In 1987 the Swedish National Board for Technical Development (STU, later becoming the Swedish National Board for Industrial and Technical Development, NUTEK) initiated a study of Sweden's Technological Systems and Future Development Potential. A comprehensive, interdisciplinary study was envisioned, yielding not only useful insight but also a permanent competence base for future analyses of technological systems and technology policy in Sweden. Three leading Swedish research institutes were invited to participate: the Industrial Institute for Economic and Social Research in Stockholm, the Department ofIndustrial Management and Economics at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, and the Research Policy Institute at the University of Lund. I was invited to direct the project. The project group decided to focus initially on a particular technological system, namely factory automation, to be followed by similar studies of other systems. Numerous publications have resulted from the project thus far. The current volume represents a summary of our work on factory automation. It consists of several original essays and of some previously published papers which have been edited, in some cases substantially, in order to form a comprehensive and coherent picture of a technological system. To our knowledge, this is the first in-depth analysis of a technological system designed as a component of a systematic study of technological systems more generally. At the time of this writing, three further studies on electronics and computers, pharmaceuticals, and powder technology are under way, to be published in a later volume.

The transition process of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, which started more than a decade ago, has been the focus of much attention for both practitioners and scholars. Few studies however, address management issues involved in the transition process and no study has, until now, assessed the strategies and tactics which individual companies have pursued over the past decade as part of their adaptation process. This book fills this gap and will leave the reader with a better understanding of the adaptation process at single firm level.

The start of intense rivalry between industry, trade unions and the financial sector, to influence policy in postwar Britain, increased in the late 1950s. Macmillan's government succeeded briefly in restoring some of the original wartime consensus after 1961, only to see hopes for Conservative planning wither. Competition among interest groups to settle how the national interest should be defined made Wilson's attempt to create a Labour planned economy almost impossible. Despite the spur of relative decline, modernisation always fell far short of politicians' aims, putting in doubt the ability of even a modern state to achieve its ambitions. A series of crises exposed promises of breakthrough into growth, which governments blamed on the self-interest of institutions - without whose co-operation they still believed they could not govern. Search for an elusive tripartism, though justified in terms of the political ethos and organisations in which they almost all believed, led industrial politics to a messy conclusion in the late 1970s. The fall of the Heath government is described in detail. In the process, the postwar settlement's already-insecure foundations were eroded, and the ab

This book takes an in-depth look at the economics of digital transformation. Presenting a variety of perspectives from experts, it deals with the socioeconomic changes associated with the digital transformation of production systems. The chapters also address the impacts of digital transformation on the sustainable functioning of socioeconomic and environmental systems. Select chapters also investigate the consequences of adopting intelligent learning systems, both in terms of replacing the human labor force. and their effects on the smart digital management and security of cities, places, and people. Lastly, chapters discuss important questions regarding innovations leading to sustainable change.

This book examines the economics of natural resource markets and pricing, as well as the field of natural resource economics in general. It presents the key contributions to this field of research, including the pioneering works and contemporary studies. The book highlights the basic principles and ideas underlying theoretical models of resource pricing. The models considered in the book underline the fundamental determinants of resource prices and the economic nature of rents for non-renewable and renewable resources. Besides the classical theory of exhaustible resource economics, the book includes several issues that are of high importance for global economic growth, such as the transition to alternative energy and the economics of climate change. The authors also consider the issues of commodity pricing and a resource cartel's activity that are relevant to the world oil market. The book provides analytical solutions illustrated with numerical examples. It allows an intuitive understanding of the subject and the model inferences through graphical illustrations and an informal introduction. It, therefore, is a must-read for everybody interested in a better understanding of resource prices, resource markets, and resource economics.

Mergers & acquisitions are an essential instrument of strategic corporate management for companies of all sizes. The success of an M&A project highly depends on an optimal transaction preparation, fast execution and the experience of all parties involved. Due to numerous endogenous and exogenous influences, no two M&A transactions are alike at the detailed level. This book is designed as a practical M&A guide for students and professionals alike. In addition to dealing with important basics of mergers & acquisitions, the focus is on a structured and in-depth examination of the individual process steps of a typical company sale. At various points in this book, specific differences between a company sale of medium-sized companies (mid-caps) and large companies (large-caps) are discussed in detail.

Although what has come to be known as transaction cost economics has its origins in the 1930s, it was not until the 1970s that transaction cost economics as a systematic and identifiable field of study began. Since then, numerous theoretical developments and empirical applications have expanded and enriched the field. Recognition of its contributions to our understanding of organizations and institutions includes two Nobel laureates, Ronald Coase in 1991 and Oliver Williamson in 2009. This is an important selection of key articles on transaction cost economics by distinguished scholars including Ronald Coase, Herbert Simon, Kenneth Arrow and Richard A. Posner. This research review addresses key areas such as private ordering and credibility, contracts and organization, internal organization, vertical integration and contracting.

New Work and Industry 4.0 have matured and this book takes a practical, experience-based approach to project management in these areas. It introduces methods and covers the practical aspects. It critically examines existing approaches and practices and shows their limitations. The book covers appropriate methods as well as human and social aspects. It contributes to the ongoing discussion of business practices and methods. It also aims to stimulate dialogue in the professional community. Digital Project Practice for New Work and Industry 4.0 begins by introducing basic concepts in the context of Industry 4.0 and discussing how they might influence organizational communication and impact the work environment. After examining the possibilities and challenges of remote work and collaboration in distributed teams all over the world, the book looks at a company's fundamental changes related to New Work from a practical business perspective as well as legal and ethical perspectives. It reviews the case of the VW emission scandal and recommends ways to improve corporate culture. Legal issues include New Work and hybrid forms of collaboration as well as liability for automated decisions (i.e., the potential need for an 'electronic person'). Other implications for the workplace include how: Industry 4.0 might influence the potential demand for "Digital Unions" Industry 4.0, and lean production, and their applications can change industrial practices Open Banking presents new approaches and new business models Work structures and systems can empower employees' work self-management This book also looks at how New Work effects individual workers. It addresses digital stress, introduces strategies for coping with it, and discusses related topics. It also explores the benefits of meditation and the economics of mind, body, and spirit. In essence, this book cover appropriate methods along with human and social factors. It also covers practice, different perspectives, and various experiences from all around the globe. Contributing to the ongoing discussion on business practices and methods, this book will nourish and stimulate dialogue in the professional community.

This book examines the implementation of emerging technology projects in the service-based Indian IT sector. The title shows how emerging technologies impact IT-enabled Services (ITeS) organizations and examines the mobility prospects for engineers and students looking to enter IT. Indian IT, dominated by organizations offering ITeS, provides services to clients across the world. Fueling this sector's growth are engineering graduates. Emerging technologies such as AI, Big Data, Cloud, and Blockchain, have brought the IT and engineering education sectors to a crossroads, with global implications. The IT sector is facing growing demands for new technology solutions from its clients and it is engineering students who are expected to upskill in order to build these solutions. The volume provides a rare, bottom-up look at the intersection of technology, education and organizational structure, based on an ethnographic study. This book will be a helpful and unique resource for managers in IT enabled Services grappling with emerging technologies, researchers looking at how emerging technologies impact organizations and for those developing innovative IT courses in higher education. Readers interested in the global structure of IT education and industry will also find a fresh, ethnographically-informed take on these issues.

This book highlights the importance of talent management practices in recruiting, developing and retaining talented professionals in the digital and IT&C industry. It unpacks the distinctive characteristics of 'digital talent' represented by a wide spectrum of professionals and managers with digital abilities, competencies and skills who add considerable value to organizations and industries worldwide. It shows that despite digital talent's increased variety and significant contribution to digital transformation processes, much of the existing human resource and talent management research and practice fail to account for their distinctiveness. This book calls for the need for a new kind of talent management, referred to as 'digital talent management' (DTM) that is applicable to digital talent and decidedly integrates digital talent's distinctive characteristics into talent management strategies and practices in a human-centered manner. Drawing upon existing, yet disconnected, streams of literature and empirical evidence derived from the information technology and communication (IT&C) industry, this book defines digital talent and delineates strategies to attract, develop and retain them for an uncertain and renewed future.

Market dominance - encompassing single firm dominance, overt and tacit collusion, mergers and vertical restraints - raises many complex analytical and policy issues, all of which continue to be the subject of theoretical research and policy reform. This second edition of a popular and comprehensive text extends the arguments and combines an analysis of the issues with a discussion of actual policy and case studies. This new edition addresses the recent fundamental changes in antitrust law, especially in the UK and the EU, and reviews some high profile and controversial cases such as the Boeing-McDonnell Douglas merger and the Microsoft monopoly. The author moves on to deal with several unresolved questions including the conflicts between trade and antitrust policy, the foreign take-over of domestic assets and extra-territorial claims made by certain countries. Market Dominance and Antitrust Policy will be of considerable value to students and scholars of economics, law and business, as well as researchers, policymakers and practitioners with an interest in competition policy and international trade.

Finally! A comprehensive volume on the management of corporate acquisitions that summarizes contemporary research, and that moves what we know about acquisition management a step further. The book encompasses innovative works from several countries, related to a variety of issues; managerial motives, the role of acquisitions in competitive strategy, as well as organizational and political processes. Unlike several other works on acquisitions, this book emphasizes the most critical issue faced by managers today; how to manage successfully already acquired companies and operations. Both researchers, managers and students of strategy and organization will find this book an important supplement.

As the technological demands of a rapidly changing society impact the training needs of the industrial sector, mechanisms for identifying learner strengths as well as weaknesses are needed to optimize the training process. In addition, there is a need for processes for evaluating the effectiveness of programs focused on the developmental needs of learners. Traditional measures, such as norm-referenced paradigms, do not meet the criteria established for developmental assessment. This book will provide the technical details needed to construct instruments as well as evaluate programs using a recently developed technique called item response theory, which meets the criteria for developmental assessment.

Many organisations are using an increased range of information technologies to support a variety of new organisational practices and organisational forms. The book aims to investigate the integration of information technologies into work places and their effect on work and work-life. Issues include changes in: the nature, quantity and quality of work; power relations; privacy; and aspects of organisational culture. The book also considers the social process of shifting from present organisational structures and practices to new ones.

Economic theorizing suggests that firms can acquire and maintain market dominance in a number of ways. Some economists argue that firms attain dominance only by being relatively more efficient than their rivals and retain leadership only by staying more efficient than their rivals. Others argue that efficiency is not the only source of dominance and that leaders can retain preeminence even if they are inefficient. This book attempts to sort out the relevant points by exploring market dominance experienced by firms in ten different industries. It examines factors that led to acquiring, holding and in some cases losing dominance and asks whether those factors were consistent with economic efficiency.

The results suggest that both schools make valid points. Generally, firms that rose to dominance were market pioneers and did so using economically-efficient strategies. In some cases, however, firms rose to dominance using inefficient strategies. Once they reached their ascendance, these firms engaged in a number of strategies, some efficient, others inefficient, to maintain their dominant positions.

Most of the firms examined eventually lost their dominance. In some cases, the market evolved too rapidly for any firm to maintain control. In other cases the fall was ushered along by federal antitrust and trade policy. In still other industries, it was due either to poor management or the firm becoming inefficient. However, even when some of these dominant firms became inefficient, the market system worked only very slowly to remove them.

The analysis has specific implications for antitrust policies toward dominant firms. Because the sources and consequences of dominance can be varied, neither a DEGREESIlaissez faire DEGREESR policy in favor nor a DEGREESIper se DEGREESR injunction against dominance is called for. A reasoned approach, tempered by underlying market conditions, is warranted toward the strategies used to acquire and maintain dominance.

In revisiting the forty year history of reforms to China's state-owned enterprises (SOE), the book assesses the experiences of this process of reform and scrutinizes how this has helped advance the country's economy overall. The author finds that China's SOE reform not only commits to institutional innovation within the corporation in terms of operating mechanisms, management structure, legal organization and the economic system of the enterprise; but that it is also underpinned by a series of policies that highlight an increasing market orientation. The measures have given rise to a benign interaction between enterprise reform and market development, while switching the SOE's role from appendages of government organs under a planned economic system to more autonomous entities that integrate public ownership and the market economy. In this regard, SOE reform's success in constructing a modern enterprise system serves as the micro-foundation and core of an improved socialist market economic system. The book will appeal to academics and students interested in political economy and the Chinese economy, with particular reference to SOE reform and the recent economic transition in China.

With the ever rising demand for meat around the world, the production of meat has changed dramatically in the past few decades. What has brought about the increasing popularity and attendant normalization of factory farms across many parts of the world? What are some of the ways to resist such broad convergences in meat production and how successful are they? This book locates the answers to these questions at the intersection between the culture, science and political economy of meat production and consumption. It details how and why techniques of production have spread across the world, albeit in a spatially uneven way. It argues that the modern meat production and consumption sphere is the outcome of a complex matrix of cultural politics, economics and technological faith. Drawing from examples across the world (including America, Europe and Asia), the tensions and repercussions of meat production and consumption are also analyzed. From a geographical perspective, food animals have been given considerably less attention compared to wild animals or pets. This book, framed conceptually by critical animal studies, governmentality and commodification, is a theoretically driven and empirically rich study that advances the study of food animals in geography as well as in the wider social sciences.

Our intention with this book is to extend the efficiency literature to the case of intertemporal models. We do this in steps. First, we introduce static network models which will serve as building blocks for our intertemporal budgeting models and our dynamic models. Next, we devote two chapters to productivity measurements, which we think of as comparative static models. Intertemporal budgeting models and dynamic models are taken up after that. Each chapter, except Chapter One, contains an empirical applica- tion. These applications are coauthored with colleagues and stu- dents; thanks are due to Runar Brannlund, Yijan He, Julius Hor- vath, Pontus Roos, Jerry Whittaker and S. (Lek) Yaisawarng . . We would also like to thank Dale Boisso and Kathy Hayes for gra- ciously sharing their data on Illinois municipalities with us. Two of the applications are already published, namely: "Environmental Regulation and Profitability: Applications to Swedish Pulp and Pa- per Mills," Environmental and Resource Economics 6: 23-36, 1995, (Section 2. 5) and "Productivity and Quality Changes in Swedish Pharmacies," International Journal of Production Economics 39: 137-144, 1995, (Section 3. 5). We are grateful to Kluwer Academic Publishers and Elsevier Science for kindly allowing us to reproduce these publications here. During the summer 1995 we spent a very enjoyable two months at the Center for Economic Studies (CES) at the University of Munich.

1. This book assesses different sectors in the world economy with particular emphasis on the Indian economy and highlights the achievement and prevailing problems in the sectors. 2. It focuses specially on industries, investment and trade; finance and credit; and employment, gender and development. 3. It will be of interest to departments of Economics, Business, and Gender Studies across the UK and USA.

Utilising a wide array of data and rich empirical evidence drawn from a large sample of industrial districts (IDs), Ivana Paniccia presents a realistic, state-of-the-art analysis of their socio-economic structure and performance. This extensive yet detailed study adopts a wide perspective, integrating historical evidence and different streams of literature - from industrial to regional economics - into testable hypotheses. The multidisciplinary, quantitative approach adopted by the author, enables her to 'de-structure' the 'canonical' idea of the ID and evaluate the normative value. Supported by multivariate and econometric analyses, she identifies four general types of ID each with different development paths, performances, inter-organizational relations, and regulatory rules and institutions. The results demonstrate that IDs on average achieve better static or dynamic economic performance than non-ID areas. The analysis also highlights critical points of rupture in the socio-economic equilibrium of IDs which may impair their future competitiveness and social sustainability. The author offers a critical appraisal of the organizational literature on IDs, claiming for caution in their depiction as 'cooperative systems' and goes on to present the first steps towards a 'microfoundation' of a theory on IDs. Providing the methodology to monitor the performance and evolution of IDs, together with precise policy suggestions, this book will appeal to a broad range of scholars and researchers in a variety of disciplines including regional, industrial and institutional economics, organizational studies and industrial sociology.

This book analyses the historical context and progression of "significant innovations" beginning with the industrial revolution, starting around 1750 to the present. It explores the interrelationship, causes, and evolutionary process of contemporary "disruptive" inventions and the role played by global finance and international commerce to support these. First, the authors examine the environment and circumstances surrounding the inventors and explore their backgrounds to determine, why at a specific time, they identified a need that became the seed for invention and, what was their method of successfully commercializing their innovation. Secondly, they focus on the financing of the inventor, the innovation, and the commercialization of the invention(s). They analyze the changes in finance during the shift from a labor-based production process to a more capital-intensive production process, and what new financial products or financial markets were created to facilitate this transition. Third, they explore the impact of global commerce on the inventor country's innovation environment and international competition impacting the innovation's production, distribution, and sales, as well as, investigating any financial impact from the demand side and whether that impact was domestic or global in character. Furthermore, they consider if and how global finance and international commerce including the migration of people, together play a role in helping the disruptive invention satisfy a need in society, whether from a production or consumption perspective. Finally, they search for common elements that repeatedly inspired inventors and their disruptive innovations over time. This book will appeal to global government officials, business leadership, early career professionals, and students across a number of disciplines including finance, economics, business, engineering, and technology.