The editors have assembled an international team of expert scholars together to describe and analyze the role of organized business in creating, and responding to, the regionalization and internationalization of markets and politics. Chapters focus on theoretical issues, discrete regions drawn from the major trading regimes around the globe, and sectors, and together address a number of important issues: First, to what extent does organised business push the deepening and widening of regional and global trading regimes? Second, does the development of these multi-level governance regimes in turn pull organised business into more comprehensive levels of organisation and public policy coordination? The collection concludes that globalization and the 'new regionalism' cannot be understood without recognising the key role of business organizations. This book is unique because no other volume details the critical relationship between organized business and globalization/new regionalism.

Michman and Mazze present five key variables that retailing executives in nine specialty businesses must understand and work with, to gain and sustain competitive advantage in their competitive environments. Innovation, target market segmentation, image development, physical store decor, and human resource managementf are identified and examined. Authors argue convincingly from research and practical experience that these fundamental considerations are crucial to achieving competitive dominance. With up-to-date analyses and extensive coverage of e-commerce and internet retailing as well, their book is essential for retailing executives.

Michman and Mazze find that successful specialty retailers are not all things to all customers, and do not try to be. They are, however, the first to apply new technologies. Authors analyze the development of specialty stores in the U.S. and tie their variables together in an epilogue. Along the way they make clear that by focusing on their five critical variables, we can understand how marketing successes come about and what causes blunders in the nine highly important store categories under their examination here. They point out that not all of their variables need be used concurrently. Some may be more critical than others, and this depends on environmental and competitive conditions. Backing it all up is meticulously developed evidence from their research and personal experience -- all of it presented readably and in a way that practitioners can understand and immediately apply.

This study examines the development of capitalism in Israel. Taking a different view from the traditional modernization perspective, Ben-Porat argues that since 1948--when Israel became a state--the process of forming a capitalist society has underlain all other major processes. To explain capitalism in Israel, a perspective is needed that treats the problems of implanting capitalism in post-colonial states. Problems include the undeveloped class structure; the inability of the bourgeoisie to fulfill its capitalist role; the continuing post-colonial dependency on state support; and, most importantly, the central role of the state in enhancing, but also regulating, capitalism.

The Engineering Ethics in Southern African textbook has been written specifically for engineers in this geographical region. Not only does it provide an overview of moral philosophy and the various ethical approaches that can be applied in the engineering field, but it shares what it means to be a professional engineer in Southern Africa and provides insight into both professional and community expectations.

Local engineering case studies have been chosen to highlight ethical dilemmas and conflicts that can arise, and various ethical approaches have been applied to them to explain their cause and consequence(s).

Readers will find that this textbook not only provides them with invaluable knowledge for their careers as professional engineers, but that it will continue to encourage them to think ethically in their lives as professional engineers engaged in engineering projects and engineering activities.

"There is no doubt in my mind that this is the best book on the Japanese school, and especially on the underlying concepts. As such it is one of the most important books on Japanese society." Peter Drucker "Benjamin Duke knows both American and Japanese education intimately. His analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of each is compelling. Everyone interested in Japan's economic performance over the past generation--and the next--needs to examine The Japanese School." Mike Mansfield U.S. Ambassador to Japan

Technology, Innovation and Industrial Economics: Institutional Perspectives, inspired by the work of William E. Cole, Professor Emeritus at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, extends his work with essays on technology, innovation and industrial economics from an Institutionalist perspective. The managerial style, innovational practices and industrial setting of the continuous improvement firm are central to several chapters. This volume also features innovation and technology in Latin America, Adam Smith's writing on entrepreneurship and a comparison of American and European Institutionalism. The topics of technology, innovation, industrial organization and industrial policy are being widely discussed and debated in today's literature, but seldom from an Institutionalist perspective. The purpose of this book is to reduce substantially this missing dimension in the ongoing debates on these important issues.

There are many complicated theories and ideas about the structure and style of organisations. Human Resource Management and Development looks at how they apply in practice and what they mean for the people who work with them. Divided into four sections and amply illustrated with case studies, topics such as Organisation Theory, Recruitment and Selection, Leadership and Counselling are explained, concluding with chapters on 'Organisation Change' and 'Empowerment'. Written in an accessible and lively manner, this book will be of interest to both students and professionals involved in Human Resource Management.

This volume of the Academy of International Business series looks at International Business in the context of a rapidly changing Europe. Leading contributors have come together to present the latest research, attempting to answer a number of important questions: * is the vision of a Single European market realistic? * what are the barriers to its achievement? * what are the prospects for Eastern Europe? * how should firms enter East European markets? * what does the process of transition imply for corporate policy?

This collection provides exceptional descriptive and analytical insights into changes in corporate governance settings in ten Eastern and Western European countries. It demonstrates that there exist different varieties of capitalism and paths to transformation of economic institutions. In addition, it offers detailed discussions about national cases as well as the overall European Union effects. This book should be of great interest to scholars and students of comparative national systems, corporate governance and European studies.

Business growth depends on the ability to innovate. Knowledge management concepts, business process reengineering, human centered assets and information and communication technologies are the foundation for innovation though virtual reality makes innovation a reality. Virtual Technologies for Business and Industrial Applications: Innovative and Synergistic Approaches provides insight into uncovering the security risks of dynamically created content, and how proper content management can greatly improve overall security. This book also researches the security lifecycle, protocols and applications of the Internet, and the contemporary solutions to these problems.

This important book addresses the prospects for reconciling economic competitiveness with sustainable development. It shows that we cannot simply assume that changes in public attitudes, business policies and government regulation will guarantee the conditions for long-term ecological, social and economic sustainability. On the basis of new original case studies, the authors consider corporate environmental strategies, technological change and sustainable development as a social partnership between firms, citizens and government. They suggest that competitiveness must be considered as a dynamic process requiring proactive and reactive adjustments by business and government institutions all working towards sustainability. Sustainbility and Firms combines intellectual rigour with accessibility to communicate fundamental ideas to help policy decision-makers, enterprise managers, environmental scientists and economists grapple effectively with the problems of competitiveness, technological change, strategies of firms, governance and sustainable development.

Public Technology Procurement and Innovation studies public technology procurement as an instrument of innovation policy. In the past few years, public technology procurement has been a relatively neglected topic in the theoretical and research literature on the economics of innovation. Similarly, preoccupation with supply-side' measures has led policy-makers to avoid making very extensive use of this important demand-side' instrument. These trends have been especially pronounced in the European Union. There, as this book will argue, existing legislation governing public procurement presents obstacles to the use of public technology procurement as a means of stimulating and supporting technological innovation. Recently, however, there has been a gradual re-awakening of practical interest in such measures among policy-makers in the EU and elsewhere. For these and other related measures, this volume aims to contribute to a serious reconsideration of public technology procurement from the complementary standpoints of innovation theory and innovation policy.

Modelling European Mergers presents a comprehensive and fresh perspective on the economic analysis of mergers by leading academics and competition policymakers from Europe and the US. The book frankly discusses the pros and cons of using applied game theory models in merger control from historical and theoretical perspectives. Seven case studies on the actual use of advanced techniques and models in legal procedures provide a perspective from the national competition authorities in Belgium, Denmark, Italy, The Netherlands and Sweden on markets that range from basic goods such as bread and aperitifs to complex products such as electricity, literature and software. The case studies provide many insights into practical issues such as data collection, procedures and errors of predication, as well as in the relative merits of different econometric approaches. A recurring theme of the book is how economic insights can be translated into convincing legal decisions. The contributions cover a broad spectrum of markets, methods and countries and the contributors offer incisive reflection on the increasing use of economics in competition policy. This unique book is a thorough transatlantic discussion of academic and policy insights combined with applications based on actual decisions. It will appeal to legal and economic professionals who deal with and advise on mergers and acquisitions whether they be in a ministry, central bank or competition authority setting. Scholars and students interested in analysing markets, law and economics, industrial organization and applied econometrics will also find much to interest them in this work.

From Industrial Districts to Local Development introduces a set of papers representing the main contribution of the 'Florence school' to the recent literature on industrial districts. The authors illustrate that the revitalisation of the concept of industrial districts, returning to Alfred Marshall's nineteenth-century writings, is rooted in an unconventional interpretation of the economic development of Tuscany after the Second World War.Models of industrial organisation and empirical investigation of industrial tendencies are featured, and Alfred Marshall's concepts of the advantages of the geographical agglomeration of specialised small firms in industrial districts are reintroduced. The authors extend the analysis of purely economic effects of agglomeration, including social, cultural and institutional foundations of local development, and current case studies are presented. This book will appeal to scholars, lecturers and researchers focusing on industrial economics, development economics and economic geography. Its references to Italian political experiences will also be of interest to policymakers in both developed and developing countries.

Technological Change in the Modern Economy presents an authoritative overview of the economics of technological change. Using an empirical foundation, it examines the economic causes and effects of technological innovation. It also analyzes the process of innovation itself.The author first provides an introduction to innovation and technical change. He expands this to include issues such as innovation and economic growth, the organization of innovation, innovation and competition and the role of government. He also discusses new topics such as technological cooperation, the spillover effects of research, the firm as a learning organization and national systems of innovation. These issues are analysed empirically, employing theoretical explanations to support case studies on Europe, The United States and Japan. The book uses an institutional economics approach, discussing the role of various actors, such as individual inventors, research departments of private firms and public research institutes. The book will provide an introduction to the economics of innovation for advanced undergraduates and for managers and public administrators involved in innovation. It will also be of interest to those studying industrial organization and institutional economics, and will be accessible to those from business administration and management science.

This set brings together an outstanding collection of works on industrial economics. Written by a range of international experts, the titles span from the historical development of trading enterprises, to the competition, mergers and tariffs of the twentieth century.

This book, first published in 1970, analyses the factors affecting the export performance of selected firms from particular UK industries in the period 1958-66. The study was designed to test at the level of the firm and industry the hypothesis that, in the short run, variations in exports are a function of the pressure of domestic demand. It also obtained valuable information on the factors affecting the export performance and behaviour of firms.

A Billion Trips a Day: Tradition and Transition in European Travel Patterns consists of twenty-four original chapters developed by a network of transport professionals in a coordinated manner. The three parts of the book are: European Mobility Patterns; Dimensions of European Mobility, and National Perspectives. Mobility in fourteen countries is described and ten chapters of analysis compare the major dimensions of travel across Europe, which is seen as a laboratory for transport policies. A Billion Trips a Day: Tradition and Transition in European Travel Patterns questions the uniqueness of European travel and transport policies and demonstrates that, in many ways, Europe is different from other developed economies. However, there are side dissimilarities within Europe. The authors take a deep look at the underlying factors which affect travel behavior, with the objective of providing the necessary information for policy making. The comparative chapters of Part II provide an analysis based on national perspectives of the role of the time dimension travel; automobile ownership and use; commuting; public transport; and international travel. They also review the transport policies applied in Europe, explaining why some policies work in some places, while failing in others.

This book provides a theoretical framework to explain the formation and growth of economic agglomerations and industrial clusters from the viewpoint of spatial economics, and goes on to present current examples of clustering and policy in different economies, through the case studies such as the automobile cluster in China; the technopolis in Austin, Texas; the automobile clusters in India; Japan's industrial cluster policy; the industrial cluster in the Greater Bangkok, Thailand; and the electronics cluster in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Known as the Taiwan Miracle, the Republic of China on Taiwan (R.O.C.) has, over the past thirty-five years, experienced one of the world's highest rates of economic growth. Arguing that major theoretical frameworks for analyzing international political economy are often too simplistic in that they omit key factors or overly generalize from relationships found only in limited situations, Clark uses a detailed case history of the R.O.C. to suggest not only that development and dependency in contemporary society are extremely complex and indeterminate processes, but that development in Taiwan deviates significantly from the postulates of the two leading paradigms of international political economy. To go even further, Clark states that Taiwan's economic growth and transformation resulted from its deviation from the normal dependency syndrome. Indeed, a development strategy based on economic flexibility and periodic regime change that has made this flexibility possible are hallmarks in Taiwan's success story. The United States and other advanced industrial economies whose past successes have created economic and political barriers to future adaptation can be better understood in terms of the characteristics of R.O.C.'s development strategy.

Part I of the three-part work focuses on environment, first discussing various paradigms and theories about development and then presenting an historical overview of Taiwan. The second part investigates Taiwan's international role, political development, and rapid economic growth. The volume closes with a chapter devoted to the implications of the Taiwan experience and political economy paradigms. Eight figures and thirty-five tables illustrate facets of Taiwan's development, including government structure, indicators of agricultural development, industrialization, educational progress, and export performance, among others. Because of the detailed presentations of political economy theories and their variants, especially in relation to economic and political development in Taiwan, this volume would be an excellent choice for courses in political economy, developing societies, Asian politics, and international relations theory, as well as libraries serving students in these areas.

This book provides an account of work in the Schumpeterian and evolutionary tradition of industrial dynamics and the evolution of industries. It is shown that over time industries evolve and change their structure. In this dynamic process, change is affected and sometimes constraint by many factors, including knowledge and technologies, the capabilities and incentives of actors, new products and processes, and institutions.

The international fragmentation of economic activities - from research and design to production and marketing - described through the lens of the global value chain (GVC) approach impacts the structure and performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) agglomerated in economic clusters. The consolidation of GVCs ruled by global lead firms and the recession of 2008-09 exacerbated the pressures on cluster actors that based their competitive advantage on local systems, spurring an increasing heterogeneity, both across and within clusters, that is still overlooked in the literature. Drawing on detailed studies of different industries and countries, Local Clusters in Global Value Chains shows the co-evolutionary trajectories of clusters and GVCs, and the role of firms and their strategies in organizing manufacturing and innovation activities in the context of ongoing technological shifts. The book explores the tension between place-based variables and global drivers of change, and the possibility for territories containing such clusters to prosper in the new global scenario. By adopting insights from the GVC framework and management studies, the book discusses how the internationalization strategies of firms create opportunities as well as constraints for adaptive upgrading in clusters. This book is of interest to both researchers and policy-makers who are interested in the dynamic sources of competitive advantage in the global economy.