainable and rogue nations seek power and influence through extreme political and terrorist acts. To address this tenacious poverty, a vast array of international institutions has pumped billions of dollars into these nations in recent decades, yet despite this infusion of capital and attention, roughly five billion of the world's six billion people continue to live in poor countries. What isn't working? And how can we fix it?
"The Power of Productivity" provides powerful and controversial answers to these questions. William W. Lewis, the director emeritus of the McKinsey Global Institute, here draws on extensive microeconomic studies of thirteen nations over twelve years--conducted by the Institute itself--to counter virtually all prevailing wisdom about how best to ameliorate economic disparity. Lewis's research, which included studying everything from state-of-the-art auto makers to black-market street vendors and mom-and-pop stores, conclusively demonstrates that, contrary to popular belief, providing more capital to poor nations is not the best way to help them. Nor is improving levels of education, exchange-rate flexibility, or government solvency enough. Rather, the key to improving economic conditions in poor countries, argues Lewis, is increasing productivity through intense, fair competition and protecting consumer rights.
As "The Power of Productivity" explains, this sweeping solutionaffects the economies of poor nations at all levels--from the viability of major industries to how the average consumer thinks about his or her purchases. Policies must be enacted in developing nations that reflect a consumer rather than a producer mindset and an attendant sense of consumer rights. Only one force, Lewis claims, can stand up to producer special privileges--consumer interests.
The Institute's unprecedented research method and Lewis's years of experience with economic policy combine to make "The Power of Productivity "the most authoritative and compelling view of the global economy today, one that will inform political and economic debate throughout the world for years to come.

.

Strategic Alliances for SME Development is a volume in the book series Research in Strategic Alliances that focuses on providing a robust and comprehensive forum for new scholarship in the field of strategic alliances. In particular, the books in the series cover new views of interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks and models, significant practical problems of alliance organization and management, and emerging areas of inquiry. The series also includes comprehensive empirical studies of selected segments of business, economic, industrial, government, and non-profit activities with wide prevalence of strategic alliances. Through the ongoing release of focused topical titles, this book series seeks to disseminate theoretical insights and practical management information that should enable interested professionals to gain a rigorous and comprehensive understanding of the field of strategic alliances. Strategic Alliances for SME Development contains contributions by leading scholars in the field of strategic alliance research. The 12 chapters in this volume deal with the increasingly significant role of strategic alliances in the development of SMEs, covering such diverse topics as management capability and internationalization of alliance portfolios, building alliances, development drivers, founder ties, competitive edge, strategic alignment, technology and innovative firms, and temporary project alliances. The chapters contain empirical as well as conceptual treatments of the selected topics, and collectively present a wide-ranging review of the noteworthy research perspectives on the role of strategic alliances for the development of small and medium-sized enterprises.

Antitrust in Germany and Japan presents an innovative, comparative analysis of the development and enforcement of two antitrust regimes, illustrating how each was shaped by American occupation strategies and policies following World War II. First imposed in 1947, the anti-trust controls in Germany and Japan were the world's first outside the United States. Those enacted in Japan continue in force, whereas in Germany, following a decade of debate, the occupation legislation was superseded in 1975 by the Law Against Restraints of Competition.

This study explores the ironies and errors that led to the enactment of the German and Japanese statutes and emphasizes the unexpected degree of convergence that has occurred during the past fifty years through amendment and practice. It compares in detail the institutional structure and processes for the enforcement of antitrust controls as well as the system of remedies and sanctions available under each statute. It notes the debates in Germany and Japan over the effectiveness of statutes, particularly the still timely debate in 1970s Germany over a proposal for criminal sanctions.

Antitrust in Germany and Japan reveals many unexpected and controversial similarities between the two antitrust regimes and demonstrates the extent to which American policy toward Germany determined American policy in Japan not only during presurrender planning but also throughout the occupation. It also challenges the prevailing view of the relative strength of antitrust controls in Germany relative to the weakness of antitrust in Japan.

This book will be of interest to corporate lawyers as well as to legal historians and scholars of political economy.

Ronald Burt describes the social structural theory of competition that has developed through the last two decades. The contrast between perfect competition and monopoly is replaced with a network model of competition. The basic element in this account is the structural hole: a gap between two individuals with complementary resources or information. When the two are connected through a third individual as entrepreneur, the gap is filled, creating important advantages for the entrepreneur. Competitive advantage is a matter of access to structural holes in relation to market transactions.