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.

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.

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.

You are hereLearning Mastercam X5 Mill 2D Step-by-Step Learning Mastercam X5 Mill 2D Step-by-Step James Valentino Joseph Goldenberg Learning Mastercam X5 Mill 2D Step-by-Step Back to CAD / CAM / CIM 600 pages, Published: October, 2010 ISBN 9780831134235 $74.95 Add To Cart Overview This unique text presents a thorough introduction to Mastercam X5 Mill for students with little or no prior experience. It can be used in virtually any educational setting -- from four-year engineering schools to community colleges and voc/tech schools to industrial training centers -- and will also serve as a reliable reference for on-the-job use or as a self-study manual. The award-winning authors have carefully arranged the contents in a clear and logical sequence and have used many hundreds of visuals instead of wordy explanations. Two enclosed CDs contain Mastercam X5 Demo and also include examples and exercises from the text for student practice. Features * Emphasizes student-friendly graphical displays in place of long explanations and definitions. * Includes an overview of the process of generating a word address program.* Presents numerous examples that provide step-by-step instructions with graphical displays. * Eliminates flipping between pages by featuring all explanations on the same page as the example. * Contains exercises at the end of each chapter. * Features a process plan for many machining exercises to indicate the machining operations to be performed and the tools to be used. * Contains a new chapter on Creating 2D Solid Models by extrusion, revolving and Boolean Operations. * Contains new material on editing solids and building a history tree for imported solids. * Contains a chapter on Executing 2D Milling Operations on Solid Models. * Contains new material on creating a user defined tool plane and machining on the plane. * Contains a new chapter on File tracking and Change Recognition. * Includes an in-depth presentation of how to customize Mastercam X5 for user applications in the appendix.

The emergence of a truly global economy in the 1970s and the need to understand the subsequent changes in economic structure provided the impetus for this synthesis of the sociology of agriculture. The book offers the first formulations of a political economy theory that explains the transnational social and production relations of food and agriculture. Drawing upon studies of labour, technology, the state and gender, the contributors put forward a basis for reassessing and restating the intellectual framework of agriculture.

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.

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.

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.

Critical, independent voices are seldom found within the citadels of international finance. That's what makes Nomi Prins unique. During fifteen years as an executive at skyscraping banks like Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, and Lehman Brothers, Prins never lost her ability to see the broader picture. She walked away from the game in 2002 out of disgust with the burgeoning corporate corruption, just as its magnitude was becoming clear to the public. In this acclaimed exposé, named one of the best books of 2004 by The Economist, Barron's, Library Journal, and The Progressive, Prins provides fascinating firsthand details of day-to-day life in the financial leviathans, with all its rich absurdities. She demonstrates how the much-publicized fraud of recent years resulted from deregulation that trashed the rules of responsible corporate behavior, and not simply the unbridled greed of a select few. While the stock market roared on the back of phony balance sheets, executives made out like bandits and Congress looked the other way. Worse yet, as the new foreword to this edition makes clear, everything remains in place for a repeat performance.

In third world countries an increasing number of people have been drawn into the process of industrialization as wage workers. Only when confronted with their practices, strategies and struggles can the competing and contradictory policies they face at the level of capital and state be explained. Consequently, the empirical analyses here presented cover the limits set by workers to exploitation in workshop production, ethnicity as a workers' strategy, the role of workers' absenteeism and turnover, and labour strategies in a situation of recession and de-industrialisation. Using a historical approach labour migration, union strategy for democratisation, and the world-scale pattern of labour unrest are studied as outcomes of social conflict. Some of the chapters in this book focus on single events in a factory, others on a branch or a region in a long-time perspective. They all contribute to an empirical and theoretical investigation of the impact of industrial workers' actions on societies in transition. They also share the same urge to look beneath the surface in order to find the unnamed, and to understand how they make history.

Decision making at the enterprise level often encompass not only production operations and product R&D, but other strategic functions such as financial planning and marketing. With the aim of maximizing growth and a firm's value, companies often focus on co-ordinating these functional components as well as traditional hierarchical decision levels. Understanding this interplay can enhance enterprise capabilities of adaptation and response to uncertainties arising from internal processes as well as the external environment. This book presents concepts, methods, tools and solutions based on mathematical programming, which provides the quantitative support needed for integrated decision-making and ultimately for improving the allocation of overall corporate resources (e.g., materials, cash and personnel). Through a systems perspective, the integrated planning of the supply chain also promotes activities of reuse, reduction and recycling for achieving more sustainable environmental impacts of production/distribution networks. Thus, this book presents, for the first time, a unique integrated vision of the Enterprise Supply Chain Planning and provides a comprehensive account of the state of the art models, methods and tools available to address the above mentioned features of the modern supply chain. It offers a comprehensive review of the associated literature of supply chain management and then systematically builds on this knowledge base to develop the mathematical models representing each of the core functional units and decision levels of the corporation and shows how they can be integrated into a holistic decision problem formulation. Abundant illustrations and tables help maximize reader insights into the problems discussed with several case studies and industry application also examined. This book is intended as a textbook for academics (PhD, MSc), researchers and industry decision-makers, who are involved in the design, retrofit and evaluation of alternative scenarios for the improvement of the supply chain.

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.

Under the label of "the socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics", the Chinese Government has made a firm commitment to economic reform, though still retaining tight political control. Thus, under conditions of liberal economic systems and autocratic rule, a new capitalist system is emerging in China; its top companies are managed by private entrepreneurs, government bodies or a combination of both.This book, presented in an easily accessible format, fills an important gap in the growing literature on China in the global economy and provides a research reference tool on China's top companies. It offers a comprehensive directory listing of the Top 100 corporations in China, thus enhancing the research potential on China for students, researchers and businesses. As a general reference guide to the Chinese economy, A Guide to the Top 100 Companies in China provides up-to-date and comprehensive coverage of the top Chinese enterprises. Corporations from Hong Kong and Taiwan that conduct significant business in China are also included.

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.

In his 1982 State of the Union address, Ronald Reagan vowed to return power to the states. Rather than take the more traditional route, he chose to instill the "new federalism" through intergovernmental regulatory relief. This book assess the policy's success and the problems it has caused. The book is based on several cases studies from different policy areas. Intergovernmental relations, nuclear energy policy, and environmental policy are discussed in detail. The authors have drawn extensively on public documents as well as interviews with members of congress, executive department officials, and those involved with special interest groups.

Lifelong Learning is essential to all individuals and in recent years has become a guiding principle for policy initiatives, ranging from national economic competition to issues of social cohesion and personal fulfilment. However, despite the importance of lifelong learning there is a critical absence of direct, international evidence on its extent, content and outcomes.

Lifelong Learning in Paid and Unpaid Work provides a new paradigm for understanding work and learning, documenting the active contribution of workers to their development and their adaptation to paid and unpaid work. Empirical evidence drawn from national surveys in Canada and eight related case studies is used to explore the current learning activities of those in paid employment, housework and volunteer work, addressing all forms of learning including: formal schooling, further education courses, informal training and self-directed learning, particularly in the context of organisational and technological change.

Proposing an expanded conceptual framework for investigating the relationships between learning and work, the contributors offer new insights into the ways in which adult learning adapts to and helps reshape the wide contemporary world of work throughout the life course.

Originally published in 1987, this book showcases global examples of people and communities who are learning to use the world's resources without despoiling them for future generations. It includes chapters on nomadic life in Kenya, food supply in a Peruvian shantytown and a Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka who advises about tree planting and watersheds. Amidst climate change and environmental destruction this book looks at the world through the eyes of the people who tend it and finds hope in their growing understanding of their environment and in their willingness to live within the Earth's resources.

Taking a close look at the national economic system of China, this book defines industrial clusters, then summarizes their measurement indices and identifies their methods. The author identifies 11 industrial clusters and analyses their structural relationships. He studies the relationships between structures and characters of industrial clusters using the relationship between topological indices and total outputs of industrial clusters. Using a series of economic indices, the book analyses scale distribution, functional type, technologic economic structure relationship, and technologic economic beneficial result. Focal points, cut-in points, and paths of industrial cluster policies round out the coverage.

Why do firms in high technology industries cluster at particular locations? The authors examine whether firms grow faster at such locations, and whether disproportionately more new firms are created in clusters. They compare the clustering process in the UK and the US in both computing and biotechnology, and investigate the policy implications.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Interest in learning at work has captured the attention of many people around the world, often taking centre stage in policy debates about improving economic performance, prosperity and well-being. This book is about the learning that goes on in workplaces ranging from offices, factories and shops to gyms, health centres and universities and how it can be improved. Such learning includes everyday work activity, on-the-job instruction and off-the-job training events.

Improving Working as Learning is the first book to analyze systematically learning at work in different settings by developing and applying a new analytical framework. The Working as Learning Framework connects the particularities of work tasks with the way jobs are organized and the wider pressures and constraints organizations face for survival, growth and development. The authors convincingly demonstrate that the framework offers a sophisticated understanding of how improving the work environment both within the workplace and beyond can enhance and sustain improvements in learning at work.

Each chapter presents evidence taken from both private and public sectors to illustrate how the Working as Learning Framework provides a means by which employers, researchers and policy-makers can

• Improve the conditions for nurturing and sustaining learning at work
• Build appropriate workforce development plans within given constraints
• Recognize that the creation and use of knowledge is widely distributed
• Mobilize existing workplace resources to support learning
• Enhance and extend our understanding of how workplace learning is shaped by relationships at, and beyond, the workplace

This topical book will appeal to an international readership of undergraduate and postgraduate students, vocational teachers and trainers, human resource professionals, policy-makers, and researchers.

Work in the construction industry is particularly tough. It demands excessively long hours and frequent weekend work. Other characteristics are particularly marked, such as re-location, job insecurity and distinctive behavioural patterns, which negatively affect employees' personal lives further. Work-life balance has emerged as one of the most pressing management issues in the 21st century. For construction managers dealing with traditional models of work and rigid work schedules, the issue may be especially difficult to manage, and yet the work-life balance is now recognised as an issue of strategic importance to the construction industry. It is critical to the construction industry's continued ability to attract and retain a talented workforce, and it is also inextricably linked to organizational effectiveness and employees' well-being. This book presents the argument for the management of work-life balance in the construction industry. It maps the changes to the workforce demographic profile and the changing expectations relating to work and personal life that occurred during the second half of the 20th century. Legal imperatives for managing work-life balance are set out. It also presents work-life balance theory and discusses the practical implications of research, along with extensive empirical data collected from the industry. Lastly, practical advice is provided about what construction organizations can and should do to manage work-life balance. This provides a unique guide to a key issue.

Previous research has generally shown a very small although statistically significant economic benefit from attending high-quality colleges. This small effect was at odds with what students' college choice and various social theories would seem to suggest. This study sought to reconcile the empirical evidence and theories. The effort was in two directions. First, the economic effect of college quality was expanded from examining only the economic benefit to considering other student outcomes including job satisfaction and graduate degree accomplishment. A new perspective regarding the social role of college quality was offered in conclusion.