How do Chinese managers learn to do their job? Management training has become a vital necessity for China under the economic reforms. This book examines industrial and management training in the PRC, based on empirical study of the institutions involved both at post-experience and university level. It covers the period 1979 to 1989 during the "Open Door" policy, as China has tried to modernize its industry.

Part of a mini-series of Focus books on COVID-19 in Malaysia, the chapters in this book address the pandemic's impact on business and the economy in Malaysia. Covering a range of challenges and opportunities for business and the economy over a year-long period, starting from Malaysia's first pandemic lockdown in March 2020 to the state of the country as of May 1, 2021, the contributors highlight the impact of the pandemic on the Malaysian business and economy and how Malaysians are finding ways to adapt and rise above adversity. They illustrate how the pandemic has affected businesses and anticipate the prospects for the Malaysian economy going forward. This is also an opportunity to witness how researchers from multiple disciplines can join forces during challenging times to deliver insightful research with impact. More importantly, there are many lessons to be learned from the successes and failures in responding to the pandemic in this developing Southeast Asian economy. A fascinating read for individuals with an interest in crisis adaptation in non-Western contexts, especially those with a particular interest in Malaysia or Southeast Asia more generally.

In order to effectively address global warming, many countries have significantly reduced the amount of carbon dioxide emissions that are put into the atmosphere. From the perspective of industrial structure, this volume examines the emission reduction potentials and abatement costs in China. By making an empirical analysis of the emission reduction, the author proposes some practical strategies. The book comprehensively summarizes related theories and research of contaminant disposal modeling, and estimates the shadow price of interprovincial CO2 emissions, the emission reduction potential of different regions, and the marginal emission reduction cost based on the parametric model. It finally puts forward the strategy to adjust the industrial structure in China. The book hence provides solid evidence for policy-makers to help mitigate CO2 emissions through industrial restructuring strategy.

This book connects political economy perspectives with scenario planning for mapping out future trajectories of digital ecosystems. The focus is purposefully on digital ecosystems as it encompasses economic, political and social contexts on a global, national and local level. The diversity of political economy approaches allows the author to explore alternative meanings of digital ecosystem development, which is particularly useful for envisioning alternative futures. Often visions about the future of digital ecosystems suffer from a lack of imagination and confirmation bias which is favorable to the extrapolation of current trends. A wide range of political economy perspectives applied through positivist theorizing in this book shows different interpretations of developments in digital ecosystems. Scenario planning teams around the world have applied a collective imagination to show how future trajectories can be radically different from the current trends. The book outlines meta-scenarios for alternative futures of the political economy of digital ecosystems by reviewing and synthesizing the work of foresight teams. These meta-scenarios served as insights for developing four scenarios for European digital ecosystems through the workshops with high-level executives and experts. The scenarios identified the nature of EU cooperation and the development of digital infrastructure as key drivers. These four scenarios developed in the workshops are further operationalized in a specific context by exploring the implications for Estonia as well as for Chinese investments in European platforms. This exercise shows how scenarios of digital ecosystems can be used for stress-testing decisions and strategies. Decision-makers, students, scholars and other stakeholders in a wide range of industries ranging from academia to ride-sharing can use the scenarios for reframing different development trajectories and future-proofing their strategies. The scenarios can be further developed and modified for specific purposes and contexts as they are not written in stone.

The Economics of Productivity provides an anthology of many of the leading papers on productivity analysis. Part 1 of the collection portrays the development of production functions and growth accounting, including classic papers by Robert Solow, Dale Jorgenson, Edward Denison, and Angus Maddison. Part 2 covers topics on the economics of research and development and technological spillovers, featuring works by Zvi Griliches and Edwin Mansfield. Part 3 is devoted to evolutionary and Schumpeterian models of technological change, including articles by Richard Nelson and Sydney Winter. Studies by Moses Abramovitz and William Baumol, both published in 1986, document a convergence in labour productivity among industrialized economies, and Part 4 includes several seminal papers on this topic. Part 5 treats another important development in productivity analysis - endogenous growth theory, in which production itself creates the conditions of further technical change. The input-output framework provides another powerful system for the measurement of productivity growth, and articles on this topic are presented in Part 6. A dramatic slowdown in the rate of productivity growth occurred in the early 1970s and this development spawned a large literature on the subject of productivity, which is highlighted in the last part of the volume.

The economic crisis has brought about a watershed in institutional, political, and social relations, reshaping the labour market and the class structure in southern Europe. This book provides a critical comparative assessment of the dynamics of change in the employment field, focusing on Spain, Greece, and Cyprus. The book assesses how the liberalization and deregulation processes and the promotion of market-enhancing reforms progressed in three different national settings, identifying the forces, agents, contexts, and mechanisms shaping the employment and industrial relations systems. The comparative perspective used deciphers the interplay of external and internal dynamics in the restructuring of the labour field in Southern Europe, examining austerity and its contestation in connection with prevailing societal ideologies and class shifts. The first part of the book sets the theoretical and historical context, the second is comprised of three empirical national case studies, and the third discusses comparatively the handling of the crisis, its impact, and its legacy from the standpoint of a decade later. The book presents differences in industrial relations systems, trade union forms, and class composition dynamics, accounting for the development of the crisis and the reshaping of the employment field after one decade of crisis. It will be of value to researchers, academics, professionals, and students working on issues of employment and industrial relations, labour market and labour law, political economy and class structure, as well as those interested in the contemporary society and economy of southern Europe in general, and Spain, Greece, and Cyprus in particular.

In a balanced and readable account, this book explains how international, domestic, economic and political factors interrelated to shape the world of modern industry in the thirty years before it was originally published in 1987. It conveys some of the richness and diversity in the political and economic landscape of modern industries and provides a real-world background for the theory of economics and business. Drawing on the work of business analysts and industry specialists, as well as of economists and political scientists, it treats the subject in terms of applied economics in an empirical and practical perspective. After tracing the post-war development of manufacturing up to the mid-1980s, the same approach is applied to specific industries: steel, automobiles, consumer electronics, semiconductors, computers, automated machinery and textiles. Two themes are stressed throughout: industrial growth and development have become truly international, if not global; and most manufacturing takes place under oligopolistic conditions in a world of state intervention and pressure-group activities.

Concise expert guide to important business research topic Summarises the state of the art in available and emerging research Includes references to key research publications in the field

Coping with complexities is an everyday reality for private, public and third sectors that face intricate, overlapping, obscuring and ever-changing challenges. Developments in technology and systems of value creation are driving a new need to understand, facilitate and manage complexity. The book proposes design and design research as a solution to respond to the complexities associated with the intensifying and rapid changes in societies, technological fields and environments. A four-step design process for managing complexities is introduced in the four parts of this book, spanning from design research in the field to practice-based contexts. This publication collates high-level research and the latest scholarship on this topic, while many of the case studies described herein draw on rich experiences and applications in practice. The ways designers work to overcome complexities through design, and the methods and frameworks presented in the chapters, provide critical insights and form an important scholarly contribution in this subject area.

This book goes beyond traditional minimum wage research to investigate the interplay between different country and sectoral institutional settings and actors' strategies in the field of minimum wage policies. It asks which strategies and motives, namely free collective bargaining, fair pay and/or minimum income protection, are emphasised by social actors with respect to the regulation and adaptation of (statutory) minimum wages. Taking an actor-centered institutionalist approach, and employing cross-country comparative studies, sector studies and single country accounts of change, the book relates institutional and labour market settings, actors' strategies and power resources with policy and practice outcomes. Looking at the key pay equity indicators of low wage development and women's over-representation among the low paid, it illuminates our understandings about the importance of historical junctures, specific constellations of social actors, and sector- and country-specific actor strategies. Finally, it underlines the important role of social dialogue in shaping an effective minimum wage policy. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and policy-makers and practitioners in industrial relations, international human resource management, labour studies, labour market policy, inequality studies, trade union studies, European politics and political economy.

The latest edition of the gold standard in the economics and financing of health care In the newly revised Sixth Edition of Health Economics and Financing, an expert team of authors delivers an authoritative discussion of key topics in the economic and finance issues relevant to health care. From cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analyses to the economic considerations driving the choices of physicians, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies, the book explores the influence of financial considerations - both public and private - that remain front-of-mind for modern health care decision makers.

Reflecting on both ethical corruption and success stories, the 6th edition of Business Ethics: Decision Making for Personal Integrity and Social Responsibility aims to tell the stories of both the good and bad in business. The questions today are less about IF ethics should be a part of business strategy than about WHICH values and principles should guide business decisions. This textbook provides a comprehensive, yet accessible introduction to the ethical issues arising in business. The authors' goal is to help students make responsible decisions for themselves. They have created a distinctive text that emphasizes a decision-making approach to ethics, helping students reach conclusions without imposing someone else's answers on them. The 6th edition also provides strong pedagogical support for both teachers and students. Numerous small cases and examples help teachers and students integrate concepts and material from philosophy, law, economics, management, finance, and marketing with the very practical goal of making real-life decisions.

This book is a study of the New River Company. It gives a highly complex and comprehensive analysis of the complicated legal problems encountered from the company's inception in the in the first decade of the seventeenth century to its municipalization and conversion to a property company at the turn of the twentieth century. The problems of water supply, hygiene and even general business matters are examined in a relatively narrow framework. As s legal history, this book is full of technical terms. This book, however, is not without merits. It contains interesting chapters on shares, in which tracing the progress of some of the company stock through some of the various hands is discussed, as well as governance and finance yields.

Should 185 sovereign nations allow 750 giant corporations to invest corporate profits as they alone see fit, or must public authority be mobilized to protect public interest by reining in these economic behemoths as they roam the global markets? By integrating many fields of knowledge and bringing to bear their disparate viewpoints, Dr. Saari makes his own viewpoint clear: The people did not elect investment bankers and CEOs, and neither group represents the people and the public interest. His book is a compelling argument for offering others a place at the table and for giving them a voice in deciding how billions in world currencies should be spent or invested. Comprehensive, multidisciplinary, empirical and analytical, Dr. Saari gives a coherent, reliable examination of the many pressure points between globalizing corporations and the nations in which they are embedded (and to which perhaps they should be indebted).

Dr. Saari's exploration takes into account a variety of eactors: popular national sovereignty, the variable definitions of capitalism, clashing views on the need for foreign trade, corporate practices like labor downsizing in home nations and their growing labor, tax, and regulatory problems. He makes three key points: (1) Regulated capitalism by nations is a viable public control system to shape the investment choices of giant corporations in such a way as to include the public interest; (2) Popular sovereignty in a democratic society directs all subunits of that society. Corporations must be separate from the state and subordinate to it; and (3) Most nation-states need to cooperate more fully to regulate, in a globally coordinated way, the global actions of giant coporations, especially with regard to decisions on direct foreign capital investment. Meticulously documented, with a comprehensive bibliography and two important appendices, Dr. Saari's book is essential for scholars and students in a wide range of academic disciplines, and for their colleagues in policy making capacities throughout government and the world's growing and ever more global corporations.

During the second half of the eighties, Euro-pessimism slowly started giving way to Euro-optimism. Several years of uninterrupted economic growth, soaring stocks markets and improving East-West relationships gave Europe the confidence that it might regain some of its lost economic power. In this optimistic environment, the 1992 initiative quickly gained momentum.

Originally published in 1974, Ritual in Industrial Society is based on several years' research including interviews and observations into the importance of ritual in industrial society within modern Britain. The book addresses how identity and meaning for people of all occupations and social classes can be derived through rituals and provides an expansive and diverse examination of how rituals are used in society, including in birth, marriage and death. The book offers an examination into the use of symbolic action in the body to articulate experiences which words cannot adequately handle and suggests that this enables modern men and women to overcome the mind-body splits which characterise modern technological society. In addition to this, the book examines ritual as a tool for articulating and sharing religious experiences, a point often overlooked by more intellectual approaches to religion in sociology. In addition to this, the book covers an exploration into ritual in social groups and how this is used to develop a sense of belonging among members. The book will be of interest to sociologists as well as academics of religion and theology, social workers and psychotherapists.

"Empirical Studies in Industrial Organization" brings together leading scholars who present state-of-the-art research in the spirit of the structure-conduct-performance paradigm embodied in the work of Leonard W. Weiss. The individual chapters are generally empirically or public policy oriented. A number of them introduce new sources of data that, combined with the application of appropriate econometric techniques, enable new breakthroughs and insights on issues hotly debated in the industrial organization literature. For example, five of the chapters are devoted towards uncovering the link between market concentration and pricing behavior. While theoretical models have produced ambiguous predictions concerning the relationship between concentration and price, these chapters, which span a number of different markets and situations, provide evidence that a high level of market concentration tends to result in a higher level of prices. Three of the chapters explore the impact of market structure on production efficiency, and three other chapters focus on the role of industrial organization on public policy.

Antitrust, Regulation and Competition brings together a group of well-known European and American academics to examine antitrust policies and competitive behaviour on a wide variety of topical cases and critical markets. Taking both a theoretical and applied perspective, the contributors examine issues such as entry and market concentration, auctions, technological innovation, privatization and the role of public firms, market transparency, the supply of product quality and multinational firms.

The profound economic crisis of 1931-33 undermined the process of industrialisation and the stability of the regime. In spite of feverish efforts to achieve the over ambitious first five-year plan, the great industrial projects lagged far behind schedule. These were years of inflation, economic disorder and of terrible famine in 1933. In response to the crisis, policies and systems changed significantly. Greater realism prevailed: more moderate plans, reduced investment, strict monetary controls, and more emphasis on economic incentives and the role of the market. The reforms failed to prevent the terrible famine of 1933, in which millions of peasants died. But the last months of 1933 saw the first signs of an industrial boom, the outcome of the huge investments of previous years. Using the previously secret archives of the Politburo and the Council of People's Commissars, the author shows how during these formative years the economic system acquired the shape which it retained until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Reviews of previous volumes:; The Soviet Economy in Turmoil will be read avidly by all specialists on the Soviet economy; it should also be consulted by anyone

To what extent can governments supplement private venture capitalists and stimulate the economy by providing money to new entrepreneurs as well as existing enterprises? The UK's National Enterprise Board (NEB) attempted to do just this, and whilst it gained most publicity through its efforts to bail out ailing giants such as British Leyland and Rolls Royce Aerospace, much of its attention was actually directed to smaller ventures. Originally published in 1988 Professor Kramer reports that the NEB's record of success was surprisingly good, and that many flourishing undertakings would not be in business today had it not been for the NEB's efforts. The author goes further, and after discussing the political and economic issues involved in according public aid to private enterprises on a case by case basis, he argues that not only should the UK revive its NEB, but that other countries, notably the United States, could benefit by establishing their own versions of it. Indeed, throughout, the author's perspective as an outsider makes him peculiarly alive to the relevance of the UK example to a whole range of international cases. As the first scholarly, full-length study of the NEB, this book will be of value to those interested in the relationships between venture capitalists generally and the enterprises in which they take equity. It will also interest those studying the relationship between holding companies and their subsidiaries.

One of the most important trends in post-war Britain was the extension of the number and variety of public service undertakings. Originally published in 1933, this title indicated the empirical nature and recent importance of British public utility development at the time, being the first study, which dealt with this trend in a comprehensive manner. For completeness to the book and also providing a suitable background, the local utility services water, gas, transport, docks, and harbors have been considered. The author felt the trends of recent years made a rediscovery of political economy imperative and urgent. This study was an effort to reunite economics, public administration, law, and philosophy in the consideration of British public utilities.

Social science theorists from various scholarly disciplines have contributed to a recent literature that examines how the finance industry has expanded and now wields increasing influence across a variety of economic fields and industries. In some cases, this tendency towards a more sizeable and influential finance industry has been referred to as "the financialization" of the economy. This book explains how what is referred to as the finance-led economy (arguably a more neutral and less emotionally charged term than financialization) is premised on a number of conditions, institutional relations, and theoretical propositions and assumptions, and indicates what the real economic consequences are for market actors and households. The book provides a theoretically condensed but empirically grounded account of the contemporary finance-led economy, in many cases too complicated in its design and rich in detail to be understood equally by insiders-empirical research indicates-and lay audiences. It summarizes the relevant literature and points at two empirical cases, the construction industry and life science venturing, to better illustrate how the expansion of the finance industry has contributed to the capital formation process, and how the sovereign state has actively assisted this process. It offers a credible, yet accessible overview of the economic conditions that will arguably shape economic affairs for the foreseeable future. The book will find an audience amongst a variety of readers, including graduate students, management scholars, policymakers, and management consultants.

This book examines the linkages between exchange rates and India's merchandise trade since the 1990s. It looks at India's trade in the post-liberalisation period through its two main components: commodities and trading partners, and provides a bird's eye view through aggregate analyses accompanied by a historical narrative of the evolution of trade and exchange rate dynamics. Presenting a comprehensive analysis of bilateral and product-specific trade, the book explores the impact of exchange rate on labour intensive sectors and charts out major development. It also offers compelling evidence to suggest that if some commodities are identified as integral to India's export plans, then the impact of exchange rate must be weighed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) prior to a market intervention. This timely volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers of economics, business and finance, development studies, trade, business, and industry as well as practitioners, think-tanks, and policy makers.

This two-volume set brings together for the first time a collection of seminal writings dealing with the development of competition policy in Europe, the United States and Japan. It begins by reproducing the writings of leading philosophers and scholars on the rationale and desirability of competition in market economies. These interpretations range in time of origin from ancient Greece through to Adam Smith and James Madison to very recent contributions in the competition policy debate. Having established relevant philosophical foundations, the compendium presents analyses by leading British, American, German and Japanese scholars on the interpretation and administration of laws concerning price-fixing and other restrictive agreements, market dominance and monopolization, predatory practices and mergers.

Alternative Theories of the Firm provides a range of fundamental readings embracing the economics of firm behaviour from a non-neoclassical perspective. The collection covers several basic topics including: the importance of transaction costs and agency theory for the analysis of firm behaviour; capabilities and resource-based theories of the firm; the economics of firm strategy; behavioural theories; Austrian theories; evolutionary theories; and the historical development of firms. The readings include selections from traditional masters as well as writings by more recent authors. This collection will be of great value both to scholars who want a summary of developments in the field and to students of industrial economics and corporate strategy.