Professor Sten Malmquist constructed the Malmquist quantity index and in doing so developed a distance function defined on a consumption space. This function is the consumer analog to the Shephard input distance function of producers and is used in ratio form to define the quantity index. This volume contains new contributions based on Malmquist's work nearly 50 years ago and provides modern perspectives on the value of this research.

Operational Research in Industry brings together the experience of an international group of practising OR consultants, researchers and academics in the applications of OR in Industry. The book gives practical examples of cross-industry management, covers many different industrial sectors and includes a variety of operations research tools including modelling, optimization and data mining.

The world is fast becoming a global factory in which workers, entrepreneurs, and multinational corporations find themselves producing for the world capitalist market. This collection of original essays explores in concrete anthropological detail the ways that people throughout the world have been drawn into this new international labor web. Broad in scope and far-reaching in their analyses, the chapters in this book offer numerous examples of this new world order. The case studies focus on industrialization in small-scale workshops and informal work-at-home situations as well as multinational corporations. Undertaken in every continent, in core as well as peripheral regions, the studies cover the perspectives of the workers, the entrepreneurs, and the corporations.

In this systematic view of the capitalization of the world economy, the contributors demonstrate how new economic linkages are being formed between world markets and small-scale entrepreneurs and home-based local producers and how late-developing regions attempt to gain economic sovereignty through the marketing of local product specialties. At the same time, the contributors' investigations provide concrete evidence of local efforts to create culturally distinct and socially equitable lives--showing how the spread of the world capitalist economy changes the everyday lives of people. They point to ways in which people use their local traditions of kinship, culture, and community to resist and shape economic change to more satisfying local ends.

Building on the historical analysis of organizations and theories that have influenced their development, Gianfranco Dioguardi provides an insightful exploration of the network enterprise and its evolution from the Medieval guilds to the present innovation clusters of Silicon Valley, the Research Triangle, Route 128, and other regions in the U.S and around the world. Providing in-depth analysis of production systems and the evolution of "lean manufacturing" principles, Dioguardi integrates history, sociology, management theory, and economics to explore the dynamics of organizations that operate as networks and interact with other firms along the supply chain and in complementary industries. In a technology-enabled environment, the boundaries between products and services and across enterprises become blurred-and create the context for entrepreneurship, innovation, and dissemination of knowledge. Several chapters are devoted to practical concerns of managing the network enterprise, with a particular interest in the ethical and cultural issues. Dioguardi concludes with discussion of the role of the network enterprise in new firm creation and economic growth.

This book delves into topics on pilgrimage travel and communities from a variety of perspectives through academic research based on the Middle East, Northeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and Europe, where sacred sites have become of great importance for both international and domestic tourism. In particular, Europe and Asia possess a high volume of world-renowned pilgrimage sites that are currently being developed as tourism destinations in their respective countries, such as Santiago de Compostela (Spain), Lourdes (France), and Koyasan (Japan). This book includes studies on these two continents that harbor both a great history of pilgrimage tradition, as well as tourism development related to religious travel. The book importantly covers the role of the community in religious tourism, as well as the impact on the locals, which is comparatively an unexplored area. Whilst pilgrimage is seen as an effective tool to revitalize local economies, this book also reveals the different challenges to achieving this goal. Realizing the importance of the interrelationship of community and pilgrimage travel, as well as the lack of studies on it, this book seeks to address this research gap through 14 chapters divided into two parts, ‘Communities and Constestation’ and ‘Pilgrimage Shaping Communities’. To ensure diverse perspectives, case studies from different Eurasian countries, written by authors with expertise in the study of pilgrimage and religious travel, are included. Readers can expect to gain new perspectives by having a deeper comprehension of the ‘community side‘ of pilgrimage travel in Eurasia, and thus an integral understanding of contemporary pilgrimage

Human-Centered e-Business focuses on analysis, design and development of human-centered e-business systems. The authors illustrate the benefits of the human-centered approach in intelligent e-sales recruitment application, integrating data mining technology with decision support model for profiling transaction behavior of internet banking customers, user-centered context dependent data organization using XML, knowledge management, and optimizing the search process through human evaluation in an intelligent interactive multimedia application. The applications described in this work, facilitates both e-business analysis from a business professional's perspective, and human-centered system design from a system development perspective. These applications employ a range of internet and soft computing technologies.

First published in 1984, this textbook analyses, at both aggregate and micro economic levels, the contemporary industrial conditions in Third World countries and relates this to the process of economic growth and structural transformation. Drawing upon both industrial and development economics, the authors offer a comprehensive and integrated treatment of the different levels of industrial analysis in less developed countries, alongside a wealth of comparative data on industrial structure, business concentration and behaviour, and industrial policies in a cross-section of countries in Africa, Asia, the Far East and Latin America.

First published in 1984, this work explores the issues surrounding the industrialisation of the Third World at the beginning of the 1980s. The expectation that Newly Industrialising Countries would facilitate industrial growth via an outward-orientated strategy had begun to be the combination of growing recession, growing protectionism and the diffusion of radical microelectronics-related technical change. In addition, the high indebtedness of developing countries made them increasingly dependent on assistance from the IMF and IBRD, whose policies increased the tendency towards de-industrialisation. The papers in this volume explore all of these issues and their implication for LDC industrial strategy in the 1980s.

First published in 1989, this book focuses upon the phenomenon of export-led industrialisation fuelled by foreign investment and technology. He concentrates on Mexico, where US companies have been taking advantage of inexpensive labour to establish "maquilla" factories that assemble US parts for export. Through this detailed study of the maquilla industry, Sklair charts the progress from the political imperialism of colonial days to the economic imperialism of today.

The factory specializing on hydraulic cranes, the engineers, armament makers and naval shipbuilders was set up in 1847 by William Armstrong at Elswick, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. It had become, before 1900, the ordanance, armour, naval and merchant shipbuilding and commercial engineering giant, Armstrong Whitworth. Armstrongs was prominent in the half dozen world-ranking armament concerns. After the extensions and exertions of the Great War, it was faced with collapse. It then became one of the earliest subjects for Bank of England involvement in industrial reconstruction. This book analyzes Armstrong's 80 years rise, decline and reorganization, treating it, in some ways, as a case study of British industrial malaise. The author has had access to Armstrong papers and minute books at Tyne and Wear Archives and Vickers Ltd, material in the University of Glasgow's Business Archives, and the extensive files of the Securities Management Trust in the Bank of England.

Japanese participation in British industry has increased greatly in recent years. While the new investment is welcomed for the jobs it helps create and the injection of new technology and managerial techniques, many people are fearful lest this increased participation should lead to loss of control of British industry by British nationals and adversely affect British competitors and their struggle for global markets. These concerns are made worse by lack of knowledge about just how extensive Japanese managerial participation in British industry is and about how Japanese practices differ. This book, based on extensive original research, answers these and related questions. It is the first detailed study of the extent of Japanese participation in British industry, and of its economic impact in a number of key areas.

The Emergence and Evolution of Markets examines the development of markets based on empirical examples from Western economies and from the post-socialist economies of Eastern Europe. It provides an historical dimension to the present problems of transition. The Emergence and Evolution of Markets clearly demonstrates that liberalization, privatization and changes to formal institutions are not in themselves sufficient to create a successful market economy. In the first part, there is an analysis of general aspects of economic theory with regard to market evolution and an historical assessment of the development of markets. The authors then examine the experiences of some specific markets, including the telecommunications and stock markets to draw general conclusions. In part three they focus on the emerging market systems in post-socialist countries, particularly Kyrgyzstan and Bulgaria. In addition, the discussion offers an empirical analysis of the evolution of capital, currency and agricultural markets, emphasizing the importance of transaction costs and institutions in the development of these markets. This major book will prove invaluable to academics and policymakers interested in the areas of transition economics, political economy, and policy analysis.

Web usage mining is defined as the application of data mining technologies to online usage patterns as a way to better understand and serve the needs of web-based applications. Because the internet has become a central component in information sharing and commerce, having the ability to analyze user behavior on the web has become a critical component to a variety of industries. Web Usage Mining Techniques and Applications Across Industries addresses the systems and methodologies that enable organizations to predict web user behavior as a way to support website design and personalization of web-based services and commerce. Featuring perspectives from a variety of sectors, this publication is designed for use by IT specialists, business professionals, researchers, and graduate-level students interested in learning more about the latest concepts related to web-based information retrieval and mining.

The book deals with the concept of urban infrastructure and the strong evolution of globalization, in particular the driving force taken by global cities. Urban infrastructure is a constituent part of the global cities, both have a synergistic evolution. The main reference is to western global cities in the intertwining of financialization, settling and brownfield which is a little different from the urbanization of other global cities of other non- developed countries, or emerging countries. There is therefore a significant link between globalization and urban infrastructure. The occurrence of slowbalization can have consequences on urban areas infrastructures and more generally on the different dichotomy between global city and nation. With the pandemic infectious and the post COVID, there is already a different configuration between the global city and the rest of the national territory. A driving element of the urban infrastructure and the global city has been the financialization and identification of assets within global cities. Urban infrastructure as an asset has grown considerably in the last two decades, in the wake of what has already been highlighted previously for real estate. There are contiguous issues that affect the concept of urban infrastructures and they are the enormous growth of finance and the landings of this in the great cities of the world with investments that first involved Real Estate and then urban infrastructures. There has also been a technological revolution that has merged the ubiquitous technological infrastructure with other more traditional components of the infrastructure, even apparently recent themes, such as smart cities, come from this evolutionary trend and merge with urban infrastructures. The theme of smart cities, if properly interpreted, gives strength to the concept of urban infrastructure.

Looking at the new diplomacy between the multinational firm and the nation-state, this book focuses on the interdependencies, conflictual and co-operative, between the two primary actors in the global economy. International contributors (UK, USA, Canada and Sweden) from a variety of disciplines (international relations, political science, public policy, economics and business studies) discuss the theory and practice of MNE-state relations in the 1990s.

Collective action by firms is a central phenomenon in society, seen for example in standards setting, multi-stakeholder initiatives, and in relation to climate change, environmental and human rights issues. This incisive book reveals how firms set up specific devices, referred to by the authors as FCADs (Firms' Collective Action Devices), of which trade associations and chambers of commerce are the traditional forms, and investigates how firms organize themselves collectively, and their impact on the economy and democracy. Delving deeply into previously under-explored aspects of collective actions by firms, using the concepts of meta-organization and heterarchy, the book combines and expands on insights from history, political science, economics, sociology, management and organization theory. It demonstrates empirically how FCADs function on the basis of compromise and consensus, and analyzes their forms of action, their organizational dynamics and their recent evolution. This rigorous and pluridisciplinary evaluation of how businesses organize collectively will appeal to researchers and PhD students in organization studies and business management, as well as those in other disciplines who are interested in firms' collective action. It will also be a useful resource for business practitioners, public servants and politicians in contact with firms' collective action, and NGO members.

This proceedings book showcases papers presented at the 2022 Rethinking Management and Economics in the (New) 20s conference in Leiria, Portugal. Rethinking Management and Economics in the (New) 20's is focused on the investigation of key challenges and perspectives of Management and Economics. The chapters in this book explore new avenues of research and cover theoretical, empirical, and experimental studies related to different themes in the global context of Management and Economics. This book contributes towards deepening our understanding of what the new problems associated with achieving the goals of management and Economics in the 2020s and present possible solutions to the problems. This book is ideal for economists, businesses, managers, accountants, practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students who are interested in the current issues and advancements in corporate governance and earnings management.

This book is a seminal contribution to decision making theory through its study of management decision making in six Beijing state enterprises during the period 1985 to 1989, when the government adopted decentralization as the key to reforming state industries. Through interviews, document surveys and analysis, the author provides a unique insight into not only the changes, but also the complex relations among managers, the Communist Party organization and planning authorities. Readers will gain a richer understanding of Chinese management issues and society.

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.

This book explores how a long-term innovation can take place based on historical analyses of the development of reverse osmosis (RO) membrane from the early 1950s to the mid-2010s. The RO membrane is a critical material for desalination that is a key to solve water shortages becoming serious in many places of the world. The authors conducted in-depth field studies as well as analyses of rich archival data to demonstrate how researchers, engineers, managers, entrepreneurs, and policymakers interacted each other for this material innovation to be realized. A series of historical analyses in this book uncovered that initial government supports, strategic niche markets, emergence of breakthrough technology, and company-specific rationales played significant roles for companies to overcome four types of uncertainty, technological, market, competition, and social/organizational ones, and enabled the companies to persistently invest in the development and commercialization of the RO membrane. This book depicts that innovation does not arise on a sudden, but that it is actualized through long lasting process with turns and twists, which is driven by many non-economic rationales beyond economic motives.