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.

Among the success stories of economic development through hi-tech industries, the emergence of India as a major center in the world for software production and exports stands out. This is a fascinating story of economic development in a poor and technologically underdeveloped economy that surged to prominence within a relatively short period of less than two decades. The industry has sustained annual growth rates in excess of 35% for over 15 years since the early 1990s, when the country embarked upon an ambitious economic reforms program. However, within the country, the growth of this industry has been highly uneven, with the southern and the western regions leading the rest of the country. This trend has drawn attention to the role of regional policies in the development of this industry. Investigating these issues in depth will help us understand how the state can play a role in propelling an economy forward. The book also compares the different ways in which three states in southern India have established their software industries, illuminating the multiple pathways that are available to developing regions for industrial development, as well as how they affect the type and structure of the industry that evolve. In this first comprehensive study of the role of regional policies in the development of software industry in India, Rajendra Kumar explains the success of these states in terms of four critical factors: availability of adequate skilled labor and specialized infrastructure, pro-employer labor and policy reforms, ethnic linkages of immigrant professionals abroad who returned to establish firms in their native states, and their existing technological capabilities at the beginning of reforms. Contrary to common explanations in the literature, the state did not play a significant role in providing specialized R&D or finance to the industry. He also presents a new "Competitive Flexibility" model and shows that increasing globalization presents tremendous opportunities for developing regions to become globally competitive in a hi-tech field. This is an important book for all scholars and policy makers interested in economic development through high-technology-based industries.

" The results of the Russian-Swedish research team] are presented an exemplary fashion and rigorously edited ... Whoever is interested in the industrial development of European economy and society should read this book." . Vierteljahrschrift fur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte

..". very well written, clearly arranged and interesting and easy to read ... an important study." . Eva Osterberg, Professor of History, University of Lund.

The title of this book has a double meaning: on the one hand, it deals with two very different societies both of which made iron in the early modern period. On the other hand, iron "made" these societies: the needs of iron production and the resistance to these demands from local peasant communities gave the societies a special kind of cohesion and rationality.

This volume presents the findings of a joint team of Swedish and Russian scholars examining the social organization of work in early modern iron industry and their respective societies. The comparison was carried out against the backdrop of the international discussion on proto-industrialization, its prerequisites and consequences. There has, however, been a certain bias in much of that debate, the focus being mainly on Western Europe, particularly on Britain, and on textile trades. This book offers an important contribution to the debate in that it widens the perspective by discussing Northern and Eastern Europe and by studying the iron industry. More particularly it examines actual production processes, the organization of work, social conflict, questions of ownership and its evolution, as well as the diffusion and organization of technical knowledge. The comparative approach is consistently applied throughout, with each chapter closely integrating the results relating to the two selected geographical areas, thus showing ways of solving some of the problems arising from comparative history.

What is the significance of entrepreneurship in an economy? Scholars have argued that when the market is viewed as a process of perpetual adjustment to various forces, and not as a set of end-state prices and quantities simply arrived at, the role of the entrepreneur comes to the fore. What then are fruitful ways to conceive of the phenomenon of entrepreneurship? How do entrepreneurs both respond to and shape larger forces in the economy? In what ways can political institutions and government regulation shape the decisions made by entrepreneurs, and their responsiveness to consumers? How does the cultural environment influence the types of opportunities that an entrepreneur will notice and act on? Finally, is entrepreneurial behavior strictly limited to activity we see in the market? This edited volume-comprised of chapters by scholars and students studying from the disciplines of sociology and economics-examines entrepreneurship theoretically and applied to various cases. It provides an overview of the economic literature on entrepreneurship and puts forth a framework for understanding the market process, as well the policy implications of government intervention and cultural considerations in the market. It will be of use to any scholars, students, practitioners or policymakers interested in entrepreneurship.