Yoshiro Miwa asks whether a state can correct market failures and in particular critically analyses the performance of the Japanese economy as a result of state intervention within it. In order to examine the capacity of the state to promote growth, Miwa examines the Japanese machine tool industry, the government's role in promoting this sector and government efforts to achieve growth in small and medium sized enterprises in Japan.

In republican Colombia, salt became an important source of revenue not just to individuals, but to the state, which levied taxes on it and in some cases controlled and profited from its production. The salt trade consistently accounted for roughly ten percent of government income.

In the town of la Salina de Chita, in Boyaca province, thermal springs offered vast amounts of salt, and its procurement and distribution was placed under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Finance. Focusing his study on la Salina, Joshua M. Rosenthal presents a fascinating glimpse into the workings of the early Colombian state, its institutions, and their interactions with local citizens during this formative period. Although historians have cited the state's weakness, and in many cases, its absence in local affairs, Rosenthal counters these assumptions by documenting the primary role the state held in administering contracts, inspections, land rights, labor, and trade in la Salina, and contends that this was not an isolated incident. He also uncovers the frequent interaction between the state and local residents, who used the state's liberal rhetoric to gain personal economic advantage.

Seen through the lens of the administration of la Salina's salt works, Rosenthal provides a firsthand account of the role of local institutions and fiscal management in the larger process of state building. His study offers new perspectives on the complex network of republican Colombia's political culture, and its involvement in provincial life across the nation.

First published in 1984, Industrial Relations in the Future highlights probable developments in Britain's system of industrial relations into the 1990s. It also provides a basis for further and detailed analysis and debate of issues central to the nation's future. Written by distinguished scholars in their respective fields, the three main sections give reviews from three contrasting traditions- mainstream industrial relations, industrial sociology and management, and labour economics. These accounts are highly complementary in the ways in which, in each and every case, issues of collective bargaining, managerial strategy and union response, and the behaviour of governments are all set against a broad backcloth of economic, political, and social changes. The authors see the ultimate outcome as depending greatly on the policies and types of action of organised labour, managements and governments, and possibly of wider social movements as well. This book will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of labour economics, industrial sociology, economics, and public policy.

The study of competition and competitiveness has recently seen a great deal of expansion and development. This timely survey reviews the most important developments in policy and practice. It illustrates the complexity of competitive behaviour in the real world and provides a framework for understanding the different notions of competition. Special attention is given to key areas including: * competition as a process versus competition as a state of affairs * the behaviour of firms and organization of competition * new forms of competition and competition policies The Process of Competition will be essential reading for researchers, practitioners and policymakers concerned with competition policy, industrial economics and strategic management.

"For students ... this is a good introduction ... The assorted essays ... successfully present Kocka's methodological emphases and his wide-ranging contributions to modern German social history." . Enterprise & Society

"This fine volume brings together essays by one of the leading modern German historians, essays that give the reader an impressive overview of his work from three decades and introduce new generations of students to central questions of modern German social history." . Central European History

..". a tour de force of societal history, reminding one both of how many insights Kocka has generated through application of Weberian analytical tools." . H-Net Reviews (H-W-Civ)

..". a good introduction ... the assorted essays ... successfully present Kocka's methodological emphases and his wide-ranging contributions to modern German social history." . Enterprise & Society

..". a seminal, critically important, uniquely informative contribution to the study of German history, business, entrepreneurship, and the working class." . The Midwest Book Review

Jurgen Kocka is one of the foremost historians of Germany whose work has been devoted to the integration of different genres of the social and economic history of Europe during the period of industrialization. This collection of essays gives a representative sample of his effort to develop, by reference to Marx and Weber, new and powerful analytical tools for understanding the dynamics of modern industrial societies.

Jurgen Kocka is one of the foremost historians of Germany whose work has been devoted to the integration of different genres of the social and economic history of Europe during the period of industrialization. This collection of essays gives a representative sample of his effort to develop, by reference to Marx and Weber, new and powerful analytical tools for understanding the dynamics of modern industrial societies.

Rural America is at a crossroads in its economic development. Like regions of other First World nations, the traditional economic base of rural communities in the United States is rapidly deteriorating. Natural resources, including agriculture, show little prospect for generating future job growth, and manufacturing has become a new source of instability. Faced with these changes and an increasing vulnerability to international economic events, rural communities have begun to seek high-technology industries and advanced services as candidates for job growth and economic stability. What is the potential for high-tech growth outside the largest cities? What is the role of high-tech industry in the economic development of non-metropolitan America? This book provides a hard-nosed look at the high-tech potential in rural economic development. Some of the questions Glasmeier addresses include: Are rural areas attractive to high tech? Will high tech follow earlier patterns and filter down the lowest-paid jobs to rural areas? Will rural communities be bypassed completely for even lower-wage Third World locations? Glasmeier answers in a sober analysis that separates fact from myth. Empirical data reveals the kinds of high-tech jobs that locate in rural areas, and the kinds of rural areas that attract high-tech jobs. This analysis leads to a highly critical evaluation of state and local economic development policy and recommendations for its improvement. This book is a must for policymakers, practitioners, scholars, and an informed public interested in the promise of high tech and the future of US economic development.

The systems of innovation approach is considered by many to be a useful analytical approach for better understanding innovation processes as well as the production and distribution of knowledge in the economy. It is an appropriate framework for the empirical study of innovations in their contexts and is relevant for policy makers. This text is the result of the work within an international inter-disciplinary network or "working seminar" with the task of building a more solid and sophisticated conceptual and theoretical foundation for the continued study of innovations in a systemic context. The book has three parts. The first presents an overview and tries to work out some conceptual problems. In the second, the systems of innovation approach is related to innovation theory. Part three is devoted to increasing understanding of the functioning and dynamics of systems of innovation. There is also an introduction where the genesis and anatomy of different systems of innovation approaches are discussed and where the systems of innovation approach is characterized in nine dimensions.

One of the most serious problems facing the Middle East and North Africa · is the region's growing inability to feed its expanding population. Rapidly escalating demand has made the region highly dependent on food imports, and policy initiatives intended to increase domestic production have met with mixed success at best. The contributors to this volume examine the historical origins of state policies toward agriculture, recent policy changes and their effects on domestic supply, and the social and political implications of these shifts. Focusing on the region's largest agricultural economies, contributors analyze Turkey's strong performance as well as Egypt's weak response to its agricultural problems. Pricing, investment strategies, irrigation policies, and the impact of large-scale labor migration on agricultural sectors are discussed, and a common theme of the interplay between politics and economics runs throughout.

First Published in 1960, Nationalized Industry and Public Ownership is concerned with the state of nationalized industries in Britain in the context of the wider sphere of public enterprise in the world. It critically examines themes like the motives and background of nationalization; the state of public corporation in Britain; public utilities as monopoly; parliamentary debates and questions regarding government control; the idea of public accountability; the status of consumers' councils, and the link between labour relations and public ownership. This book is an important historical document for scholars and researchers of public administration, political economy, British economy, labour economics and British labour history.

Universities are increasingly expected to be at the heart of networked structures contributing to society in meaningful and measurable ways through research, the teaching and development of experts, and knowledge innovation. While there is nothing new in universities' links with industry, what is recent is their role as territorial actors. It is government policy in many countries that universities - and in some countries national laboratories - stimulate regional or local economic development. Universities, Innovation and the Economy explores the implications of this expectation. It sites this new role within the context of broader political histories, comparing how countries in Europe and North America have balanced the traditional roles of teaching and research with that of exploitation of research and defining a territorial role. Helen Lawton-Smith highlights how pressure from the state and from industry has produced new paradigms of accountability that include responsibilities for regional development. This book uses empirical evidence from studies conducted in North America and Europe to provide an overview of the changing geography of university-industry links.

In an era of accelerating change in the world economy, services are assuming greater importance for the economies of both developed and developing countries. As technological developments allow increasing tradeability of services, huge global firms are offering services across national boundaries. This important book explores the global impact of this economic phenomenon from both empirical and theoretical perspectives.

As China has blended market reforms with comprehensive industrial policies, most research has focused on the national government's strategies for economic growth. However, one of the unique characteristics of industrial policy in China is that it involves government intervention at all levels, from the political elite all the way down to village leaders. This book focuses on the domestic appliance industry, and China's three major business groups in this area - Haier, Hisense and Aucma. The Haier Group, in particular, is one of the most successful and competitive enterprises in China and is very well-placed to compete globally as the Chinese economy becomes more integrated with the world trading system. This volume shows how industrial policy is formulated at the national level and implemented at the local level, and examines how local government frequently intervenes in local enterprises' business strategy and management. Of practical importance, this book provides academics, business people and policy makers with valuable insights into the development process and a concrete understanding of the challenges faced in the global business revolution by one of the world's most dynamic economies.

Competitive pressure demands that firms create a good balance of their technology, people, and organization, and that they sustain it with well-meshed business, technology, and human resources strategies. But the acceleration of technological change over the last decade has made it more difficult to find this balance. Moreover, the intensification of global competition has made any imbalance debilitating for business performance. This book explores the emergent new models of balance among technology, people, and organization. The common premise of the contributions that the effective implementation of automation in manufacturing and engineering operations will typically require a work force with a higher skill profile. Examining the experience of countries in Europe, Australia, Asia, and the U.S., the chapters analyze four themes: the new competency required for effective implementation of new technologies; how firms can develop these new competencies; the implications of these changes for industrial relations; and how firms can weave together business strategy, technology strategy, and personnel strategy, to build competitive advantage. Integrating sociological, economic, and organizational perspectives, this book will interest both academics and professionals. It presents an up-to-date review of international trends in industry's response to the challenge of the new technologies. It draws compelling conclusions regarding the changes needed in the management of operations, human resources, industrial relations, and business strategy.

Regulation, Markets and Poverty analyses the policy implications of research into issues of competition, regulation and regulatory governance in developing countries. Particular attention is paid to factors affecting poverty and to the connection between regulation, competition and poverty. It represents the culmination of research undertaken in the past five years by the Centre on Regulation and Competition.Written in a non-technical manner with references to the more technical literature, each chapter draws on the work of leading experts across a range of disciplines who frequently challenge conventional wisdom. This accessible and lively study will appeal to policymakers and practitioners dealing with regulation and competition in developing countries, postgraduate students of regulation, competition, public policy and international business. Staff of international development agencies and NGOs working on governance issues, competitiveness, utility policy and infrastructure investment will also find this important book of value and interest.

As experienced by the United States, competition has played out in three distinct types of threat activity: sabotage (the destruction of capabilities), espionage (the theft of specific capabilities), and defection (the carrying of knowledge out of the country). Today, the changing innovation environment has created new challenges. Significant advances are being made in start-ups as well as larger companies who no longer rely on U.S. government contracts. Not only does this place a key element of national power in the hands of the private sector, but it often leaves Washington at an informational disadvantage in understanding technologies. This book analyzes these concepts from the perspective of the United States' experience in the field of innovation security. Historical and recent examples illustrate the threats to innovation, the various approaches to mitigating them, and how the evolution of the innovative process now requires rethinking how the United States can benefit from and preserve its cutting edge human capital.

Information theory, cybernetics and the theory of finite automata are used to model learning-by-doing, bounded rationality, routine behaviour, and the formation of teams. The non-neoclassical characterization of production developed in this book ignores the usual quantitative relationships between inputs and outputs and instead views production strictly as a problem of control and communication. The motivation for this unconventional characterization of production comes from Schumpeter's critique of neoclassical economic theory. The non-neoclassical characterization of production developed in this book is in keeping with how economic historians describe specific technological changes and how they write technological histories about particular machines, firms or industries.

Focusing on the design and implementation of computer-based automatic machine tools, David F. Noble challenges the idea that technology has a life of its own. Technology has been both a convenient scapegoat and a universal solution, serving to disarm critics, divert attention, depoliticize debate, and dismiss discussion of the fundamental antagonisms and inequalities that continue to beset America. This provocative study of the postwar automation of the American metal-working industry--the heart of a modern industrial economy--explains how dominant institutions like the great corporations, the universities, and the military, along with the ideology of modern engineering shape, the development of technology. Noble shows how the system of "numerical control," perfected at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and put into general industrial use, was chosen over competing systems for reasons other than the technical and economic superiority typically advanced by its promoters. Numerical control took shape at an MIT laboratory rather than in a manufacturing setting, and a market for the new technology was created, not by cost-minded producers, but instead by the U. S. Air Force. Competing methods, equally promising, were rejected because they left control of production in the hands of skilled workers, rather than in those of management or programmers. Noble demonstrates that engineering design is influenced by political, economic, managerial, and sociological considerations, while the deployment of equipment--illustrated by a detailed case history of a large General Electric plant in Massachusetts--can become entangled with such matters as labor classification, shop organization, managerial responsibility, and patterns of authority. In its examination of technology as a human, social process, "Forces of Production" is a path-breaking contribution to the understanding of this phenomenon in American society.

In this wide-ranging collection of significant articles by leading scholars, the editors link the impact of innovation to the process by which firms and industries change over time and ultimately to economic development and growth. The books cover topics such as the impact of the product life cycle on industry evolution, the links between innovative activity and the start-up of new firms, and an analysis of the sources of diversity and the impact of diversity on economic evolution. The three key elements of the post-entry performance of firms are examined - their ability to survive, the learning process and the links between industry evolution and productivity. The books then explore the roles of turbulence and persistence in an evolutionary economy. Additional topics include the evolution of market structures, the evolution of regions and the international competitiveness of industries in an evolutionary context. Finally the books examine the implications for government policy of the links between innovation, industry evolution and economic development.

Modern societies demand high levels of literacy. The written word is pervasive; individuals with poor literacy skills are deeply disadvantaged; and governments are increasingly pre-occupied with the contribution that skills can make to economic growth. As a result, the basic skills of adult workers are of concern as never before, a focus for workplace and education policy and practice.

While Improving Literacy at Work builds on detailed research from the UK, the issue is a universal one and rising skill requirements mean the conclusions drawn will be of equal interest elsewhere in Europe, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The research findings have very direct implications and practical relevance for teaching and learning, as this valuable book demonstrates, providing clear advice on how to develop effective provision and how best to support learners at work.

Throughout the study, the authors address the following fundamental questions:

• How do adults literacy skills impact on their working lives, and on the enterprises where they work?
• How can we develop these essential skills in the workforce?
• When and how can literacy instruction change individuals employability and engagement with further learning?

Essential reading for trainers and managers in industry, teachers, researchers and lecturers in adult and further education and stakeholders implementing evidence-based policy, this book maps the fundamental changes taking place in workplace literacy.

As the twenty-first century begins, the world finds itself with a wide range of possible economic futures. Many corporations find it difficult to compete in international markets with the result being shrinking revenue. Too many governments utilize an excessively high percentage of their nation's goods and services. In the past, some countries could afford to have a less than perfect tax system. However, wage and other labor rigidities (work rules) handcuff management. Management has become pre-occupied with non-productive pursuits, and numerous other sources of inefficiency. The objective of this book is to suggest several revisions in institutional structure, management techniques and rewards, and a drastic change in how hourly labor is compensated. The suggestions offered are applicable to any economy where decisions have to be made as to how to organize the factors of production most efficiently. It is therefore essential reading for policymakers, human resource management and accountant management.

German unification evoked ambivalent reactions outside its borders: it revived disquietingmemories of attempts by German big business during the two world wars to build an economic empire in Europe in conjunction with the military and the government bureaucracy. But thereare also high hopes that German finance and industry will serve as the engine of reconstruction in eastern Europe, just as it played this role in the postwar unification of western Europe.

In recent years, we have witnessed huge economic and socio-political change in the Gulf. This book examines the rapid industrialization of the region and how local economies are starting to diversify away from petroleum, exploring how this transformative process is starting to impact on the region's economy and social make-up. With contributions from some of the top scholars and practitioners in the area, this book discusses crucial topics related to the region's transformation, from issues of economic development and relations with Iran to foreign labour and women's education and work outside the home. Chapters explore how in addition to the massive growth in investments and products such as oil, gas, chemicals, metals, and cement, this growth has triggered numerous societal changes, such as labour migration, educational reforms, declining natality, and shifting gender roles. Covering in detail a broad range of issues, this book will appeal not only to Middle East experts, particularly those with an interest in the Persian Gulf, but also to development experts and political scientists.

Modern societies demand high levels of literacy. The written word is pervasive; individuals with poor literacy skills are deeply disadvantaged; and governments are increasingly pre-occupied with the contribution that skills can make to economic growth. As a result, the basic skills of adult workers are of concern as never before, a focus for workplace and education policy and practice.

While Improving Literacy at Work builds on detailed research from the UK, the issue is a universal one and rising skill requirements mean the conclusions drawn will be of equal interest elsewhere in Europe, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The research findings have very direct implications and practical relevance for teaching and learning, as this valuable book demonstrates, providing clear advice on how to develop effective provision and how best to support learners at work.

Throughout the study, the authors address the following fundamental questions:

• How do adults literacy skills impact on their working lives, and on the enterprises where they work?
• How can we develop these essential skills in the workforce?
• When and how can literacy instruction change individuals employability and engagement with further learning?

Essential reading for trainers and managers in industry, teachers, researchers and lecturers in adult and further education and stakeholders implementing evidence-based policy, this book maps the fundamental changes taking place in workplace literacy.

Allan Flanders was one of the leading British industrial relations academics and his ideas exerted a major influence on government labor policy in the 1960s and 1970s. But as well as being an Oxford academic with a strong interest in theory and labor reform, he was also a lifelong political activist. Originally trained in German revolutionary ethical socialism in the early 1930s, he was the founder and joint editor of Socialist Commentary, the leading outlet for ?revisionist? social democratic thinking in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. He was also the leading figure in the influential 1950s ?think tank? Socialist Union and played a key part in the bitter factional struggles inside the Labour Party. The main argument of the book is that Flanders? ethical socialist ideas constituted both his strength and his weakness. Their rigor, clarity and sweep enabled him to exert a major influence over government attempts to negotiate labor reforms with the trade unions. Yet he proved unable to explain the failure of the reforms amidst rising levels of industrial conflict, as his intellectual rigor turned into ideological rigidity. The failure of negotiated reform led to Margaret Thatcher's neo-liberal assault on trade union power in the 1980s.