Although mercers have long been recognised as one of the most influential trades in medieval London, this is the first book to offer a comprehensive and detailed analysis of the trade from the twelfth to the sixteenth century. The variety of mercery goods (linen, silk, worsted and small manufactured items including what is now called haberdashery) gave the mercers of London an edge over all competitors. The sources and production of all these commodities is traced throughout the period covered. It was as the major importers and distributors of linen in England that London mercers were able to take control of the Merchant Adventurers and the export of English cloth to the Low Countries. The development of the Adventurers' Company and its domination by London mercers is described from its first privileges of 1296 to after the fall of Antwerp. This book investigates the earliest itinerant mercers and the artisans who made and sold mercery goods (such as the silkwomen of London, so often mercers' wives), and their origins in counties like Norfolk, the source of linen and worsted. These diverse traders were united by the neighbourhood of the London Mercery on Cheapside and by their need for the privileges of the freedom of London. Extensive use of Netherlandish and French sources puts the London Mercery into the context of European Trade, and literary texts add a more personal image of the merchant and his preoccupation with his social status which rose from that of the despised pedlar to the advisor of princes. After a slow start, the Mercers' Company came to include some of the wealthiest and most powerful men of London and administer a wide range of charitable estates such as that of Richard Whittington. The story of how they survived the vicissitudes inflicted by the wars and religious changes of the sixteenth century concludes this fascinating and wide-ranging study.

This title is a study of the export of books from Britain to early-independent Spanish America, which considers all phases of production, distribution, reading and re-writing of British books in the region, and explores the role that these works played in the formation of national identities in the new countries. Analysing in particular the publishing house of Rudolph Ackermann, which dominated the export of British books in Spanish to the former colonies in the 1820s, it discusses the ways in which the printed form of these publications affected the knowledge conveyed by them. early-independent Spanish America and the trends in the import of European books in the region, the author examines the operation of Ackermann's publishing enterprise. She shows how the collaborative nature of this enterprise, involving a number of Spanish American diplomats as sponsors and Spanish exiles as writers and translators, shaped the characteristics of its publications, and how the notion of useful knowledge conveyed by them was deployed in the service of both commercial and educational concerns. and retailing in Spanish America in the 1820s are also analysed, as is the way in which the significance of the knowledge transmitted by those books shifted in the course of their production and distribution. The author examines how the question-and answer form of Ackermann's textbooks constrained both publishers and writers and oriented their readers' relation with the texts. She then looks at the various ways in which foreign knowledge was appropriated in the construction of individual, social, national, and continental identities; this is done through the study of a number of individual reading experiences and through the analysis of the editions and adaptations of Ackermann's textbooks during the 19th century. be of interest both to book historians and to Latin American scholars, as well as to historians of education, historians of science, and scholars interested in processes of internationalisation, transmission, and appropriation of knowledge.

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Chinese Worlds

Explains the major changes in the textile and clothing industry that are taking place mostly in the USA. Shows the central role of information systems in providing data on sales at the retail level that is communicated back through the system to garment distributors, manufacturers, designers, and to the starting point: the manufacturers of the cloth from which the garments are made.

From vision to realization Five years after the start: an update on the status of the initiative Insights: research and industry Comparison with industrial internet and Made in China 2025

One hundred fifty years ago the McCoy brothers of Springfield, Illinois, bet their fortunes on Abilene, Kansas, then just a slapdash way station. Instead of an endless horizon of prairie grasses, they saw a bustling outlet for hundreds of thousands of Texas Longhorns coming up the Chisholm Trail - and the youngest brother, Joseph, saw how a middleman could become wealthy in the process. This is the story of how that gamble paid off, transforming the cattle trade and, with it, the American landscape and diet. The Chisholm Trail follows McCoy's vision and the effects of the Chisholm Trail from post-Civil War Texas and Kansas to the multimillion-dollar beef industry that remade the Great Plains, the American diet, and the national and international beef trade. At every step, both nature and humanity put roadblocks in McCoy's way. Texas cattle fever had dampened the appetite for longhorns, while prairie fires, thunderstorms, blizzards, droughts, and floods roiled the land. Unscrupulous railroad managers, stiff competition from other brokers, Indians who resented the usurping of their grasslands, and farmers who preferred growing wheat to raising cattle all threatened to impede the McCoys' vision for the trail. As author James E. Sherow shows, by confronting these obstacles, McCoy put his own stamp upon the land, and on eating habits as far away as New York City and London. Joseph McCoy's enterprise forged links between cattlemen, entrepreneurs, and restaurateurs; between ecology, disease, and technology; and between local, national, and international markets. Tracing these connections, The Chisholm Trail shows in vivid terms how a gamble made in the face of uncontrollable natural factors indelibly changed the environment, reshaped the Kansas prairie into the nation's stockyard, and transformed Plains Indian hunting grounds into the hub of a domestic farm culture.

If you have no time to follow the market closely, then "Trend Trading" is the book for you. Trend trading is one of the most effective and easy-to-use methods for making money in the market. Success depends on identifying the trend with confidence and catching the trend after it has started, and on getting out as soon as possible after the uptrend turns into a downtrend.

The book examines in detail the steps in finding, assessing, selecting, managing and monitoring a long-term trend trade. These are proven, successful methods which are easy to understand and apply. Included are the most recent updates and developments in using the count back line and the Guppy Multiple Moving Average. Daryl Guppy also includes a practical look at setting stop loss conditions to protect capital and profits, and a bonus section on Darvas-style trend trading which is the first significant update of this technique in forty years.

"Trend Trading" shows readers how to use and apply the analysis tools to find effective long-term trades. These can be applied to any group of selected stocks, whether chosen on fundamental criteria, from stock tip newsletters, or found using database technical scans. From this starting point, Guppy shows how the better trades are identified, how risk is managed, and how the trades are closed successfully. The book includes examples of Daryl's personal trades.

This book compiles brand new case studies on the intricacies and market entry strategies of different companies in China. The sheer speed and scope of China's growth makes it unique and investment opportunities are very attractive. Despite the potential, many western companies fail in their market entry strategies. This book traces the major sources of failure and uses cases to illustrate how firms can better cope with the challenging Chinese market. With a special focus on marketing, positioning, and branding, this book presents issues and solutions of both large multinationals and small niche market players.

This volume focuses on the latest findings concerning financial environment research and the effects on business. Major topics addressed range from finance-driven globalization, contagion risk transmission, financial sustainability, and bank efficiency, to oil price shocks and spot prices research. Further topics include family business, business valuation, public sector development and business organization in the globalized environment. This book features selected peer-reviewed articles from the 16th EBES conference in Istanbul, where over 270 papers were presented by 478 researchers from 56 countries.

This book has been written for experienced managers and students in postgraduate programs, such as MBA or specialized Masters programs. In a systematic yet concise manner, it addresses all major issues companies face when conducting business across national and cultural boundaries, including assessing and selecting the most promising overseas markets, evaluating market entry alternatives, examining the forces that drive adaptation versus standardization of the marketing mix. It looks at the various global marketing challenges from a strategic perspective and also addresses topics not usually found in international marketing texts, such as aligning marketing strategies with global organizational structures, managing the relationship between national subsidiaries, regional headquarters and global headquarters, as well as corporate social responsibility challenges, and pertinent future trends that are likely to affect global business.

This engaging book fills a substantial gap in the understanding of Caribbean enterprises, focusing upon FOBs (family-owned businesses) about which, despite accounting for 70% of private sector employment in the region, very little is known. Concentrating on MSMEs which represent the majority of FOBs in the English-speaking Caribbean, the authors compare and contrast their experiences to those in developed countries, focusing in particular on areas such as family business succession, business financing and marketing. Understanding the Caribbean Enterprise provides context-specific lessons from a historical perspective of business and entrepreneurship, which in turn provide an understanding of the current issues facing MSMEs and FOBs in the English-speaking Caribbean.

This book highlights innovative solutions together with various techniques and methods that can help support the manufacturing sector to excel in economic, social, and environmental terms in networked business environments. The book also furthers understanding of sustainable manufacturing from the perspective of value creation in manufacturing networks, by capitalizing on the outcomes of the European 'Sustainable Value Creation in Manufacturing Networks' project. New dynamics and uncertainties in modern markets call for innovative solutions in the global manufacturing sector. While the manufacturing sector is traditionally driven by technology, it also requires other managerial and organizational solutions in terms of network governance, business models, sustainable solution development for products and services, performance management portals, etc., which can provide major competitive advantages for companies. At the same time, the manufacturing industry is subject to a change process, where business networks play a major role in value-creating processes. By far the biggest challenge in this context is making value creation a sustainable process where economic, social, and environmental demands are met. Managing product and service-related business operations in manufacturing networks thus brings different challenges that cannot purely be resolved using traditional methods, and techniques. This book is an outcome of a European project funded by the European Commission, and performed by a dedicated R&D consortium comprised of some leading Research institutions and Industrial partners.

This casebook demonstrates that the future of global business lies in how well the multinational landscape is charted and how the importance of Asian market leaders is deeply embedded in it. It offers international management students and researchers an extensive guide to the business history, strategy development, and foreign market entry modes used by emerging Asian multinationals. The cases focus on well-known companies such as Lenovo, Alibaba, Infosys, Huawei, Panasonic, and Rakuten. These companies, all of which generate huge revenues in their own countries (e.g. in China, India, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam), are now becoming increasingly sophisticated and striving to become global brands, while also enjoying the active support of their governments in terms of their international business. Readers will learn about the current multinational landscape in Asia, the management challenges, and the future implications for traditional western companies seeking to retain their market share. Chapters on corporate entrepreneurship, human resource management and intercultural competence, and current branding trends in Asia will provide a cutting-edge update on international business strategy for students and practitioners alike.

First published in 2010. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book systematizes the concepts of business relationships and network embeddedness, taking a new approach to internationalization, relevant for the global economy. It reflects the growing importance of network internationalization theory and explores the impact of embeddedness in domestic and foreign relationships on a company's performance. The author questions the validity of the distinction between domestic and foreign activity of companies and demonstrates that in the B2B market, there are actually no exclusively domestic companies which are not directly or indirectly connected with foreign entities. Chapters cover both small to medium sized enterprises and large multinational corporations, presenting a qualitative analysis of over 400 companies including case studies from the IT and furniture industries. This informative study will provide useful insight for academics and students of business and management, international business and organization studies.

The separation of the ownership from control of a company is a hallmark of many large UK companies, and has been so for nearly a century. Much contemporary debate over corporate governance assumes that this separation is the norm. However, quoted companies are much less common outside the UK and quoted companies in other jurisdictions often have one dominant shareholder, rather than being widely held.
In this book, Brian Cheffins explores the historical foundations of the separation of ownership and control, asking how the widely held company came to prominence and why it has endured in the UK. He synthesizes existing theories on the evolution of ownership and control in the UK and assesses the extent to which they need to be revised in the light of new historical evidence. He provides the first systematic analysis of why and how the UK stock market came to be dominated by institutional shareholders and illustrates the development of key similarities and differences between the UK and US systems through comparative discussions.
Being a blockholder in a large and successful business can provide the private benefits of control and the power associated with being a business leader, so why did those who traditionally owned large blocks of shares want to exit? Leaving one's savings in the hands of managers over whom one has no control seems foolish. Why were investors willing to buy the shares that the blockholders wanted to sell as ownership separated from control, and why have they continued to buy? As ownership separated from control in UK public companies, those who bought shares (including institutional shareholders, who had sufficient fiscal power to take a hands-on role withpublic companies) rarely sought to exercise control over management. Why was this? Even though the widely held company has been a key part of British capitalism for nearly a century, a series of prominent public-to-private deals carried out by private equity buyers mean that this trend may not necessarily continue. The concluding chapter of this book draws on the analytical framework used throughout to assess the possible future of the widely held company in the UK.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Data Engineering Issues in E-Commerce and Services, DEECS 2006 held in San Francisco, California, June 2006.

The book presents 15 revised full papers and 8 revised short papers organized in topical sections on e-commerce services, business processes and services, data and knowledge engineering, business models and analysis, Web services, and e-commerce systems.

This book examines patterns of economic governance in three specific, contrasting, contexts: machinery-producing districts; declining steel cities; and clusters of high-technology activities. Building on the work of their previous book (Local Production Systems in Europe: Rise or Demise? OUP 2001), which charted the recent development of local clusters of specialized manufacturing among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, the authors find patterns of economic governance far more complex and dynamic than usually described in a literature which insists on identifying simple national approaches. The machinery industries were often identified in the literature of the 1980s as prominent cases of industrial district formation, which were then considerably weakened by the crises of the mid-1990s. Did clustering help these industries and their associated districts to respond to challenge, or only weaken them further? The case studies focus on the Bologna and Modena area of Emilia-Romagna, Stuttgart in Baden-Wurttemberg, Birmingham and Coventry in the English west midlands, but generally in France where there are very few local concentrations. Even while some thought local production systems were in crisis, national governments and the European Commission continued to recommend their approach to areas experiencing economic decline. This was particularly the case for cities that had been dependent on a small number of large corporations in industries that would no longer be major employers. Political and business leaders in these areas were encouraged to diversify, in particular through SMEs. Could this be done in response to external pressure, given that successful local production systems depend on endogenous vitality? The authors ask these questions of former steel-producing cities St. Etienne, Duisburg, Piombino, and Sheffield. The idea that local production systems had had their day was challenged by clear evidence of clustering among SMEs in a number of flourishing high-tech industries in parts of the USA and western Europe. Why do scientists, other specialists and firms actively embedded in global networks, bother with geographical proximity? This question is addressed by examining the software firms at Grenoble, the mass media cluster in Cologne, the information technology sector around Pisa, and the Oxfordshire biotechnology region.

Do we need yet another textbook on business fundamentals when every publishing house has stacks of such books ready for sale? No, we do not need another standard textbook. What we need is a new kind of teaching tool that at once accommodates the modern-day classroom and exposes new century students to the contemporary world of global capitalism in which today's businesses operate. In primer form, Dr. Patrice Flynn clarifies the functional areas of business, a term used to describe what every businessperson needs to understand to be successful, from entrepreneurship to small business development, legal structure, going global, finance, big data, marketing, management, and more. This primer demonstrates how a master teacher teaches new century students, thus giving supremacy to pedagogy along with rigorous content. The primer can be used with both business students and the growing number of nonbusiness students interested in learning how business works before entering the world of work. Every student will come away not only with a sense of the business areas that pique their interest but also with a deeper understanding of business from which to craft next career steps.

From the mid-1880s a shopkeeper movement developed in Milan, centred around a shopkeeper newspaper, a federation of shopkeeper trade associations, and a shopkeeper bank. In 1904 shopkeeper representatives initiated a sequence of events that led to the fall of the first radical-socialist administration within the city. The author explains these events with reference to the business of shopkeeping itself. He analyses the trades, techniques, tax structure and topography of the Milanese retail sector, and traces the history of the contest between shops and cooperatives and the shopkeeper's changing relationship with his employees and with his clientele. The final chapter confronts the crucial question of why the Milanese shopkeepers were to be found on the political right in the years leading up to the Fascist takeover. This is the first book to deal with any aspect of the Italian petite bourgeoisie.

Nelson Wolff, Bexar County judge and former San Antonio mayor, has been an active participant in the city’s political and business community for five decades. His first book, Transforming San Antonio, highlighted four major initiatives that created the economic revitalization of the Southwest’s most vibrant city: building the AT&T Center; expanding the River Walk north to the Pearl Brewery; securing the Toyota manufacturing plant; and building the JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort and two adjacent PGA golf courses. The Changing Face of San Antonio explores six transformative city and countywide efforts that have emerged in the past decade: the Mission Reach expansion of the iconic River Walk, an eight-mile extension of one of the city's most valued resources; the renovation of the San Antonio Municipal Auditorium into the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts; the much-needed expansion of the University Health System; criminal justice reform; the city’s efforts to become a tech leader in biomedicine, aerospace, and cybersecurity; and the creation of BiblioTech, the country's first all-digital public library. Wolff offers an insider’s view of the key issues that shaped these efforts. With journalistic ease, Wolff uses his unique point of view to convey the complexity of each endeavor—who said what to whom, when, and how—at a lively pace.The Changing Face of San Antonio reflects his passion for San Antonio and, as one might expect, his confidence in the paths taken under his leadership to help the city achieve its goals.

Originally published in the Great Depression this accessible volume was aimed not only at the academic economist, but also the general reader. The cycles of panic, boom and bust are discussed and solutions provided as to how to get over the bust periods as efficiently as possible. The commodities of wheat and gold are discussed in detail, and comparisons made between UK and US budget surpluses and deficits.

Technology is a process and a body of knowledge as much as a collection of artifacts. Biology is no different and we are just beginning to comprehend the challenges inherent in the next stage of biology as a human technology. It is this critical moment, with its wide-ranging implications, that Robert Carlson considers in "Biology Is Technology." He offers a uniquely informed perspective on the endeavors that contribute to current progress in this area the science of biological systems and the technology used to manipulate them.

In a number of case studies, Carlson demonstrates that the development of new mathematical, computational, and laboratory tools will facilitate the engineering of biological artifacts up to and including organisms and ecosystems. Exploring how this will happen, with reference to past technological advances, he explains how objects are constructed virtually, tested using sophisticated mathematical models, and finally constructed in the real world.

Such rapid increases in the power, availability, and application of biotechnology raise obvious questions about who gets to use it, and to what end. Carlson s thoughtful analysis offers rare insight into our choices about how to develop biological technologies and how these choices will determine the pace and effectiveness of innovation as a public good.

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.